Preserving Foods After SHTF

[jontte]

it's surprizing how little you really need,despite what the marketing people tell us

 

[Brent S]

Are they the ones that John West rejected? (If you guys had those ads in the US)

Sorry, lost on the john west thing? Was he anything like John Wayne, lol. I'm jealous of your location down under. Would love to visit the place one day, but it's a long, long way. I think the Aussie govt seems to have its stuff together more so than ours, debt wise and staying out of other countries business and all. The more I've learned, the more I respect it.

 

[Brent S]

You have a great setup there Brent. Greenhouse, pond, ducks, chickens, I'm kind of jealous.
My plans are tentative at the moment for several reasons. The most important being my physical capabilities. I am pretty much on my own and working at my other property this weekend has really high lighted my limitations. I have always been self-sufficient, able to do whatever needed doing by myself. Now I am finding it difficult to even mow the lawn.
I have COPD, asthma and a couple of other health issues that have really taken their toll on me the last few years. So it really is about trying to live as healthy and simple as I can now.
I don't think I'm as interested in aquaponics as your neighbor. Using what I have learned from reading about it I think it would be fun to put in one of those black form pools from Lowe's, grow some fish in it and maybe float some veggies on top. I have a lot of success growing my veggies in the ground with the exception of the leafy varieties. Five years ago I could have dug the hole for the pool myself. Today, I don't think I could do it.
And I have another option that I am seriously considering: going permanently mobile. Selling everything I have and buying a motor home. There's still a lot of traveling I'd love to do. Imagine trying to grow your own veggies in a motor home!

Sorry to hear about your health. I'm reasonably healthy but at 50 am allready realizing that our time here is short. Best advice I can give you is figure out what you want the most, and if reasonable, do it. My wife has asked why do I work so hard all the time. I guess I just really like to, sure digging is no fun, but I like the sense of accomplishment I get when I see the finished product. Most of my 'hobbies' are productive pastimes, like woodworking, gardening, and building things. I have always kind of wanted to travel in an RV, but never really had the resources. Sure sounds like fun for a couple years though. I think I'd really like fixing up one with solar and as many prepping Ida's as I could think of. That would be a great thread, bug out RV ideas! Whatever you decide, I wish you well.

 

[Brent S]

I cleaned five young roosters today. I'm still pretty new to killing animals, but it wasn't too bad. I haven't plucked any yet, I just peeled the skin with feathers completely off. It comes off pretty easily. I usually don't eat the skin anyways, and always trim off all fat so I'm ok with it. I've heard that it helps hold in the juices so you have to be careful when cooking skinless to keep it from drying out. I just didn't want to boil a large pot to scald them in to loosen the feathers. May try that down the road though. My wife was amazingly tolerant of me cleaning the birds in the kitchen sink. Still doubt she will try them, but no complaints anyways. The hardest part of it all was catching the birds. I have a huge dominecker rooster that is one bad ### bird. He wasn't very happy with me messing with his flock! It's tough to snatch a bird with one hand and fend off an attacking rooster with the other.

 

[Graynomad]

It was a tad scary for me I think because I was only 45 and we left a high-paying jobs and owning 3 houses to having no income and no real estate. You really can't come back from no real estate part unless one day you buy into a much cheaper area. As it happens that's what we've done, we bought 25 acres of virgin bush in the middle of nowhere and I could never go back to living in a city anyway so I'm well happy, but at the time I felt I was really burning my bridges.

Another "scary" thing is that historically living in a box the size of an RV really sorts out a relationship even more so than retiring, the old "half as much money and twice as much husband" comes into play except it's 10th and 10x Usually it's the bloke that wants to live on the road and the woman tags along to keep him happy, but six months of being together in a tin can 24/7 and not seeing the grand kids is enough and it's ultimatum time. I've been lucky in that regard, my wife is actually part Romany (Gypsy) and it was her idea.

In Oz you can be a caretaker in national parks, you get a free spot and if necessary free water (but no wage), in return for collecting the fees. Many people do that, in fact it's so popular you almost have to wait for someone to die to get a spot and then be related to them. Caravan parks offer similar deals as well etc. It's never appealed to me because I'm something of a loner and I can camp just about anywhere I like for free, so why should I work for the privilege while living cheek by jowl with a 100 other people? In fact we haven't stayed in a caravan park since shortly after we hit the road in 2001.

That said if you enjoy working with people that KOA gig sounds good, typically with that sort of thing once you get in and get a reputation for reliability you can pick up work anywhere. Minimum wage with no accommodation expenses is actually not bad money, even with the crap min wage you guys get in the US. We were living quite well on about $15k pa which is about half the Oz min wage I think.

Another thing about the mobile lifestyle is that it's perfect for the "natural disaster" style of prepping, when you hear about a hurricane you just up anchor, head inland and sit on some BLM land for a month or two until it blows over (so to speak ). But it's no good for the "back to the 1800s" style long-term event prepping as you can't store the huge amounts of preps required and grow much food etc. So that's a gamble you will have to make.

As for the price of gas that is an issue, but remember that it's largely a discretionary expense, you don't have to drive anywhere for the most part. Our preference is to drive for a couple of days then camp for a month or more, our average over many years was 137k (85 miles) per week. That's affordable almost regardless of the fuel price. But if you want to gad about every second day (as many people do) then yes it could get expensive.

Overall I heartily recommend it as a lifestyle choice, with the above caveats re prepping and getting back into the real estate market.