I got an email today....

[Infolurker]

So, I got this right after my notification that Keystone Beef went up 3 bucks per can.

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Thank you for your recent order with Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc. Due to the overwhelming demand for our products over the last week and a half, I would like to reach out to you personally in order to let you know that there will be a bit of a delay in fulfilling your order.

That is probably telling you something that you already know if you have been patiently waiting for a couple of days now for word on the shipping of an order (or orders) that you placed, but I felt as though I at least owe you an explanation as to why it is taking us a little extra time to ship your order.

I have spoken to hundreds of customers personally over the last couple of days as I worked through close to 10,000 emails that I have received since last week - so if I already spoke to you about this, then please forgive me for bugging you on the same subject again.

It took me a few days to go through the backlog of orders to make sure that I knew exactly where we sat.

Please rest assured that your order will ship soon. For some people “soon” will mean hours or a day or two. And for others, “soon” could mean a delay of up to a week or a little more. It just depends on when you placed your order.

It is hard for me to tell anyone/everyone exactly how long the wait is going to be because we are moving as fast as we can without sacrificing accuracy.

Quite honestly, If I had to stop what we are doing to try and give you exact dates, not only would that be nothing more than a guess, but the time to go though orders one by one to come up with that guess would mean that I would be adding up to several more days onto the time it is already taking us to ship your order.

But, just know that we are shipping all orders out in the order that we receive them. You have me word on that!

Part of the difficulty of giving you an accurate ETA for the shipping of your order is that because the order sizes are so varied. Not only are there are still several thousand orders in the system that we are working on - but some of them are for a handful of items, and some of them are for hundreds of items.

And because we chose to accept back-orders on some items that we’re selling faster than we could replenish stock on them, we will be doing partial shipments on many orders, to ensure you do not have to wait longer than necessary.

That means that we may need to ship you two (2) orders to complete your purchase, and obviously it takes twice the time to ship two orders as it would take to ship one order.

However, I can tell you that we have all of the product in-house to fill every single order that we received, so you are guaranteed to receive your order with every single item that you purchased.

Once your order has shipped, you will receive an email with tracking information from my shipping folks so that you will know with certainty that it is on the way to you. If we did have to ship your order in more than one shipment, it will be indicated on your shipping confirmation email, and the remainder of your order will ship automatically, so you do not have to worry about doing anything on your end.

If you are willing to bear with us and wait for a little bit (and I hope that you will), you do not need to do anything. Just know that we are working on shipping orders literally around the clock 7 days a week.

However, if this delay is unacceptable to you, I honestly will understand and it will not stop us from hopefully offering you products that no one else is able to produce. Just let me know if you would rather not wait and I will cancel your order and issue a full refund to you right away.

If you have already received notification from us that your order has shipped, then please disregard this email as I may have gotten my wires crossed. Because of the huge volume of orders, I am relying on my shopping cart software to tell me who has placed and order and who is still waiting for us to ship it. So if your order has shipped annd you are receiving this email in error, that is why and I apologize for worrying you.=!

Again, if your order has anlready shipped, then I sent this message to you in error annd I am sorry about that. I just want to make sure that I get word to everyone who has been patiently waiting.

I would like to offer my sincere apology for any inconvenience that this delay may cause you. We do our best to fulfill orders without incident, but occasionally delays like this are simply unavoidable. I can count the amount of times that we have had to suspend our same-day shipping promise on one hand and still have 2 fingers left over;-).

I promise you that this delay will be temporary and we will get back to shipping orders the same day that they were received just as quickly as we can.

If you have additional questions and/or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally by responding to this email. I give you my word that you will receive a personal response from me - not from someone on my staff pretending to me - although I probably should add the disclaimer that it could take me a day or two to respond if I get overwhelmed, as I am actually already dealing with a volume of emails that I have never seen in the 21 years that we have been in business.

So if you don’t get a quick reply from me - please don’t send your message again. I promise you I have received it and I will reply to you personally as quick as possible.

