Are you really prepared?

I read this very well written post about being prepared today.  Read through it and ask yourself, are you really prepared?

There is a whole market and industry established to help you prepare for hard times, whether it is from natural disasters or man made problems. A lot of people have caught on and have taken actions in order to be ready for trouble that may come. The problem I see with a lot of people's plans is that they don't really reflect reality. A lot of it is based on "fiction."

Today there are a lot of books and movies that tell the story of survival. They cover scenarios such as the collapse of government, EMP strikes and the loss of power and of course even the zombie apocalypse. These make good reading with interesting stories how individuals or small groups work together to in order to survive and rebuild. One of the first of these I read was "Lucifer's Hammer," back in 1985, which tells the story of what happens after a comet strikes earth. The trouble is that this is fiction, and fiction rarely tells the whole story. True down and dirty survival is ugly and brutal.

The best way to get a real understanding of how bad it can get, and what it takes to live to tell your story is history. And you don't even have to go very far back in time to see this.

You want real life with no power end of the world type stories here in the U.S.? Read about what Southerners were forced to do to survive the "War Between The States," especially once the official war was over. One of my instructor's great grandmothers had to list her possessions after the war to receive benefits. He has the paperwork; she owned two forks, a chair and some clothing.

The twentieth century has plenty of stories about the "end of the world as we know it." Read non-fiction, the true stories of what WWI looked like on the other side of the pond for those who lived in the battle torn areas and what they did to survive. The same goes for WWII, where the German army had to issue orders and strict discipline measures for their soldiers in Stalingrad to stop them from cutting off the soles of their feet to cook and eat.

Want more recent examples of civilian life during hard times? During the Great Depression things were hardcore. The only food my mother's family ate was what my grandfather could kill, grow or trade for, and the same goes for clothing they had to make or any other commodities required to live. Read about how civilians survived during the recent conflicts fought in Europe and the Middle East over ethnic cleansing and religious differences.

Today, in the U.S., most of us have become soft. Life is extremely easy compared to what it has been in the past. We complain bitterly when the 'net goes down or we lose power. Our visions of survival are often based on movies and books, and even if they are modeled on "true" events they usually have "story-book" endings where the good guys win. To learn about real survival you have to study history, the unedited truth.

History shows us how ugly it can get and the horrible things people will do to others in the name of "right." History shows us what you do in order to live without power and all the nice modern things we take for granted. Then, once you get an idea of what this is like try it for a few days. It will be hard, but you'll learn a lot about how well you're prepared.

Today we have instant access to almost anything we want or need. This is great, but it also means you can go from having all that to nothing in a heartbeat - especially considering how fragile our support systems like power, the economy and society are today. It's a fine act of balancing, and it doesn't take much for things to tip over and go sideways. To be ready you have to study and know what it's truly going to look like, and then prepare accordingly.

Tiger McKee is director of Shootrite Firearms Academy, located in northern Alabama. He is the author of "The Book of Two Guns" - http://shootrite.org/book/book.html writes for several firearms/tactical publications, and is featured on GunTalk's DVD, "Fighting With The 1911 - http://shootrite.org/dvd/dvd.html Website: www.shootrite.org

Canning some fruit

It's been awhile since I posted here but haven't done much.  We did sell our other house in Missouri and purchased 2.5 acres in Taylor Az and am building our house there slowly.  We were up there this last week.  Our friends there were picking apples and had two small boxes left over so we took them and then went over to our daughters house in Eagar to visit them for a couple of days.  We found them picking apples off of some trees that her husband Rob's cousin owns.  We pulled the truck in and picked a plastic bin full of red and green apples.  Now, what to do eith them.  Our friend and our daughter and her husband were making apple butter, apple sauce and pie apples so we decided to do the same.

I thought I remembered that we had a "squeezo" so I went out to our storage shed at my sisters and looked.  Sure enough, there it was, laying on the floor in a box.  After taking it home and washing it up, I built a small wood shelf to mount it on on top of our fold up plastic table outside on the porch.  We have a apple peeler but with the squeezo, all you need to do is wash them, cut them in half, cook them and then put them thru the squeezo.  So in we jumped.  We washed up a sink full of apples, cut them in half and then put them in our 14 quart All American steamer caner.  I put 3 quarts of water into the caner and then secured the top on it.  Using a turkey cooker propane burner, I lit the fire and waited for the steam to start coming out of the port.  Once that happened, I put the weight on the port on the 5 pound side and watched while the pressure gauge came up to 5 pounds.  When it did, I shut the gas off and waited for the pressure to go back down to 0.

After the pressure came back down to 0 making it safe to open the lid, we had the squeezo set up, jars  and lids sterilized and were ready to start.

We took turns turning the auger handle and pushing the cooked apple halves down into the squeezo.  You can see the applesauce coming down the chute and the peels, core, seeds and other "stuff" coming out of the end into the ice cream bucket.  After doing that load of apples, we put the applesauce into a large stainless steel pot, added two heaping tablespoons of cinnamon and one heaping teaspoon of powdered cloves into it and stirred it in.  We cooked it on the stove for about two hours so that it would thicken up and then put it in the food processor to make it smooth.  We then put it back into the stainless steel pot and cooked it for another hour.  After it was thick enough, we put it into pint large mouth Ball jars, put the lids on and put them in the pressure caner.  Putting enough water to cover the tops of the jars by one inch, I brought the water to a rolling boil with the lid off and then cooked it for 15 minutes.  The book called for 10 minutes while adding 5 extra minutes for the altitude.  After the timer went off, I turned off the fire and carefully lifted the bottles out of the caner and put them on the table on top of a towel.  I then put a towel over the top of them because there was a slight breeze and they needed to be protected from it.

While the apple butter was cooking, we started working on a second load of apples.  Went through all the steps as for the apple butter except we didn't add any cinnamon and didn't cook it after putting it into the stainless steel pot.  We transferred it from there into the 1 1/2 pint Ball jars and water bath cooked them.

After putting them onto the table, we covered them and left them overnight like the book said.  When canning, the best sound in the world is when you hear the lids click meaning they are sealed.  After they have sit for 24 hours, we put them back in the box that the jars came in.  One secrete I have about that is I cut the plastic off at the top of the box so it acts as an extra support for the box when the bottles are in.  So far, we have made nine 1 1/2 pints of applesauce and 12 pints of apple butter.  We still have about 20 pounds of apples to do.  We may make some pie apples but will see.

Take advantage of any opportunities you get to learn new skills and especially in preserving food for home storage.  And by the way, we have a friend who benefited from our efforts.  She has some pigs that really enjoyed the peels and apples that were excessively bruise or had worms.  Try caning.  It is fun and you can really see the benefits of your efforts and they taste very good.

Bob and LouAnn