September 2001 in Review and October Preps

September 2011 Preps

What did you accomplish in September? We had amazing weather all month long. We had very little rain or cloudy days and the highs were consistently in the 70s. The end result was picture-perfect fall weather. That encouraged this lazy woman to soak in the sun instead of prep or experiment with solar cooking devices.   

Even our sewage lagoon (our clay soil prohibits a septic tank)  gussied
itself up with a cloak of sunflowers this month. 

I did buy two bushels of apples and canned and dehydrated them. It was the first time I've used my Excalibur 9 Tray Food Dehydratoron something besides herbs and I was really impressed with how well it worked. I ended up with 3 quarts of dried apples that I'll use for desserts this winter and another 2 quarts of apples that I sprinkled with cinnamon and dried into crispy chips. The kids love snacking on those. I also made 3 pints of apple butter and 15 quarts of applesauce. Added to what was left from last year, we are fully stocked with apple goodness.

Our lovely weather is encouraging the garden to keep producing, albeit slowly.

I have enough green peppers frozen to last me until next summer's harvest. There are probably another 50 peppers still out there, so I think I'll try dehydrating the rest of them. We're still getting green beans from our remarkable zombie green bean patch and our raspberries are giving us the best harvest we've had from them yet. Not enough to can, but certainly enough for multiple batches of raspberry bars and fruit salad.

In between furious bouts of leisure and intermittent sprinklings of food harvesting and preservation, I also added some store-bought food to our food storage. I picked up some canned goods on sale at the grocery store as well as more clarified butter, coconut oil, freeze dried fruit, and tomato powder online. We are also prepared to stay warm during a winter power outage. And I'm excited to say that we were able to save up most of what it will take to buy the chicken coop of my dreams.

Oh, we also got one of these:

Christened "Goldie Butterscotch", but mostly called "Bunbun"

Mini Me has been obsessed with rabbits for about 2 years. We broke our "no pets in the house unless they live in an aquarium" rule and bought her this little guy for her birthday. Of course I also had to quickly buy a couple of months of food storage (timothy hay and alfalfa pellets) for the rabbit! That is not to be confused with using the rabbit for food storage. I don't think Mini Lops make good eating and it would definitely not be worth the trauma to our little rabbit lover.

What's in store for October: 

• I'll be returning to the Sun Oven. I'm bound and determined to cook something properly! I think I'll go for bread next. 
• After it frosts (Our frost date is quickly approaching ~Sigh~), we'll plant garlic. This will be the first time we've tried to grow garlic. Last spring we bought some garlic starts from the nursery as an impulse buy. They didn't do very well and therefore don't count! We bought a pound of "Music" variety organic seed garlic from Peaceful Valley.
• We have TONS of green tomatoes out there. I'll definitely have to do something with those before it frosts. I have several solutions in mind, so stay tuned for that. 
•  Maybe I'll do something with our pie pumpkins. We have about eight of them and while I enjoy using them as decorations, I'd like to try and cook at least a few of them. 
•  Hubby Dear and I will begin the infamous chicken moat this week. We priced out several options for fencing and discovered that this project is going to be more expensive than we thought. I'm sure it will also be more difficult than we thought, too. That's generally the way projects are at our house. Since we have never built fence before, it should be a grand headache adventure. 
• I'm still saving up for the chicken palace, but I should have some money in the budget to buy some miscellaneous preps. I'm not sure exactly what I'll buy, but it will definitely include food storage and probably more books. I'll keep you posted. 

So that's me. What did you do in September and what do you have lined up for October? 

A Partial Solution to our Winter Heat Problem

Thanks to all who weighed in on my Sun Oven woes. You all gave me food for thought and I have not given up the fight! Now, for something completely different...
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I spent the majority of my prepping budget this month on a few tools to help keep us warm if the power goes out.

This is the Mr. Heater Big Buddy, plus a hoseand propane tank. The good thing about this heater is that it is approved to use indoors and it automatically shuts off if it tips over. You can run it off 2-1 lb propane canisters OR a 20 lb tank (like those for grills). According to the manufacturer, one 20 lb tank will heat 400 square feet for 25-110 hours, depending on how high you have the heat turned up.

I use the major ice storm we had a few years ago as the benchmark for a winter power outage. That time we were without power for 8 days. Assuming that is the length of an archetypal winter disaster, two 20 lb tanks would provide enough heat to get us through. Four tanks would give us considerably more cushion.

But wait! We have one of these in our yard:

We always keep our 500 gallon propane tank topped up during the fall and winter. Wouldn't it be handy if we could find a way to refill our little propane tank from this big one? I did a little online research, and it appears that it is indeed possible to fill grill-type tanks from a big tank like this one. You need to have a special hose or something (love my technical terminology?) installed, but it can be done if you own your propane tank rather than rent it. I'm thinking about calling our propane co-op and seeing if this is a possibility.

A wood stove and a generator are definitely in our future, but a propane heater is certainly better than nothing.

Now that it is officially fall, it's time to be thinking about the challenge of keeping warm during the winter. What preparations have you made in case your heat goes out in the winter? 

