The Stupendous Crisis Survival Thread

[nickers]

43 minutes ago, calfoxwc said:

I have, it's really good, but it depends on what ingredients you use.

I've only used wild blackberries, but want to try with blueberries and pineapple...

I plan on re-packing my hiking waist pack, and will include some pemmican, Right now, I am researching bear spray and will order a few cans for our trip out west.  I want to figure out the best meat to use...

https://www.fieldandstream.com/survival/homemade-pemmican-recipe/

https://www.skilledsurvival.com/how-to-make-pemmican/

 

Where in Ohio are you Cal?

 

[calfoxwc]

3 hours ago, nickers said:

Where in Ohio are you Cal?

 

right between Marietta and Toledo, and Cleveland..... lol

[calfoxwc]

https://foragingwildedibles.com/book/?tid=tidEEE23852053709450264SSSplEEEFacebook_Desktop_FeedSSSsrcEEEfb

[calfoxwc]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:14 PM, JAFBF said:

Do you all know what this is ?

 

 

 

 

It's just a simple Indoor Garden   .   .   .   but it is also a :

 

 

 

Think about it.

 

Anyone familiar with "Victory Gardens" ?

 

People used to growth a lot more of their own vegetables, but almost no one does today.

Free money (you're not paying for it), free food (you grew it for the price of seeds / watering).

There are actually some amazing videos out there showing how to "regrow" your vegetables - I'll post a few as I come across them again.

 

 

Cal, I'm thinking reheating (Oven) can recover/restore those absorption bags, but I'm not certain on that.

Could be a research project for someone.

 

Dried Beans (Pinto / Black Bean/ Seven Bean / Spilt Peas / etc) are generally common and inexpensive to pick up, just repackage them I think will aid in storage life.

 

Rice is good as well, just spread out the consumption as Rice is generally a bit high in Arsenic, and the Chinese crap has Plastic mixed in (yea, it sucks).

 

Spam, Vienna Sausages, Stews, Soups, Tuna, Salmon, Sardines, etc. and the like are good in moderation (high Sodium from Canning), but are tolerable.

 

I agree with what Cal is saying, but not everyone has the ability / time too cover all those bases.

 

MRE's are great, but expensive and a bit high in Sodium.

 

 

Cal, feel free to correct me on these, I defer too your experience, these are just a few things I do which may not be optimal.

 

Also note that different parts of the Country have different "abundances" of items.

On the West Coast, we have a ton of Salmon/Fish/Apples/Grapes(Wine)/Blackberries/Marion Berries/Blue Berries/Seafood and so forth, whereas the Midwest is more Corn/Wheat/Soy/Apples (Northern OH).

 

CA and FL will have Citrus, and other Southern States will be Peaches/Pecans/Nuts   .   .   .  

 

Pretty amazing Country of diversity when you think about it, but ideally, we all work together.

 

I forgot to reply - good points ! I have been asked by a few neighbors about gardening - they never really gardened before. They, too, are getting worried, wondering about where we are headed.

   At one time, Dad and I grew about a thousand tomato plants. I actually paid a neighbor kid to count them all after we were done planting. lol.

   It's only me now, so I have cut back dramatically. I love Early Girl tomatos, my favorite cherry is the Sunsugar - highly productive, pretty resistant to cracking (unlike Sungold cherry tomatoes), Rutgers and various heirloom Brandywines. My favorite sweet pepper is Aconcagua - a very wonderfully sweet, very large pepper from Argentina I think, and sweet banana peppers. I want to upgrade our soil this spring, and different leaf lettuces - love wilted lettuce salad.

Burpless cucumbers, zuchini (zuchini bread is excellent), and Blue Lake green beans. I'll try bush beans only, because of critters getting itno the garden. So, I'll put up a solar electric fence, lay metal fence on the ground all around our fenced in garden.

   A cool thing is dehydrating. Frozen, big packages of your favorite vegetables can be immediately dehydrated because they have already been blanched. I snack on them here and there. I like to get friends to try them - telling them they are dehydrated grasshoppers. lol.

   Dehydrated sliced apples, pineapples, mangoes, etc do NOT have to be dehydrated - vegetables DO.

  I've canned tomato sauce, and made and canned my own videalia onion relish. That relish is awesome on most sandwiches, hotdogs.....

  This year, I will be working on smoothies - you can take things like dehydrated green beans, dehydrated garlic cloves, etc - and grind it up into powder. Seems to last for many months.

  I cook soak beans overnight, rinse them, and cook them halfway to done - it take a good bit of time. Then I drain, and dehydrate them, put them in jars with oxygen absorbers. can last for months if not years.

    Every fall I pick about 19/12 lbs of wild blackberries, and make the best jam. I have elderberry plants growing - the berries make an excellent medicine. There's common mallow all over - and I dry the leaves for a medicinal tea for sinus and lung congestion.

  It's a fun hobby for me  - and if the SHTF - I can always hunt squirrel and groundhog, and fish, and find wild plants to eat, and burn wood in the wood fireplace insert so we can keep warm if the power goes out.

  I bought a nice generator to keep the freezer and fridge going if the power goes out,

  I enjoy it. It's been a hobby for many years.

It's almost spring - I fry up dandelion blossoms and make dandelion jelly - really terrific.  Just fun.

and I want to start making some pemmican and try bannock. The learning never ends.

