Introduce Yourself

Hippie Clan 6, We have a good handful of peepers in SW Wa. Some will see this and hopefully chime in. I like that area of our state! Welcome to APN.

Statistics: Posted by MrDanB — Thu Sep 21, 2017 7:29 pm

Hippie Clan 6, We have a good handful of peepers in SW Wa. Some will see this and hopefully chime in. I like that area of our state! Welcome to APN.

Statistics: Posted by MrDanB — Thu Sep 21, 2017 7:29 pm

Welcome, a lot of good information on this site along with good people to help you along.

Statistics: Posted by Yeti_2015 — Thu Sep 21, 2017 8:12 am

Welcome, a lot of good information on this site along with good people to help you along.

Statistics: Posted by Yeti_2015 — Thu Sep 21, 2017 8:12 am

All good ideas mentioned here. As a long time prepper, most of my preps are/were put by on a low budget. Aldi’s has the best retail prices I’ve seen, Sams club can vary – around here it is expensive. As a retired person with more time than money, perhaps you can use some of my research ‘finds’….
1. Feed stores can be cheap sources of bulk grains, but you will have to put them into mylar or other storage on your own. You also need to make sure you purchase plain, untinkered with grain. But since the day a feed store employee told me he fed his own family from the feed store wheat & corn, I am comfortable with it. It hard to argue with being able to store whole dried field corn (for hominy, cornmeal, grits, etc) for the price of $12 for 50 lbs. Whole kernels of corn are superior anyway, as the natural oils in corn start turning rancid right after grinding.
I’ve also found red wheat in 50 lb sacks for a similar price. Very basic, but very cheap.
2. Check ethnic stores – you can often find terrific deals on rice and dried beans in a Mexican store, or an Indian store. Korean stores sometimes sell acorn flour (if you want to see how acorn meal would taste – might be nice to know if acorns are a potential resource). Canned goods from other countries often include foods you cant easily find canned in the US, but watch the prices.
3. Dented can places. I was lucky to find a canning company that sold dented cans (after they inspected them to make sure the seals were not affected) for $6 a case. Selection was whatever they had on hand, but generally I could get corn, green beans, beets & canned potatoes every time; other times I would find peas (I always grabbed those, they disappeared quickly), spinach, carrots, kraut, mixed vegetables and sometimes pickled beets or applesauce (in cases of glass jars). This place has a good turnover, as folks from several counties around would come to buy and their #10 cans ($1 apiece) were particularly popular with charity food kitchens, the VFW, and nursing homes. Its worth checking to see if there is such a place near you…I plan on returning annually (when I go to fish for Salmon) to stock up. Such a place is worth the search for it and imho will be worth the 480 mile drive to get to it annually after I move (unless I can find one closer).
4. Prep KNOWLEDGE, not stuff. Stuff can be taken/confiscated/stolen, get lost, break, and otherwise fail. Know-how (how to make a rocket stove from bricks lying around after a tornado hits, for example) can not be taken away from you and allows better improvisation to fit changing situations. The library is free; I used the free internet there for many years, downloading and taking notes, or putting on personal disks (and later thumb drives) until I could learn it, or print it out. Best though, is to try these new things out, learning as you go.
5. Learn to store and put up your own foods. A dehydrator is a good buy (often around Christmas) and you can easily dehydrated frozen veggies (no need to blanch, it is already done) easily, until you find alternate bulk food sources. 16 cups of frozen corn dries down to around 5 cups of dried corn – if your family likes corn, it is one of the most popular dried veggies, as it rehydrates well & with a good flavor & texture. You can also dry applesauce (on the little trays, or line your screen with plastic wrap) for home made fruit roll ups. Lots of fun, easy to do, takes only a little power. Canning is not all that hard, and canned foods are familiar comfort foods in a crisis. The canners can get expensive tho, so if you have an older relative with a canner, ask to borrow it (and maybe for lessons). Thrift shops in areas transitioning from rural to urban, or mixed areas often have canners available cheap. I got my first three canners for $10 each.

Yes, it can take a while, and in light of todays situations, I’d try to learn as much as possible of critical skills – what forage foods are in your particular area/neighborhood & how to cook them, how to make a shelter and a fire for starters. How to live reasonably well without power or help. A little networking is free. You are waaaay ahead of most folks in that you are aware of the need, and actively doing something. So congratulations, and keep up the good work.