Sun Oven, Part III: Using the Sun as a Crock Pot

This is the third part of my Sun Oven series. Part One is here and Part Two is there. I wasn't quite ready to post about my attempt at cooking soup in the Sun Oven. As you'll read, I had some more issues to work out and I wanted to play around with it a bit more. The problem is that the weather hasn't been very cooperative.

Great weather for watching football on the TV, not
so great for using a Sun Oven! 

The test of whether there is enough sunlight to cook in the Sun Oven is if it casts a shadow. That's not going to happen when the weather has been like this for a week. I'm going to post my initial experience today and revisit the topic soon.
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After the chocolate chip cookie debacle, I'll admit that I was feeling pretty deflated. What's the good of cooking with the sun if the end product tastes like the tire off an SUV? Nevertheless, I pressed on. I announced to the family at breakfast the next day that I would be making dinner in the Sun Oven. Hubby Dear shot me a skeptical look and mumbled under his breath, "I guess I'll be picking up dinner tonight."

The recipe I selected is a simple potato soup recipe that I have been making in the Crock Pot for years. It only takes about 3-1/2 hours to cook in the Crock Pot, so I felt sure that if I started it around noon in the Sun Oven, it would surely be ready by dinner time.

First, the setup:

Cooling rack in place in the bottom of the chamber

Any pot big enough to hold a batch of soup for my family will not fit on the leveling shelf.  I removed the shelf and placed a small cooling rack in the bottom of the Sun Oven. It is imperative that there is air circulation all around the pot so that it cooks evenly, hence the cooling rack.

Pot covered with a dish towel

I chopped the vegetables and assembled all the ingredients for the soup and placed them in a stainless steel pot and covered it with the lid. Since stainless steel is reflective, I covered the whole ensemble with the darkest dish towel I could find and took it outdoors.

It didn't take long for me to notice a problem.

The wind pummeled the reflectors

See the reflector on the left? It's not supposed to be bending like that. Our notorious country winds kept flipping the reflectors around. I didn't know what to do about that, so I just left the reflectors alone and readjusted the position of the Sun Oven throughout the afternoon to maximize the sunlight.

I was a bit disappointed that our local Jehovah's Witnesses didn't stop by that afternoon. The last group that stopped by asked me who I thought was in control of the universe. I was ready if they had visited while my Sun Oven was out. I was going to say excitedly, "You know who is in control? Really? Can you take me to your leader? We're establishing communication with our mother ship!" Maybe that would have weirded them out enough to keep them away for a while. As a rule, I try to be kind to proselytizers. We're just overrun with Jehovah's Witnesses who won't take no for an answer.

 In the midst of my musings about Jehovah's Witnesses, I did notice that the thermometer didn't seem to be climbing as high as I expected it to. The oven hovered around 225 degrees.

I finally took the pot out around 5:30 PM and brought it inside to check the results.

More disappointment. The potatoes and other vegetables were still mostly raw. The soup smelled good, but it was far from edible. At this rate, it would take another 10 hours to cook the soup in the Sun Oven! Since my family wanted to eat dinner sometime before dawn, I went ahead and finished cooking the soup on my stove.

I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but I think the wind might have been the issue. Since the reflectors were moving about frequently, there had to be a drop in the amount of sunlight that was getting directed into the cooking chamber. I found a solution to the wind problem on the Sun Oven website, but since my Sun Oven is only on loan, I didn't feel like I should be drilling holes into it!

When we have a sunny, calm day, I'll try again. This shouldn't be so hard!

Sun Oven owners: any input on why my soup didn't cook?  

Sun Oven, Part II: Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is the second part of my series on the Global Sun Oven. You can read part one here.
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The next thing I did after I unpacked my Sun Oven and familiarized myself with it was to put it through the pre-use cleaning regimen. That involved heating a pot full of soapy water for about 2 hours and then scrubbing down the inside of the chamber and on the outside around the gasket.

Soapy water heating up. By the end of the two hours,
the glass was completely fogged over with condensation. 

Even after all that, my Sun Oven still had a lingering chemical smell. I pushed my doubts to the back of my mind and decided that the first recipe I would try would be chocolate chip cookies. After all, I had successfully baked chocolate chip cookies in my mini-van in July. This would be a great test of the merits of the Sun Oven.

While I made a batch of standard chocolate chip cookie dough, I set my Sun Oven outdoors to preheat. It would easily have reached 300 degrees in the cooking chamber within 20 minutes but I forgot to latch the glass lid. Oops!

Once the oven thermometer finally read 300 degrees, I slid the cookies into the chamber.

Cookies in!

A less than impressive amount of cookies, eh? Well, I had a hard time coming up with an appropriate pan that would fit into the oven. I settled on using this nonstick cake pan but I could only fit three cookies in at a time. If you are going to get a Sun Oven, I highly suggest that you invest in some cookware. Brownie pansor these toaster oven sheet panswould be ideal. The cool thing about the Sun Oven is that because it is  uniform in temperature throughout the entire chamber, you can stack the pans by crisscrossing them and fit several in at one time. They will all cook at the same rate. In my case, the tiny amount of cookies I baked on my solitary cake pan turned out to be a good thing. More on that in a bit.

