Ever since the earlier scares of the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 (supposedly, planets lining up in same plane would cause cumulative gravity to cause Terra to flip on our axis), Y2K (supposed shutting down of the electric grid after year 2000) and The Big Scary 2012 Mayan Calendar, survival supply companies have done a very good business. The world has always had instabilities and periods of shortage or challenge. Rather than waiting to see a shift in national or international events to justify “prepping,” why not break this down to a local level? This what what would actually affect you, your mate, family. The larger international events can probably be seen coming at least a little bit.
A massive hurricane can be known about heading for a coast or a regional drought predicted. Rabid media demagogues can go stir up riots often based upon misleading or partial representation of events for the objectives of their masters. (US legacy media are state run media as in other systems of government (look up Mockingbird for more on this..). So let’s think in local terms. If mobs of social benefit recipients strip store shelves while police are told to stand down, or if a tornado knocks out the power grid for two weeks, do you have food or a means to cook it?
The survival / prepping story is much larger than this, staying warm, securing your space, many other consideration, but here let’s just collect some videos with practical advice on low cost ways to preserve and store food.
Here is a discussion of 24 key foods that Amish people have traditionally stored in canning jars, not requiring refrigeration, for use whenever needed:
I remember being very young in the 1950’s and helping a great uncle, along with my dad, clean up the potatoes after harvesting in the Appalachians. After scrubbing the dirt off in one large zinc plated steel tub, they were given a second rinse in another, using still bristled (pre nylon wooden backed) brushes in both. Then they were set onto tar paper place on the ground and allowed to get mostly dry. Next, we dusted them with agricultural lime. After that, a bunch of cedar logs, side by side to each other like a raft, maybe 2 meters by 2 meters was set down atop 10-12 centimeters of coarse gravel for drainage. A layer of tar paper was placed over that, then a layer of 6-10 cm of pine straw. Onto the layer of pine straw was laid a layer of potatoes, then another layer of pine straw over that, and another layer of potatoes, three deep. I don’t know how may layers would usually be done. I just happened to be helping in an old way of storing them. Finally, the stack of limed potatoes, surrounded by pine straw was topped with more tar paper, which draped down over the sides as well. Smaller logs, to keep wind from blowing it off, were placed over the pile. This was usually built in well ventilated area but in shade, so that it did not get too hot on warmer Fall days. I don’t recall how many months this arrangement was said to keep the potatoes. As a kid, I didn’t think to ask. I did recall dad’s saying on way back home from helping with the harvest (and with our own sack of freshly dug potatoes as a thank you for helping) that when Uncle Lee wanted to get some of them, he’d remove the tar layer and take all or half of a layer at a time, and put them into burlap sacks and take them into the house or root cellar. Just a little quaint Appalachian folklore to hearken back to yesteryear…
Even other than canning them, here’s how to store potatoes for up to a year:
How to water bath can your meats: She shows a technique for cooking the meat in water (you can add salt and spices also) in the jar inside large cooker that holds 24 one quart jars;
Preserving your fresh eggs that were not washed first after taking them from the hens; he will show the lime method, but one of his commentators describes the mineral oil method:
While this blog is all about health topics and we generally do not discuss food, it seemed a good time, with all the instability in the air, and hopefully, in hindsight, we look back upon it later to find that it remained in the air and was never actualized, how to assure nutrition is always a cornerstone of health.