I was thinking about an upcoming article on survival energy harvesting and came across some recommendations at Food Safety.gov the US federal government’s portal for all things food safety wise. One suggestion in particular caught my eye. That is to keep a small thermometer in your fridge and/or freezer. This allows you to monitor the temperatures to give you an idea as to the safety of the stored food. Basically anything at 40 degrees fahrenheit or 4.5 degrees celsius is still safe. Once temperature gets above that level, bacteria can start multiplying and the food becomes progressively less safe to eat.
Of course, it depends what kind of food we are talking about. Maybe you are keeping peanut butter in your fridge to ensure the oils don’t turn rancid, because you don’t go through a jar of peanut butter in 3-4 months. Well, you can safely take the peanut butter out of the fridge and put it on a shelf in the pantry for the above mentioned three months. Similarly eggs recently bought can happily sit on your kitchen counter for a week or more. The suggestion to throw out cooked or cut produce if it is held above 40 degrees for more than two hours seems a little extreme. Now I’m not a food safety expert, so I advise you to use your own judgement after taking in consideration the advice of professionals.
Additionally I found out that a full freezer will keep foods below 40 degrees F for four days if you only open the door once a day for a minute or two. Full being the key. A half full freezer will only last two days. And a fridge will keep food at 40 degrees F for four hours. This is a great argument for keeping plastic juice containers or two litre (64 oz.) bottles full of water in your freezer when there is space. They fill up empty space, you can take a couple of bottles out to keep your refrigerator or a large cooler cold, and you have water that is safe to drink. If you can buys frozen blocks of ice, do so. Blocks of dry ice will maintain a freezer at a safe temperature for up to four days on their own.
In addition, over top of your fridge or freezer is an excellent place to keep sleeping bags or comforters when they are not being used during a power outage. In cold winter weather, put containers of water outside overnight to freeze. You can continue to do this as long as you have freezing temperatures. Be careful about putting containers of food outside if you have wildlife nearby.
Check your own fridge or freezer, or those of others (Not an affiliate link)
In a post I put up just the other day I talked about doing a local community inventory. I mentioned that you could have food processing plants of food warehousing establishments nearby. Even if you don’t have local food processing plants or facilities, there are lots of places that might have frozen food. Everything from retailers to your neighbours who are off vacationing in Europe when the grid goes down. Your neighbours who are home could have frozen food. Maybe you want to consolidate all of the frozen items from both refrigerators into just one to fill up space. Having a small lightweight thermometer that you can take with you to check cold storage temperatures could come in pretty handy when you are assessing available food sources. At Amazon.ca the non-digital versions start at about $3.50 for add on items and there is good choice around $8-9.00. No excuses.
Here’s a link to some search results I got for “power outages and frozen food” at the US Food Safety government site.
The premise of this site is that survival in groups is preferable to survival as a lone wolf. A highly skilled and prepared lone wolf may very well have an excellent chance at getting through a very bad time, though I question what kind of an existence that would be. A highly skilled and prepared group has a better chance, I would maintain, simply because of the range of skills and abilities available. Medical knowledge, mechanical knowledge, knowledge of crop raising, hunting, animal husbandry, fishing, and organizational skills, as well as security knowledge and skills, are going to be higher in a community group than in a single individual in most cases.
What Do You Need
Thinking in terms of a community means much larger requirements for food, energy, water, everything. Unless you have formed a group of likeminded preparedness oriented people, the only way you get a community is if you bring your existing community along with you. You aren’t going to be able to take care of all of those people’s needs. Therefore you need to look to the community for internal resources.
In a large scale disaster, you are going to need to know where local resources are available
I am going to engage in a mental exercise and I am going to start with what I consider to be the best circumstances. The process I am describing in this article will be much easier to accomplish in a small rural community than in the middle of a big city. It will be more applicable to smaller satellite towns that provide workers for the city. I DO believe you can take these principles and apply them to almost any situation, but there is no doubt that things will get hairy in a large urban area
Very few of us really know our own community in terms of survival resources. We probably know a few folks that live around us, but we don’t know much about most of our neighbours, most of the businesses or even our own municipal organization.
Resources Are All Around You
Let me tell you a personal experience from this past winter. I arrived at our local Civic Centre for a presentation I was delivering about 6:00 pm, just as it was getting dark. The town I was entering has a population of about 1200. I pulled up to the door of the centre, got out, entered the building and realized there was a noisy engine running outside. The maintenance guy who was there and who let me in told me it was the facility’s generator, which had kicked on automatically when the power outage struck. It was just starting to get dark, so I hadn’t noticed the lack of lights in the houses as I entered town. It turns out that this Civic Centre was also the emergency resource centre for the town in a disaster. There were a certain number of supplies stockpiled there and the generator had enough fuel for three days of continuous use. The generator could power the lights, the kitchen facility, and the library upstairs with its computer stations and internet hook up etc. Used just four hours a day, the fuel supply would be good for 3 weeks and that would be enough for hygienic purposes, food preparation and to provide relatively comfortable shelter purposes for a lot of people. The town had a large water tower so the water supply would be available through gravity feed until the tank emptied.
