My Top Five Prepping Successes of 2011

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas. We had a lovely time with our extended family and it was quite a jolt to have to get back to everyday life on Monday. We homeschool our children and I wanted to squeeze in a few more school days in the hopes that we might complete our school year in May. This sounded like a perfectly sane and logical plan when I concocted it in November, but as I sat at the kitchen counter helping The Thinker with her Latin lesson, I seriously regretted my decision to forgo Christmas break. This led me to entertain some fanciful ideas about what I would do if I could get my hands on the ancient Roman responsible for the evil grammatical construct known as the declension. My fantasies were surprisingly creative considering the general stupor I was in at that time of the morning. That, my friends, is a classic case of  Post-Festivity Latin Declension Disorder (PFLDD for short) and is a key reason why you should never skip Christmas break.

Now that I'm mostly recovered, it's time to turn my attention to cheerier matters than dead languages: my top five prepping successes of 2011.

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5. The Great Chicken Moat Build

This little fencing project was a huge undertaking

The chicken moat is not technically finished, much less put to use, but I had to put it in this countdown because of the sheer amount effort that went into it. Hopefully the chickens that will live in this moat will greatly cut down on the insect and weed pests in our garden, contribute delicious meat and eggs to our diet, and will be a source of fertility for our soil. The potential benefits made this difficult project worthwhile.


4. No more store-bought bread! 

Much better than sliced bread!

I have been baking bread since I was a teenager, but I never before attempted to make all of my family's bread products. After I bought a NutriMilland then a Bosch Mixer,it became ridiculously easy to grind wheat and bake as much bread as we consumed. So I started doing just that and even figured out how to use a Sun Oven to bake bread.

It feels really satisfying to make something so delicious and healthful for my family.


3. Explored new ways to preserve food

I have a few new tricks up my sleeve when it comes to food preservation. I've been water bath canning for a few years now, but pressure canning was new territory. Not only do I now pressure can with the best of them, but I regularly can meat, something that was very intimidating to me in the beginning.

Dehydrating oregano

I also learned the ins and outs of dehydrating. My new Excalibur Dehydrator is awesome, though I must admit I find it very tedious to place all the pieces of food meticulously on the trays.

Vacuum sealing with the FoodSaver

My favorite new trick, however, is using a FoodSaverto vacuum seal mason jars of dry goods. I have stored brown sugar, nuts, chocolate, raisins, shortening, herbs, and many other items with this little gadget.



2. One year of food storage*

Some of the comfort food items I bought during our Food Storage Blitz Month 

We finally have one year's worth of food storage! Sorta. If you go by the number of calories stored, we do, but we are still short several key nutrients (such as calcium and Vitamin C) and I want to add more meat to our supply. And then we'll need to add more food as our children grow and need more calories. And more fruits and vegetables would really be nice... You get the picture.

I can't exactly rest on my laurels here, but I'm pleased with what we've accomplished.

1. Garden re-do

Our new square foot gardening boxes

Hubby Dear deserves most of the credit here. He transformed our decidedly sub-par garden of years past to the Garden of Eatin' by adding square foot gardening boxes. That involved a lot of carpentry and an insane amount of soil toting and mixing.

This year was so successful that we plan on adding 19 more square foot boxes to our garden, albeit in stages. This will double the size of our current garden. I can't wait! (Read this post if you are unfamiliar with square foot gardening.)



What accomplishments in the area of preparedness are you the most proud of? Was 2011 a banner year or a bust? 

No inflation here! (Cough)

How much will this buy in 2011?

Every few months I add to our supply of dry milk by ordering a case of it from Walton Feed. The last time I bought it was in March, during our Food Storage Blitz Month. It cost $78.92, including shipping.

I bought another case of it today and had an unpleasant shock. 

My total this time was $95.05.

I checked various online food storage vendors and found that Walton Feed is still the best deal for me, even with the $16 jump in prices. (Check out this post if you want to know how I came to that conclusion.)

