Please start stocking up on food

a reply to: Boadicea

I have 1000watt led grow lamps for my tomatoes they are great, they don't use as much leccy and my tomatoes grow better in there than outside and all year around.

a reply to: Graysen

That was rather informative.

Thanks!

a reply to: Darkblade71

If you have a lot of people to feed, it is definitely worth a person's while to buy quarters or even halves of beef.

If its just you and a partner, it might not be worth the hassle. Personally, I've got my own tribe, what with grandparents and family friends, and various in-laws and outlaws who stay here with me.

Pick up a couple of freezers used. Upright or chest, whatever you can get for cheap. I have one small chest freezer I got nearly 10 years ago for $45. Don't let a freezer set empty. It wears the thing out to make it try to freeze air. If you have nothing for a month or so, then fill some bags with water or buy bag ice. The thing won't work so hard, and you can always throw the ice away once you get valuable food. Until then, you have extra water prepped!

Then find someone who will sell you a share of a beef.

At worst, go through the phone book or whatever online contrivance you kids are using these days. Find a stand-alone butcher shop and ask about their package deals. I knew one independent butcher who had 10 "specials". They often included milk or eggs every week for a couple of months as part of the deal. And in exchange for part of your beef quarter, he'd exchange you a couple of whole chickens or 4 racks of baby back ribs, etc. Or he may sell you a quarter beef. It'll probably be a buck a pound less than the grocery. That's like $250 or so, easy.

Better is to find a local slaughterhouse. I have lived most of my life within an easy drive of the boondocks. But look for "meat packer". "meat locker". "game processing," etc. They will have better prices than the lone butcher, usually.

If you live around hispanic culture, look for "carneceria". it's the Mexican butcher, and the prices are usually a hell of a lot better since he isn't selling to anglo food snobs who will pay 12 bucks for a Cornish game hen. Their English is always excellent. Se Bizee-nees, señor.

The best is to find a rancher connection. These folks have 5+ cattle, enough for family plus a few friends. Become one of the friends. The rancher gets a couple of bucks more per pound than if he sold it to the butcher, and you get it for a couple of bucks less per pound than if you bought it from a butcher.

Usually the rancher will connect you with pork meat, game meat, and probably a free range heritage turkey for thanksgiving.

I keep two freezers in the garage full, plus one in the house as well. Between buying beef quarters, deer season, fishing in the summer, dressing our own chickens, and freezing the garden produce we don't can, we keep the freezers busy and happy.

When you think about it, the single item you can reduce most in your budget is food. Cooking from scratch, from your own source (butcher or hunting or whatevs) will cost a quarter of food from the grocery, or a sixteenth of the cost of dining out.

IF the grid goes down, you have a big shindig. grill everything and give it to the neighborhood in an orgy of carnivorism and gluttony. You will be popular enough to run for mayor if that ever does happen. In the meantime, you just formed your own survival community, with you as the boss.

all the best.

originally posted by: Lysergic

Wow 5 ads on a 10 minute video. This dude is making bank.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Depending on what the items that you went by the sell by date were.
Last friday I baked 2 loaves of bread using flour with a best by date of
2016 and yeast that was best by 2017.I did check the yeast by mixing
it with the warm water and sugar first,it was still good!

Spam lasts forever,white rice about 30 years, honey lasts also.
Good job I like spam I have 150 tins of the stuff.

Spam spam spam spam and egg.

a reply to: MyToxicTash

Wow! 1,000 watts seems like a lot, but I really have no frame of reference so that's probably just me!

We're in the desert, and can grow tomatoes three seasons of the year. Even during the hottest months, I've found some cherry tomatoes that still thrive in the heat. We even have some volunteer plants that came up.

There's nothing like tomatoes straight off the vine, eh? A couple summers ago, I don't even think one tomato made it into the house because we ate them too quick.... You won't have that problem!

a reply to: Boadicea

Same as running a pc. If you go high pressure sodium lamps it uses electricity like mad and has too much heat.
LED is space age growing

a reply to: MyToxicTash

May I pick your brain a little please? I have no real purpose except that I'm quite curious and intrigued!

How large is the actual light area? And it's housing? Is it rectangular or round or does it matter? I'm kinda thinking it would be over and basically cover the growing area? I know the leds can get pretty warm, but I'm thinking the leds are spread out to keep from burning the plants to a crisp! Is it something where you have to adjust the light as the plants grow taller?

