Anyone had group of 100+ for more than 10 years?

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Our activation plan regarding meals is to feed the arrivals meat dinners the first few days using frozen meats.
The purpose is to fill their bellies and to calm them from the panic times and change of address.
After that we will go to one meal dinners so there is no waste.

In order to give a break, one night a week individuals can come draw supplies for a small private dinner with select friends or family.
This gives all of us a break.

But overall, let me set the eating arrangements.
First we will canvass for unusual needs of meals and try to accommodate.

Secondly, we have a few different food plans. Everyone here is to provide their own food. We hope it is similar supplies to what others have done so we can easily have group meals.

But some began to show up with long term stored foods in buckets.
Some planned to eat separate from the git go.
Others came in as cheap as possible (just beans and rice).

Therefore, we will have most members in a common meal with some smaller groups cooking for themselves.
We have three cooking kitchens.

"But Jim, this is not fair" some will say. Each family picks and chooses their food options freely. It is their choice. They must live with it.
Our main rule is food belongs to the one that brought it. We will keep records on group consumption in group meals.

When their supplies run out they will be moved to a house on our border so we can support them in all manner except food.

P.S. Individuals can share their food supplies with others if they themselves choose to.



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Our activation plan regarding meals is to feed the arrivals meat dinners the first few days using frozen meats.
The purpose is to fill their bellies and to calm them from the panic times and change of address.
After that we will go to one meal dinners so there is no waste.

In order to give a break, one night a week individuals can come draw supplies for a small private dinner with select friends or family.
This gives all of us a break.

But overall, let me set the eating arrangements.
First we will canvass for unusual needs of meals and try to accommodate.

Secondly, we have a few different food plans. Everyone here is to provide their own food. We hope it is similar supplies to what others have done so we can easily have group meals.

But some began to show up with long term stored foods in buckets.
Some planned to eat separate from the git go.
Others came in as cheap as possible (just beans and rice).

Therefore, we will have most members in a common meal with some smaller groups cooking for themselves.
We have three cooking kitchens.

"But Jim, this is not fair" some will say. Each family picks and chooses their food options freely. It is their choice. They must live with it.
Our main rule is food belongs to the one that brought it. We will keep records on group consumption in group meals.

When their supplies run out they will be moved to a house on our border so we can support them in all manner except food.

P.S. Individuals can share their food supplies with others if they themselves choose to.
Jim,
Yours is a very different approach from ours. but it makes sense. It looks like you are melding the skills and protection a group provides together with family independence. Everyone works together but each family unit is responsible for providing for themselves.

In our group, everyone has job(s) to do for the group and in exchange, we provide for each other. So, your family may be assisting the cooks tonight in the kitchen or cleaning up after dinner tonight. Tomorrow another family will do the same (each time learning new cooking skills together as a family.) In exchange for this and whatever else your family has as their stewardships, you eat EVERY meal with the group and get to choose from whatever is being cooked that meal. The group, bulk buys, preserves, and stores all of our food and drinks. You are welcome to stock your living quarters with whatever food and drink you want, but no one overstocks because they know if something catastrophic happens and we have no food, we would go get food or hunt for it. Regardless, we're all better off and safer together than apart.

Different group, different facilities, different philosophies. It's all good !
 
We are selling our LPG Toyota 7FGCU60 Forklift and have already purchased a Toyota electric THDE2000-24 to eliminate inside carbon monoxide emissions. The electric is already in use, but it may take a while to sell the old one. We don't need 4. The new electric is used primarily to rotate the pallets of different type foods from the grocery to the facility and back to the grocery (frequently cans.) The rotation is sort of like the rolling can system you might have so that you eat the oldest first, except with full pallets instead of single cans. This latest stay by about 50 extra people we hadn't planned on meant breaking into some of our pallets to be rotated, so rather than rotate them "broken" we just bought new cases to replace the partials and re-wrapped the pallets. We'll use the partials mixed into the menu for the permanent residents for the next couple of weeks and everything will be hunky-dory. After this evening's news, we're already getting requests to move back in and reconvene the school inside the facility, so we'll be watching the Ukraine situation closely this weekend. I hope they de-escalate, but hope is not a plan.
 
