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Your Food Preparedness Score – How Food Prepared Are You?

May 182013

YOUR FOOD PREPAREDNESS SCORE – And exercise to determine just how prepared you really are.

The Food We Eat - Our Dependency, Our Problem

The following is a matrix of food dependency, food self-sufficiency and food preparedness and preparations.

Everybody needs to eat, but understanding just how dependent we really are on our food, where it comes from, is not always easy to understand.

The following matrix measures how prepared you are using several hundred common foods. The matrix does not take into account food storage losses, waste or techniques and methods that result in food loss. Nor does the matrix measure how much food storage you currently have which is an entirely different subject. Decades of experience has shown that nobody is storing anywhere near enough food (or actually growing enough) to meet their own nutritional needs.

Any food that is bought or eaten can be added to this list to determine how prepared you really are.

The following is my “creation” this Saturday. As I’ve pondered the problems with the food industry, it occurred to me that we really don’t understand the risks we’re all facing when it comes to food. So I dreamed this thing up, I hope you enjoy it!

If you have display problems (Ipad), try this link instead: Food Preparedness Matrix

Instructions:

This is a list of the common foods eaten by most Americans. Complete columns 1 through 5 with simple Y or N answers. Do not skip any lines, as you will skew the results!

Be HONEST about your answers, this is about your food preparedness and that of your local region.

Column #1 – Is this food produced locally? Answer Y if this can be grown or produced within 60 miles of your residence (or use a farther distance if you like). Answer N if not.

Column #2 – Do you buy this food at any time in the past year? Answer Y if you eat this food and have to buy it. Leave blank if you do not eat this food. Answer N if you never buy this food and grow ALL your own.

Column #3 – Answer Y if you grow any of this food (even small amounts). Answer N if you never grow any of this food. Leave blank for foods you do not eat.

Column #4 – Answer Y if you grow enough of this food and never have to buy it. Leave blank for foods you do not eat.

Column #5 – Answer Y if you have this food currently in your food storage program. Leave blank for foods you do not eat or buy. Answer N if you do not store this food.

Food Scoring:

Scoring is done in the right-side corresponding columns. Yes answers are scored a value of 1. No answers are scored a value of -1, ie, Y = 1, N = -1.

A negative score indicates that you are under-prepared for a food shortage of this product (for any reason, drought, disaster, job loss, gardening failure). A high number of negative scores means you will probably starve when any catastrophe occurs.

Another Work Day

General 7 Responses »

May 172013

I’ve got an ice-maker on my refrigerator door. I like having an ice-maker. I like having a refrigerator too. And the electricity to run it.

Such conveniences are pretty nice. In nearly any other country, I’m living like a king. The things I take for granted far too often, are only dreams in billions of people’s minds. If we want to find “responsible” for things like climate change, we only need to look in the mirror.

It’s hard to fathom. We really can’t understand or feel what others are feeling. Our perceptions about our lives are only our own. This is why “connecting” to others in meaningful ways is so incredibly difficult. We don’t walk in their shoes, or experience what they experience on a daily basis.

We have no conception of what it “takes” to live their lives – or to eke out a subsistence living, or to eat the same gruel every day. Or to bake under the grueling sun, year after year…. or to watch our crops get wiped out, again and again and face the hungry looks of our starving children.

We really have NO IDEA what it is “like” for billions of other souls on this planet. I can write about, share a bit about what I’ve learned, but it’s really not the same thing at all…

Projects 2013

General, Practical Preparations, Sustainable Living 9 Responses »

May 162013

I’ll title this post “Projects 2013″, although several of these have been underway for a few years. Due to the large number of blog posts here, the only way I can keep things straight is to come up with a unique blog title.

These are some of the projects I’m working on this year:

Pond Expansion

I’ve two ponds now, both man-made. Dug by machines, but it’s still a lot of work. This year I’m expanding the lower pond, which also is giving me a lot of needed dirt to be used elsewhere (hugelkultur beds and road work).

forest pond

Some helpful creature deposited some cattail seeds in this a year or so back. Continue reading »

Hopium and Near Term Extinction

Collapse, General 15 Responses »

May 122013

Selected quotes from around the Net:

First, you have to have a ‘community’. The US has suburbs where most don’t even know their neighbors. Your kids know the neighbor kids but do you know their parents? I doubt it.

