Are you prepared? Trying to be more self sufficient

Vegetables arent really a mainstay for most part. Maybe potatos, onions and such. You can grow some, canning extends food out over a year easy.

You can also "can" meat and it keeps a long time. Making jerky extends meat also.

 

If you plan ahead! Say you make it 60 days into a catastrophic event (no power anymore etc), and you're catching/killing game animals. What's the best way to preserve them? You obviously can't eat the whole thing at one time and you'd want to store the rest for future consumption. I've read about root cellars but can you store meat in them? Would it be cold enough? You can cure your meat if you know how, I don't, but at some point you'd need the ingredients to do that, like salt. Almost makes you want to throw your hands in the air and say "fuck it"!!

 

Yep trust me i know the feeling.
Main reason we grow stuff in garden is its tastes so much better. We rarely buy store bought jams or jellies.

 

Oh for sure! My grandmother used to can every year after we went and picked everything from local farms. Of course I paid no attention to how she did it....

 

probably your best bet would be smoking it. Old school way to make jerky. You can do that with fish, deer, turkey. Really any meat probably. Not sure how well it would do with fattier cuts like pork or bear. I’d like to make a bushcraft smoker this winter and smoke some deer right in deer camp. Seems like a good lesson to learn.

 

80 acres, 1800 feet of Saco river frontage, 100 foot well, generator, next door neighbor is a 7000 acre state owned wild life management area. House is at 660 feet. Grocery store that locally farms less than a mile away I just live here and enjoy life.

 

Keeping your vehicle prepared is very important. I keep a tool kit, jumpers, air compressor, and first aid kit

 

I have canned corned beef, chicken, pork loin, beef chili, pork N beans. Delicious, cheap, shelf stable and convenient.

Salmon is also on my canning list, but I don't really want/need a dozen or more jars of it.

Strange that you hardly ever see preppers talk about canning. Way less work than a garden. I buy "scratch N dent" vegetables in bulk from the local produce place for pennies on the dollar. Run em through the good 'Ol Presto 23 quart and blam..... Pantry is full.

 

that sounds like the setup I would like to have in the near future. A WMA next door would be great to have. Lots of potential there in a crisis.
I didn’t know where the Saco river was. Googled it. That’s a beautiful river.

 

Oh also if you are doing canned foods from store rotate out the older stuff replace with newer

 

Keep a gas stove handy with fuel and can it if pissible

 

They have a program to discount less than perfect veggies I think it’s called “misfits” sell for a bit cheaper.
Been watching for a good sale on chicken we need to can more of that

 

Scenario for today.
Grid has been down for a week or two. Most folks around you are out of food by now. You aren’t because you prepared.
How do you cook it with out the smell telling everybody you have food?
How are you going to handle it when starving neighbors or others ask for food.


For everybody talking about bartering just remember that shows people you have an excess of something. Perhaps better to try and barter work or skills

 

that’s a couple of very good points. This is probably a lot easier if you are not in a neighborhood. I would think the best scenario is if you and a couple of close neighbors are on the same page for prepping and then work together in a disaster situation.

 

Interesting scenario! I have more questions about how you're preserving any uncooked foods (like someone asked yesterday, say you hunt and kill something, how are you preserving it for long term in a no power/freezer/hot environment?). That being said, I'm not super far down the canning/preserving foods rabbit hole, but it seems to me that any long term food supplies consist of already cooked food, and any cooking would likely be more related to a fresh harvest of food. Interesting topic for sure.

I've got another topic though, which I thought about yesterday (after hearing thirdhand unreliable information about military checking areas for radiation yesterday because of a "failed attack"). In the event that radiation sweeps an area, killing off your entire gardens/future supplies, do you have backup plans for future food sources?

 

If its going to kill off your garden you are done for already. Human body is far more suseptable to radiation than plants.

 

I guess this made up scenario was assuming you had the ability to shelter and make it lol.

 

basically would be at ground zero. Would be a bad place to be in...unless you had a bunker. But even so thats worst case scenario.

 

Perhaps cook indoor. Utilizing a camp stove or similar in a garage. Then when the cooking is done open a single window or door to let the smells slowly dissipate??? Hopefully that would not attract too much attention.

I know this makes me appear callous, but I am reminded of the ant and the grasshopper fable. Sometimes nature must run its course as winter will arrive whether others want it to or not.

 

Depending upon your surroundings and where you are located dealing with this can be difficult. For those of you in the suburbs or where you are surrounded by your neighbors without defensible space to say no to them could lead to them not asking but then trying to attack you. . Ultimately you need defensible space where you can choose to help someone but if you need to say no and that person does not want to accept what you say you can properly defend yourself.

In a situation where the world is actually crumbling people will get desperate and getting food and water will be one thing but defending yourself against others will be a whole other challenge. Remember the show The Walking dead. This is why the city's crumpled first. Eventually people made their way out into rural areas but even then you will have to defend your space. At some point we start to get to the point where small communities will form to protect themselves. That's a whole new rabbit hole