PREPS

I was reading Mickey Creekmore this morning and he had a big article up on surviving in the city. How disgusting! And he was disgusted by having to write to the folks who insist on doing it. Can't say as I blame him. I read about Mountain House Foods upping their free shipping order to $10,000, up from $3000. Big jump there. And Mountain House is not a bunch of fools. They want to sell their product and make money. What this is telling me is that while some people may be doing group buying, there must be a lot of people buying BIG chunks of freeze dried food for storage. $10,000 worth is a pretty good load. And most preppers I know don't have that kind of money. A few maybe, but not many. So the well-to-do are getting into the act while the getting is good. A lot of the COMEX buyers are taking delivery on their gold these days. That means the smart money is getting out of town. And why not? If you intend to use gold as a safe haven for wealth you damn sure don't want it sitting in a vault in Nu Yawk Sity. I want it out of that town! Besides, they just might loan it to a Bernie Madoff kind of guy and he might take a hike with the gold himself. Always remember to keep your wealth in TANGIBLES. Promises may let you wipe your butt once on the paper but that is about the extent of it's usefulness. Promises have a habit of wasting precious Oxygen. If I could not hold the gold in my hand then I didn't buy it. Because I am the kind of guy who doesn't buy worthless pieces of paper and try to enter them on the asset side of my financial ledger. Those kind of deals are for the elite bankers to pull, like Washington Mutual. Real wizards those guys.

Mickey did have a real nice link on his screed that tales you to a neat Food Storage Calculator. I think it is a Mormon site and they know more about food storage for hard times that most Americans. I BOOKMARKED the Food Calculator Site and I suggest you do the same thing. You just never know when it could come in handy. And when you read over the calculator notice that there are no meats on the list. It is pretty much a vegetarian diet. It has the necessary protein and all of that but no meat. Me, I have lots of Sardines and Tuna. Acquiring a small stash of Mackerel to go with it. We also have a small stash of Salmon. Gotta do something about that Tuna and Salmon. I like them both and I love the protein they give you. I also have a very large stash of Beef Stew. It tastes pretty good and it has a lot of fat and protein and carbs in it. We have the usual cans of Chicken and Beef to amend our diet should the need arise to get off of Rice and Beans. A few jars of Pickled Pigs Feet would be a nice change of pace should the need arise. Pigs Feet are supposed to be a southern dish but I ate the hell out of them living in northern Indiana. Yummy.

I have three 5 gallon buckets with lids ready to store stuff. I am not too happy about plastic buckets. I prefer my metal garbage cans. But these buckets will allow me to keep things like Old Fashioned Oats a lot fresher and better tasting than just throwing the bags of them in the garbage can. We can buy the Oats for 50 cents per pound at the Amish bulk store. I bought pure, unadulterated steel wool to make my Oxygen traps. You put the steel wool in a napkin with a small serving of table salt and you have a cheap and effective Oxygen reducer for your bucket. Keeps things pretty nice.

I have been buying local Honey from the Amish bulk store also. Honey is a great sweetener and a good cure for low blood sugar. It has antiseptic qualities which can help you out in an emergency. Just try not to get a bad wound in a producing Clover field in the Summer. A field full of bees could give you more of a problem! One of the great things about honey is it's ability to vaccinate you against a lot of different pollens. Honey can really help people with allergies sometimes. If you have allergies and you don't have a problem with Honey, give it a try. If you have a sugar problem you might want to go to a doctor and find out about yourself and Honey.

The pep stash is getting stuff in it you wouldn't think about when you first start to prep. I have a brand new manual can opener that has never been used, put away. I have 3 pair of brand new blue jeans put away. We have spices by the container full, unopened, stashed away. I can't tell you have much Salt I have in the stash but it is a bunch.

We spent a lot of our prep money this last Summer and Fall buying canned vegetables. I would say it would add up to maybe some where around 800 pounds, net weight. If you can heat the canned veggies up in the juice that is in the can you can hang on to a lot of nutrition. The Handmaiden foraged a lot of greens for our table last year and froze a bit of it. We had our last meal of Lambsquarters last night. I will miss them. Good food and good fiber. A little butter and salt and you just chow down. We probably won't get any more free greens until the middle of March when the Nettles come back into view. I like Nettles. The Handmaiden says she is going to save a lot more Lambsquarters this year so we don't run out in the Winter.

The freezer is full of Chicken and Venison. Our neighbor gave us a ton of Venison and we bought 30 pound of chicken for $6.00 a little over a week ago. Helluva bargain. I have a 50 pound bag of feed corn yet to eat. I also have a grinder to make it into something I can digest. No electricity needed just Armstrong power.

It is snowing outside as I type this. And I don't care. If we got a foot of snow and couldn't get out of the Valley I would be okay. Part of the Handmaiden's dowry is her little Y2K stove that runs off of cans of Butane. We have enough for a few weeks or so. I just noticed that the snow had turned into big flakes all of a sudden. We are forecast to hit 0 degrees here in a couple of days. I like that! We have lots of good quilts to help us make it through such a spell.

So mind your preps and consider the idiots who won't do it, though obviously some people with money are starting to pick up our train of thought. We can make it through this coming hard time. We are not stupid and we are preparing. Even the fedgov is catching on. But they have the big money. Our money. But they also have the Continuity of Government Act to back their play. Wonder why no one ever submitted a Continuity of the Citizenry Act to Congress. Must have slipped their minds and Obama will make up for lost time in that area. You believe that? Okay. I really didn't think you would but I had to ask.

Stay alive!

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net