It took about 20 minutes for the cookies to brown and look like they do when I pull them from the regular oven. They looked great, but what would closer inspection reveal?

The end result

The first thing I noticed was the texture. They came out very crispy. When cookies get this brown in my regular oven, they end up chewy, which is the way we prefer it. Lesson #1: Obviously, I can't use the level of browning as an indicator of doneness in a Sun Oven. Next time, I would take the cookies out about 5 minutes earlier.

I took a big bite of a cookie. It tasted like I had eaten a spoonful of baking powder - it was a bitter, chemical taste. I can't even describe how repulsive it was and, needless to say, I ended up spitting it out. I baked the same cookie dough in my regular oven and they came out perfectly, so obviously the chemical smell from the Sun Oven had permeated the cookies baked inside it.

This was disappointing to say the least, especially when you compare the results from my mini-van experiment.

Mini-Van vs. Sun Oven

Outside temperature and season:   110 degrees, late July     vs.    75 degrees, mid-September
Time it took to bake the cookies:  2 hours    vs.    20 minutes
Appearance:   pale    vs.    browned
Texture:   soft, a bit crumbly    vs.    crispy
Taste:   Kids loved them    vs.    Ended up in the trash

Obviously the Sun Oven is a powerful tool. It certainly has the capability to harness the sun's energy, even on cool days. The chemical taste, however, is unacceptable.

I did the cleaning routine again and the chemical odor has diminished yet further, though it has not completely disappeared. The next thing I cook will be in a covered pot so the odor can't affect the food. I'm hopeful that I'll get this to work yet!

Coming Soon: Sun Oven, Part Three: Can the Sun Oven Work like a CrockPot?

Where Were You on Sept. 11th? How Has It Affected Your Preparedness?

My 9-11 Story: The Young and the Clueless

The morning of September 11, 2001 dawned bright and lovely in the large Midwestern city I was living in at the time. Well, as bright and lovely as it can get in a ozone-filled, back-to-back-car-jam-prone metropolis. Hubby Dear was in his second year of medical school and I had a newly-minted teaching license and was working at an inner city magnet school.

My first hour class began at 8:10 central time (approximately 20 minutes after the first plane hit). For some reason, I was a bit late that day and was not in my usual position at the front of my classroom when the bell rang. I ran into another teacher right outside my classroom door. I was eager to get inside to take control of the 35 hormonal eighth graders that would commence to riot if I didn't present myself soon. Mrs. M.,  a grandmotherly, rather flaky English teacher, grabbed me by my arm and said, "Oh, Mrs. Harried Homemaker! I wanted to tell all you social studies teachers - a plane has run into one of the Twin Towers. You should turn on the television." She smiled benignly and bustled away.

"OK. I can do that", I mused. "I'll give my class their quiz and tell them if they do well, we can turn on the TV."  In no way, shape, or form did I have a clue as to what was really going on. I pictured a small plane - you know, like a Cessna or something - crashing onto the side of a skyscraper. I really didn't see what would be historic about a plane crash that occurred so very far away from us, but decided to take Mrs. M's word for it. Heck, I could use an easy day and the TV might just transfix my students to the point where I could get some paperwork done.

I gave my students their quiz and, as promised, turned on the television. The scene that greeted us was far from what I had imagined. What in the heck was going on? It took us a moment to catch up to speed. Really, this is in New York? I didn't think this kind of stuff happened in America.

My students were excited more than anything. Perhaps that's because they had no relatives on the east coast to worry about. Maybe they were hardened to the imagery from watching too many action movies. All they knew is that the teacher was changing her lesson plan and allowing them to watch TV.

I did mention to them that they would always remember where they were when they heard of the Twin Towers tragedy - like my grandparents and Pearl Harbor, or my parents' generation with the Kennedy assassination. Some of them thought that was cool. Honestly, I kinda did, too. The idea that I was witnessing history was a bit intoxicating to this history teacher.

Clearly, I had no idea of the immensity of the tragedy. I didn't know that our nation was under a coordinated attack and that not one but four planes had been hijacked. Over the course of the day, we learned more about what was really happening along with the rest of the country. It took me a while - probably until I became a mother a couple years later, now that I think about it - to really grasp the enormity of what occurred.

 Did 9-11 Lead Me to Prep?

Remember when this was in the news? 

Well, considering I didn't start prepping until 2010, 9-11 didn't have much of an effect in that area. I continued living in that happy land called Denial. You know, the fairy tale land where nothing bad could ever happen to you or anyone you love? Do you remember when they created the Dept. of Homeland Security and started giving instructions on the use of plastic sheeting and duct tape? I totally ignored it. Nothing major was going to happen again in the USA, much less the Midwest, and certainly not in MY lifetime! In my opinion, Hubby Dear and I had all the trappings we needed to succeed and be happy and preparedness had no part of it. Nowadays, I measure success and happiness by a different scale and preparedness is part of the fabric of our family.