I'm sure this has nothing to do with inflation. Uncle Sam has been telling us that there is no inflation and the government is never wrong. And it probably has nothing to do with people deciding that things in our country are going down the tubes and that they should stock up on food storage.

Nope. I'm probably imagining the whole thing. I'd better check my Quicken account for errors. (Massive eyeroll.)


Have you noticed inflation in your neck of the woods? Is it affecting your family's preparedness efforts?

Month Ten in Review and Month Eleven Prepping Plan

I feel so accomplished. Hubby Dear and I really got a lot done around the homestead this month.

1. I upgraded my EDC. BTW, thanks for all the great comments and ideas. The stuff some of you all carry around is quite impressive. 
2. Our Food Storage Blitz Month was quite successful. It's such a nice feeling to know that we wouldn't have to go hungry during an emergency or job loss.  
3. We did a ton of work in the yard. Literally, we moved a ton of materials into our garden, a few bags at a time. First, Hubby Dear finished filling all 19 of our garden boxes with Mel's Mix. This was a major undertaking, especially since we had to drive 50 miles each way to get the materials and could only fit a certain amount in the ol' mini-van. I think we exceeding the load limit a few times.
   
   

   

   The boxes - filled with Mel's Mix and grids in place

We're also nearly done putting down pea gravel to cover the pathways between the boxes.
   
 



The grids are optional, but handy. The larger areas are where we're planting
 pumpkins. Radishes, lettuce, and peas are in the smaller boxes.


We planted radishes, peas (sugar snap and shelling), lettuce (both a romaine and leaf lettuce mix), cabbage, strawberries, and onions.



The Thinker's radish seedlings.

We also added a few more raspberry canes, doubling our raspberry patch in size.  We're still waiting on the organic seed potatoes we ordered to arrive. The delay is irksome enough that I think next year we'll buy our seed potatoes closer to home, even though they may not be organic.                                 
4. You might be asking what happened to the cloth pad project? Well, I got sidetracked with all the gardening work. And I got a huge stack of uber interesting books at the library. Then the NCAA basketball tournament started. (We are giant college basketball fans.) The result? I still have only two (partially completed, at that) cloth pads. I will get back and finish the project, eventually.   

What's in store for Month 11 of my Prepping Plan?

1. I want to add more cash to our BOBs/at home emergency stash.
2. We're going to craft our own water filter using food safe buckets and ceramic filter elements.
3. Using some of the suggestions from my Ask the Readers post, I'm going to stock-up on some more can openers.
4. I'm going to buy some garden seeds for long term storage.
5. We're going to continue building our food and oh-so-important toilet paper supplies.
6. We'll be very busy in the garden. Hopefully we'll have some lettuce to harvest.  
7. I have some preps of a unique nature that I'll discuss with y'all in an upcoming post. I've got to pick your brain again!

Food Storage Blitz Month, Part Four and Month End Results

My Shelf Reliance unit has filled up a lot since this photo was taken

Sorry, I don't have a photo of the remaining items I bought for Food Storage Blitz Month. Every time I went to the grocery store, I bought a few extra items based on what was on sale and what I had coupons for. I never remembered to take pictures of my haul before I had them put away.

I bought:

- Several boxes of cereal
- Lots of canned soup
- Canned mushrooms. This is not something we usually buy, but there was such a good deal on them I couldn't resist.
-Refried beans
-Spaghetti sauce
-A few bags of 15 bean soup mix
-Crackers
-Tomato sauce

So, at the end of our Food Storage Blitz Month, where are we?

• Our Three Month Supply is much closer to being complete. I still need to fill in some items, but we made a huge jump forward this month.
• In terms of long term storage, we have:

        - 957 lb of grains, consisting of wheat, flour, oats, rice, and pasta.
        - 148 lb of legumes, not counting the canned beans (approx. 50 cans) I have stored.
        - About a 6 month supply of miscellaneous fats.
        - 150 lb of sugars.
        - 84 lb dry milk, 20 cans of evaporated milk and 10 lb dry eggs

All told, when you combine our three month supply with our long term items, we have 245.79 days of food storage for our family of six, according to the Food Storage Analyzer. Not too shabby!