I've recently seen a product that uses led lights as a heat source for citrus trees. You stick them in the ground at the roots to keep the soil from freezing during winter and I guess keep the lower trunk/roots warm. I think this winter there were only two or three weeks where we had hard freezes, but even one is enough to kill a citrus tree. I'll probably look into them next fall.

a reply to: blueman12

We keep some emergency supply, but "stocking up" on large quantities of food is useless unless you have potent defenses anyhow. Whether its thousands of neighbors trying to get at it, or forced government confiscation of stockpiles, if things got that bad, you surely wouldn't just be comfortably sitting on it.

I agree with the "cry wolf" mentality as well. For years, its been coupled with the type of people who focus on the debt in terms of dollars, rather than percentage of GDP (which is really all that matters.) This is done to make a "less good" thing (moderately increased debt:GDP) appear to be a terrible thing (massive increase in debt dollars.)

Perspective.

a reply to: Boadicea

It's all in a grow tent 4x4x6 the light could easy cover double that, I have the light on a pulley and keep it around a foot and a half off the top of my tomatoes if they grown more I train the plants to grow sideways.

Oh and before anyone says it really is tomatoes.
Peppers next.

originally posted by: Fallingdown
This will be the same the crops mostly affected will be corn and soybean.

So, shouldn't affect me at all, since we don't eat garbage, and we only eat grass fed/finished beef.

originally posted by: mamabeth
a reply to: stonerwilliam

Depending on what the items that you went by the sell by date were.
Last friday I baked 2 loaves of bread using flour with a best by date of
2016 and yeast that was best by 2017.I did check the yeast by mixing
it with the warm water and sugar first,it was still good!

I once drank a can of beer that was 10 years out of date and never died milk products get me i once had food poisoning with a yoghurt and lost 50 lb in 10 days , i nearly died

originally posted by: MyToxicTash
Spam lasts forever,white rice about 30 years, honey lasts also.
Good job I like spam I have 150 tins of the stuff.

Spam spam spam spam and egg.

OMG, I thought having 30 cans might be too much. Now I'm jealous.

Seriously tho, spam comes is so many different flavors and it does last forever. But just think, adding one live rooster and
3 - 5 hens, you can have fresh eggs daily and chicken occasionally pretty much for an eternity. And that small amount of animals will be cheaper to feed than the same amount of cats.

a reply to: mamabeth

I go through a five pound sack of flour every three months or so. Three years?
How? I guess bread baking is not on the schedule too often.
I make a lot of biscuits and pancakes from scratch.
Occasionally I make bread.
I test the yeast the same way. If it grows in warm sweet water its still good.
I use flour almost daily. Tonight it was to make beer batter for fish.
Last night I made gravy for turkey breast tenderloins.

There are too many people who think this is doom and gloom. Get real! Lost a job? Unexpected mouths to feed? Need to help another family in need?

There are many reasons to stock up on food sources when one can either afford it or grow it. I know several families who are suffering right now from a main source income contributor that is suffering from cancer or a long term disability. Several people in the community volunteer to make meals for the families in need. You think I have enough to feed 2 or 3 other families of 4 or 6?????? Well yes I do. ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE SAVED AND MADE THE DECISION to store food stuffs. I can make 2-3 meals a week for these families in my community in their time of need. Stop thinking of this as a doom and gloom porn thread. It's common sense to store up food for all types of situations. I don't like paying high prices for foods types that are volatile......PERIOD. I only buy coffee that is less than $7.00 a can....ever for the last 15 years. I have enough coffee to last many, many years. That's just one thing I save a ton of money on and it's one thing I love and don't want to be without. My choice.

It's not rocket science. Chit happens and there's no reason NOT to put a little prep into your program especially if you're not rich.

we just need to experience a downfall in the environment like a flood, typhoon and so on to know that we must have some survival gear to get us through the tough times.

originally posted by: HarryJoy
I'm sure a large percentage of the corn goes into ethanol production..

Since ethanol is very damaging to internal combustion engines, I'd much prefer for it to just go away and return to straight gasoline.

originally posted by: Archivalist
If it gets so bad that I have to shoot my neighbor for food, then I'll be handing my neighbor food before they shoot me, and I'll die, as is the duty of any person that claims to be a true humanist.

We are a group, a collective, not an individual. Self ego is nothing to preservation of society, so there's no need to doom prep, or worry about the end of the world. If the world screws itself up, then fall on the sword, as is the duty of any human that wants the continuation of the whole, and doesn't mind being the price to pay for it.

Ummm.... no, I don't think so...

originally posted by: blueman12
One guy or two is not going to stop a gang of 20 hungry thugs coming to take what you got.

One or two against 20? From a reasonably defensible location? Properly armed? Against

Piece of cake if the 20 aren't armed to the teeth with lots of ammo and someone leading them with some military experience.