This ‘resilience’ kick sells books, seminars, and seeds, but it is doing little to change anything real. Huddling down in your ‘community’ is not going to save you from the earths collapse. Mother nature doesn’t care if you grow your own veggies. She is going to wipe you out with the SUV driving blimps and not look back. 9 degrees wipes out you and your family just as it does any 3rd world poor family, or the McMansion owner with 3 cars and all the other toys of wealth. The Four Horsemen are equal opportunity killers. Continue reading »

Plan(et) “B”

Collapse, General No Responses »

May 102013

Everybody has heard of Plan B. Most of us have had to resort to our “plan B” when things didn’t pan out the way we thought they would the first time.

Most of us know by now that whatever our Plan A was for our lives, this didn’t work out exactly as we thought either. So we moved on to try plan B, or C or D and so on, until we got our feet underneath us and made some sense to our lives.

Whatever “plan” in your life that you’re still working on, I’m here to tell you that it’s going to change again.

There are two worthwhile developments to consider for your next “Plan B”: Continue reading »

Storable Food Update

General 3 Responses »

May 032013

New announcement from Alpine Aire / Richmoor (now Katadyn North America):

The entire Richmoor line of pouch products, is discontinued, effective immediately. This is a huge disappointment for us, as this was very popular with our customers. We do have the Natural High line after a short disruption, in pouch cases only.

Update: Individual Alpine Aire pouches are also no longer available. We can sell cases only. The only alternative for single pouches is to find a stocking dealer. We’re unsure whether we should take this route or not ourselves, it’s just too expensive to ship the small orders people place for pouches.

It’s been clear for years that customers have no idea what shipping actually cost. A single pouch could cost us $14 – $18 to ship, depending on where it was going. We were only collecting $4.95 to help cover this.

Shipping rates were slightly better with more weight (more product), but we were still only collecting the $4.95 even though now we’d pay UPS $20 – $48 or so. Orders over $100 were shipped “free” but we still pay UPS their fees (there is no such thing as free shipping).

The Age of Stupid

Collapse, Environment, General 10 Responses »

Apr 292013

I got a chance to watch “The Age of Stupid” on Hulu over the weekend. If you haven’t seen this, maybe you should. It’s a fictional, but not really – account of how we screwed up the planet and wiped ourselves out. I say not really because there is a preponderance of evidence now that this is exactly what will happen.

I also watched “Living On A Dollar A Day”. Four students head to Guatemala to experience first-hand what it’s like for over a billion people on the planet to try and survive on a dollar a day. These poor boys (self-imposed poverty, but I use the term to describe their naivety) envisioned difficult times — but had no idea just how difficult this was going to be. Within mere days, weakened by hunger, they lacked the necessary strength and cognitive ability to make the right decisions.

They tried to be farmers and if not for some expert help, they would have failed miserably, not understanding anything. But they learned, which was the whole point to the documentary. Even so, they could not and did not ever learn to raise enough food to actually feed themselves — not even for a single week. Instead, they had to buy all their food in order to survive. It’s a telling lesson – in an incredibly fertile country.

Both videos demonstrated that food was the #1 issue for everyone. Adequate nutrition was nearly impossible to find. Notably, this is true right now and will be quadruply true in the future. Continue reading »

Eradicating

General, War No Responses »

Apr 192013

This is how we destroy an entire generation. This is what our government is doing to our children. This is what you can expect in your future.

Unless you and everyone else, especially the soldiers, say “No more”.

Continue reading »

Deception

Terrorism, Tyranny 2 Responses »

Apr 192013

James Corbett, “When False Flags Don’t Fly”:

The Worst Place To Live & Raise Children

Collapse, General No Responses »

Apr 132013

“Lack of education, cost of healthcare, childhood obesity and teenage pregnancies put the life chances of American children at the bottom of a table of overall well being – far behind those from poorer countries, a damning report has found.”

“UNICEF ranked the U.S. at the bottom of a league table of the best places to raise a child”:

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