Saturday, December 16, 2017

Positives and Negatives of Pay

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What Did You Do to Prep This Week?

I’ve seen lots of comments posted in response to my recent article on heating your home in a long-term grid-down situation suggesting building a “rocket mass heater” for heat inside the home, and while these things can work, most people aren’t going to build one of these things inside their homes so I did not include it in my article.

I keep my articles practical and give information that will help the most people, and if it isn’t practical and or no one reading it will actually build it then I leave it out.

I wonder how many people suggesting this in the...

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Tree Fruits from Seed

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

When we turn to sustainability, a lot of preppers consider tree fruits for part of our long-term food supply. They can be expensive to buy, so it’s tempting to just plant a seed from the tasty apple we ate for lunch or the fruits of a nearby tree that’s thriving. Johnny Appleseed did it after all.

It’s not quite that easy these days, though. Our most common tree fruits need a little help in the seed-to-plant stage. Then what we get from our 5-20 year investment may be … pretty disappointing.

Rampant Hybrids

The modern era has changed our fruit trees. They are about as far away from Johnny Appleseed’s as our modes of transportation.

Most of our common domestic tree fruits are not self-fertile. They require another tree, usually of a different variety, to pollinate their flowers. This results in a fruit that is carrying a hybrid seed within it.

Call it a Labrador and a poodle, and your seed is a labradoodle … except, it’s not as predictable in results as those labradoodles are.

That’s because many of the fruit trees purchased in the last 50-70 years are already a hybrid. So now you’re planting the equivalent of a puppy bred from a labradoodle and a bagel (beagle-basset).

That’s a lot of potential color, coat, size, health and temperament combinations. Same goes for fruit trees.

Understanding Breeding

When a plant flowers, it already knows what kind of fruit it’s going to produce. That fruit production is coded into its genetic material. It doesn’t matter what pollinates it, the fruit it bears will be the same.

The pollen carries the additional DNA from a different tree for most of our fruits. That new genetic material affects the seeds (offspring) inside that fruit, and in turn the fruit that offspring will produce. Like any other mutt or hybrid, it’s a BINGO pull for which parent’s genes end up in each of the offspring.

Then, there are the ways those genes interact with each other.

With some genes, there’s a straight on-off switch. In many cases, however, multiple sets of genes impact the same trait(s). Labrador coloring is one fairly simple example of gene expression.

Plants – to include our fruit trees – can inherit the same mixes of traits, which will affect our future trees. You can also get the same throwback results and the same potential of mutation, with some mutations positive for the species, some waiting hidden for years and eons, and some pretty negative.

Resulting trees and their fruits may be lacking in flavor or texture, produce very small amounts instead of bushels, be unable to support the weight of its fruit so they all snap off and drop before they ripen, or might create a throwback to a medlar. It might be two feet tall, ten feet tall, or twenty feet tall, spindly or shrub-like or lollypop-umbrella “tree” shaped. Its roots might be polite or might run along the surface.

Takeaway: Just because you like the fruit, the fruits from the seed inside are most likely going to be different.

That’s assuming the seed is actually capable of developing into a mature tree, and a fruit-bearing tree. Non-fruiting ornamental varieties of trees are also the result of hybridization. Disease and pest resistance may vary greatly from the parents.

Plus, the new hybrid may or may not make a good pollination partner with the existing trees or its newly sprouted hybrid-hybrid brothers and sisters. Fruits usually come in several prime pollination and flowering “seasons”, and sometimes have only a handful of other varieties that will work well as a pollinator for them.

Grafting’s Influence

On top of the high likelihood that your parent trees were both hybrids and your seed is likely to conceal all kinds of throwback and combination genetics, it’s very likely that if a tree was purchased in the last 20 years, it’s grafted.

Grafting is when you take a root from one tree, and glue a stick from a different tree on top of it. (Every botanist and arborist just twitched at that oversimplification. You’re welcome.)

Mostly, grafting is done to control size or to place a favorable fruiting variety on a root stock that can handle soil conditions better than that fruiting species. Sometimes it’s done to create the “tree of many fruits” combinations, or to make “self” fertile apples and peaches.

The root stock in no way affects the genetic material that’s carried by either the hybrid pollen donor or the hybrid female flower that will turn that pollen into a seed. However, it does create an additional set of issues due to the introduction of that fifth (and potentially sixth if it, too, is a hybrid) set of genetics into the “successful tree” gamble.

