Paleo prepping

As I was laying in bed last night about to fall asleep it dawned on me that the food storage we need to do for my special diet needs and Pierce's is pretty much Paleo with some rice/potatoes/dairy added in.  That means we need to focus on dried fruits, nuts, canned meats, dried and canned veges and any kind of raw organic dairy that is storable (which right now is pretty much zero dairy!). Some of this I have been doing, raisins are great in sealed bags and pouches, I food-saver seal up nuts and have a bunch plans to can tomatoes and green beans in the next few weeks.

What we have not been doing is saving any kind of canned meats, I think I will start picking up some kipper snacks and sardines every time I grocery shop and see if I can find any good brands of other kind of canned meats and buy them in bulk at Sam's club.  I am also going to explore canning my own meats as well.  Its a relief to think this way because I was beginning to think if we didn't store grains and corn my family would starve. And grains and corn make at least 2 of us very sick, so that was a lose/lose proposition.

I also got an inspiration to actually reserve the paloepreppers.com web name so that in the future if I can find some others who are like me (which seems pretty unlikely at this point!) we can have a place to talk about how we non-mainstream eaters can stash away food for emergencies and just to save money in general. 

I am reading a really good book on Paleo eating called "Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat"  .  I actually got it for free as my kindle loaner book (thanks again Steve!) for the month and it is a wonderful instructional book with lots of recipes and idea included.  It also has ways to save money, cook all your own food and making the bulk of it in one day to eat for the week, which is kind of how we do things around here already.  it is so good I will probably end up buying it to keep.  She does keep it a lot lower carb than we can with 2 thin growing children so I will add in my usually dairy and extra fruits and some starch for the kiddos as well, plus some of our cocnut flour goodies that I bake regularly.  The book also gave me some really good ideas for stuff to keep on hand preparedness wise as well as just for being able to whip up a fast yummy nutritious meal.  All in all if you have a special diet or even if you don't and are just interested in moving toward a more healthy eating style I recommend you check it out.

Dejunking is prepping too!

I am on a mission to get my house organized and de-junked and our prepping stuff more easily accessible.  I am spending 15 minutes (or more) a day cleaning out cupboards, organizing supplies and just making things easier for us to grab and go if needed.  I am getting back into writing, so I am going to blog daily as an exercise in consistency. Some on this blog and some on my other personal blog that I tend to ramble on with my health issues. Keeping them separate allows me not to bore people to death!

Each day I come across so many reasons to be prepared and so many good ideas that I want to implement.  So for now it will be baby steps, 15 minutes of cleaning and writing a day, and learning to dream and have goals again.  I am starting a nice list of "wants"  for our prepping and everyday life and I am going to save for things that overlap on both lists.  My new addition for today is a Sun Oven that Mary Hunt reviewed.  I thought that would be a wonderful addition to our home now and for preparedness.

I still feel like I am lacking in community and friends, I spend most every day home alone not really talking to anyone, which is a nasty by-product of being such a hermit for the past few years.  Unfortunately, I couldn't choose not to be sick and my illness took all I had leaving me nothing to give anyone, and barely enough to do even the basic care for my family.  Mood swings and general crankiness probably chased a few people away as well.  As I am climbing out of that health pit I am slowly moving back into the world and craving some companionship and more importantly community or kindred friends to share my time and my life with.  Lets hope I can collect some more along the journey.

The garden is going really well, our tomato plants grew absolutely huge for some odd reason, like 6.5 ft tall and 3-4 feet across.  We are just starting to pick the ripe ones,  but with 10-12 of those enormous plants I am going to be drowning in tomatoes pretty soon. In other news the peppers and spices are also taking off.  We already froze up one batch of basil/oregano/garlic seasoning cubes and there is enough basil to do another one of those.  I think I may package them up and give them as gifts this Christmas.  With our new lower budget I need to get creative for gift giving!  It has been a short but productive summer and I feel like I am moving forward for the first time in years. 

Latest News

So, been a while since I blogged, things have been crazy here with health issues, financial changes and in general being busy with the kids and summer.