So, 9-11 isn't the main reason why I prepare, but the tenth anniversary of that horrific event reminds me to hold the course. We don't know what the future holds, but we do know that as long as we live, we will have the need for food, water, shelter, clothing, etc. I can't do much personally to stop Al Qaida, but I can certainly provide the simple essentials of life for my family.  


So what's your story? Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001? Did it affect your preparedness? I'd love to hear your stories. 

Hubby Dear's got Excel... and He's Not Afraid to Use It

Yesterday Hubby Dear and I took advantage of the amazingly lovely weather (76 degrees and very low humidity. Wow!) and went outside to measure and plot our chicken run/moat.

We're going to begin work on the fencing soon, so it was imperative that we got accurate measurements. Mere measurements weren't enough for my uber-analytical spouse. Anything worth doing is worth doing with an Excel table, right? Here's the diagram he created:

A diagram of our future chicken palace/moat/garden combo 

We're researching the best fencing options to use (ideas welcome from experienced chicken owners!), but the point of greatest concern to me is the gate into the garden. In order for this to be a true chicken moat, the chickens have to be able to go all the way around the garden, but yet stay secure in the run. That means we have to either create some sort of tunnel (like the one used in this chicken moat installation) or bridge and underpass (see an example here).  What do you think? Will chickens actually go through a tunnel? Sounds kinda like a low-budget circus act to me.

Hubby Dear was on a roll after he finished the chicken moat diagram so he began to plot out our orchard-to-be. We have three pecan trees arriving in November and apples in the spring. You can bet Hubby Dear will have it all plotted out perfectly months in advance. Gotta love having a geek for a husband! (Seriously, I love it. Other than the fascination with Star Trek. That I could do without.)

Calling all poultry fanciers! Hubby Dear and I could use your best chicken run construction tips, plus your opinion on the chicken moat bridge vs. tunnel debate.  

Sun Oven, Part I: First Impressions

Welcome to the first installment of my series on the Global Sun Oven. First, my disclaimer. The Global Sun Oven Company sent me a Sun Oven to try. I'm not getting paid for this; I just get the fun of experimenting with the Sun Oven for length of time before I have to give it back. All opinions you'll read during this series are genuine and based on my personal experiences.

With that out of the way, let's get started.

The Box. Gee, I wonder what's inside?

My FedEx guy was chuckling and making snide comments as he delivered my package. Hey, guy, don't knock it before you try it! We'll see who's laughing when I'm eating freshly baked bread during a power outage! I've written before about how preparedness companies should ship their products in plain, unmarked boxes to help preserve their customers' privacy. A Sun Oven box doesn't give off the "crazy survivalist" vibes that some companies' boxes would, but still. Help preserve my OPSEC, Global Sun Oven, and I'll love you for it.

The moment I opened the box my nose was flooded with a strong chemical smell that nearly singed my nose hairs. Sorry for the ugly image but that's truly what it felt like. When I was doing some research on the Sun Oven prior to receiving it, I found several customers complaining that the Sun Oven lent a chemical taste to their food. My Sun Oven was packaged with explicit instructions on how to pre-clean it prior to use. I'll follow those instructions carefully and see what happens.

Out of the box and ready to go

The Sun Oven is very easy to put together.  It is already assembled and all you have to do is pop up the reflectors and put it in a sunny location. Done!  I appreciate the handy carrying handle and strap to hold reflectors in place during storage and transport. Even with my current handicaps, I had no problems lifting it and carrying it around.

The oven itself seems pretty sturdy. Reflectors are a bit bendy (we'll have to see how well they hold up to our legendary country winds), so if there's a weak spot, it's there. The case is plastic with wood surrounding the door. The door is made of tempered glass and it is attached to the body with sturdy metal hinges. The inside of the cooking box is made of anodized aluminum and it appears to be the source of the chemical odor. According to the company, the box has a food grade powder coating, so perhaps that's the culprit. I sure hope the pre-cleaning regimen works!

In position. The reflectors still have their protective coating

The reflectors come shipped with a protective coating that you have to remove. Hubby Dear and I had a hard time peeling it off and some of it clung stubbornly underneath the rivets. He and I are notoriously un-handy, though, so you would probably find it a breeze.

Looking inside the cooking box

Here's a shot of the inside of the Sun Oven. You'll see there is a thermometer included so that you can monitor the internal temperature. There is also an automatic leveling tray so that your food stays safely contained in its cooking vessel, no matter what angle you set your Sun Oven at.

The leveling leg

Speaking of angles, depending on the season and the time of day, you might find it necessary to angle the Sun Oven in order to capture the maximum amount of sunlight. There is a built-in leveling leg that makes this easy to do, even for me.