The problem for home growers who want to propagate their own trees is that the root stock defines a lot of the tree’s success, while the scion that will grow into the trunk and limbs determines the actual fruits you’ll harvest. Without the root stock, that scion may not even survive long-term.

Identifying Grafted Trees

First off, if you bought an apple, cherry, peach, plum, or pear tree in the last 20 years, I’m pretty comfortable saying it’s grafted. But maybe not. If not, you probably hunted hard to get your pure-bred, non-grafted, standard-sized heirloom, and know it’s not grafted.

If you want to check, look at the base of your tree. If you’re into mulch volcanos (many Americans are), you may want to move some of the material away from the base of the tree.

You’re looking for a ring or bulge somewhere right above where the roots start spreading out horizontally, sometimes up to 1-2’ above that point. That’s the scar tissue from where your tree was grafted onto its root stock.

Some trees are sneaky (by which I mean they heal flawlessly), and some botanists and arborists are artistic masters who should be working in cosmetic surgery, so it’s not 100% that you’ll find the scar. To further complicate it, there’s chip budding that is sometimes done, and grafting not the trunk, but limbs, which requires looking higher on the tree.

For the most part, though, look for that bulge or scar, in a circle or a series of them within 1-2’ of the soil and root levels. That’s your clue that you aren’t dealing with just one hybrid, but have an additional set of genetics contributing to the tree’s success.

Cold Stratification

Still want to try that seed for future apples? Or, want to try to breed some successful root stock crops for your area? Sometimes just tossing an apple core as-is works. It’s how we get apples growing in the woods around school campuses all over the world.

However, there are more reliable methods that can increase your chances of getting a tree to actually grow from that seed.

You can separate the seeds and plant clusters of 3-8 spaced 2-4” apart, with clusters separated by 4-8” in a row or mound. Top it with sand for the least-compaction potentials.

If you have problems with rodents, cover the seeds with some screen or wire mesh, similar to planting bulbs in “cages” but with the ability to cut it free and bend it up as the seedling grows to avoid girdling it.

At that stage, you may be digging them to graft and transplant, or you might be thinning to 6-25’ with the intention to graft in-situ, or just wing it and let them grow up. Whichever the goal, you want to go ahead and thin before their roots become too entangled.

Spring planted seeds are less likely to sprout the same year, and can be susceptible to late frosts and heavy rains or rotting in saturated soils. Autumn-planted sprouts may need mulched over – similar to strawberries – to protect them over winter.

A 6-to-24-hour lukewarm water soak ahead of planting out in spring will increase germination rates – which are typically pretty low for fruit trees.

 

Another method is to keep seeds cool and dry until 60 days before spring planting. At the -60 mark, the seeds are moved to damp (not soaking wet) straw, sawdust, peat moss, sphagnum moss, or sand and kept in the fridge.

You can also do the fridge stratification, and transplant into bags or cells. I prefer bags, because you slit or untie them, and transplant a full plug without ever disturbing the roots. A tree with a healthy tap root will be more successful and need less help later on in life.

For fruits like peaches and plums with their thick pits, you can help them out by gently cracking that tough armor when you get to the damp stratification, pre-soak, or are directly sowing them. There’s a tiny tree embryo in there, so be gentle. Nut crackers, a thin hand saw, and gentle taps with a hammer are all ways to open up that pit.

It’s Not All Bad News

Personally, I’m not much of a gambler. Especially when it comes to months, years and decades of time and space investment, I’m more comfortable with a sure thing. So how do I plan to continue propagating fruit trees?

I do it the same way the pro’s do to put those apples in the supermarket and all those baby trees in newspaper tubes for sale at Tractor Supply – grafting.

Those trees that are so hard to predict and so hard to sprout are pretty incredibly easy to graft. Not only do they form fast bonds, they’re pretty adaptable to “whose” roots you stick them on.

There are copious YouTube and web instructions for various types of root grafting and scion propagation. Some of the county and state extension offices, Master Gardener programs, and co-ops put out region-specific information that can help, too.

Air Layering

When I said I’m not much into gambling, and that I propagate root-scion combinations to replace trees and expand my orchards, I lied a little bit. I don’t like gambling on 10% germination, 50% survival rates from that 10%, and waiting 5-20 years to see if my lottery numbers get called.

Instead, I air layer limbs. Usually air layering is done with pencil-thick woody stems. If I can support the weight, I’ll use milk jugs and do limbs even 1-1.5” across.

By propagating a limb, I make a 2-8’ “sapling” in 3-6 months. It cuts years off the wait time and increases my survival rates from <5% to better than 70% (remember, that new tree is lacking the root stock that made my first tree successful).

