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Here's 2 more websites worth a check

offthegridnews.com
This site has hundreds of articles on many topics and also offers a free newsletter. Information from composting to water purification.

efoodsdirect.com
This site offers food and supply kits.

foodinsurance.com
This one has more affordable 1 month supply kits. But with both of these websites, be prepared for "sticker shock." The 1 month/1 adult package is $300. The 2 week version is $160 (closer to my affordability). They also have gluten free and vegetarian options and supply kits.

If you think about how much you spend a month on just groceries, these prices are still high, due to preparation and the extended shelf life. But from this view point, the price is not excessive. If you can save about $100 each month with the tips already posted here, in a year, you could have a complete food supply for 2 adults for 2 months. That may not sound like much, but combined with your other inventory, it could stretch further.



Jane Winkler, Editor
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Here are 2 websites worth a look on preserving foods

answers.com/topic/smoked-meat
This site is a good starting point with general information and history on smoking meats for preservation.

freshpreserving.com
This site has instruction videos, a list of classes and regional harvest guides. If you have local farms which sell to the public, or a farmer's market, the regional harvest guide (pdf format) list when different fruits/veggies are harvested and will be available. It also includes how many pounds are needed for one 32 oz jar. This is great information for buying the correct amount for the number of jars you have.


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These are really great tips Lcp!

When I had a garden, I preserved in jars all of the beans, tomatoes, jams, pumpkin, soups, apples, etc. and my goodness, they lasted the entire year. I didn't have to buy any of these items once until around month 14.

I cook every day, unless I'm sick or just exhausted. If I didn't though I'll bet those jars would have lasted well into the following year as well. You can reuse the jars too, just replacing the lids.

I can't have a garden here, but I can grow herbs. At around 2.50 a bottle that can save a great deal of money too and herbs are more like weeds anyway, so their growing ratios are very forgiving when you don't have the perfect climate or yard to grow them.


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I know canning is only recommended for a year or two of preservation. However, I have to admit to eating items that were well beyond the 2 and even 3 year mark. If stored in a cool, dry, dark environment, canned food will be good well beyond the recommendations.

I got a huge box of veggies and fruits from a Freecycler, just for the jars. I wasn't expecting the food to still be edible. The jars were marked with the year they were filled, and some were 4 to 5 years old. Only 1 of 10 jars of green beans had gone bad. I don't know who put these up, but they were delicious, and so were the peaches.


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I think I'm sensing the "food" shortage epidemic...some of the things that end up bringing it about.

I'm not 100% for certain if I have these in the right order. The come to my vision and fall, come to my vision and fall, like there are ups and downs. That's true for anytime in history, but there are certain cycles wherer the gaps between those ups and downs are extending - elongated, like times of wars, The Holocaust era, riots, Russian bread lines, etc. They're trigger points in history. We're not there yet, and I'm thinking that's why I'm getting the whoosie ups and downs.

What I feel right now, how it is being presented to me is, take a rubberband and attach it to two fingers of your left hand and two fingers of your right. Stretch until there is just some resistance. It's a boring excercise but see how long you can sit there before your arms get tired.

The arms are the government. The rubberband is the the system and the fingers are the people. If you had enough people, say in a classroom, see how many hands and fingers you could fit in this rubber band and it can't be an industrial strength band because the system/rubberband is faulty, it isn't stable and in reality isn't something that is really there or can do what the arms are saying the band can do. So, there's just a lot of fingers and hands inside the rubber band. Now everybody stretch the band from both sides. It's a little tighter and a little tighter and so on and so forth. It won't take much of an external to snap the sides of this band no matter what direction it comes from.

So, right now we don't have everyone in this system/band. So, the band goes in and it goes out and people, if they are honest with themselves, do feel it.

HOWEVER...HUGE HOWEVER! what's "in" now is to be a 'ray of sunshine,' keep it positive, keep it light and inspirational...it for whatever reason (i understand why this is, but the general public may or may not and feel badly or that they are the problem for seeing it.) isn't something you're actually supposed to notice. It's kind of like working for a corporation and you're sittin there going, o.k. I know the petty cash fund and bonus programs were in the green, what happened...and you start to see memos that don't make sense...you snoop around and find the head guy is laundering/pilfering funds and they make you feel like you are not the "team player" for noticing. It goes like that.