I didn’t know that the Civic Centre had this secondary function even though I had lived in the area for 10 years. This experience got me to wondering what else I didn’t know about my community.
Local Community Resource Inventory
As I said before, the area I live in is rural, so here is a list of things I think I should know about:
Cattle farms, dairy farms, chicken/poultry operations, pork operations, sheep operations, cash crop operations, market gardeners, orchards, grain storage facilities, game farms, apiarys, antique/vintage agricultural equipment museums or clubs or collectors, fuel depots, farm supply stores, farmers co-ops or feed stores, firewood suppliers, feedlots, abattoirs, refrigerated storage capabilities, food processing operations, metalworking or repair shops, gun clubs or firing ranges, firearms or ammo retailers or suppliers, greenhouses, fish hatcheries, outdoor adventure tour operators, RV parks, public or government land, parks or woodlots, solar cell arrays etc.
I could go on for quite a bit, but you can probably understand where I am coming from. My small community probably has everything it needs to take care of the local community for over a year but also enough extra for a large influx of people. One small beef operation might have 30 animals. An average 1200 pound steer will provide about 500 pounds of boneless meat. But in an emergency situation, you wouldn’t be throwing out the bones. A lot of them would wind up being cooked up in soups or to make broth. Let’s ignore that for now though. Thirty animals would yield 15,000 pounds of meat. A sedentary man needs 56 grams of protein a day. He can get that from about 1.2 pounds of beef. Using the sedentary man requirements as representative of our population as a whole, men, women, and children, those cattle meet the protein requirements of the whole town for about 10 days.
Well, that’s not much help, is it? The truth is, not many people meet all of their requirements for protein from eating nothing but beef. In an emergency, beef could be used to make other sources of protein more palatable. Checking on livestrong.com, we find this:
“Black beans and rice served together form a powerful nutritional team. A 1-cup serving of cooked, long-grain brown rice contains 5 grams of protein, 45 carbohydrate grams, 2 grams of fat and 216 calories. The same serving size of cooked black beans without salt has approximately 15 grams of protein, which is 30 percent of the daily value set by the FDA based on a 2,000 calories per day diet, 41 grams of carbohydrate, less than 1 gram of fat and 227 calories.”
Two Cups of Rice and Two Cups of Beans
So a cup of beans and a cup of rice will provide over a third of our required daily protein. With two cups of rice and two cups of beans a day, that small herd of cattle is suddenly good for a month. And that ignores everything else that might be available in peoples pantries, freezers, refrigerators, root cellars, or available from other sources. Think back to that list I compiled at the top of the last page; in addition to beef operations, I listed dairy farms, chicken/poultry operations, pork operations, sheep operations, cash crop operations, market gardeners, orchards, and grain storage facilities along with numerous others. It’s not a lack of resources that is the big problem. It’s coordinated action involving the resources that are available.
In my local area, there are a pile of agricultural operations that could wind up in dire need in a grid down situation. Not only would they need feed and water, but with no or limited access to electricity, they will need labour and cooperation to continue operating.
In a truly widespread disaster, when it takes people a while to get organized, and when the scope of the disaster isn’t recognized, many of the possibly useful resources in many of these locations could be wasted or ruined. Most agricultural operations are going to have power and fuel for several days at least. Whether they have large portable generators or depend on PTO driven units they can hook their tractors up to, they can power ventilation units in their poultry barns or run the machinery for their dairy operations for a while at least. But in a situation in which distribution channels are tangled or stopped completely, a lot of nutrition could go to waste at the same time a lot of people are going hungry. An organized list of resources on the one hand, and needs on the other, could go a long way to solving a lot of problems.
Recognize, I am not suggesting creating a list of places that are targets for looting in a disaster. I AM suggesting we all need to look further than our downstairs pantry to find our way out of a serious grid-down situation. This is especially true if we are located within a weeks walking distance or a two-hour drive from a major urban area. If you aren’t thinking in terms of a major disaster will create refugees, you aren’t thinking ahead enough. We have had years of the Syrian conflict and also years of having to deal with Syrian refugees Europe as a partial example.
