January has been "Prep-uary" at our Place

We've been very busy this month with prepping-related projects.

• Hubby Dear and I cleaned and organized our storage room. It had collected a lot of odds and ends and, frankly, it was becoming a bit of a dump. I inventoried our long-term food storage and came up with a long list of items I need to buy. We've used some things that we need to replace. According to the food storage calculators, our family now consists of four adults and two children (children 7 and up are "adults" for food storage purposes), which means that I also need to increase the amount of food we store in general. 

Once we cleared out the clutter, it became apparent that we had used A LOT
of our food storage and never replaced it.

We also have a lot of canned goods that need to be eaten and restocked. Rotate, rotate, rotate! 

We still have some of the onions we grew last year left. They are stored in cheap pantyhose, which works
pretty well to keep them fresh and mold-free. You'll notice that a few of them have sprouted, though!

• Because of some health concerns that I have, I started following a Paleo diet back in December. I no longer eat grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, or refined fats. In other words, I can't eat most of our food storage! I hope that this way of eating will help resolve some of the problems I have as a result of chronic inflammation in my body, but it does provide a challenge to store food that meets the criteria of my diet. I'm brainstorming a list of Paleo-friendly foods to add to our storage and this is what I've come up with so far:  sprouting seeds, canned coconut milk, coconut oil, lard, nuts in the shell, and canned tuna and salmon. Anyone else out there who is both Paleo and a prepper? I'm curious to see how you handle this dilemma. 

• As I was organizing my storage room, I decided that my vintage, 1940s-era water bath canner had finally bit the dust. It is just too rusty and decrepit to use any more. Identical products on Amazon.com had very poor reviews - I guess they don't make granite ware like they used to - so I invested in a Victorio Stainless Steel Multi Use Canner.  This product can be used as either a water bath canner or steam canner and seems really sturdy. I've never steam canned before - have any of you? 

RIP, vintage water bath canner. You gave me (and others) years of good service.

• Hubby Dear and I ordered our seeds for the spring and bought the components of our DIY seed starting set-up. I am excited to share with you our plans for the year in an upcoming post. It won't be long before we'll be sowing broccoli, cauliflower, and kale indoors. 

Seeds, glorious seeds! So much promise is inside these packets. 

• I bought an assortment of homesteading books. Let's see if you can guess what kinds of things I am researching by a few of the titles: Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening, Keeping A Family Cow, and The Backyard Goat: An Introductory Guide to Keeping and Enjoying Pet Goats.

• Some friends of ours are downsizing due to job loss and health challenges. We bought a generator and some other homesteading paraphernalia from them, which served to help both of our families out. 

Our "new" 5500 W generator.

I did the math, and this generator will run one of our refrigerators and the furnace fan and that's it. It is definitely not a total solution to a long-term power outage, but it is a start. Now I need to stockpile some gas tanks, gasoline, and Sta-Bil.

Have you been celebrating "Prep-uary" at your house? Tell me what you've accomplished so far in 2013. :) 

Month Four Preps: Butane in my veins

I like to write posts named after lyrics from songs from my youth. I probably should have called it "Come on Baby, Light My Fire", but that would be from my parents' youth. We'll stick with the 90s today.  

---------------
Without electricity, how am I going to cook any of this food I am so frantically storing?

Around here it is de rigueur to have at least a 500 gallon propane tank on your property. Ours runs our furnace and gas cooktop. Depending on the season and the weather conditions, a full tank will last us between 2 and 6 months. We are members of a fuel co-op and have regular deliveries to keep our tank topped off. We also buy our winter fuel ahead of time, locking the price of propane in place and paying for everything in advance. If Hubby Dear should lose his job, that's one bill we wouldn't have to worry about for a few months.

The only problem with this set up is that the starter-spark thingy that lights the gas in both appliances is electric. The furnace also uses electricity to run its fans. I can't do much about that until we get a generator, but we can easily use our stove even in an emergency with aid of a handy-dandy butane lighter.

I love this Zippo MPL. It is very easy to use and is refillable. And did I mention it is pink? :)

I bought four extra cans of butane this month. I'll get more butane as well as additional MPLs later on. 

Of course there's always matches. You can never have too many of those. I have some in our kitchen and others in our BOBs. I'm going to stock up on more as part of Month Five of my Prepping Plan.

The third item I'm planning on buying for potential fire starting needs is a firesteel. I first saw one of these demonstrated on The Discovery Channel's "Dual Survival" (Here's a link that describes all the methods they used to start a fire on that show). You rub small metal striker perpendicularly down the steel. It produces a very hot spark that will light the gas on my stove or the tinder I gather for a fire outdoors.

Speaking of tinder, I've started collecting dryer lint. Finally, a use for dryer lint! I'm filling small ziplock bags with it and putting it in our BOBs. If we do have to bug out and make a fire, having dry tinder at the ready will be vital. 

If the electricity goes off, my electric oven won't work. There are a few options for baking food without electricity:

• A solar oven, either homemade or store-bought. That method will only work if it is sunny.
• A homemade box oven.
• Baking on the dashboard of my van on a hot day. For real.  

At some point, we're going to have to consider getting a wood stove and/or a generator for backup power. For now, though, we can be sure of a hot, home cooked meal whether or not the power is on.