Thanks to everyone for the understanding if you have been patiently waiting for your order or for a response from me. I am humbled by the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent information that many of you have seen on YouTube. I promise to never take the kind words, trust and loyalty for granted, as I know that you have choices out there.

On behalf of everyone at Freeze Dry Wholesalers - thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are the reason why we do what we do, and we all consider ourselves to be blessed to be a part of your lives!

Warmest Regards,

-Steve

Steven L. Cyros, President
Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc.

PS; As you will have seen if you have visited our website recently, we are sold out of a lot of products. In addition to our focus on shipping your order quickly, my buyers and my production folks are working on getting those products back in stock as quickly as we can.

Items that I have in my fridges and freezers will continue to be available for backorder. You can purchase those items and we will ship them to you as soon as they are available.

Items that I don’t physically have in my possession cannot be purchase, as I am just not comfortable taking your heard-earned money for them and then having to rely on a vendor to ship them to me. The state of the supply chain these days is questionable at best.

If you sign up on our website to be notified when an out of stock product is available, you will receive a real-time email the second we put it back in stock, so that is the best way to be alerted to our ever-changing inventory right now.

[kdog]

So, I got this right after my notification that Keystone Beef went up 3 bucks per can.

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Thank you for your recent order with Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc. Due to the overwhelming demand for our products over the last week and a half, I would like to reach out to you personally in order to let you know that there will be a bit of a delay in fulfilling your order.

That is probably telling you something that you already know if you have been patiently waiting for a couple of days now for word on the shipping of an order (or orders) that you placed, but I felt as though I at least owe you an explanation as to why it is taking us a little extra time to ship your order.

I have spoken to hundreds of customers personally over the last couple of days as I worked through close to 10,000 emails that I have received since last week - so if I already spoke to you about this, then please forgive me for bugging you on the same subject again.

It took me a few days to go through the backlog of orders to make sure that I knew exactly where we sat.

Please rest assured that your order will ship soon. For some people “soon” will mean hours or a day or two. And for others, “soon” could mean a delay of up to a week or a little more. It just depends on when you placed your order.

It is hard for me to tell anyone/everyone exactly how long the wait is going to be because we are moving as fast as we can without sacrificing accuracy.

Quite honestly, If I had to stop what we are doing to try and give you exact dates, not only would that be nothing more than a guess, but the time to go though orders one by one to come up with that guess would mean that I would be adding up to several more days onto the time it is already taking us to ship your order.

But, just know that we are shipping all orders out in the order that we receive them. You have me word on that!

Part of the difficulty of giving you an accurate ETA for the shipping of your order is that because the order sizes are so varied. Not only are there are still several thousand orders in the system that we are working on - but some of them are for a handful of items, and some of them are for hundreds of items.

And because we chose to accept back-orders on some items that we’re selling faster than we could replenish stock on them, we will be doing partial shipments on many orders, to ensure you do not have to wait longer than necessary.

That means that we may need to ship you two (2) orders to complete your purchase, and obviously it takes twice the time to ship two orders as it would take to ship one order.

However, I can tell you that we have all of the product in-house to fill every single order that we received, so you are guaranteed to receive your order with every single item that you purchased.

Once your order has shipped, you will receive an email with tracking information from my shipping folks so that you will know with certainty that it is on the way to you. If we did have to ship your order in more than one shipment, it will be indicated on your shipping confirmation email, and the remainder of your order will ship automatically, so you do not have to worry about doing anything on your end.

If you are willing to bear with us and wait for a little bit (and I hope that you will), you do not need to do anything. Just know that we are working on shipping orders literally around the clock 7 days a week.

However, if this delay is unacceptable to you, I honestly will understand and it will not stop us from hopefully offering you products that no one else is able to produce. Just let me know if you would rather not wait and I will cancel your order and issue a full refund to you right away.