Instead of 5-20 years, I know if I have a tree that can produce on its own in as little as 3-8 years. That’s a gamble I’m willing to take, with about 30-40% of my propagation.

Too, because it’s a clone of the tree limb that’s already giving me fruit, I already know that if it does survive, I have pollination partners that work for it on the property, which I can also propagate, and I know it produces a yield I actually want.

Yeah, I’m never going to discover the next Fuji or Methley, but I’m comfortable with that.

 

The post Tree Fruits from Seed appeared first on The Prepper Journal.



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Friday, December 15, 2017

Staying Warm and Heating Your Home During a Long-Term Grid Down Situation

keeping house warm in wither preppersLet’s face it, heating your home during a long-term grid-down situation is probably one of the biggest challenges that a prepper facing the cold winter has to overcome. You have to keep your body temperature in the normal range i.e. above 95 F (35 C) or hypothermia will start to set in.

When your body temperature drops, your heart, nervous system and other organs can’t work normally. Left untreated, hypothermia can eventually lead to complete failure of your heart and respiratory system and eventually to death. From: The Mayo Clinic – Hypothermia.

In other words, you need a...

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A Truthful Mind-set relating to Really should Religion Research Be Trained on High school

A lot more rrndividuals are having to be faith based without the need of religion. Blending equally beliefs was established to be a tricky task while conflicts particularly persist. It is sometimes accustomed to mask natural hate on the individual. It provides archaic philosphies about very nearly every factor of life. Society religions is supplied at plenty of colleges. Bear in mind, real Muslims will wipe out individuals with regard to their beliefs, and even i will safeguard ourselves.

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On occasion these high schools mightn’t be ready to fulfill the primary essentials of each and every individual on the subject of precisely the exact level. The result is, these products is advantageous particular care about every different student as per an individual’s talent. Community classes can protect with fury giving protection to somewhat of a degree. If a impulse is absolutely than somebody alone if absolutely no consequently you do not wish to be able to it. A person are able to get any response to this thought as a result of from the moment you will reach the ending about this hub. Figuring out is definitely at the heart with Heathenish rituals. Lots of irrational methods are the outcome of the particular false understanding from the organic and natural events.

Mums and dads opt for those private degree at where they may get an all-inclusive achievement involving education. A better way for you to earn children understand is via play. Except in cases where little ones, from the early age formulate this kind of meaningful get the picture, it really is a whole lot more tough because grow-up to receive pushed to build perfect choices. If you are enthusiastic about helping your baby and also tot to read through, could possibly undeniably furnish a particular scholastic advantage. in spite of this, it really is unidentified here when it is going to be considered a larger benefits than in which skilled with the latest preschooler. At the same time, consider to click on beats that you currently know together with have ever heard before. It’s the realization with the really worth of the distinctions lacking judgement.

Disagreements concerning academics will appear, although physical exercises should really need to get explained. One particular of the most important arguments alongside earning orison going to school lawful is that it is already legitimate to your large part. Making a determination to turn within an affiliate of the cathedral neighbourhood needs a good deal for considered plus discernment. Because you can notice, the chance of the consensus relating to the discourse around when making love coaching throughout faculties is definitely a good or cold is actually an issue that could take a while taking place. It is really genuine for the people that they are readier to sit and learn any time a little something initiates their interest. It is vital in making a desire for strict trust, which could be realized from intending trivia activities with respect to junior groups.

Communal component perfomances a vital task for education. Communal composition and also context, together with sociological practices are a large role measuring some sort of criminalas behavior. Using this viewpoint, it’s essential to choose through the progression from discovering our true, initial i.d . as a way to absolutely actualize it.



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Freezing and Food – Do They Go Well Together?

One of the biggest problems we have with our food supply in the summer is that the heat makes storage of fresh meat almost impossible for any length of time because it spoils.

In the winter, we don’t have that problem, but we do have a host of others. So, how do you keep food safely frozen in the winter, how do you store it, and what foods freeze well?

We’re going to talk about that right now. Keep reading!

First, if you’re in a survival situation and hoarding a food supply, you’re probably in fine shape as long as you’re in a place where you can store the food.

How To Build a Small Root Cellar and Bunker in Your Backyard with $400

As a matter of fact, your freezer that runs on electric is still a fine place to store meat without power as long as it’s outside and well below freezing out for most of the time. If it gets warmer than that consistently for more than a couple of hours per day, then you need to pack the freezer with snow or ice.