Statistics: Posted by kappydell — Wed Sep 20, 2017 11:10 pm

Welcome! A good place to start for answering your questions about storing water, food, etc. is in the “How to Start Prepping-the Basics” section. Here’s the link http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.net/viewforum.php?f=616

Statistics: Posted by IceFire — Wed Sep 20, 2017 10:14 pm

Welcome aboard. Im from PA

Statistics: Posted by Photon Guy — Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:49 pm

Good Evening Everyone,
I just registered. I have been prepping for a couple of years, but my budget is tight so I prep a little at a time. I would like to learn more about storing water and/or manually pumping water from a well when the “lights go out”. My husband is on board with becoming more self reliant, but I don’t talk to anyone else about it. I’m looking forward to communicating with you all.
CG141fas

Statistics: Posted by CG141fas — Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:44 pm

I guess I’m closest being 2 hrs from SSM.

While I have good friends in Cabbage Town outside of Toronto, they don’t Prep. The shootings at your Parliament building were unnerving to me. This was not Canada.

If you need anything, shout!

Statistics: Posted by Blondie — Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:42 am

Hello and welcome aboard from West Virginia.

Statistics: Posted by popcandave — Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:34 pm

My wife and I canned this way for many years. The only thing different is we used large,round washtubs to can in.
We’d put a sheet of tin over the top to keep the heat in. When we were done we both smelled like smoke and it
didn’t take long before we headed for the shower.

I guess we’ve gotten old. For now we use our two pressure canners.

Statistics: Posted by popcandave — Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:31 pm

Hi Gisele and welcome from Southern California!

Statistics: Posted by jean11 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:00 pm

Welcome! There are a lot of fellow vets here on this site.

Statistics: Posted by IceFire — Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:47 pm

Windy64 wrote:
Hi everybody – I am really glad to have found this site! I am a single mom of a 14-year old boy and live in Ottawa. I have been prepping for awhile now, but my ultimate wish would be to find a great community in my area, and if there are any within say 100 km (60 miles) of Ottawa, I would LOVE to talk and meet you. It is so hard being the only prepper I know lol, so please say “hi” if you would also appreciate joining other preppers in our area, and even setting up a new homestead together OTG (off the grid). If you already live in an OTG community, and are looking for new members, I would be soooooo grateful if you got in touch. Thanks so much and have a great day! Gisele

Welcome aboard. I am in PA so Im a bit far from Ottawa but there are other people from Canada here although Im not sure if they’re near your area. It would be interesting to see what prepping is like in Canada and how it differs from prepping in most places in the USA.

Statistics: Posted by Photon Guy — Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:14 pm

Hello and welcome from PA. So you’re from Canada, it will be interesting to see what prepping is like over there.

Statistics: Posted by Photon Guy — Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:10 pm

Thanks for this post. I’ve never heard of this method before. Not even from my grandparents. I will be looking further into this.

Statistics: Posted by bacpacker1513 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:46 pm

Hello

I have just joined and all of you have already helped me so very much by assuring me the Golden Harvest lids and rings are good and very few problems.

I have a rekindled interest in canning and food prep. I developed a interest in canning before I left home for the US Army when I was 18 yrs old back in 1970. I remember my family canned over 500 quarts of green beans plus corn, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peaches, kraut, squash, beets, pickles and other stuff i can’t remember. OH, YES! Also pickled eggs, pickled corn, pickled beans, pickled okra! Plus pork, chicken, and beef, jellies and jams.

We didn’t have pressure cookers back then. We used the submerged boiling water method. No stove tops were used here. We
used very long watering tubs/bath tub types (approx six feet long) that were actually used by farmers to water their live stock in. We dug
out trenches for 8 tubs, put 4 cinder blocks on each side and one cinder block on each end of the tubs. The trenches that the tubs sat over
were 2 1/2 feet deep and we built wooden fires under the water filled tubs. The glass canning jars were put into the cold water filled tubs with cloth rags sandwiched between the jars to prevent breakage. The water came to a rolling boil and did so for many, many hours for each canning cycle. I cannot remember one jar that was ever broken during our canning. The water and jars were allowed to cool down
on their own time at which time we removed the hot jars from the water and stored them in a spare room waiting for the lids to seal.
Of all the thousands of canned jars, I cannot remember one jar that did not seal. 8 very large farm watering tubs canned a lot of food in one day’s work.

We had a 3 acre garden and produced two crops of vegetables for our use and to sell to people in the nearby small towns. Plus a lot of apples.

