What happens when it runs out?

[bee_pipes]

I enjoyed the articles in this month's issue about stockpiling and being prepared for sortages, but it also got me to thinking about all the stuff I take for granted.

Say petroleum gets scarce or prohibitively expensive. This is a long term problem and probably won't get any better. Jeff Yago talks about the one year pantry - what happens when it goes on longer for a year? Say it's not just an emergency, but a fundamental change? He mentioned, for example, saran wrap. What happens when that runs out? What do you use to keep food from drying out? If the supply chain goes to the devil, no more saran wrap, probably no more wax paper, none of that stuff. What did people use before saran wrap? Granted, that's a silly example - old jars with lids, plastic containers with lids (until they run out) and such. Saran wrap is a consumable item, made to be used and disposed of. What about aluminum foil? Another consumable.

Now, something a little more important - mason jar lids. The rings and jars can be reused, but what about the lids themselves? With freezing and refrigeration non-existent or at a premium, canning (as OzarkMtnDaredevil pointed out in If you can, Can. (http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum2.pl?board=foo-canning;action=display;num=1207182738)) this will become an increasingly important method of preserving food (along with smoking, salting, dehydrating, etc.). What did people do back in the days before cheap, disposable lids? My wife has a few old mason jars - green tinted glass - with these weird one-piece lids. The lids are made of some sort of grey metal with a plastic top (inside the lid). My guess is that these were made to withstand boiling and be reused. We don't use them for canning, but it got me to wondering about the modern disposable lids.

There's all kinds of other disposable stuff I take for granted - matches, razor blades, etc. Some of these are so common place you don't even think about them. What did folks use before we had all this fodder for landfills? What do we find replacements for and what do we do without?

Regards,
Pat

[wy0mn]

Hi Pat
Been enjoying your pictures, & posts.
I imagine a good root cellar would be a must. And I remember helping mom braid onions & garlic to hang. We always sliced & dried apples and dried beans as well.
Chili peppers dry naturally fairly well.
Lots of this stuff was hung in burlap bags from the rafters with wire, to keep them away from rodents.
Smoking, salt & sugar curing, was done to hams & would probably work on other things too. And there is always jerky, it reconstitutes into a nice stew.
Your beeswax is good for more than candles too, cheeses are often cloth covered then wax dipped. You could probably seal crockery in a similar manner. So I suppose we must educate ourselves in pottery & basketry too.
Matches I don't worry about much. I have several magnesium fire-starters in various B.O.B.s & tackleboxes. I've never used one up, but I'm also fixing to teach myself to use flint & steel.
Dixie Gun Works is just up the road from you, Union City I think. They carry flint~n~steel kits and a lot of other pioneer/colonial tools & implements. They are on the web.
http://www.dixiegunworks.com/product_info.php?products_id=3674
Lex

[Deberosa]

We might learn something from parts of the world where they don't have such throw away items.

I had a good friend in Denver whose parents met in a concentration camp in Poland. So all of her relatives were in Poland. She was constantly sending boxes of just the items you mentioned. THey weren't much to her but they meant alot to people who couldn't get such things. Saran wrap and aluminum foil were big. Also cloth for making clothes. Small plastic utensils, it was amazing what they did not have, but they seem to survive...

I agree about the canning jar lids - canning won't be much use if you can't get lids but also if you can't get electricity or gas to run a stove or sterilize the jars.

Life will be nothing like it is today no matter how prepared you are if a disaster lasts any lenghth of time.

It's sort of the same thing that I saw in my career for "disaster recovery" of computer systems. They lay out this fantastic plan, and employ all current staff in their plan - how to ship them to alternate sites, etc, etc. No consideration that the first thing the "staff" is going to do is ensure the safety of their families - and their precious computer system will have to wait anyhow. What if half of them are dead???

[msta999]

I remember my mom using wax to seal some jars. I think it was jams though. Can you do the same for other canned foods?

[bee_pipes]

...a good root cellar would be a must...
...braid onions & garlic to hang. We always sliced & dried apples and dried beans...
...Lots of this stuff was hung in burlap bags from the rafters with wire, to keep them away from rodents...
...suppose we must educate ourselves in pottery & basketry too...

...Matches I don't worry about much. I have several magnesium fire-starters...


Exactly! This is the type of old-time knowledge we have lost, thanx to the convenience of electricity and consumable, disposable items.

Smokehouses, springhouses, icehouses - it isn't rocket science, our grandparents knew it, and they probably had qualms about the stuff their grandparents knew but forgot. The small things we take for granted as we blunder through our days are the very things that are going to bite us in the fanny.

I am embarrased - flint and steel are the most obvious choice for replacing matches ;D

Thanx folks! Keep the ideas coming!

Regards,
Pat

[wy0mn]

Pat
I've been thinking about the ice house idea myself. Up here it seems it would be quite the idea.
The trout lake I haunt is still mostly frozen & theres still a bagoodle of snow around the snowfences on the roadway. So harvesting ice, or compressing blocks of snow, would be possible late into the year. I'll have to eSearch for depth/sizes/drainage problems, etc; but I think I'll go for it, and the root cellar! (I wish I had a small reefer truck to bury).
Deb
Granny canned on her woodstove. She never had an electric one. Electric was for lighting only.