Yes, we use gravity fed pallet racks like this, so the forklifts load on one end and remove from the other end. (Labels sanitized, sorry!) So, our rack depth and the shelf life of the pallet's contents limits how many years' worth of food we can store in pallets. Racks are 3 pallets high and modular, so we could add to the depth if we drag the whole unit forward to maintain the loading lane. By carefully monitoring lot dates, we are able to rotate the pallets back into the store stock without significantly affecting our grocery customer's product shelf life, but it virtually eliminates stale dating at the facility.
 

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It was probably a fruitless presidential call with Putin today.
 
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Gold is down, Bitcoin is up...go figure?!
Great group meetings this morning. Folks are nervous but calm.
Great supper tonight, very smooth so far considering the number of people inside!

Best cooks ever! Great meal, talk and laughter sounded almost like a roar as you approached mess hall. Lots of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" - holstered pistols came out at the supper tables. A couple got dropped to the floor. Lots of gritted teeth. Newbies make me nervous...too much enthusiasm.
 
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Your op sounds like it could supply a couple small stores. Wonderful way to keep a rotation.
For sure we could easily stock a couple of stores! By using my fairly large grocery next door as our rotation source, our facility stock is regularly rotated back into the grocery...like apples for apples, except its mostly identical pallets of canned food for identical pallets of canned food.

Over the last two weeks we added a depth of two pallets to the pallet gravity feed, so now, one night a week, we are literally forklifting every front pallet off the feed (low side/oldest first) into the basement of the grocery and bringing newly purchased pallets to add to the back end (high side/newest) of the pallet gravity feed. We have long since paid for all the existing pallets, so by trading one for one, we always have fresh stock of all pallet food types and a stupid-proof method of rotation. (Unless we have to use some of a front pallet, in which case we purchase what we need from the grocery to replace missing cases, shrink wrap, and then trade it out.)
 
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Gold was manipulated down. Bitcoin doesn't have a true ETF yet so they can't short paper Bitcoin like they short paper gold.
Are you saying mass buying and selling of "gold on paper" could trigger automated computer buying or selling at some thresh hold and then the manipulators jump in or out to take the profits caused by the triggered buying or selling? Sorry for the wordiness.
 
The short sales that drive the price down are too large and too risky for it to be just normal short sellers doing it. Some of the dips have bounced back so fast they had to cover at a huge loss. Speculation is that the U.S. Treasury is doing it.
 
The short sales that drive the price down are too large and too risky for it to be just normal short sellers doing it. Some of the dips have bounced back so fast they had to cover at a huge loss. Speculation is that the U.S. Treasury is doing it.
Maybe, but to what end? The US Treasury owns billions in bullion, so why would they want to devalue it? I'm obviously missing their motives.
 
Gold is down, Bitcoin is up...go figure?!
Great group meetings this morning. Folks are nervous but calm.
Great supper tonight, very smooth so far considering the number of people inside!

Best cooks ever! Great meal, talk and laughter sounded almost like a roar as you approached mess hall. Lots of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" - holstered pistols came out at the supper tables. A couple got dropped to the floor. Lots of gritted teeth. Newbies make me nervous...too much enthusiasm.
You are all already in facility now? We cannot at all because of more water problem and the electricity wire was also cutted so now we have to do again.

If your guys that are in Ukraine can not get the grandmother into the US and you need safe home, we can have her be with our home for sure for you. My daughter speaks the Russian very well if that would be a good thing. Tell me and I will say yes.
 
You are all already in facility now? We cannot at all because of more water problem and the electricity wire was also cutted so now we have to do again.