That being said, if you keep the freezer closed after the temperature goes above freezing, it’ll keep everything frozen for another couple of days.

Regarding ice, it stays frozen longer when it’s in large chunks, so use soda bottles or milk jugs, then pack them in your cooler. That way, you’re killing two birds with one stone – you have ice to keep your food frozen and you also have drinking water when it thaws out.

Another way to keep food frozen if you don’t have an outside freezer is to pack it in the snow. This is kind of remedial and you run the chance of losing it to predators, but it’s better than nothing.

Just as your ice stays frozen longer when it’s in bigger chinks, so does our meat. Either cut it into large chunks when you butcher it, buy it in roasts, or pack all the smaller pieces into one larger bag so that it’ll freeze together.

Don’t freeze it into chunks bigger than you and your family can eat in a couple of days so that you don’t waste it.

If you have a place outside such as a storage building, you can improvise a cooler by building a cupboard, or even by hanging the meat whole in carcasses, covering it, so that the animals or bugs can’t get into it. That’ll work as long as the weather stays below freezing.

Food That Freezes Well

Just as there are some foods that can well and some that don’t, there are also foods that freeze better than others. Meats, of course, freeze well, as do most vegetables and fruits. You can even freeze your jams and jellies as long as you don’t have them in sealed containers.

Inexpensive, Easy to Build Cellar Will Protect Your Life and Supplies in the Next Crisis

Just about all proteins freeze. You can even freeze eggs as long as you take them out of the shells first. Here is a partial list of foods that freeze well:

  • Meat
  • Eggs
  • Cheese
  • Milk
  • Bread
  • Bread dough
  • Most fresh vegetables except the list below
  • Most fresh fruits
  • Fruit juices
  • Vegetable juices
  • Flour
  • Rice, cooked or raw
  • Beans, cooked or raw – cook a bit al dente so they won’t turn to mush
  • Pasta as long as it’s cooked al dente. Don’t overcook it or it’ll get mushy
  • Herbs
  • Prepared foods such as soups and sauces
  • Most condiments
  • Sour cream – most people say no, but I freeze mine all the time. The only thing I notice is that it separates a little bit, but I just stir it up and it’s fine.
  • Sugar, as long as it’s in an airtight, moisture-tight container. If not, it will absorb moisture and turn into a giant sugar cube.
  • Dried foods as long as they’re in airtight containers.

Foods that Don’t Freeze Well

These foods may freeze okay as part of a prepared dish such as a soup, but they don’t do so well raw.

  • Cabbage
  • Celery
  • Cucumbers
  • Endive
  • Lettuce
  • Radishes
  • Potatoes
  • Cooked egg whites get mushy
  • Icings made from egg whites
  • Mayonnaise, though only because it separates. You can always mix it back up. It may not be as pretty but it should taste fine.
  • Canned foods
  • Pressurized foods such as canned whipped cream

Protecting Your Stockpile

Now that we’ve discussed how well most food freezes, we need to talk about how to protect those foods that can’t be frozen. Of utmost importance are your canned goods. These are likely going to be staple items and if you lose them, you’ll likely go hungry.

So how do you protect such foods? Well, the best answer is that you keep them inside. That sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many people new to canning try to store their foods outside in the storage shed or other such places.

Industrial-canned foods will burst, as will home-canned goods, though home-canned foods are more likely to blow the seal than actually explode. Either can happen though.

Another great way – an idea way, actually – to store your canned goods in a way that will keep them from getting either too cold or too hot is to keep them in a basement or, even better, a cellar. Both maintain a fairly constant temperature, but if you’re going to use a basement, make sure that it’s heated a bit, but not so much that it’s above 70 degrees or so.

Another real danger to your stockpile that’s secondary to freezing is moisture. When ice melts or when one side of a wall is cold and the other is hot, condensation can form that will run down onto shelves and soak your boxes, paper goods, and dried goods. Wet toilet paper sort of defeats the purpose and pasta that’s absorbed pantry-shelf water isn’t the best, either.

To combat this problem, it’s always a good idea to store everything in airtight containers. The boxes are great, but they provide ready access for bugs, moisture, and anything else that would like to crawl in there. Also, varying temperatures will make pasta and rice go bad much faster.

The secret to protecting your stockpile is to know which foods freeze well and which ones don’t. For the most part, no food is ruined by the process of freezing, at least nutritionally. Typically, it’s just the texture that’s damaged. It’s another story if the container is damaged, such as it is when canned foods burst.

