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!

Ask the readers: Your Favorite Can Opener

If you are a prepper, chances are you store a lot of canned food, be it from the Piggly Wiggly or an LDS Cannery. If the only can opener you own is electric or a dinky one attached to a faux Swiss Army knife, you need a good manual can opener, stat!

Can you imagine if TSHTF and you didn't have a way to open your cans? You'd be a little frustrated, just like the cat in this video.





Sesame Street was so much better back in the day. "Elmo's World", which seems to take up most of the current incarnation of the show, makes me want to gack.

Oxo Good Grips Can Opener. Image from Amazon.com

I own a pretty decent manual can opener that I use all the time, an Oxo Good Grips Can Opener. It is very easy to turn and cans open smoothly. I have noticed that the plastic around the handle appears to be breaking down a little bit after a year of continual use. I definitely need to develop some redundancy in this area. I think we should have three manual can openers, minimum, to be safe.

So, I'm asking my readers: do you have a favorite, rock star manual can opener? What's your go-to device for opening TEOTWAWKI eats?