Our goal is to have a full year's supply of food storage, so we still have a ways to go. The Food Storage Analyzer revealed that our storage is low in Vitamins A &C, so I need to remedy that, as well. Dried fruits and vegetables, legumes, and oils are my priority for the next few months.

There you have it! I hope you have been able to add to your food storage over the past month. What have you added to your storage lately?

Food Storage Blitz Month, Part Four

Another case of dry milk

I got yet another case of powdered milk from Walton Feed. I ordered it on February 28th and it just arrived yesterday. I guess the food storage companies are still really backed up with orders.

Click here if you haven't read my post on powdered milk. This post from Survival Blog mentions how important powdered milk is to have on hand during a nuclear crisis. Again, I'm not too worried about radiation from Japan making it over the US, but it goes to show how essential dry milk is to have as part of your food storage.

Stay tuned for a new food storage-friendly recipe coming soon!

Food Storage Blitz Month, Part Three

My next contribution to Food Storage Blitz Month is another 12 pints of meat.

Canned chicken breast and ground beef

Since I learned how to can meat, I have been slowly adding to my stores of canned chicken and ground beef. It's easy for me to do and Hubby Dear is very thankful that he won't ever have to subsist solely on rice and beans.

Speaking of Hubby Dear, the disaster unfolding in Japan led him to admit to me that he's actually glad that I am building up our food storage. He's come a long way, hasn't he?

Food Storage Blitz Month, Part Two

Here's the next installment of our Food Storage Blitz - a run to Sam's Club.

I bought 150 lb of rice, 50 lb of sugar and another 50 of flour. I'll be storing them in buckets like I described in this post.

I bought a few more long term storage-type items at Sam's, but also some comfort foods for our three month supply.

Canned fruit, fruit snacks (hey, I've got four kids), Carnation Instant Breakfast, granola bars, maple syrup, honey, sliced almonds, chili powder, brown sugar and chocolate chips. The almonds, brown sugar, and chocolate chips will get put into canning jars and vacuum sealed.

Chicken and beef bouillon, pudding cups, a wedge of Parmesan cheese, 12 lb spaghetti, 12 lb macaroni, and 6 lb penne. I also bought a couple of jars of my favorite salsa and one of bread and butter jalapenos. I hope to can my own versions of those this summer.


Part III of Food Storage Blitz Month coming soon.

What are you stocking up on?

Food Storage Blitz Month, Part One

As I shared previously, my main goal for this month was to seriously amp up our food storage. We doubled our prepping budget for March and christened it "Food Storage Blitz Month". 

The thought of spending several hundred dollars all at once on food storage made me both excited and apprehensive. I was thankful to be able to get a bunch of food in one fell swoop, but I also felt the heavy responsibility to spend the money wisely.

After a lot of thought, I decided to split the money between our three month supply and our long term food storage. The goal is to have a balanced range of food stored and to gradually increase the amounts of all types of items until we have a full year of food.

Here's the first installment of our Food Storage Blitz Month: an order with Emergency Essentials.

I ordered 4 "Superpails" of hard white wheat, plus mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and buckets to package some things on my own. (More about that in Part Two.)

We now have ten of these six gallon buckets of wheat and yet we still need to buy a lot more. We're about 200 pounds short of what we're supposed to have according to this food storage calculator.

I also bought some whole egg powder, freeze dried green peppers, drink mix, and lentils. Not very exciting, eh? I'm going to buy a dehydrator sometime soon and dry the peppers we grow ourselves, but these freeze dried ones are good to have on hand for now. The drink mix is high in Vitamin C (something that we are a bit short of in our food storage at the moment) and would be very welcome if we were living on stale-tasting stored water. The egg powder and lentils are simply good staples to have around.

More of our Food Storage Blitz Month coming soon!