The best thing you can do for your stockpile is to keep everything in airtight containers if it’s going to be exposed to temperatures that are going to be below freezing. If you’re planning to use nature to keep your meets and other perishables frozen, store them in airtight containers too, so that animals can’t get into them.

You have to make smart choices about your storage so your foods would freeze well, and you would safely preserve your food supply!

This article has been written by Theresa Crouse for Survivopedia.



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Building your Food Storage

Written by John Hertig on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another guest post from John Hertig to The Prepper Journal. A follow-on article to his recent post on Building Water Storage Systems.  As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award as well as be entered into the Prepper Writing Contest with a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards  with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today!

Although the average person can survive for three weeks without food, it would be very unpleasant, and it would make it difficult if not impossible to effectively do any other survival related task.  Having food on hand for an emergency or disaster is very wise.  It is likely that the grocery stores will be stripped very quickly and not replenished until after the situation is resolved.  Although this could be a matter of a few days, it is more likely to be weeks or months or even longer.  Unless you want to be one of those rioting, looting or perhaps just starving, make sure you always have some food on hand.

How much food should you have stored up?  Ah, that is indeed the question.  Food provides 1) calories, 2) nutrients your body needs and 3) relief from hunger pains.  Calories are pretty straightforward.  2000 calories is considered a “normal” diet for the average person under standard conditions.  1200 calories is considered a “survival diet”, if you are inactive, like in a lifeboat.  800 calories is for a doctor supervised extreme weight loss diet.  On the other hand, if you are very active (as you might be in survival conditions) you might need 3000 calories a day or even more.

Choose the calorie level appropriate for each person in your group and the likely activity level, and figure out how long you want to maintain that level for.  I’d say at least a month, and a year or even more would not be too much if you can manage it, both from a cost and a storage standpoint.

Nutrition is a more difficult consideration.  Your body needs protein, vitamins and minerals, and some other stuff we don’t think of or even really know about.  And if you don’t get any fiber, it probably won’t kill you but you might wish it did.  🙂  The vitamins and minerals can be augmented with QUALITY supplements; you might as well get a few years worth.  Note that the majority of mineral supplements are what we call “rocks and rust”.  This does not mean the minerals are not there, but it does mean that they are wicked hard for the body to extract, and as you get older, the body gets continuously worse at extracting minerals.  By the time you are into middle age, you are probably getting only a few percent of the minerals these supplements provide.  You can tell these by looking at the ingredients list.  If you see a lot of words ending in “ate” (calcium carbonate) and “oxide” (ferrous oxide), you are looking at “rocks and rust” minerals.  Search and find minerals which are “chelated”; they are significantly easier for the body to extract the minerals from.  The most easily extracted minerals are in the form of “colloidal suspensions”, but these are liquid, tend to be more difficult to store and use, highly expensive and have a short shelf life.  Plus they are often “natural”, which means the balance of minerals in them is “randomized” (2% of the recommended amount of one and 2000% of another).

Protein is a simple concept, but difficult in a food storage program.  Meat is protein; storing meat is a challenge.  Meat is also a COMPLETE protein; there are vegetable sources of protein building blocks, but you have to mix and match to get complete protein.  For instance, beans and rice combinations are a staple for vegetarians, and survivalists.  It would be wise to peruse vegetarian recipe books for other combinations of vegetables which add up to complete protein.

If your body does not get enough fiber, it messes up the bowel system, leading to severe constipation.  Although some of the food storage items we will consider are high in fiber, others are seriously lacking.  Based on what you choose for your food storage plan, you might want to have some powered fiber you can add to your meals; Benefiber is a decent one.

Water First

You can plan and research food storage all you want, but before you start implementing that plan, make sure you have WATER (>>> see the article here <<<).  Water is necessary for life itself as well as the digestion and in many cases, the preparation of food.  Having three weeks of food and three days of water is a waste of more than two weeks of food.  You’ll be dead before you can eat it all (unless you can trade it to someone else for water).  So don’t start buying food until you have a water plan in place, and to the degree practical, implement both plans “together” so you won’t run out of one before the other.

Types of Food

There are many types of food, some very suitable for long term storage and others only good for a few days under the best of conditions.  And some of this food is very tasty, some barely palatable, some easy to prepare, some difficult, some healthy, some not so healthy and some downright harmful.  It is best to have as much variety as is practical for your circumstances.