If your guys that are in Ukraine can not get the grandmother into the US and you need safe home, we can have her be with our home for sure for you. My daughter speaks the Russian very well if that would be a good thing. Tell me and I will say yes.
Clair,
Yes, just about everyone is here. Putin is egging on both the hawks and libs, hoping that one or both will take the bait and give him the excuse he needs to launch a nuke. He understands that we are so risk averse, we will hesitate or will not act at all, giving him serious advantage. I'm sure his subs are already in position and quiet, so we will have little or no warning if he decides to strike first.
Thank you for the offer, it may in fact be needed. I will PM you when I know more. Thank you again.

P.S. Sorry about your wiring and water problems. This is a really bad time to be unable to use your facility. I hope you can get that new wire run and get your pumps going quickly! Maybe use a trencher this time if possible so it is too deep to be accidentally cut?
 
In early February we expanded our hydroponics to handle the extra mouths we recently had to feed. It's still going to take a while to develop those crops so we're at a deficit for now on fresh veggies and supplementing with frozen. If everyone who is here now stays for a couple months, the hydroponics will catch up.

As for our live food experiments, the Carp and Tilapia are not big enough to eat yet, but they're getting there, especially the Carp.
The "Turkens" and "Plymouth Rock" chickens will be big enough to start laying eggs in April or May, so we're out of luck egg-wise for now.
As for the rabbits (Flemish Giants and Palomino,) they expect some Palomino bunnies to be born probably in May, but the Flemish Giants apparently take more than a year to mature, so that probably means we will NOT be breeding them. Maybe we'll have fresh rabbit sometime soon at their expense?
 
I've had the facility managers keep really good records of our food, water, and energy usage during this time of heavy member usage. The usage IS significant but better to know if the usage tracks with their models than to be surprised when we are stuck with a facility full of people who can't run to McDonalds as many are doing now. The gravity flow rotation works like a charm! When an empty pallet gets removed, the one behind it smoothly rolls to the front and even slows to a stop. As this Ukraine thing drags out, a good number of folks are going out and don't come back for a few days. We already make the kids we have walk over to the school for classes rather than using one of the mess halls, so hopefully tensions will ease enough for them all to go home and I'll be able to spend more time in the grocery where I'm having some issues with a couple of newer employees who are chronically late. I hate being my own HR.
 
Solar stuff, if anyone cares...

We have over 30 public power utilities in our state but fortunately they offer net-metering, i.e. they buy any electricity you produce in your solar array if you agree to their terms and behave. Shhhh! We don't actually behave, since they want us to provide ALL of our output to them for credits. We take what we want first and then channel the excess through their meter. There's a pending new solar law, HB-741, and if it gets signed into law, new solar arrays may not be worth building, but fortunately if you already have an array, you get a 20-year grandfather grace period before they make it more difficult and expensive to own. That should easily outlive me and in 20 years who knows what the law will be?!

Our "stealth" dual system is designed to primarily use net-metering, but we can easily divert as much power directly to the facility as we want. The Li-ion batteries are always kept topped off, and the facility is now always 100 percent powered by the array. Even when we were at 91 percent of our membership in the facility last week, our usage inside the facility barely affected our net-metered output. We have way more capacity than we need for our facility, but the idea is to have the cells pay for themselves now and then when SHTF, we'll be set by switching over completely. Our inverters are designed to handle the total output of the entire shopping center's solar array and as long as the power company is online and buying our excess, we are actually making money on our solar production. When SHTF and we suddenly are not diverting electricity to the power company, we can switch entire sections of the array off so as to not waste the excess into the ground. There will be rainy or cloudy days when we will have all panels online, but frequently, entire store rooftops will probably be switched off. That being said, we still test all generators monthly, first with natural gas (the default fuel) from the utility company (FPU,) and then with propane which is stored on-site.
 
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That’s a lot of egos in a small space.
It actually "feels bigger" than you'd think because of the 20-foot ceilings.
There are several egos that sometimes think things should be done differently, but they've been given more responsibilities, so they become part of the solution. It works. No unrest or mutinies!
 

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