[Shamrock1121]

I'd like to suggest a book. *Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning - Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation - by The Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivante.

"...When it runs out?", you find alternative ways to preserve what you can grow or forage for, fish or hunt. *

1. *seeds of all kinds for sprouting *- These will supply you with easy-to-fix fresh veggies in the winter, when they are few and far between. *Sprouts are a power-house of nutrition. *

http://www.i4at.org/lib2/sprouts.htm

2. *endive - how to grow endive in a bucket
http://www.kitchengardeners.org/2006/02/growing_belgian_endive.html

3. *herbs - grow fresh herbs in pots/planters in a sunny window

Fresh herbs can contribute a lot of taste AND easy to harvest nutrition. *While you're at it, you'll find you can also grow other foods indoors in the winter. *Small varieties of cherry tomatoes can be grown in a pot. *Meyer lemon trees will provide citrus fruit and much needed vitamin C. *Sauerkraut is also a food that can provide a lot of nutrition and vitamin C.

4. *30-years or more *
Store foods that will sustain life and have a long shelf-life. *Preferable foods that can grow MORE. *Only a fool would eat everything they have... *Collecting seeds for the next year is important. *Here is a list of foods I found the other day and it's estimated shelf-life:
30-years +
wheat, white rice, corn, sugar, pinto beans, apple slices (dried or freeze dried and vacuum-sealed), macaroni, rolled oats, potato flakes

20-years
powdered milk (I'd suggested hermetically-sealed in #10 cans for long storage)

5. (Modified to add:) raising fish in a barrel
http://www.tabletophomestead.org/Raising%20Fish%20In%20A%20Barrel.html

-Karen
*

[wy0mn]

Sorta off topic, but maybe not.
Just returned from my remote property. It took 45min to travel the 25mi length of winter ravaged county maintained dirt road and the additional 3mi of private ranch road. This was just to get back on the pavement. Its still an additional 45mi to Laramie.
Imagine road conditions, and travel time, when "big brother" can no longer afford to maintain the roads!
Anything we haven't stockpiled or learned to make ourselves may not be worth the effort of going after.
I already know I'll have to snowmobile, ski or snowshoe the last 3mi for about 2mo in winter.
Shamrock
Thanks for the book title, I'll be looking for that one!
Pat
Those green jars with the hinged reuseable lids reminded me of something. Grolsch lager bottles would be great for pickled peppers & such, same type of lid.
I have a few of the jars you were speaking of, but the gaskets have dry-rotted, just countertop art now.

[Shamrock1121]

Use some caution when choosing old jars for home canning. In a canning class I took as a Master Food Volunteer, they said jars had about a 10-year life. The older the jar, the more seasons it had been used, the more likely they will be brittle and break easily from any number of things, including being knocked together, being hot and then exposed to cold air, pressure from the jar lifter when being taken out of the canner, pressure canner, heat, using a metal knife to remove air bubbles which can cause the jar to shatter after it's hot packed.....

You can still purchase the rubber rings to use with glass lid and bail jars. They make great storage jars, but I'd personally never use them for home canning.

- Karen

[TheUnboundOne]

Dear Bee Pipes and Forum Members,

I recall reading in Foxfire 1 that Appalacian Mountain people would string harvested pole beans with a needle and thread, then hang them on the wall to air-dry. *It was called "leather breeches beans" and then they would boil them whenever they wanted to eat them.

Oh, another thing. Appalachian people also made sauerkraut by using a cleaned-out butter churn or crock, with alternating layers of chopped cabbage and salt pressed down with a plate and a stone on top. The weighted-down cabbage would secrete water into the salt to make the brine. The homemaker would periodically scoop the scum off the top, and once the cabbage was fully pickled, they just kept it in the same crock at room temperature.

Native Americans preserved the dried meat and fruit mixture called pemmican by covering it in melted tallow and letting it get solid. *That would serve to keep it away from the air and the elements and preserved it well for months.

[TheUnboundOne]

Dear Wy0mn,

Howdy, Wy0mn!

You wrote:

I've been thinking about the ice house idea myself. Up here it seems it would be quite the idea.
The trout lake I haunt is still mostly frozen & theres still a bagoodle of snow around the snowfences on the roadway. So harvesting ice, or compressing blocks of snow, would be possible late into the year. I'll have to eSearch for depth/sizes/drainage problems, etc; but I think I'll go for it, and the root cellar! (I wish I had a small reefer truck to bury).


I was listening one time to Radio Nederlands and they actually had a whole radio program on the subject of ice and human uses for it. Prior to chemical/hydraulic and electric refrigeration, ice was considered a luxury item of kings and royalty. Typically, after the ice was harvested from glaciers or icebergs, it was covered in thick layers of straw, transported, and stored deep in caves. A fascinating story!