Admittedly, for most of us, I am talking about a low probability event. But what if an incident is widespread enough and lasts a couple of week or more? Think of the Northeastern blackout of 2003 that affected 55 million people for two days, because of a tree branch rubbing on power lines. What if it had been caused by hackers who selectively targeted hard to replace high voltage transformers? You aren’t replacing high voltage transformers in two days; weeks or months are more likely. The fact that it is low probability doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about it. But we should consider it in terms of an extension of our existing preps. And simply because it would affect so many people, it makes sense to think of a community response.
All Hazards Preparedness for Rural Communities: https://www.cfba.org/images/resources/all-hazards-preparedness-for-rural-communities-book.pdf
Farm Planning: Emergency PReparedness on Farms:http://wvats.cedwvu.org/media/1560/emergency-preparedness.pdf
Planning for and Responding to Disaster in Canada, An Approach for Farmers: http://www.ablamb.ca/images/documents/resources/planningforandrespondingtodisastersincanada.pdf
Imagine you could eat 3.5 ounces of something and get 28% of your daily protein, 30% of your calcium, 17% of your potassium, 14% of your daily fibre and 62% of your magnesium requirement. Oh, and also 670 energy supplying calories. Bonus: you get to pick it off a tree, which will continue supplying this bounty for the next 25 years or more.
The Korean Pine is the most popular pine nut species beign grown in northern areas of the US and Canada and produces the largest nut.
Pine nuts can do this for you. In all there are about twelve useful nut producing pine trees found across Asia, Siberia, Europe and in the Southern United States. While all of the 100+ pine trees found around the world produce seeds, approximately 20 species produce nuts large enough for collecting however, as I mentioned above, only about 12 are important nut producers.
In the US nut collecting from native species is done exclusively with pinyon pines. The bulk of commercial pine nuts sold are collected in the wild.
In the northern sections of North America pine nuts are collected from imported varieties, with the Korean species, Pinus koraiensis, probably being the most popular because of the size of it’s nut. The Korean Pine can be grown in Zones 2-9, so it is extremely tolerant of cold climates.
You can find a great round up of the various species of pine nut trees typically available for purchase here on Rhora’s Nut Trees web page.
For a great round up on pinyon pines and harvesting their nuts try this article by Hank Shaw.
Pinyon Pine Nuts
Pinyon pines are slow growing so the likelihood of you harvesting from your own tree are slight. However, if you are on property you expect to stay on for a few years, you might want to consider starting some Korean Pine. As mentioned on the Rhora’s site, hybrids are now becoming available which can bear fruit in as little as 6 years, and they bear nuts that are up to 30% larger than non-hybrid types.
If you are establishing a homestead, whether rural or urban, you should consider planting some of these trees. They do reach a considerable size, but so do the pine and spruce that I see growing beside many a suburban ranch style home around town. And if you have a couple of acres, not only are you able to provide a tasty and nutritious product for your family, you could also be creating a small supplemental income. Pine nuts are selling for up to $40.00 a pound. At a farmers market, where you can advertise “locally produced,” and offer 4 oz packages, you could be making a lot more than that.
Pine nut trees are definitely multi purpose, providing shade, wind protection and landscape interest as well as a tasty and nutritious food product. They fit in perfectly with the Survival Harvesting principle of work once, harvest many.
I’ve dropped the nutrition table I gleaned the opening paragraph information from down below. Consider pine nuts. Remember, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
I like the idea of working once and reaping benefits for an extended period of time. That is why mushrooms are appealing. Whether you find them in the wild or on your property, you can expect to see them popping up again in more or less the same place year after year. Search once, reap many.
Oyster and Shiitake mushrooms present you with a similar situation when you cultivate them yourself. If you have a little bit of space in your backyard, or a small bush lot, you can inoculate some hardwood logs and expect to reap a mushroom harvest for 3-4 years.
I am not going to go into the details of hunting for and picking wild mushrooms. There are a ton of varieties and sometimes the differences between toxic and okay to eat are subtle. I will provide a couple of guides. The Canadian one is suitable for a lot of the US, from the east coast to the west. Of course, the Eastern Forests guide is as titled.
I had a lot more trouble finding a large, comprehensive guide to US mushrooms than Canadian. Since there are a ton of agricultural research stations, university agricultural extension services and local groups, I suggest you try a Google search with your location and “wild mushroom education” in the search field. I tried it with “ohio wild mushroom identification” and got lots of results. Try a similar search and add the words “guide” or “class.” I am sure you will find something useful and worth your time.
What I want to focus on in this post is raising edible Oyster and Lions Mane mushrooms. These are two of the easier ones to cultivate. And I want to focus on doing it out of doors using logs.
Basically you need to find the right type of logs, fresh enough cut that they are still holding ample moisture. You have to inoculate them with mushroom spawn and place them in the right locations, or so arranged that they get the right amount of shade. Depending on the weather you may need to water the logs periodically. But essentially you walk away.