Inspiration is wonderful and you don't have to be all doom and gloom,. If you want to get support groups or offer key resources for things you feel, just for you own sanity and everyone elses, too really, have positive and helping things you are doing as well. Write, join communitiy services, cook, go for picnics, grow those gardens, etc.

I feel there is going to be something with the food stamp program. Like incentivess for large businesses. So, the more people that are on them, there is money not only going to the companies for accepting food stamps but gov. grants will pay for the efforts of supplying those foods and it builds minimum wage jobs, federal min. wage jobs etc. Keep in mind too when someone uses foodstamps each purchase is STATE exempt in having to pay taxes for that food. So, no taxes. That's part of it. I also see restaurants being able to use or accept foodstamps. Utilities comes in here too, but it's garbles in my brain right now.

O.K. Look for utilitiy hikes. Why? Simple...we've seen the wonderful gov. ads about how to be a good parent and teach your kids to turn off lights, etc. There is going to be a gap somehow with profits, but they'll tell you it is something else, like shortage of this or that...I'm going to go with oil, but what do I know?

So the food stamps and utilities somehow fall into or under some grant or program. The people who are actually turning their lights off and pay full price for everything (thrifty), well, the CEO's of the utility companies only see that because you are keeping your bills down, they aren't getting their golfing green fees and yacht insurance paid for so to keep them and their investors happy, guess what they decide to do to bridge that gap?

And the CZARS (sp) we here Obama setting in place the salary zar, whatever they are. They are like those dandelion things you blow in the wind. They will show up and they will make people feel they are looking out for you, but the "player" the CEO replacement "players" will publically be repremanded with a glass ceiling of a salary, but they'll have "outside" incentives and funds trikling in to balance the difference. Their job will be to keep the public assured the company though is in good standing and the popele will be told they need "TO DO MORE"

The gov. is also going to go after the young. The old know too much. Look for grants in schools and lots and lots of visits to college campus' The young are to "tweak" the middle aged and old...the parents. Basically to "get them on board."

Last edited by Eleise - Clairvoyance; 10/01/10 05:23 PM.

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Just before we left for Pow-wow, I saw something on TV that really peaked my interest on water purification. But had to wait until our return to look it up. The Pow-Wow was INCREDIBLE!!!!

Potters For Peace is an organization that teaches potters in 3rd world countries to make very simple water purification systems. These are used in South and Central American, Africa, the Carribean and Asia. It's a clay pot made to fit in a bucket. After firing, it's painted with colloidal silver paint. The small pores in the clay filter particulates and the colloidal silver had anti-bacteria properties that make the water potable.

There are quite a few ceramic filter systems on the market. This is a system made for the other 90% of the world. However, this low-tech method of water purification is practical knowledge for all of us. The version I saw on TV had fluted sides to increase surface area. The Potters for Peace website has a ton of information on testing, production standards, etc., and there is no patent on this system.

Last edited by lcp012586; 10/11/10 09:30 PM.

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I've heard of Colloidal silver but I hadn't heard of it in a paint.

Do you have to keep re-painting the bowl or making new ones for the impurities that are trapped in the bowl from previous filterings?

This might actually help if people ended up near streams, homeless, but are near water supplies. Also, if there's an old well that still has running water underneath it, to filter it for cooking and such.


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According to the Potters for Peace website, the silver is not really a "paint." You mix it with water and then dip the clay pot. The formula and brand names of the silver they use is on the website. The pots have to be scrubbed and they get thinner. This reduces the effectivenss over time, but they do last quite a while.

AquaRain makes a gravity ceramic filter system. It's looks similar to a tea urn, and has a spout. It's not too expensive and the filters last much longer than those for the water pitcher systems. Their unit with 4 filters has been added to my wish list.

Last edited by lcp012586; 10/14/10 11:46 PM.

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I've been doing small things as well around the house.

One of them is like a game. Each month I tally how much money I spend on food. Then I divide that by 4. Then I see if I can beat those numbers by $15.00/wk anyway I can.