If you have already received notification from us that your order has shipped, then please disregard this email as I may have gotten my wires crossed. Because of the huge volume of orders, I am relying on my shopping cart software to tell me who has placed and order and who is still waiting for us to ship it. So if your order has shipped annd you are receiving this email in error, that is why and I apologize for worrying you.=!

Again, if your order has anlready shipped, then I sent this message to you in error annd I am sorry about that. I just want to make sure that I get word to everyone who has been patiently waiting.

I would like to offer my sincere apology for any inconvenience that this delay may cause you. We do our best to fulfill orders without incident, but occasionally delays like this are simply unavoidable. I can count the amount of times that we have had to suspend our same-day shipping promise on one hand and still have 2 fingers left over;-).

I promise you that this delay will be temporary and we will get back to shipping orders the same day that they were received just as quickly as we can.

If you have additional questions and/or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally by responding to this email. I give you my word that you will receive a personal response from me - not from someone on my staff pretending to me - although I probably should add the disclaimer that it could take me a day or two to respond if I get overwhelmed, as I am actually already dealing with a volume of emails that I have never seen in the 21 years that we have been in business.

So if you don’t get a quick reply from me - please don’t send your message again. I promise you I have received it and I will reply to you personally as quick as possible.

Thanks to everyone for the understanding if you have been patiently waiting for your order or for a response from me. I am humbled by the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent information that many of you have seen on YouTube. I promise to never take the kind words, trust and loyalty for granted, as I know that you have choices out there.

On behalf of everyone at Freeze Dry Wholesalers - thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are the reason why we do what we do, and we all consider ourselves to be blessed to be a part of your lives!

Warmest Regards,

-Steve

Steven L. Cyros, President
Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc.

PS; As you will have seen if you have visited our website recently, we are sold out of a lot of products. In addition to our focus on shipping your order quickly, my buyers and my production folks are working on getting those products back in stock as quickly as we can.

Items that I have in my fridges and freezers will continue to be available for backorder. You can purchase those items and we will ship them to you as soon as they are available.

Items that I don’t physically have in my possession cannot be purchase, as I am just not comfortable taking your heard-earned money for them and then having to rely on a vendor to ship them to me. The state of the supply chain these days is questionable at best.

If you sign up on our website to be notified when an out of stock product is available, you will receive a real-time email the second we put it back in stock, so that is the best way to be alerted to our ever-changing inventory right now.

I have seen this canned meat in our grocery store and thought about buying some. I have a few cans of another brand but haven't tried it yet. Is it any good ?

[Infolurker]

So, I got this right after my notification that Keystone Beef went up 3 bucks per can.

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Thank you for your recent order with Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc. Due to the overwhelming demand for our products over the last week and a half, I would like to reach out to you personally in order to let you know that there will be a bit of a delay in fulfilling your order.

That is probably telling you something that you already know if you have been patiently waiting for a couple of days now for word on the shipping of an order (or orders) that you placed, but I felt as though I at least owe you an explanation as to why it is taking us a little extra time to ship your order.

I have spoken to hundreds of customers personally over the last couple of days as I worked through close to 10,000 emails that I have received since last week - so if I already spoke to you about this, then please forgive me for bugging you on the same subject again.

It took me a few days to go through the backlog of orders to make sure that I knew exactly where we sat.

Please rest assured that your order will ship soon. For some people “soon” will mean hours or a day or two. And for others, “soon” could mean a delay of up to a week or a little more. It just depends on when you placed your order.

It is hard for me to tell anyone/everyone exactly how long the wait is going to be because we are moving as fast as we can without sacrificing accuracy.

Quite honestly, If I had to stop what we are doing to try and give you exact dates, not only would that be nothing more than a guess, but the time to go though orders one by one to come up with that guess would mean that I would be adding up to several more days onto the time it is already taking us to ship your order.

But, just know that we are shipping all orders out in the order that we receive them. You have me word on that!

Part of the difficulty of giving you an accurate ETA for the shipping of your order is that because the order sizes are so varied. Not only are there are still several thousand orders in the system that we are working on - but some of them are for a handful of items, and some of them are for hundreds of items.

