Welcome to DK Preppers: A place to discuss practical ways to get through emergencies, both short term and long. Topics may include skills for growing, storing and sharing food, lost and historical skill sets, sustainability issues, living and leaving safely, and growing community. Everyone is welcome, and the comments are open. We have open threads weekly.
First, for those of you who have not read the previous diaries in this series, here is the list of diaries:
www.dailykos.com/…
These diaries date from early 2017, with the earlier ones mostly by AuntieB:
www.dailykos.com/…
But acts of nature aren’t the only disasters that can happen. Most of the US lives paycheck to paycheck. Losing your job is a disaster on a personal level. Getting injured at work or at home can mean going weeks without pay. If you have some resources set back and if you don’t have to spend money on food and supplies, it can make the difference between making it until the next paycheck, or finding yourself in a downward spiral toward unmanageable personal debt, or eviction and other bad things.
This one is truly interesting, by AuntieB:
www.dailykos.com/…
We have decided that it all boils down to special skills, willingness to adapt, and knowledge. We would need abilities that would help our community. For instance, my daughter Grace has Williams Syndrome, and an IQ in the mid-40’s, but she knows how to care for chickens, how to trim their wings to keep them from flying over the fence, how to pound in a small fence post, how to clean a chicken coop so they don’t get sick, how to care for rabbits, how to weed a garden, how to tell if carrots are ready to pull, which greens chickens and rabbits like to eat and how to gather baskets full of them, and several wild greens that taste good for humans. Not only does she have skills and special knowledge, but she has a willingness to get in there and do stuff. She would be a valuable asset to our imaginary community no matter what the number is after her IQ on cognitive tests.
This is one of my earlier diaries here:
www.dailykos.com/…
I have never seen raisins or other dried fruit get moldy of spoiled in any way. And I’m old.
I may have seen raisins that got so dry they were hard to chew, but never moldy or rotten.
We currently have:
49 boxes of raisins, at 15 oz per box.
49 x 15 = 735 oz divided by 16 = 45.9375 pounds, or about 46 pounds of raisins.
3 bags of dried blueberries, 2 lbs each, or 6 pounds of blueberries.
4 bags of dried cherries, 4 lbs each, plus 2 more bags, 2 lbs each, for a total of 20 pounds of dried cherries.
7 bags of dried cranberries, 30 oz each: 30 x 7 = 210 oz divided by 16 = 13.125, or about 13 pounds of dried cranberries.
46 + 6 + 20 + 13 = 85
We have 85 pounds of dried fruit.
Now for some information that is on the topic in the title of this diary: losing weight:
In our home we have four adults, a skinny teenager, and a baby.
All four of us adults need to lose weight, some more than others.
All four of us are losing weight.
Losing weight should help us live longer, by avoiding high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, and heart troubles.
This is part of prepping, because living more years means helping others in the family for more years.
In my case, I am only 5’ 9” tall, and for about ten years, I weighed about 270 pounds.
Within the last three months, I have lost about 20 pounds. I only weigh about 250 pounds.
The exciting thing about this is that I do not feel hungry all the time, not at all.
I feel as if I have turned on a kind of autopilot, to stop eating, any time I eat, stop eating at the right time.
The only foods I truly avoid are sweet beverages, and mostly avoid breads and cakes and donuts.
We all eat, freely, applesauce, (unsweetened), bananas, oranges, and potatoes.
So, regular meat and potato meals are okay, with any veggies we like, but not much corn, not much bread.
I drink a veggie smoothie, that has kale and carrots and other things in it.
Seems to me,
coffee,
water (we drink Ozarka bottled water)
bananas,
and applesauce,
are all appetite suppressants.
Plus that mental autopilot, that tells me when to stop eating.
I feel I should mention, briefly, that we plan to buy a few acres of land out in the country, and set up the beginnings of a self sustaining farm.
I want at least 20, maybe closer to 50, raised bed veggie gardens, each 4’ x 4’ and 3’ high, to make them easy to tend.
I also want lots of fruit trees and berry bushes.
I also want chickens and goats, for eggs and cheese.
We also want a large greenhouse, so we might be able to grow even tropical plants, such as olives, avocados, tea, coffee, bananas, etc., plus normal veggies all year.
Tell us in the comments what you are doing, to live longer, to prep for disasters, or whatever is on your mind.
Thanks for reading.