Saw a lovely Steyr SSG for sale today. Mmmmm…nothing says lovin’ like something made in Austria.
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Still running the Mountain House menu through my head. My food storage plan has the FD stuff as a long-term storage option and as a supplement to regular food. However, the big advantage to the FD stuff is that I can take a footlocker full of it, stick under the bunk in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and it’ll still be edible and reasonably healthy in ten years. Personally, for a short-term crisis I’d rather have ‘everyday food’ rather than MRE’s and FD’s…but for something you can put away and forget about, prepare with a minimum of fuss and fuel, and still feel like eating it theyre hard to beat. One weak link in any food storage program is meat..it simply doesnt keep well. And the stuff that does have even a mildly long shelf life (Spam, tuna, Vienna sausage) is to me fairly unappetizing and doesnt lend itself to cooking adventures. The FD meat, on the other hand, is going to be perfect for turning out stew, soups, meat sauces, salads and other dishes that will be prepared exclusively using stored food.
And I get it at a discount. Mmmmm…economy.
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Its getting time to put the winter clothing away. Basically, I’ll just remove the module from my bag that contains my gloves, hat, neck gaiter, liners, etc. A very convenient way to keep things handy and still have them secure, out of the way and available for use. I will keep a set of gloves in the bag though just because you never know what the hell the weather is going to do around here and it really doesnt have to get too cold to make bike riding a hand-numbing experience.
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Know what I look forward to this summer? Driving out into the sticks and daydreaming about real estate. I know that somewhere in this great and glorious state there is a parcel of land with some water on it, far from the interstate, surrounded by wilderness, and far enough out of the way to be cheap enough that it becomes A Possibility. Just gotta go look.
Which reminds me, if any of you guys see anything on the internet (property listing, ads, auctions, etc) that look like it might be something I’d be interested in, lemme know.
One weak link in any food storage program is meat..
I was thinking that having some livestock would be helpful in that regard. A chicken or twenty and a pig or two might be useful.
…the module from my bag that contains my gloves, hat, neck gaiter, liners, etc.
I must have missed that post. That’s cool as hell. I still need to get my pack sorted properly.
I’m going to start looking for a similar setup in northern Nevada. I love the area and the land is cheap. Your suggestion to drop a cargo container on a piece of land is a good one. The water issue is a pain, though. It’s hard to find, and more important to have.
mmm… steyr. ssg. aug. mmmm….
If you want to preserve meat learn how to can pressure can. Wonderful home made chilis, soups, stews, sauces for pasta not to mention hot canned pickles, chutneys, salsas and fresh vegtables from the garden. A typical meal in my household runs like this.
Find can that contains todays fancy. Boil starch (rice, pasta, spuds or just home made bread with the soups). Open can and heat contents. Serve wonderful home cooked meal.
Ask yourself this. How you going to preserve meat once the FD has gone? You can’t eat a whole cow at once and you can’t just slaughter half a cow (or pig/sheep/goat/deer). If you want land and want to keep livestock this very rapidly becomes a very real issue.
I can guarantee you won’t be running an FD unit but if you can build a fire you can can your meals. (Too many cans in that sentence). So canning is self sustaining and renewable and FD isn’t. Done properly canned food will easily last a couple of years and taste a damn sight better than FD too.
Curing meat is a partitial solution to the problem as well and another skill that is well worth learning. So why not learn both now, when you don’t have to rely on it instead of learning when you do have to rely on it and a failure becomes a critical waste of resources?
Oh, Im already quite familiar with pressure canning meats and vegetables… what Im looking for is a durable storage method rather than the relative fragility of glass jars. The glass jars require that the food be kept from exposure to light, kept from freezing, and that they not be banged around… not exactly the ruggedness and durability I want in a product that may be banged around in the back of a truck and left squirreled away in a remote location throughout an unheated winter, and glass canning jars do not fit that need.
Were I to have livestock I’d probably wind up preserving meat through pressure canning, (as well as drying) but thats under a different circumstance than what Im thinking about now. The circumstance Im thinking about now is long-term sotrage of meat in a manner that makes it much more durable and insensitive to environment than pressure canning in glass jars.
Canning is self-sustaining as long as you have lids (which I already have a decent supply of) and jars that are suitable for the task (ditto).
The FD meats appeal to me because they are highly portable, are temperature insensitive (compared to the wet-pack stuff), have a longer shelf life, require no special storage conditions, and take up less weight. For a long term storage option, theyre pretty hard to beat. If I have a half hour to shove all my gear into the back of a truck and beat feet outta here I sure think its going to be easier with #10 cans of FD meats than a couple dozen fragile glass jars.