And because we chose to accept back-orders on some items that we’re selling faster than we could replenish stock on them, we will be doing partial shipments on many orders, to ensure you do not have to wait longer than necessary.

That means that we may need to ship you two (2) orders to complete your purchase, and obviously it takes twice the time to ship two orders as it would take to ship one order.

However, I can tell you that we have all of the product in-house to fill every single order that we received, so you are guaranteed to receive your order with every single item that you purchased.

Once your order has shipped, you will receive an email with tracking information from my shipping folks so that you will know with certainty that it is on the way to you. If we did have to ship your order in more than one shipment, it will be indicated on your shipping confirmation email, and the remainder of your order will ship automatically, so you do not have to worry about doing anything on your end.

If you are willing to bear with us and wait for a little bit (and I hope that you will), you do not need to do anything. Just know that we are working on shipping orders literally around the clock 7 days a week.

However, if this delay is unacceptable to you, I honestly will understand and it will not stop us from hopefully offering you products that no one else is able to produce. Just let me know if you would rather not wait and I will cancel your order and issue a full refund to you right away.

If you have already received notification from us that your order has shipped, then please disregard this email as I may have gotten my wires crossed. Because of the huge volume of orders, I am relying on my shopping cart software to tell me who has placed and order and who is still waiting for us to ship it. So if your order has shipped annd you are receiving this email in error, that is why and I apologize for worrying you.=!

Again, if your order has anlready shipped, then I sent this message to you in error annd I am sorry about that. I just want to make sure that I get word to everyone who has been patiently waiting.

I would like to offer my sincere apology for any inconvenience that this delay may cause you. We do our best to fulfill orders without incident, but occasionally delays like this are simply unavoidable. I can count the amount of times that we have had to suspend our same-day shipping promise on one hand and still have 2 fingers left over;-).

I promise you that this delay will be temporary and we will get back to shipping orders the same day that they were received just as quickly as we can.

If you have additional questions and/or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally by responding to this email. I give you my word that you will receive a personal response from me - not from someone on my staff pretending to me - although I probably should add the disclaimer that it could take me a day or two to respond if I get overwhelmed, as I am actually already dealing with a volume of emails that I have never seen in the 21 years that we have been in business.

So if you don’t get a quick reply from me - please don’t send your message again. I promise you I have received it and I will reply to you personally as quick as possible.

Thanks to everyone for the understanding if you have been patiently waiting for your order or for a response from me. I am humbled by the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent information that many of you have seen on YouTube. I promise to never take the kind words, trust and loyalty for granted, as I know that you have choices out there.

On behalf of everyone at Freeze Dry Wholesalers - thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are the reason why we do what we do, and we all consider ourselves to be blessed to be a part of your lives!

Warmest Regards,

-Steve

Steven L. Cyros, President
Freeze Dry Wholesalers, Inc.

PS; As you will have seen if you have visited our website recently, we are sold out of a lot of products. In addition to our focus on shipping your order quickly, my buyers and my production folks are working on getting those products back in stock as quickly as we can.

Items that I have in my fridges and freezers will continue to be available for backorder. You can purchase those items and we will ship them to you as soon as they are available.

Items that I don’t physically have in my possession cannot be purchase, as I am just not comfortable taking your heard-earned money for them and then having to rely on a vendor to ship them to me. The state of the supply chain these days is questionable at best.

If you sign up on our website to be notified when an out of stock product is available, you will receive a real-time email the second we put it back in stock, so that is the best way to be alerted to our ever-changing inventory right now.

I have seen this canned meat in our grocery store and thought about buying some. I have a few cans of another brand but haven't tried it yet. Is it any good ?

Keystone Beef is outstanding and up until recently you could get a dozen cans for 84 bucks delivered to your door with Walmart.com

Now... 10+ bucks a can.

I mentioned it in a post a few weeks ago, one of my go to's. 