– Ready to Eat

This has obvious advantages from a convenience standpoint, but tends to take up the most room and weigh a lot, be moderately high in price and of questionable palatability.  The ubiquitous MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) is a prime example of this.  Some people call MREs “three lies for the price of one”.  Still, they have utility, when you want something meal-like you can transport or distribute, which does not require anything else.  So having a few on hand is not at all a bad idea.  I would not suggest a LOT of them though, unless you have tried them, find them palatable and adequately healthy, and have the money and storage space for them.  Generally you will want to replace them after five years or so; if you will be heavily into MREs, I suggest “rotation”, where you get in some new ones and eat the oldest ones on a regular basis even if conditions are normal.

But what about “TV Dinners”, you say?  Well, they are not quite “ready to eat”, but they can be filling, some are tasty and a few even nutritious.  And you can get them for a decent price on sale.  If you have a working freezer and microwave (or oven for the original TV Dinner, if those are even still available), they can be quite a good choice.  I stock up when they are on sale and use them regularly.  But let me suggest that to assume you will have a working freezer or microwave (or oven) during a disaster has a good chance of being a fatal assumption.  Either you won’t have them in a working condition and all that food you were counting on will spoil or be “unusable”, or you do manage to retain those appliances in working condition, but can’t prevent desperate people from knowing you have them (sound, light, smell) and they attempt to acquire it for themselves.

The other typical “ready to eat” food is known as “survival rations” or “emergency food rations”.  These are prepackaged blocks of a “bread/cake/biscuit” substance which provides a calorie specific, compact “food” source which requires minimal water to digest.  They may taste “meh”, they generally provide minimal nutrition, and they often contain things which the healthy person should be avoiding.  But again, they have their purpose, putting a survival source of calories into a package which stores and packs well, at not too ridiculous a price.  Mainstay and SOS are a couple of the major sources of these, and they are available in various sizes, usually some number of 400 calorie pieces, allowing a calorie intake suitable to the situation.  Some store in high heat ok; being designed for a lifeboat, they store in a car trunk fine.  On the other hand, they generally claim only a five year shelf life, so should be replaced that often.  Again, having a few of these is a good idea, in case you need a self contained, no preparation food option which is even smaller than MREs.

 

Of course, there are the “antique” survival rations which you can make yourself (using recipes from the internet).  The North American indigenous peoples often used “pemmican”, a dried mixture of meat, fat and fruit for long trips or when hunting/gathering was impractical.  Old sailors subsisted during long journeys on “hard tack” (“pilot bread”, “sea biscuit” or other less polite names).  This is a hard lump of “paste” (flour and water, dried), occasionally with salt added.  Jerky is another way to have some protein, although it does not really last that long, several months at best.  I make my own jerky, vacuum seal it, and store it in the freezer.  I expect it will last as long as the freezer works and for several months after the freezer ceases to work.

I know someone who loves Chef Boy-R-Dee pasta, cold, right out of the can, and she is still alive after years of this.  Thus, I have to reluctantly consider this also “ready to eat” food suitable for storage.  See the notes about canned food, below.

– Minimal Cooking Meals

As we see, when your stored food is necessary, there is a good chance you won’t have a microwave or stove handy, and if you do, using them can announce that you have food, so the “best” storage food is that which needs the least cooking.  There is a wide variety of “freeze dried” or “dehydrated” meals out there, often originally aimed at backpackers.  These can be very tasty, store and transport easily, and often have an advertised shelf life of twenty five years.  This makes them very attractive for a food storage program, and although pricey, there are some which are not out of reach of the common person.  There are generally two “classes” of these meals – one where you boil water, open the bag, pour in the water, close the bag and wait a specified period of time, and one where you bring water to a boil, pour in the pouch and boil it for a specified length of time.  The first one is preferable as it uses a lot less fuel and is easier to clean up after, as well “advertises” itself to the world less.  Make sure which type you are getting before paying for a lot of them.  Best is to start out with some samples, which you actually try, preferably under “representative” conditions (candle or flashlight, primitive stove).  That way you can make sure the taste is to your liking, and see how well it works for you under crisis conditions.

A way or three of cooking needs to be part of your food storage plan.  I’m partial to the classic Coleman camp stove, and the disposable gas cylinders for it are quite cheap at WalMart.  I also have an adapter which allows me to run it from a standard barbecue grill propane cylinder.  The barbecue itself should probably be avoided, as outdoor cooking produces smells which could attract unwanted attention.  I also have some of those little folding pocket stoves with the blocks of fuel, although that is strictly a last ditch option.  Some people like the cans of “Sterno”.  If you use a wood stove, you can cook on it, or if you have a lot of good sized logs cut to firewood lengths but not split, and a drill, you can make an effective “rocket” stove.  Both of these can be effective, but tend to announce their presence.  Backpacking stoves will work, and having one is not a bad idea in case you need to “bug out”, but they tend to be small and not hold much fuel, so are less than ideal for daily use.