The Sun Oven comes with an owners manual, CD, and a cooking pot

My shipment also included an owners manual, pot, and a CD. The pot is pretty small for my family of six,  but you can stack pots inside the Sun Oven to cook more food at once. Apparently you can use any dark-colored or glass cooking vessel (NOT shiny aluminum or stainless steel and thinner pots are better), but I appreciated having a pot included with the Sun Oven.  The CD includes a copy of Wendy DeWitt's very helpful food storage plan, the owner's manual, two short instructional videos and a recipe and cooking tips document.

Now that I've become familiar with the Sun Oven,the only thing left to do is start using it! I hope to clean it tomorrow and cook something with it, weather permitting.

Stay tuned for Part II: the Sun Oven takes over where my mini-van left off. Can sun-baked cookies compete with oven-baked ones?  

August 2011 in Review and September Preps

I'm a bit late with my monthly summary, but here it is. To cap off a very interesting August, both of our water heaters died last weekend. It took five days for the parts to come in and for the water heaters to get fixed. No hot water when you have four young children home making messes all day in the middle of canning season? Life gets complicated and everything takes about twice as long to get done. It's going to take a few days to unearth my house from under the debris of dirty dishes, kids, and laundry.  I'm hoping September will be a better month.

August Garden:

Here's the bad news: the germination rate hasn't been great for our fall plantings.

Cauliflower hanging in there

We have a few tiny cauliflower and broccoli plants.

The Box of Death

This is the box we have christened "The Box of Death". All the strawberries we planted last spring died and now only one cabbage seedling remains. Lots of seedlings sprouted, but they mysteriously died. What gives?

Brandywine tomato plant gone wild

Our tomatoes are in a holding pattern. The insanely hot weather of July and early August caused the plants to drop flowers rather than produce fruit. Now the weather is better and flowers are setting, but we have to wait until the fruit is produced and ripe.

But there's good news.

The pumpkins are looking great. It won't be long before they're ready to pick. Our cucumbers and cantaloupe are consistently producing, too.

I'm harvesting and drying tons of cayenne peppers.

Green beans in September?

And, miracle of miracles, we have fresh green beans! Lots of them! Hubby Dear picked nearly two pounds just yesterday.

I reported last month that the green beans died, right? Well, in two of the boxes, the green beans bounced back and began producing with the mild weather we've been having.  How strange is that? It's fun to have some garden serendipity instead of garden catastrophe.


August Preps:

• In addition to the odds and ends I picked up at Cabela's, I bought some more items for our long term food storage: local honey, oil, mayonnaise, molasses and evaporated milk. I broke down and shelled out the mega bucks for a case of dry milk. We are getting so close to having a full year's supply of food. Exciting!
• I also added to our three-month supply: dry carrots, dry fruit, cornstarch, granola bars and cereal. My family is a crazy bunch of cold cereal addicts, so we have to build a big stockpile of it. Cereal is getting more and more expensive (like everything else these days) so it's a challenge to find bargains. 
• Speaking of stockpiles, my budding toiletry stockpile was getting out of control. I had been just pitching items in the cabinets in our master bathroom and it was pretty chaotic. To solve this problem, I bought five storage bins and divided the stockpile into five categories: oral care, body wash & soap, skin care, deodorant, and hair care. The bins should hold about a year's supply of these toiletries for my family and items are much easier to find now.  

The beginnings of my hair and skin care stockpile

• I added these two books to my library:  Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition and The Organic Fruit Gardener. 
• I've canned a bit of salsa, spaghetti sauce, pickled peppers, and cucumbers. I have two dynamite recipes to share with you soon. 

What's coming up this September? 

• I'm so excited! Global Sun Oven is lending me a Sun Oven to take for a test drive.  I can't wait to put it through its paces. Will it really work? Is it worth the hype? Is it better for baking cookies than my mini-van? You'll be along every step of the way.
• Of course I'll continue building our food storage. I plan to dehydrate a bunch of herbs and freeze pesto. Apple season is upon us so I'll begin canning applesauce, apple butter, and try my hand at dehydrating apples, as well. 
• The advent of cooler weather reminds me that we need to get a back-up form of heat for our house. We plan to get a wood stove at some point, but for now, a propane heater will have to do. 
•  I'm cutting back a bit on my prepping budget this month to start saving for my chicken coop. Hubby Dear and I are going to begin building the chicken moat this month. Since the two of us are ridiculously un-handy, that should be fun times indeed. Thankfully our marriage is strong enough to survive the trials and tribulations that are sure to unfold. ;) 

What did you do to prep or in the garden during the month of August? What do you have planned for September? 