We have seen some videos lately of "survival food" companies re labeling Keystone (it appears) and trying to sell it for crazy bucks.

cough... sure looks like Keystone... cough

https://www.survivalcavefood.com/canned-...-meat.html

[Schmoe]

Never heard of this brand, but $10 for a 28oz can?  Christ.  I keep meaning to stock up on things, but I just never do.  Stuff like rice, fried beans, etc.  Salt.  Gotta have some salt, too.  I looked into curing meat, venison for example, but you need a shit ton of salt for that.  And a certain type of salt.

I don't have the land for seeds and all that.

[Grace]

Never heard of this brand, but $10 for a 28oz can?  Christ.  I keep meaning to stock up on things, but I just never do.  Stuff like rice, fried beans, etc.  Salt.  Gotta have some salt, too.  I looked into curing meat, venison for example, but you need a shit ton of salt for that.  And a certain type of salt.

I don't have the land for seeds and all that.

Definitely not worth it in my mind, it's always good to have some things on hand to get through some hard times, but as with all things there's a limit because you just don't know what the future holds. 

Companies profit off fear, so it's good to not let fear get the best of you. 

At our house we have 20 pounds of rice and about the same in beans along with a running basic 2 week pantry at all times, but I'm not doing more than that... anything that goes longer than that amount of time in my opinion can only be figured out in the moment. People survived the great depression they'll figure out how to survive whatever comes next. 

I've always seen it as how to get through an initial phase and then see what workarounds need worked or if the bad will even affect you. 

I mean, if it's a new Nazi Germany we are walking into, we'll see gas chambers before the end of 20 pounds of rice... lol.

[ABNARTY]

IMHO, just an indication of how may people out there are starting to see through the fog. I hope you get your order soon.

I have been working on storing up food. Maybe I can send some pics soon. Also building up the garden and building ties with local food producers (farmers, butcher shops, etc.) I can tell you it is not a quick process. I wish y'all the best of luck. 

The only wisdom I can provide is no one can store enough food to last forever. You also need to have a plan in place to generate food somehow. But it is good to have a few months on hand to make it through hard times or transitions.  Also, store food you will eat. If you like rice, store rice. If you won't touch dehydrated brussel sprouts, don't bother with them. 

I bought a new vacuum sealer from Avid. It is awesome! Miles ahead of my old cheapy one. 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HFC8V9M?psc...ct_details

[Snarl]

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Feels like that moment just before a stampede. The rational mind knows better. Just can't compete with the primitive mind once it has control. It'll pass in good time.

Glad to see people on this board realize food stocks ain't gonna last ... no matter how much you put away before the storm.

[Ninurta]

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Feels like that moment just before a stampede. The rational mind knows better. Just can't compete with the primitive mind once it has control. It'll pass in good time.

Glad to see people on this board realize food stocks ain't gonna last ... no matter how much you put away before the storm.

Yup. Folks panic when they see hard times on the horizon, and often hoard too much. Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020? I think you can reach a point where you have too much set back, and it will either A) go bad before you can eat it, or B) be nothing more than Raider Bait.

I have a friend that lives a couple hours east of here who has enough stuff set back for several years. I don't know what sort of rotation plan he has, but I can see a lot of that going bad before he can use it regardless of the rotation - you can only eat so much stuff in a day, and there are only so many days in a year. That guy also produces 95% of his own electricity via solar panels, but they are a pain in the ass to keep cleaned enough to produce. Everything has it's trade-offs, I reckon.

As Grace mentioned, we don't have a huge stock - about 20 pounds each of rice and beans, and about 10 pounds of lentils. I had a few pounds of corned beef stored up, but have now eaten it all and haven't replaced it. I've held off on hunting right around the house, so the woods are full of critters now that think it's a refuge from hunters, and tell their friends. That's my "hard times" plan Last week I looked out the kitchen window and saw there were a couple more cayenne peppers ready to harvest, so I went out to get them. It turned out that Mamma Bear (about 400 or 500 pounds of bear) was 20 feet or so on the other side of my perimeter fence, and she's still hanging on to two of this years cubs, about 150 pounds or so each at this stage. She had 3 this year, but one has already gone his own way, apparently.