The wood for the fires was purchased from a local lumber saw mill and was white pine that burned very well and hot.
When I came home four years later from the US Army, we went through the whole thing again. I then began college and canning was a thing of the past.

This all happened in North East Tennessee near Tennessee’s oldest community(Elizabethton) dating back into the mid 1700s.

I hope that you folks enjoyed this look at the past of when people really believed in putting up a whole lot of food freshly grown.

ripshinmtn

Statistics: Posted by ripshinmtn — Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:44 pm

Hello

I have just joined and all of you have already helped me so very much by assuring me the Golden Harvest lids and rings are good and very few problems.

I have a rekindled interest in canning and food prep. I developed a interest in canning before I left home for the US Army when I was 18 yrs old back in 1970. I remember my family canned over 500 quarts of green beans plus corn, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, peaches, kraut, squash, beets, pickles and other stuff i can’t remember. OH, YES! Also pickled eggs, pickled corn, pickled beans, pickled okra! Plus pork, chicken, and beef, jellies and jams.

We didn’t have pressure cookers back then. We used the submerged boiling water method. No stove tops were used here. We
used very long watering tubs/bath tub types (approx six feet long) that were actually used by farmers to water their live stock in. We dug
out trenches for 8 tubs, put 4 cinder blocks on each side and one cinder block on each end of the tubs. The trenches that the tubs sat over
were 2 1/2 feet deep and we built wooden fires under the water filled tubs. The glass canning jars were put into the cold water filled tubs with cloth rags sandwiched between the jars to prevent breakage. The water came to a rolling boil and did so for many, many hours for each canning cycle. I cannot remember one jar that was ever broken during our canning. The water and jars were allowed to cool down
on their own time at which time we removed the hot jars from the water and stored them in a spare room waiting for the lids to seal.
Of all the thousands of canned jars, I cannot remember one jar that did not seal. 8 very large farm watering tubs canned a lot of food in one day’s work.

We had a 3 acre garden and produced two crops of vegetables for our use and to sell to people in the nearby small towns. Plus a lot of apples.

The wood for the fires was purchased from a local lumber saw mill and was white pine that burned very well and hot.
When I came home four years later from the US Army, we went through the whole thing again. I then began college and canning was a thing of the past.

This all happened in North East Tennessee near Tennessee’s oldest community(Elizabethton) dating back into the mid 1700s.

I hope that you folks enjoyed this look at the past of when people really believed in putting up a whole lot of food freshly grown.

ripshinmtn

Statistics: Posted by ripshinmtn — Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:44 pm

HI again Everyone

Thanks so much for the your nice, prompt replies. I am more confident now that you have replied to my questions, Also, I found some info
where the Jarden Corporation replied to a question and stated that the Golden Harvest lids and rings were made to the same quality as Ball and Kerr in the same town and state. However, the packaging is not as fancy and therefore we can buy the Golden Harvest products much cheaper because we’re not paying for more expensive, fancy packaging.

I feel much safer now. Thanks Everyone!

ripshinmtn

Statistics: Posted by ripshinmtn — Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:41 pm

Welcome!

Statistics: Posted by founderant — Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:20 pm

the Newell Corporation owns most of the home DIY canning biz these days – but Ball and Harvest Day are NOT the same company nor is the manufacturing necessarily done at the same plants with the same QC controls & quality ….

if you think you are guaranteed Ball quality at the cheaper Harvest Day pricing – think again ….

Statistics: Posted by Illini Warrior — Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:59 pm

Hi, I am in Ottawa and also without friends or family to talk to – so I completely understand you 🙂 If you’d like to chat, please feel free…. Cheerio, Gisele

Statistics: Posted by Windy64 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:00 pm

Hi everybody – I am really glad to have found this site! I am a single mom of a 14-year old boy and live in Ottawa. I have been prepping for awhile now, but my ultimate wish would be to find a great community in my area, and if there are any within say 100 km (60 miles) of Ottawa, I would LOVE to talk and meet you. It is so hard being the only prepper I know lol, so please say “hi” if you would also appreciate joining other preppers in our area, and even setting up a new homestead together OTG (off the grid). If you already live in an OTG community, and are looking for new members, I would be soooooo grateful if you got in touch. Thanks so much and have a great day! Gisele

Statistics: Posted by Windy64 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 12:28 pm