[kawalekm]

Here's a "must have" book for anyone thinking about modern conveniences running out. It's intitled "Henley's Twentieth Century Book of Ten Thousand Formulas, Processes & Trade Secrets".

My copy is dated 1954 and has recipes and chemical formulas for making just about any household product (well any 1950's era product). It tells how to make things like matches, soap, paint, cement, powdered yeast, cosmetics, and 9994 other items. It's the most valuable book in my collection.

By the way, I used to work for the Forest Service and carried a magnesium flint & steel with me every day. I could start a fire in the rain with that flint!
Michael

[Steve_L]

Thanks for the tip on the Henley book. I found one on Amazon.

[elemay17]

[quote author=TheUnboundOne link=board=sel-other;num=1208656209;start=0#9 date=04/29/08 at 15:54:00]Dear Bee Pipes and Forum Members,


Oh, another thing. *Appalachian people also made sauerkraut by using a cleaned-out butter churn or crock, with alternating layers of chopped cabbage and salt pressed down with a plate and a stone on top. *The weighted-down cabbage would secrete water into the salt to make the brine. *The homemaker would periodically scoop the scum off the top, and once the cabbage was fully pickled, they just kept it in the same crock at room temperature.

We have made kraut in a crock (say that 10 times fast) The first try did not work so well (still too warm outside) next try (later in fall) worked like a charm, you can leave it in the crock but we chose to can it the instructions are in the Ball Blue Book. ;D

[sethwyo]

(Quote) "Your only hope lies in the knowledge of our past, in preparing to save yourself and your loved ones. Only the self-sufficiency of our ancestors will help you to create a lifestyle support system And also enable you to defend your own against all comers" (End Quote)
The man that wrote this understands that mankind was living and prospering long before checkout lines and bank acounts. before refrigerators and microwaves.
A gun without shells is usless, a pickup without fuel is usless. A years worth of food is nice, till it runs out. The point if a years worth of food, or anything, is to keep you going while you grow and prepair a new supplie when the source you usually use is gone, DONT WAIT untill you are out of food before you say ' well, i guess we should start planting some taters now'. If you like water, develop a way to to provide it for yourself, If you think you may want food, then develop a way to provide it for yourself.
Some representives from a 3rd world country that is having 'food problems' Stated (Quote)"Sustained aid and not only empty words is the only answer"(end quote)
Look at what thay are saying- "sustained aid", thay dont want to be self-sufficient, Thay believe that Someone else giving them CONSTANT aid is the only answer.
Like the welfar nation in america these people serve no purpose but to leach from others, thay have no skills, Provide nothing for themselves or anyone else, Have no interest in doing anything for themselves, And have no knowledge OR EVEN AN INTEREST in cultivating land for food.
Learn to grow and produce your own food, and maintain and even build your own tools, The colonial americans did it.

[ryanmercer]

(Quote) "Your only hope lies in the knowledge of our past, in preparing to save yourself and your loved ones. Only the self-sufficiency of our ancestors will help you to create a lifestyle support system And also enable you to defend your own against all comers" (End Quote)
The man that wrote this understands that mankind was living and prospering long before checkout lines and bank acounts. before refrigerators and microwaves.
A gun without shells is usless, a pickup without fuel is usless. *A years worth of food is nice, till it runs out. The point if a years worth of food, or anything, is to keep you going while you grow and prepair a new supplie when the source you usually use is gone, DONT WAIT untill you are out of food before you say ' well, i guess we should start planting some taters now'. If you like water, develop a way to to provide it for yourself, If you think you may want food, then develop a way to provide it for yourself.
Some representives from a 3rd world country that is having 'food problems' Stated (Quote)"Sustained aid and not only empty words is the only answer"(end quote)
Look at what thay are saying- "sustained aid", thay dont want to be self-sufficient, *Thay believe that Someone else giving them CONSTANT aid is the only answer.
Like the welfar nation in america these people serve no purpose but to leach from others, thay have no skills, Provide nothing for themselves or anyone else, Have no interest in doing anything for themselves, And have no knowledge OR EVEN AN INTEREST in cultivating land for food.
Learn to grow and produce your own food, and maintain and even build your own tools, The colonial americans did it.


That is why I dislike billionaire philanthropists... they send supplies to 3rd world countries rather than teaching the people sustainable growing. Then people go "ah yes but in lots of areas it is desert" ah yes... and if you plant some desert friendly trees... you can not only stop, but reverse desertification and then teach them how to irrigate, dig them some deeper wells, and teach them how to rotate the crops that will grow best in that area.

[pinetreefarm]

Carla Emery's book, "The Encyclopedia of Country Living", has been my book for old time things for years. She came to our town a few years before she died and I have her autograph. She gave excellent lectures.

Pine

[Cutter]

I picked up a copy of " THE FOXFIRE BOOK" for free at a yard sale last week. That book tells you just about everything you need to know about life without modern technology. I think everyone should have a copy. I have seen the same book ( the 1972 edition ) on amazon.com for $7. It's a must have and a bargain, unless you get it for free.