The deer are so bold that they jump my fence and graze in the yard. Had an 8-point buck grazing just under the bedroom window last fall. Add in the squirrels, wild turkeys, and rabbits (not many groundhogs around here - the environment ain't right for them, not enough open fields), and my "larder" is mostly on the hoof, and think I'm a "friendly".

we've got 200 pounds of "ice melt" salt that you'd best believe in a pinch would get pressed into service for curing meat. We've also got a few pounds of potassium nitrate that will serve for curing as well, but it's main intent is to make black powder with. Gotta knock that game down somehow!

Walnuts, hickory, and oaks look like they're going to throw a good crop this year. Not only will that draw in more game, but that crap keeps forever. I've discovered several thousand dollars worth of ginseng within 100 feet of the house - back in the day, ginseng and hides was as good as money around here for trade, and probably will be again before it's over. Got some 'sang berries out of the woods last week that I plan on planting in shady places in the yard, to protect it better from poachers, but it'll take 5 or 10 years for it to get big enough to amount to anything.

My plan to become Vice Lord of the area isn't really going to plan. I didn't get enough corn this year to make an ounce of 'shine, and my weed isn't bushing out like it oughtta, so not producing very well, either. In Hard Times, trade in Vice Supplies booms - that's how my family got into moonshining to begin with, during the Depression. Can't have it all, I reckon.

My whole point is that storing up food is a good thing, but can become too much of a good thing. More than a year or two of canned and dried goods is too much - you should be producing before that much runs out, else you'll be falling behind. Stored stuff is just a buffer in my opinion, to provide breathing space to get production underway. Your main plan should be production, either of food items or of trade items to GET the food items you'll need later.

.Back in the day, everyone around here kept about a year or two's worth of canned goods, dried goods, and root crops in a cellar, which was constantly rotated out with new crops going in as the old was eaten out. That's the plan, if you've got enough ground to do it, and remember, you can always make raised beds and such in a yard to supplement what you have, even if it's not enough to live on altogether.

.

[Schmoe]

Not looking good on the survival food front. Something is up.

Feels like that moment just before a stampede. The rational mind knows better. Just can't compete with the primitive mind once it has control. It'll pass in good time.

Glad to see people on this board realize food stocks ain't gonna last ... no matter how much you put away before the storm.

Yup. Folks panic when they see hard times on the horizon, and often hoard too much. Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020? I think you can reach a point where you have too much set back, and it will either A) go bad before you can eat it, or B) be nothing more than Raider Bait.

I have a friend that lives a couple hours east of here who has enough stuff set back for several years. I don't know what sort of rotation plan he has, but I can see a lot of that going bad before he can use it regardless of the rotation - you can only eat so much stuff in a day, and there are only so many days in a year. That guy also produces 95% of his own electricity via solar panels, but they are a pain in the ass to keep cleaned enough to produce. Everything has it's trade-offs, I reckon.

As Grace mentioned, we don't have a huge stock - about 20 pounds each of rice and beans, and about 10 pounds of lentils. I had a few pounds of corned beef stored up, but have now eaten it all and haven't replaced it. I've held off on hunting right around the house, so the woods are full of critters now that think it's a refuge from hunters, and tell their friends. That's my "hard times" plan Last week I looked out the kitchen window and saw there were a couple more cayenne peppers ready to harvest, so I went out to get them. It turned out that Mamma Bear (about 400 or 500 pounds of bear) was 20 feet or so on the other side of my perimeter fence, and she's still hanging on to two of this years cubs, about 150 pounds or so each at this stage. She had 3 this year, but one has already gone his own way, apparently.