You maximize harvest by creating the right kind of log environment and using the spawn efficiently. In the wild, mushroom spawn may find the right environment to reproduce or it may not. If it does, it may be in competition with the spores from some other type of fungi. If there isn’t ample shade, then as the seasons progress, it may get too much sunlight. If there is an extended dry spell, then the small struggling mushroom may just dry up and blow away. By lending a hand to Mother Nature, we help ensure survival, and many meals for the future.
Oyster mushrooms in an efficient, prolific way, from the Cornell U Cooperative Extension
One of the simplest ways to get a harvest of mushrooms is to use the Oyster mushroom Totem Method of cultivation. Click on the picture to get a concise two page explanation of the complete process.
The same method can be used for Lions Mane. Select fresh logs about 2 feet long and around a foot thick that were cut before the trees leafed out. Keep your cuts at right angles to the length because you are going to stack the pieces on top of each other.
Cut the logs in half again (about a foot long) and slice a 2″ disk from the outer end of one of them. Put a sharpie mark on the logs where the cuts are going to go so that you can put the pieces back together as exactly as possible. This will make secure stacking more likely.
Placement of log sections and spawn for Oyster Mushroom production
Put a piece of cardboard on the ground to keep the wood from being contaminated by native fungi and put some spawn on the cardboard. Now stack the longer piece of log on the cardboard. Put more spawn on the upper end of this piece and stack the 10″ section on top of it, lining up the marks. Place more spawn on the upper surface of the second piece and then top it off with the two inch disk.
Cover the whole structure with the kind of brown paper bag used for garden waste and loosely tie it in place. The bag will waste away but you can remove it in six months or so if you wish. You want your logs to be well shaded so that your log sections don’t dry out too much. If your logs are surrounded by evergreens you can be sure they will receive shade summer and winter. All you have to do is check back in the fall or the next year and start picking. This type of setup will continue to produce for up to four years.
Shiitake mushrooms are a little more complicated, but not much. I will examine how to grow your own supply of Shiitakes in another post.
Being prepared for survival means being knowledgeable and having access to survival information
A little something different for today’s post. If you are trying to increase your chances of survival or self-sufficiency, you are going to need to learn a ton of stuff.
Whether you learn it now, or take it step by step once you have the need depends on your time and resources. A strong case can be made for getting your food, water, shelter and energy preps in place before working on self-sufficiency. That way you are covered for low risk, high frequency disasters (like a job loss or extended health emergency), moderate risk and moderate frequency disasters (like hurricanes, winter storms and power loss) and even higher risk low frequency disasters (like a pandemic, or extended grid down situation).
The amount of food, water, energy and shelter you have available determines how well you will be able to cope. More preps means longer coping ability. But the more self-sufficiency you can arrange for today, the better prepared you are for all contingencies. And generally, the more self-sufficient, the lower your cost of living, so the more flexibility you have even if nothing happens.
Whatever your situation, or inclination in terms of how you prepare for life’s surprises, I am pretty sure you will find something here to engage your interest and help you achieve whatever your aim is. Below is a list of downloadable documents (PDF format) that address the following:
Energy – Efficient Wood Stove, Paul Wheaton’s Rocket Mass Heater
Food Resources – Nuts and Nut Trees, Integrated Farm Design, Tree Crops, Mushrooms -Shiitake/Oyster/Wild Edible, Microgreens, Aquaculture, Small Game Traps, Bird Harvesting, Fish Traps,
Bushcraft – Ropes and Cords, Huts and Thatching, Food and Water, Firemaking etc. Making Traps, Snares and Deadfalls, Camp Life
All of these items are available as free downloads as of the time of writing. No guarantees. You know how the internet is. If you find a broken link, let me know and I will find an alternate source or find something as good to replace it with.
Hope you enjoy going through these documents. There is a lot to learn. I am working on preparing more pages like this. Check back periodically and look under the category of “Information Resources.”
Resources.
High efficiency cook stove uses twigs and small pieces of wood
Of course, it depends what kind of food we are talking about. Maybe you are keeping peanut butter in your fridge to ensure the oils don’t turn rancid, because you don’t go through a jar of peanut butter in 3-4 months. Well, you can safely take the peanut butter out of the fridge and put it on a shelf in the pantry for the above mentioned three months. Similarly eggs recently bought can happily sit on your kitchen counter for a week or more. The suggestion to throw out cooked or cut produce if it is held above 40 degrees for more than two hours seems a little extreme. Now I’m not a food safety expert, so I advise you to use your own judgement after taking in consideration the advice of professionals.
Mushrooms