My Thoughts on TLC's "Livin' For the Apocalypse"

I DVRed the one hour special "Livin' For the Apocalypse" on TLC after reading about it on Survival Blog. Just as Rawles predicted, this show definitely tried to show preppers and survivalists as loonies. The show was short on helpful information and long on sensationalism. Most of us don't "live for the apocalypse", we just live. Here's a snippet:



The show profiled four different families with different methods of preparedness. Compared to NatGeo's "Doomsday Preppers", the producers of this show had even less regard for their participants' privacy. Full names and locations were shown with abandon. Even when the participants expressed a desire to maintain OPSEC, the producers showed items that would easily allow anyone to find out just who they are and where they live. For example, "Survival Doc" made a point about how he wouldn't reveal his real name. That was pretty much blown out of the water when the cameras caught his chiropractic licenses and an information board in his office that showed his full name and the name of his chiropractic establishment. Oh, and by the way, his chiropractic office is located in his home. OPSEC totally blown.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing the preps that Peggy Layton, author of numerous food storage cookbooks, has. The ubiquitous McClung family (in the clip above) with their tilapia pool was profiled. Again. I have seen them on three different survival-related TV shows in the last six months. And contrary to what Mrs. McClung stated, you do NOT have to be a professional to can meat. All you have to do is have a pressure canner and follow some simple instructions. I just felt sorry for the last pair, a transgendered woman and her friend. I'm not going to say much about them other than to say that I think the producers should be ashamed of their extremely unflattering portrayal. They are a pretty unusual couple, but the editing did them no favors.

I don't think Hollywood is going to be knocking at my door and asking to take a look at my preps anytime soon, but if they did, you can bet I would say no. I think the potential educational value of a TV show on preppers is far outweighed by the OPSEC concerns. I'll stick with my blog, thank you very much!

In case you missed it, here's the listings for the next time "Livin' for the Apocalypse" will be shown. I didn't find it posted on YouTube yet, but I'm sure it will get there at some point.


Did you catch "Livin' for the Apocalypse"? What's your opinion on the show?

A Visit by the Reverse Prize Patrol

I just love the Publisher's Clearinghouse Prize Patrol. I never get those sweepstakes entries in the mail, and if I did, I probably wouldn't fill them out. Still, I like to imagine that one day the doorbell will ring and some man will shove flowers and a check for a million dollars into my arms.

I have, however, been visited by the reverse prize patrol. What's that, you ask? The reverse prize patrol is when the doorbell rings and you find a large bill. Surprise! You owe $500.

Yep, that happened to me this week. I thought the doorbell was the UPS man when it actually was our propane delivery driver.

A 500 gallon propane tank is expensive to fill
Image from missiongas.com

Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Gee, I thought we just sent you guys a huge check to pre-pay for our propane through April?"

Him: "Well, ma'am, that just covers you from September through April. We top off your tank before then.

Me: "......."

Him: "Ma'am, are you OK? You look a little pale and your jaw seems to be on the ground..."

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Crud. August was a tight month for us and I definitely didn't have an extra $500 just kicking around.

A few years ago, this would have been a crisis. We would've had to take a cash advance on a credit card or engage in who knows what kind of financial tomfoolery to get this bill paid on time. Today, I was able to smile (after course of smelling salts and a Coke Zero) because I knew it would be completely different this time around.

We started following the Baby Steps outlined in Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover two years ago. As a result, we are debt free (other than our mortgage) and have an emergency fund in place just for occasions such as this.

Preparedness is not only about surviving an end of the world scenario. Preparedness means you don't have to make last-minute runs to the store for that forgotten item because you can cover it with your food storage. It means you have the ability to take care of your family and pay your bills no matter who is president or what's going on in the world at large. It means the reverse prize patrol is nothing more than a speed bump.  Preparedness makes a difference in my every day life and, boy, does that feel good!



If you don't have an emergency fund, start today. Little bits add up. If you don't have food storage, start today. Don't wait for the reverse prize patrol to come knocking! Can I get an amen from the choir?

Fresh from the Garden: Tomato-Jack Salad

This recipe couldn't be easier, and yet it is one of my family's favorite ways to eat vine-ripe tomatoes. My mom came up with this combination 20+ years ago and we've been consuming it in mass quantities ever since. The zesty dressing, sweetly acidic tomatoes, and the creamy spice of the cheese are wonderful together.

I'm happy to share with you one of my family's secret recipes. Just promise me you won't try this with bland, grocery store tomatoes, OK? That would be a sacrilege. :)

I used Roma-type tomatoes because that is all I had at the moment. Slicer-type
tomatoes are much better, but, trust me, this was still pretty good. 

Tomato-Jack Salad

Ripe tomatoes
Pepper Jack Cheese
Italian dressing (If I'm using bottled dressing, prefer to use one that is labeled "zesty" or "robusto". It enhances the spicy kick.)

Alternate slices of tomatoes with thin slices of pepper jack cheese. Drizzle dressing over the top. You can serve immediately, or let it sit for a bit to increase the lusciousness.

My summer reading list and plans for the future

In between accidents and trips to the hospital, I've been busy reading and making plans for our homestead. Can you guess what we're planning based on my selection of library books?

My reading material

Of course, when I say "we're" planning, what I really mean is that I'm planning and Hubby Dear is tolerating, albeit with sighs and massive amounts of eye-rolling.

We're going to begin with two or three pecan trees this fall and add in several apple trees in the spring. We want to plant lots of other types of fruit trees, but I know better than to try and do too much at once. We I decided to start with apples and pecans because both are nutritious foods that have the potential to store well. Pecans, in particular, take a few years to start producing, so they got bumped up to the top of the project list. Since we have such rotten soil, we're going to have to take particular care to prepare the planting sites.