The deer are so bold that they jump my fence and graze in the yard. Had an 8-point buck grazing just under the bedroom window last fall. Add in the squirrels, wild turkeys, and rabbits (not many groundhogs around here - the environment ain't right for them, not enough open fields), and my "larder" is mostly on the hoof, and think I'm a "friendly".

we've got 200 pounds of "ice melt" salt that you'd best believe in a pinch would get pressed into service for curing meat. We've also got a few pounds of potassium nitrate that will serve for curing as well, but it's main intent is to make black powder with. Gotta knock that game down somehow!

Walnuts, hickory, and oaks look like they're going to throw a good crop this year. Not only will that draw in more game, but that crap keeps forever. I've discovered several thousand dollars worth of ginseng within 100 feet of the house - back in the day, ginseng and hides was as good as money around here for trade, and probably will be again before it's over. Got some 'sang berries out of the woods last week that I plan on planting in shady places in the yard, to protect it better from poachers, but it'll take 5 or 10 years for it to get big enough to amount to anything.

My plan to become Vice Lord of the area isn't really going to plan. I didn't get enough corn this year to make an ounce of 'shine, and my weed isn't bushing out like it oughtta, so not producing very well, either. In Hard Times, trade in Vice Supplies booms - that's how my family got into moonshining to begin with, during the Depression. Can't have it all, I reckon.

My whole point is that storing up food is a good thing, but can become too much of a good thing. More than a year or two of canned and dried goods is too much - you should be producing before that much runs out, else you'll be falling behind. Stored stuff is just a buffer in my opinion, to provide breathing space to get production underway. Your main plan should be production, either of food items or of trade items to GET the food items you'll need later.

.Back in the day, everyone around here kept about a year or two's worth of canned goods, dried goods, and root crops in a cellar, which was constantly rotated out with new crops going in as the old was eaten out. That's the plan, if you've got enough ground to do it, and remember, you can always make raised beds and such in a yard to supplement what you have, even if it's not enough to live on altogether.

.

Corned beef, oh yes.  I could live off corned beef.  I make a mean corned beef hash, I could eat that every day, no problem.  Grow some potatoes, bell peppers, onions, get some chickens for the eggs to go with it, and I'd be happy until the end of time 

[Ninurta]

Corned beef, oh yes.  I could live off corned beef.  I make a mean corned beef hash, I could eat that every day, no problem.  Grow some potatoes, bell peppers, onions, get some chickens for the eggs to go with it, and I'd be happy until the end of time 

Me too. I usually make sandwiches out of it, but hash is not out of bounds, and it can be worked into a variety of other things. Grace won't touch the stuff, so when it's here, it's mine, all mine!

It's preserved with "corns" of potassium nitrate ("saltpeter"), hence the name "corned beef".

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[Schmoe]

Corned beef, oh yes.  I could live off corned beef.  I make a mean corned beef hash, I could eat that every day, no problem.  Grow some potatoes, bell peppers, onions, get some chickens for the eggs to go with it, and I'd be happy until the end of time 

Me too. I usually make sandwiches out of it, but hash is not out of bounds, and it can be worked into a variety of other things. Grace won't touch the stuff, so when it's here, it's mine, all mine!

It's preserved with "corns" of potassium nitrate ("saltpeter"), hence the name "corned beef".

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Lucky.  My wife likes corned beef too, and I'm limited on where I can hide it.

[Snarl]

Glad to see people on this board realize food stocks ain't gonna last ... no matter how much you put away before the storm.

That guy also produces 95% of his own electricity via solar panels, but they are a pain in the ass to keep cleaned enough to produce. Everything has it's trade-offs, I reckon.

Indeed it does. Right now (for me) it's a fiat cash trade-off. I've been working a property out your way. I see it as a lodge ... room for a couple of single family homes to boot. It's not farmable and that's a major loss for me. I don't even think you could put a stall barn in there that'd be worth the cost. But, it's got super clean water and powered by hydroelectricity.