We have our 3 containers of water filled now.  I am slowly stocking up on other necessities, we have sugar, Sugar leaf that I got for a good deal in bulk, some fruit dried, nuts, coconut flour, raisins and other shelf stable stuff that I come across in my shopping journey. We discovered that blueberries make really good fruit leather that needs almost no sugar, we bought 20 lbs and froze about 15 lbs and made the rest into fruit leather.  Five lbs of berries makes very little leather!  We will need to remember to eat it sparingly. 

We are still dealing with the special diet issues and finding ways to store food to eat with no wheat, corn, oats or other grains.  I did buy some dried buttermilk and am looking into butter powder although I know that has to be used within 6 months or so.  I think the easiest way to use that will be to start cooking with it.  Will still rely primarily on frozen food storage, which is good for a few day or until it all starts thawing.  I figure if that happens we will have a great big BBQ and cook all the meat we can.  we would like to get some kind of portable generator as well, and with that we could actually take a few days to dry everything we have frozen for a bit longer storage.

Our biggest problem right now is that our storage room turned into a complete disaster very quickly and we need to reorganize it again so that I can get in there and keep the food rotated and organized.  the nice shelving unit we bought it already full.  I think we are a bit of pack rats around here.  I am trying to shift that to a prepping type pack rate and get rid of useless stuff we do not need or use.  I revamped our plastic storage container cupboard today and actually store all the container with their lids on them, what a difference that makes when we go to grab a bowl or box to put things in! I plan on bullying my husband into tackling the storage room together this week or next weekend.

We are continuing to make survival bracelets, let me know if you want to purchase any we do special orders and have almost every color there is.  I prefer them as ankle bracelets so we make those as well.

Focus during storms

So how do you keep focused on prepping during personal storms?  Lately things have been stormy, health storms, work storms, financial storms. So many storms that we are drowning in stress, we have found some new friends through these storms, and learned that we have very little of what we need to survive a real emergency crisis that lasts longer than a few days.

During this process I am taking the time to dream, to give myself some strength to get though this time in my life where life sometimes seems pretty disappointing and so completely off the track from my past dreams.  Where would we live if we could? What things would we have to help us be better prepared for a famine or a sustained power outage or a tornado that wrecks everything.  how woudl our friendships and relationships look?  Can we set up a future for our children that is better than the life we are currently struggling in?

So here is a little bit of my dream:
We would live on some land (preferably at least 10 acres) with a water source, some wooded areas and a few acres that are farm-able.  There will be a root cellar or a nice basement for food storage.  Our house would be designed to be as energy efficient as possible, and easy to keep up with some sort of solar power and a engineered field for a septic system, and well water or some other form of non- city water supply, rain barrels catches etc. Wind power is also an option.

The storage area will be well defensible for our food and emergency water supplies, I prefer that the house be solid and hard to break into - but with the windows needed for energy efficiency we may have to come up with some kind of special shutters for a true disaster.  An emergency escape vehicle is a must - Brad wants a Deuce and a half, but in the interests of costs we may have to go a bit smaller than that.  I also want a camper trailer of some sort as temporary shelter and for us to use for camping and vacations (something we have not really had in many years).  There will be a barn with chickens and perhaps a milk and beef cow for food, maybe even goats instead of cows because they are edible and produce good milk as well and are much hardier and easy to feed.

Our house would be as much off the grid as we can make it and it will be in proximity to a community of people who want to work together and share our lives and enjoy the simple pleasures in life.  I feel a need to surround myself with friends and people we can count on in this world today where people are so busy we all end up alone or living just for ourselves.  This is the most important part of my vision, the house is negotiable, the land is negotiable, but I really feel a need to be part of a "village" so to speak, with neighbors that are friends as well as family and fellow villagers.  I would be able to use my weird backwoods skills for everyday enjoyment and activities as well as possibly to barter or trade for things I can't do.  Back to the basics or what life was life before the information and technology age.  Not that I mind information and technology, I just think we need to integrate it a little bit better into a more old fashioned approach for keeping people connected and working together.

So anyway this is the start of my vision of the life an home that I want!

Water Storage

Well we finally have one 7 gallon water storage container full - which could be stretched to 72 hours of drinking for the 4 of us, so goal number one complete!  We have 3 more containers to fill and a 4th that was stained inside that we filled for non-drinking usage.  We are using our R/O filtered water to fill the containers for drinking so it takes a few days to fill up.