We're also going to expand our square food garden and fence it in preparation for the spring's big project: a chicken coop, chicken moat, and, yes, chickens.

A chicken moat plan from Mother Earth News

The above diagram is not exactly what our chicken moat will look like, but you get the picture. The idea of a chicken moat is that you surround your garden with a chicken run, which reduces weed and bug problems. Plus, you raise your own meat and eggs and get a rich source of compost for the garden. We need to start setting up the fencing around the garden area now because we are going to be swamped with garden work in the spring. I'd rather get the chickens now, but first things first. :)

Summer's not even over, but I just can't resist planning for next year. Are you planning a major addition to your yard, garden, or preps in the year to come? Do you have any advice for my ventures? I'd love to hear from you!

Fresh from the Garden: Basil Pesto

It's the world's klutziest woman checking back in. :) I got a new accessory today - an arm sling.Turns out I separated my right shoulder and I get to have my arm in a sling for a month while it heals. And, yes, I am right-handed. Thankfully, I have plenty of Advil in my stockpile (that I got for free with coupons, thank you very much!) and I still have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Sometimes if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

With that out of the way, here's the latest edition to my "Fresh From the Garden" recipe collection - pesto. I know, I know. Pesto isn't exactly new and innovative. But when it is made with garlic and basil from your own garden - oh. my. gravy. So delicious! My kids practically lap it up. 

This pesto recipe is the best one I have found. The simple step of blanching the garlic keeps it from being too strong and overpowering. The spicy basil and pungent garlic are in perfect balance with the creamy pine nuts. Dang it. I've made myself drool just typing this.

Pesto fresh from the food processor

Basil Pesto
Adapted from The Best Recipe  (An A+ cookbook that I highly recommend.) 

3 medium garlic cloves (unpeeled)
1/4 c. pine nuts, toasted (In a pinch, I've used almonds, walnuts, or even pecans)
2 c. packed basil leaves
7 T. extra virgin olive oil
Salt
1/4 c. finely shredded Parmesan cheese

Thread the garlic cloves on a skewer. Lower skewered garlic into a pot of boiling water. Boil for 45 seconds and then run garlic under cold water to stop the cooking. Remove from the skewer, peel, and mince.

Place basil in a freezer bag. Pound with something heavy (I use the flat side of my meat tenderizer) until the leaves are bruised. This step really intensifies the basil flavor.

Place all ingredients except cheese in work bowl of food processor; process until smooth. Transfer mixture to a bowl and stir in cheese plus salt to taste.

Yield: Enough pesto for 1 lb pasta

Note: If you are using this pesto on pasta, save back a cup or so of the pasta cooking water and add it to the pesto. This loosens up the pesto just enough and the starch in the cooking water helps the whole thing "meld".

Penne alla pesto - yummers!

A Comedy of Accidents

I haven't posted in a while and you might be wondering if a stack of 5 gallon buckets of wheat fell on me or if I got stuck in my bunker. Surely you didn't think my silence meant I fell off the prepping bandwagon? Never! :)

What happened is a comedy of accidents due to my inherent klutziness.

The scene of the crime

One morning, I was working in the kitchen while my four children played in the living/play room. The gruesome twosome - a.k.a. Baby Dear and Sweetie Pie - decided that Momma had spent more than enough time away from them and so they gathered at the gate that separates the living room from the dining room. Have you ever heard two, mostly non-verbal, toddlers throw a simultaneous tantrum? No? You're missing out. It sounds something like the combination of a cat in heat, nails on a chalkboard, and an approaching freight train.

Motivated by their dulcet voices, I decided to cross over the gate - usually a simple maneuver - to end the screaming as soon as possible. What happened next is kind of a blur. I tripped on either one of the babies or a toy and fell to the ground with a thud similar to the felling of a redwood tree. I half expected one of my older children to shout "Timber!", but no, they ignored my slow motion descent to the floor. I ended up with my head in a toy chest, my ribs cradled on top of a toy dog kennel, and my left knee jammed onto Baby Dear's miniature John Deere tractor. I still have the tire imprints on my patella to prove it. I got the wind knocked out of me and it shook me up a bit, but I was otherwise fine. The toddlers bounced upon my inert frame while I recovered and all was well in their baby kingdom.

That evening, I started having pain in both wrists. The pain became searing over the next couple of days and my hands remain sore two weeks later. Hubby Dear diagnosed me with sprained wrists and possibly some fractures in my metacarpals due to a FOOSH (fall on outstretched hand). Whatever. All I know is it hurts.

I decided to forgo the recommended x-ray and take the wait-and-see approach. Wait-and-see doesn't require a co-pay, radiation, or spending time in a waiting room with four restless kids. In the meantime, I had some canning to do. Salsa, spaghetti sauce, you name it. It had to get done. I don't like peeling tomatoes in the best of times, but with two sprained wrists?? Fun times.

So I decided to add to the excitement by slicing through the nail on my index finger with my chefs' knife. Twice.