– Canned Foods

I’m primarily focused here on food which has been commercially packaged in “tin” cans.  If you know what you are doing, you can “can” your own food, usually in glass jars (they should call it “jarring”).  But if you screw up, you can poison yourself this way.  And I don’t know how durable the glass jars are or how long the contents last.

Most commercially canned food these days has a “best by” date.  The implication is that after this date, it is inferior, and that is not totally incorrect.  But in many cases, if the can is not swollen, rusted, leaking, distorted or otherwise different from when it came from the store, it is probably still good.  Maybe it has lost some nutrition, but canned food is not known for its nutrition, so you will be supplementing it anyway, right?  I got a bunch of canned soups eighteen years ago and I still eat one on occasion with no distress and it is still tasty.

On the other hand, canned fruit, particularly pineapple which I love, has been my nemesis.  It appears that every time I go to my food storage, one has sprung a leak and gummed up everything.  It might have to do with fermentation causing gas, which applies pressure to the seams until one gives a little.  Or maybe it eats through the seal, although that would seem to be more the behavior of something acidic.  I don’t recommend storing canned fruit or anything acidic in your long term storage.  Vegetables are an option though, although personally I find the taste and appearance unpleasant in addition to the questionable nutrition value.  Where cans shine (for me, at least) is soups and meats, as well as some semi-meals such as chili and the Chef Boy-R-Dee pasta mentioned above.  Things such as beans and potatoes are good choices and I have some other “regular” vegetables even though I don’t eat them unless I have to.

The best place for your food storage cans is right in your normal cabinet or pantry.  As you get new cans, you should be eating the oldest ones, and if they are right to hand, this is much easier than remembering to go to your storage.  In particular, cans are a good way to get some protein into your storage.  Tuna is a good choice and often on sale cheap; sometimes you can find chicken on sale as well and occasionally beef.  It used to be that canned hams were easy to find at a good price, but I have not seen them lately.  And then there is “Spam”, which I have studiously avoided learning anything about.  But if you know it and like it, why not include some?

Have as much desirable canned food as you can store, and “rotate” it regularly.  Not only does it maximize the freshness of your stock, but you will be “used” to preparing and eating it, so moving to crisis mode will be less stressful.  Make sure you have a can opener or ten.  It would be distressing to have a bunch of food you could not open (although you actually can open a can without an opener if you know how ).  Canned food can be prepared with minimal cooking, or even in some cases eaten right out of the can without preparation.

– Staples

This is the “classic” storage food – things like wheat, dry beans, rice, oil, powdered milk, salt and honey/sugar.  This is the cheap way to store lots of food, but it requires real skill to make an edible meal out of it.  If you are going to go this route, make sure you learn how to cook any ingredient and try several recipes before you invest in a lot of anything.  In particular, make sure you know anything you need to do to avoid the result being harmful.  For instance, many beans, particularly red kidney beans, have toxin as a lectin or phytohemagglutinin, and need to be boiled vigorously for 15 minutes to destroy the toxin before simmering.  Fail to do this, and your delicious and “healthy” dish will bring on a violent case of  food poisoning.

The storage life of staples can be quite long.  I have cans of wheat  from the 80’s which are supposed to be good “forever”, but I haven’t bothered to find what I can do with them as is; I probably should do that sometime soon.  I do have a bicycle powered grinder to make flour out of them, and flour I DO know how to use.  Brown rice is better for you, but white rice stores better.  Much of the nutrition has been removed so the bugs won’t eat it, and it can be made into delicious and filling recipes or eaten by itself, but if you don’t supplement it with Thiamin (vitamin B1) you can come down with BeriBeri, a condition common among those who subsist mostly on white rice.

 

In addition to any bulk items, make sure you have things like baking powder, salt, pepper and other spices and ingredients you like or need to give the taste of your meals a boost or support a particular recipe.  Powdered eggs and butter are available, which can help.

The Mormon Church requires their members to have a year’s supply of food, and is a good source of information on staples food storage and maybe even a source for some of them.  You don’t have to be a member.  Costco or Sam’s Club are also sources of staples in bulk, but you do need to be a member.  🙂

– Other Packaged Foods

Avoid food in boxes and bags; they can become infested with bugs or penetrated by mice, and even if unmolested don’t have that long a shelf life.  If you want anything like this, store it in an additional impermeable container which can be sealed, and rotate it often.