Oh, and I want to grow ground cherry tomatoes again. they are -really- good.

https://www.gurneys.com/product/aunt-mollys-ground-cherry?p=0579716

[calfoxwc]

or, you can learn dutch oven cooking over coals.

if you are allowed to have a firepit.......

[nickers]

13 minutes ago, calfoxwc said:

I forgot to reply - good points ! I have been asked by a few neighbors about gardening - they never really gardened before. They, too, are getting worried, wondering about where we are headed.

   At one time, Dad and I grew about a thousand tomato plants. I actually paid a neighbor kid to count them all after we were done planting. lol.

   It's only me now, so I have cut back dramatically. I love Early Girl tomatos, my favorite cherry is the Sunsugar - highly productive, pretty resistant to cracking (unlike Sungold cherry tomatoes), Rutgers and various heirloom Brandywines. My favorite sweet pepper is Aconcagua - a very wonderfully sweet, very large pepper from Argentina I think, and sweet banana peppers. I want to upgrade our soil this spring, and different leaf lettuces - love wilted lettuce salad.

Burpless cucumbers, zuchini (zuchini bread is excellent), and Blue Lake green beans. I'll try bush beans only, because of critters getting itno the garden. So, I'll put up a solar electric fence, lay metal fence on the ground all around our fenced in garden.

   A cool thing is dehydrating. Frozen, big packages of your favorite vegetables can be immediately dehydrated because they have already been blanched. I snack on them here and there. I like to get friends to try them - telling them they are dehydrated grasshoppers. lol.

   Dehydrated sliced apples, pineapples, mangoes, etc do NOT have to be dehydrated - vegetables DO.

  I've canned tomato sauce, and made and canned my own videalia onion relish. That relish is awesome on most sandwiches, hotdogs.....

  This year, I will be working on smoothies - you can take things like dehydrated green beans, dehydrated garlic cloves, etc - and grind it up into powder. Seems to last for many months.

  I cook soak beans overnight, rinse them, and cook them halfway to done - it take a good bit of time. Then I drain, and dehydrate them, put them in jars with oxygen absorbers. can last for months if not years.

    Every fall I pick about 19/12 lbs of wild blackberries, and make the best jam. I have elderberry plants growing - the berries make an excellent medicine. There's common mallow all over - and I dry the leaves for a medicinal tea for sinus and lung congestion.

  It's a fun hobby for me  - and if the SHTF - I can always hunt squirrel and groundhog, and fish, and find wild plants to eat, and burn wood in the wood fireplace insert so we can keep warm if the power goes out.

  I bought a nice generator to keep the freezer and fridge going if the power goes out,

  I enjoy it. It's been a hobby for many years.

It's almost spring - I fry up dandelion blossoms and make dandelion jelly - really terrific.  Just fun.

and I want to start making some pemmican and try bannock. The learning never ends.

Oh, and I want to grow ground cherry tomatoes again. they are -really- good.

https://www.gurneys.com/product/aunt-mollys-ground-cherry?p=0579716

My dad and I used to grow vegetables every year.. I would go out late march-mid april and turnover the soil then roto till it.. I used to love doing that for my pop.. it's such a great workout.. it was one of those "Hurts so good" kind of things when I was a teenager. come fall we would have like 500 tomatoes bigger than soft balls.. My dad had a phenomenal green thumb. We grew beefsteaks and romas because being Italian... We always had base for making sauce.. It was a family tradition kind of thing.. But we also grew corn.. Knee high well before July.. Nothing in the world like Ohio sweet corn in August on a hot day... No butter.. No salt... It was that damn good... And we grew beans of various types. Cucumbers, Garlic and Onion's and we had a patch were we grew fresh spearmint , Parsley and other herbs that went in the sauce.. Me and pop would spend about 2-3 weeks grinding and processing tomatoes by hand while consuming volumes of coffee.. I'd give anything in the world to have dad back and do it all over again.. He taught me so much about life...

[calfoxwc]

7 hours ago, nickers said:

My dad and I used to grow vegetables every year.. I would go out late march-mid april and turnover the soil then roto till it.. I used to love doing that for my pop.. it's such a great workout.. it was one of those "Hurts so good" kind of things when I was a teenager. come fall we would have like 500 tomatoes bigger than soft balls.. My dad had a phenomenal green thumb. We grew beefsteaks and romas because being Italian... We always had base for making sauce.. It was a family tradition kind of thing.. But we also grew corn.. Knee high well before July.. Nothing in the world like Ohio sweet corn in August on a hot day... No butter.. No salt... It was that damn good... And we grew beans of various types. Cucumbers, Garlic and Onion's and we had a patch were we grew fresh spearmint , Parsley and other herbs that went in the sauce.. Me and pop would spend about 2-3 weeks grinding and processing tomatoes by hand while consuming volumes of coffee.. I'd give anything in the world to have dad back and do it all over again.. He taught me so much about life...

Absolutely, I miss the days we gardened so much. I also plan to plant potatoes. Butternut and acorn squash, I think I might plant a lot of watermelon to try that this year. A year ago, I bought a couple of bags of organic dates. I cut the seed out, cut the dates into quarters, and dehydrated them for a lot of hrs - put them in jars with oxygen absorbers and a year later, I tried them and they were outstanding. Still chewy like candy, and with cowboy coffee. I love the Amish paste tomatoes to can tomato paste. I wish I could grow cantelopes but it never works. Haven't figured that one out yet.