I'm still avoiding the x-ray, but I had to go in for a tetanus shot to be prudent. On my way to get the tetanus shot, I jacked up my right shoulder when I slid on some wet pavement.

I think I should just stay in bed for a few days, don't you?

More garden and prep updates to come, assuming I maintain the use of my hands and my sanity.

Gettin' Romantic at Cabela's

Hubby Dear and I recently celebrated 13 years of wedded bliss. My in-laws provided us with babysitting so the Hubs and I enjoyed a kid-free weekend excursion to the big, big, city.

Who needs chocolate-covered strawberries and diamonds? Nothing says romance like a trip to Cabela's! Browsing the guns and ammo under the watchful eyes of taxidermied polar bears is sure to ignite marital passions. ;)

It wasn't the only place we visited on our trip, but Cabela's was a highlight to be sure. This is what I came home with:

A can of Mountain House Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Quik Clot Trauma Pak, SAM Splint, Firestarter, and rope

Mountain House #10 cans are still in short supply. There were plenty on hand at Cabela's, though, so I picked up one. They only carried about four or five varieties, but there were plenty of them.
I added the Quick Clot Trauma Pak and SAM splint to our first aid supplies. The Quick Clot Pak is good for large wounds - even some gunshots - and the SAM splint is reusable, which is a plus.

I've been wanting to get one of these firesteels I have refillable butane lighters, matches, and now this as my means to light fires. I'll definitely need to practice using it.

The rope was kind of a random purchase. It isn't heavy-duty, so I won't be using it to rappel down a mountain or anything. You can never have enough of it on hand, though, and since I bought it, it won't be lost in Hubby Dear's Man Land (aka the garage).



Anyone else have strange "dates" with your spouse since the preparedness bug hit?

This Inflation Business Is Getting Crazy!

For 1 case of non-fat, non-instant dry milk (including shipping):

March 2011: $78.92

June 2011: $95.05

August 2011: $107.17


That is INSANE!! I don't know if the price increase is due to inflation in general or simply increased demand for preparedness products. What I do know is I don't like it!

In case you're wondering, I didn't buy the milk. Who knows what the price will be next month?

Can Your Food Supply Beat The Heat?

First, allow me a little SHTF gardening pontification:

Many preparedness-minded people have a pack of "survival seeds" socked away for TEOTWAWKI, thinking, "If SHTF, I'll just start gardening."

First of all, you can't just throw a random can of survival seeds in your fridge and expect to be able to produce enough food to survive, much less thrive, post-SHTF. We've been gardening in one way or another for 6 years and we are by no means experts. We are making remarkable strides in our skills and knowledge, but I wouldn't want to depend solely on our garden's production.

Second of all, are you sure your seed stockpile is full of varieties that will thrive in your area? Do you have good tools? How about ways to maintain your soil's fertility and to manage pest problems without petrochemicals? Are you physically capable of the labor it takes to turn virgin ground into a thriving garden? You had better know the answers to all those questions before you have to rely on your "Garden in a Can".

Hot, hot, hot

With that out of the way, let's bring this summer's heatwave and drought into the picture. Let's say SHTF has happened. Unless you are located in the Pacific Northwest or Antarctica, chances are your summer has been brutally hot. At the Harried Homemaker Acres, we have had TWENTY ONE days where the high has been over 100 degrees. This is great for using your car as a solar oven, but not much else.



Extreme Heat Warnings and Watches, July 20, 2011

Our garden has suffered, with the corn taking the brunt of nature's furnace . Keep in mind that this is with daily watering. What would have happened if we could not irrigate? Could we live on only our garden produce?

The answer, obviously, is no. Not even if we had a much larger garden and were master gardeners. We would be struggling and would be thanking the Lord that we had our food storage in place.

POINT #1: You've got to have food storage as a back-up.

If you look at the information available from the National Weather Service, you'll find some interesting charts and graphs. This July ranked in the top ten of hottest summers ever recorded in our state. When were the other ten?

A cluster of years in the early 1900s
A cluster in the 1930s
A small cluster in the 1950s
1980

Hot and dry weather seems to come in clusters, which brings me to point number two.

POINT#2: It would be best to have enough food storage in place to account for multiple years of poor harvests.

And don't forget this -

POINT #3: In hot, dry weather, your gardening technique matters.

I will always sing the praises of Square Foot Gardening, but it is a more intensive cultivation that requires additional water and soil fertility. In a drought, giving your crops extra space is extremely useful. Two books that I own that address this issue are Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times and The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times.

I particularly find the latter book inspirational. The author, Carol Deppe, promotes corn, bean, squash, potatoes and eggs as the basis for a survival diet and gives extremely detailed information on how to grow these crops/products. If you maintain a gluten-free diet, you'll especially appreciate her book. We aren't gluten-free, but still found a lot of useful information. It is one of those books that makes you think.

Even if you are a die-hard SFGer, it makes sense to tuck these books into your survival library and learn these techniques as a option.

How is your garden growing in all this heat? How drought-proof is your garden?