 

Children and Food Storage

Children can be picky eaters, and even refuse to eat unless it is something they are used to.  Attack this on two fronts:  include some of their foods or ingredients for their foods in your plan, and try to entice them into liking other stuff in your storage plan.

Commercial Food Storage Plans

You can do your own plan, and probably will come out ahead (spend less; have the plan most suitable for you), but if you just don’t have the time or inclination, you can turn to a commercial food storage provider.  The first rule of this is, if they talk to you about “servings”, then there is a chance they are either idiots or they are trying to rip you off.  “Servings” are meaningless.  You want to know CALORIES, because that is the key measurement to ensure you have “enough” food each day.  A “serving” is in no way any kind of standard; it is whatever they decide to give you.  I’ve viewed plans which provide “12 servings” per day, that when you compute the calories, just barely comes to 800 calories, which is not a good survival target.  Some will say “oh, but we expect you to supplement our food plan with other food”.  Really; where do they expect this “other food” to come from?  Do they really think I’m going to buy their one year of one third days plan and then buy more food for the other two thirds of each day?  Or buy a “one year supply” which lasts for four months or will harm me if I try to make it last the advertised one year?

Any food storage plan which attempts to hide the calories and/or the ingredients is highly suspicious and probably should be avoided.   Any plan which claims to be good for a specified period of time needs to be carefully examined to make sure that you are getting enough calories during that period of time.

Food Replenishment

If you have access to land, it would be a good idea to have some “survival seeds” so you can start growing your own food.  Use “heirloom” seeds which reproduce themselves; “engineered” seeds may be “better”, but they tend not to reproduce themselves.

Gardening is something you should try on a small scale NOW, even if just a “patio or container garden“, so you won’t make the silliest mistakes when you can least afford to.  Get some books so you know when and how to plant each crop you are interested in, as well as care for it and harvest it.  Without land, you can still grow some things using hydroponic (soil-less gardening) techniques.  Since there is no soil, there are no nutrients for the plants, so you have to add them manually.  Again, this is not something you want to experiment with in a crisis situation.  And growing any kind of food is a long term proposition, so be sure you have other plans for the interim between planting and harvesting.

Again, with land, you can raise livestock.  Chickens are fairly small and don’t take a lot of room, but provide eggs and meat.  They are somewhat noisy, and unless confined somehow, can range far enough to be at risk or damage your crops.  Rabbits are small and quiet and more easily confined, and also provide meat as well as fur.  Goats are a step up and a way to add milk (and even cheese) to your long term diet, as well as being another source of meat.  Other animals are a possibility, but not for the casual or untrained person.

Aquaculture (fish farming) is another way of growing your own food.  This also gets exciting, as fish tend to poison their own environment so you need to change the water regularly.  This can be a challenge in a stagnant body of water.  A way to grow fish and plants in a relatively easy to conceal and maintain environment is Aquaponics, where the fish poop is converted to food for the plants and the plants purify the water for the fish.

If you have the skills and equipment, hunting can bring home the bacon or at least the venison (or rabbit, squirrel, dove, quail, etc).  Of course, there will be a lot of other people with the same idea, so this should not be a major part of your food plan.  Similarly, trapping and fishing can supplement your food supply.  And there are some edible plants you could forage for, but you need to know what you are doing IN YOUR AREA to avoid things which could harm you.

Scavenging for abandoned supplies is also a possibility, though fraught with risks.  What if it was not as “abandoned” as you thought?  And you have to risk running into other people who are desperate or psycho or looking to rob you or worse.  Although you should have the skills and tools to access abandoned supplies, you also need to focus on the skills and tools of avoiding detection.

As with water, the government may get around to handing out rations.  Make sure you are fully aware of the risks inherent in coming to the attention of the government, and to the degree practical, try not to remind them that you exist.

Disaster Food Preservation

Without refrigeration, unprocessed food tends to spoil quickly.  Investigate, gear up and practice primitive preservation techniques such as evaporation (those round stacked evaporators are toys’ the “real” ones tend to blow from the back across rather than from the bottom through), curing, root cellars and smoking.  When disaster strikes, evaluate the food you have on hand and use that which spoils quickly to eat first or preserve.  Once all the normal food is eaten, spoiled or preserved, then go to your food storage.

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