One thing I've done is when I start to see vegetables going bad I pick an hour or so I'm in deep thought and spread them out on the counter and start jullien-ing or dicing them up. I have a dehydrator I'll sprinkle them on or I'll wrap them in a paper towel and freeze them. I save a bunch of money, especially on red peppers.

I'll also, re-use those those tiny plastic cups you get with chinese food or an icecube tray and freeze left over fruit juices and stock. They're good to go for soups and stews. Winter will be here soon and those are all things I would normally buy.

The money I have left over I stash away for possible outages. We're seeing more than a few here, periodically and it doesn't have to mean a terrorist attack, but with everything integrating through the computer, it seems to just take one thing and then you're stuck.


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We're back from my daughter's wedding. It was lovely and everything went well. I'm still exhausted.

Last night we watched a commentary show about the possibility of hyper-inflation here in America. This has happened several times around the world, Germany after WWI and Zimbabwe in 2008. Unfortunately, our government and the Federal Reserve appear to be making the same mistakes these governments did which caused hyper-inflation in their economies.

The Federal goverment, particularly in the past 2 years, has accumulated a staggering amount of debt. Right now, it would take almost, if not ALL the money in the entire world to get us out of the red. The Federal Reserve is "monetizing" a portion of our debt. Just recently, many said that would NOT happen, including the heads of the Fed Reserve and the IRS. But it is being done.

It's somewhat similar to your house mortgage being sold to a new bank/lender. The Federal Reserve is the new bank/lender for the Federal Government. But all the debt buying has reduced their cash supply, so they are printing more. The more cash in circulation, the less it is worth. This sets us up for inflation. Combine that with shortages and you get hyper-inflation. Low supply increases price in every situation!

This has happened before, and it rarely ends well, i.e. dictatorships, riots, civil war..... It may be more devastating here. We've had 2-3 generations of wealth. While many of our grandparents lived through the Great Depression and the shortages of WWII, we and our children have never really wanted for anything. We have not experienced widespread and lingering hardships. Growing up, we were not wealthy by any standard, but we always had food, clothes and a home.

So many of us are ill-prepared at best. Many from no fault of their own, others relying on the illusion the government will take care of them. Historically, civil unrest and shortages begets violence. When necessities begin to run short, or are too expensive to afford, how will the citizenry respond? How will our government respond?

During the show last night, a few examples of hyper-inflation were presented. These were prepared by economic forecasters and please don't take my word. Look it up yourself. While not the exact numbers provided, they are close enough to make the point.

A Hershey chocolate bar $15.00
A small box of sugar $50.00
32oz of coffee $70.00

Yes, these are luxury items. One can certainly survive without chocolate, sugar and coffee (though for me, not happily). But it got me thinking, with these forecasted prices, how much would a can of green beans costs? A loaf of bread? A half gallon of milk? A dozen eggs? These are not luxuries. Historically, with the onset of hyper-inflation, wages did increase, but not at the same rate of price increases. If food becomes so exorbitantly expensive, many will be faced with the question of do I eat, or do I keep a roof over my head? How can I protect what little I do have?

Americans faced these questions during the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands were homeless and untold numbers died of starvation and illnesses brought on by malnutrition. There was hyper-inflation, shortages, and violence. It's happened here too, but few are left to remind us. This factual history is "glossed" over in our schools. Our children are led to believe FDR's programs and policies pulled our economy out. However, there are credible arguments those policies actually extended the crisis. Gearing up for WWII, (well before Pearl Harbor) with increased private sector production may have been what actually pulled us out of the Depression.

Our government is leading us down the historical path to hyper-inflation. If/When we get there, necessities will be worth more than gold. What can we do to turn things around?

Learn accurate history - not the idealized bunk taught in schools these days. Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Will we make that mistake as well?

Share what you have learned and let your leaders, local, state, federal know that you are concerned and watching CLOSELY.

Prepare now as best you can for possible shortages. Economic situations can fluxuate in a single day. It can happen very quickly as predicted in our companion thread, with a triggering event. There could be a run on stores, just like before a major storm. It could also happen more gradually, but over a relatively short period of time, i.e. a few months. Pay attention to prices when you shop. Was that loaf of bread $1.39 last week and this week it's $1.79?





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