We had one short power outage last week with the hail storm that came through here, I was actually a bit calmer about it as we had enough stuff stored for a few days without power. A little peace of mind goes along way and makes for a good mini practice session. 

We still need to come up with a better long term solution for water, something to clean it and a place to get more if we need it.  There are so many options out there and most are expensive and some are just not very portable or realistic. One thing that I looked at many years ago was a natural clay or stone filter/cooler for drinking water.  They are portable and can last for up to 5 years to purify drinking water.  It might even be worth learning how to make a water filter from materials on hand.  its my next research project.

Snail's Pace

Sometimes it seems to take so long to get even a little bit stored.  I am slowly buying things for our food stores.  I have added a little canned milk this week.  We got a flat of strawberries, which I made into fruit leather but the kids are gobbling it down so I can't count that as stored!  The tomatoes are all planted and growing well, a couple days of rain made them grow a lot faster.  I have plans this year to can tomatoes and beans, and I am hoping to get some more berries for some jam and fruit leather.

On a really good note, Brad cleaned out our shed and found several water storage containers we bought years again, so I am going to wash them and slowly start filling them with filtered water from our tap.  They are the long term blue HDPE containers so they are good for a minimum of 6 months and probably for a lot longer than that.  I am tempted to put a little bleach in them just to make them last longer.  All I have to do to get rid of the bleach is open up the cap and let them sit for a day or two.  And meanwhile I will have our 2 liter bottle stores while the bleach evaporates off.

I am really interested in learning to can meat, I had some canned whitefish at a friends the other day and it was fabulous, I would like to be able to make my own.  I am still cruising Craig's List for a pressure canner, as well as an Avion tow behind camper.  We are looking at ways to get out of this house and move to a real house with acreage, a place for a root cellar and possibly some chickens and a bigger garden.  We are also looking at building a community because we have been alone and on our own for far too long.

The possibilities keep opening up and we are praying about it and keeping our eyes and hearts open for which way we need to go.

The List

As we continue on in our prepping foray's we are slowly making a list of things that we have not done and need to address. 

Our biggest vulnerability at this point is water.  We have very little water storage, and no way to purify water if we need to other than boiling.  So what we have decided to do it to save our empty gallon milk jugs each week - sterilize them with boiling water and fill them up with our filtered water to store for 4-5 months (after that the plastic in the milk jugs start to break down and leach into the water).  We also have a couple of big water storage jugs that will we be filling with emergency water and I am currently researching long term water purification options (although we do have an R/O filter on our sink which runs without electricity that I may also figure out how to convert for water purification since we carry about 2 years worth of filters int he house because it is cheaper to buy them in bulk.  

As much as it pains me I also need to learn to can food and spend some time throughout the summer canning and putting up some food for use each year.  I want to learn how to can meat as well as fruit and vegetables.  We need to step up the drying as well, shortage of cheaper produce through out the winter has kept that down other than jerky, which we eat faster than we can seem to store it. 

Food wise we need more coconut flour and cream, and we could use another gallon or so of the oil as well.  I want to find a recipe for some good energy bars that have no starch in them so that we all have an option for a high calorie food - maybe pemmican like made with coconut cream and oil.  Being limited to no starch or wheat or corn products is a huge challenge, it basically means that we can buy little to no prepared food to store because EVERYTHING has wheat corn and starch in it that you can buy on the reg store shelves.  It means a lot more making things ourselves and having single ingredients instead of easy prepared food to live off.

Back on the kitchen list of things to do are making homemade vegetable stocks and sauerkraut and have that on hand to store and eat continually for the health benefits.  This is not a prepping thing so much as a personal health thing but I think we can incorporate it into our food stores as well.  We also need to do an inventory of our freezer and probably buy another beef quarter in the next month or so.


On the personal protection front we are taking a CPL class next weekend and saving up our pennies to buy 2 hand guns and practice with them regularly at a shooting range.  We have several ranges nearby, we just need to choose an affordable one or look at the cost of the range vs driving to some personal property we have been offered to use for target shooting.

That is just the beginning of our list of things we have not done, but int he interest of keeping this in nice small bite-sized packages to prevent burnout and getting discouraged it seems enough for today!