Good morning, I am not REALLY new to prepping, just new to the community. I have been a student of preparedness for, well, decades now. However, until very recently, I have done it passively.
Given the current state of the world, I am beginning to become a little more proactive with my prepping, and decided to find like minded individuals. So, here I am!!!
A little about me:
I was active duty Army from 1988-1991, then national guard until 96. Got out, went back in in 1999, got out again for good in 2005. All as an infantryman. I am an outdoorsman, I used to hike quite a bit, I am a passable woodsman, I have failed at hunting (but LOVE turkey hunting), have been involved with firearms since I was 12, and am a lifetime NRA member.
As to non prepping hobbies, I am an avid motorcycle rider, a freemason, a bagpiper, and thoroughly enjoy reading almost anything. I am divorced, and currently in a part time relationship (I dont understand it either). I live in a small community in MA, and I dont like cats

Statistics: Posted by oldsoldier181 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:13 am

Welcome from the OC…

Statistics: Posted by DR1VENbyKNOWLEDGE — Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:52 am

I have dozens used–no problem…made by Ball/Kerr manufacturers.

Statistics: Posted by JayJay — Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:48 am

I have never had any problems with them

Statistics: Posted by farmer_dude48 — Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:38 am

I’m in a real pickle. I’ve been out of work for over a year. I don’t have friends because I’m taken advantage of all too often. I don’t have any form of transportation. And, I don’t have any place to go when shtf. I’m currently living with family that’s too complacent to see reality. So, I’m looking for anyone that can use an extra hand.

Statistics: Posted by 04Cougar — Mon Sep 18, 2017 3:16 am

Welcome from Santa Clarita

Statistics: Posted by North County Guy — Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:39 pm

Welcome aboard Liverchip – we’re glad you’re here.

Statistics: Posted by jean11 — Sun Sep 17, 2017 10:43 pm

I’ve used the Golden Harvest jars, lids, and rings. They are made by the same people who make the Ball and Kerr jars, lids, and rings. I’ve never had any problem with mine.

Statistics: Posted by IceFire — Sun Sep 17, 2017 10:01 pm

I’ve used the Golden Harvest jars, lids, and rings. They are made by the same people who make the Ball and Kerr jars, lids, and rings. I’ve never had any problem with mine.

Statistics: Posted by IceFire — Sun Sep 17, 2017 10:01 pm

Hi Everyone

Do any of you have experience with the Golden Harvest canning lids and rings? I just purchased some today and before I use them I need to hear from any of you that have experience with these products.

Sincerely

Ripshinmtn

Statistics: Posted by ripshinmtn — Sun Sep 17, 2017 9:32 pm

Hi I live in Chester county but close to Rock hill. I am not southern born but am from the Midwest–I love it here!
I like to be prepared– not so much for the end of the world but for big emergencies like what happened recently with the Hurricane scare. I am not a gardener because my health prohibits the physical work involved–and the heat.
I do buy foods on sale and stock up. I have a chest freezer, a dehydrator and a food saver vacuum sealer. We moved recently so I let my stash get low-I’ve moved with preps before and it is not fun.
I have a carry license and am about to take a class for ham radio license. To me, it is enjoyable to prepare. I expect there to be more and more big events coming up, and someday I expect my personal beliefs will end up on the chopping block so being prepared is just smart. I thought it might be nice to find a group and see what’s going on in SC. as far as prepping is concerned. Thank you For Welcoming me! Cwren.
(Carolina Wren–duh)

Statistics: Posted by cwren58 — Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:22 pm

Nothing to offer myself as I an new myself, buy welcome!

Statistics: Posted by Liverchip — Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:02 pm

A new prepper in the Hi Desert of Southern California reporting in.

Statistics: Posted by Liverchip — Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:59 pm

Hello all! My wife and I joined so we can be prepared for anything that comes at us, especially with the current issues not only in our country, but the world. We live in the Florida panhandle and got lucky this past week and it painted a picture in our heads that I care not to revisit. We are excited and ready to begin prepping with guidance and experience from this group. Thank you!

Statistics: Posted by DRKDLive — Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:59 pm

It is sad that some people have forgotten the old ways

Statistics: Posted by sageprice — Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:22 pm

Always prepped to a certain degree, parents were depression era it never leaves you!

Statistics: Posted by Cndrsmart1 — Fri Sep 15, 2017 7:45 am

Howdy and welcome from AZ

Statistics: Posted by SSG Nasty — Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:45 pm

Howdy and welcome from AZ

Statistics: Posted by SSG Nasty — Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:45 pm

Howdy and welcome from AZ

Statistics: Posted by SSG Nasty — Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:43 pm