An electrician advised I swap out my backup 1.5KW for one that's as much as I can afford. He said we've got very little cost to make that happen and the main 5KW is more than enough for what we need now and the foreseeable future. His thought is: be ready to share if anyone else gets the idea to be neighbors. 

Gonna have to put a road in there after Spring.

As Grace mentioned, we don't have a huge stock

No one's been through a SHTF in America. Can't guess at what it'll be like. A lot more violent I imagine than what I saw over in Africa. Their SHTF is like watching a train wreck @ 1/10th speed.

Were I to guess, a 60 day supply ought'a be enough. More wouldn't hurt but you wouldn't want to become dependent on pull-tab food until it totally runs out. People are gonna have to learn how to scrounge and forage and grow.

Pretty sure no one's gonna show up to help. Anyone showing up is there to help themselves.

we've got 200 pounds of "ice melt" salt that you'd best believe in a pinch would get pressed into service for curing meat.

Come on, Brother. Bulk salt is super cheap. Buy it in 50lb blocks from a feed store and smash off what you need with a hammer. The blocks are safe for animals so they've gotta be safe enough for curing meat. Ain't no tellin' what else they've got in that ice melt, but I ain't never seen deer licking asphalt.   

My plan to become Vice Lord of the area isn't really going to plan.

My whole point is that storing up food is a good thing, but can become too much of a good thing. 

Your main plan should be production, either of food items or of trade items to GET the food items you'll need later.

Smart as you are, I'd never worry about you and Grace. I just wonder which of you two is _really_ gonna wear that crown of the Vice Lord.

[Snarl]

I keep meaning to stock up on things, but I just never do.  

You mentioned you have a wife. Get busy and sock at least 'some' away. This is a man's responsibility. 

You're young. One thing I suggest you do is look at what money is worth, how much of it you get paid ... and contrast that with how much a cowboy got paid and what he was paid with back in the 1800s. Trust me: it's worth the time to work that out in your head.

Sooner or later we're gonna fall back to using precious metals as a currency. Precious metals never lose their value. They might get revalued and their actual values may be misrepresented/contrived, but they never lost value.

[OmegaLogos]

Explanation: Forget gold and silver until you have stored up Heirloom SEEDS and FRESH WATER ok!

Personal Disclosure: Both will be worth their weight in GOLD come SHTF!

[Snarl]

Explanation: Forget gold and silver until you have stored up Heirloom SEEDS and FRESH WATER ok!

Personal Disclosure: Both will be worth their weight in GOLD come SHTF!

If you want a 'harvest' ... it's gotta get planted ... and, it has to be 'enough'. I've got enough seed to plant my fields with. The weight of that seed is measured in TONS. The weight of my silage is also measure in TONS. Point being, if my combine ain't running it's gonna take some folks with stamina to hitch up the mules and get the crop in. We're talkin' no-joke-McDoke _work_ ... and you can't pay people for their labor from a harvest that may or may not be.

Truth be told, there's no family that's able to live out of their 'garden'. The quantity of vegetables you can grow at home might be a supplement at best. And ... in SHTF ... who's to stop the neighbor from coming over in the wee hours and taking off with your best tomatoes?   Me? I've only got to worry about the military coming around looking to get fed.   That reality is my own failure to plan and why I place no long-term value on this property. Quicker I'm done with it the better. Should come out ahead if I can make it outta here before 2030.

[Schmoe]

I keep meaning to stock up on things, but I just never do.  

You mentioned you have a wife. Get busy and sock at least 'some' away. This is a man's responsibility. 

You're young. One thing I suggest you do is look at what money is worth, how much of it you get paid ... and contrast that with how much a cowboy got paid and what he was paid with back in the 1800s. Trust me: it's worth the time to work that out in your head.

Sooner or later we're gonna fall back to using precious metals as a currency. Precious metals never lose their value. They might get revalued and their actual values may be misrepresented/contrived, but they never lost value.

Meh.  If it gets that bad, I'll just eat the wife 

[Grace]

@"Snarl"#9 - I don't understand the precious metals thing unless it's brass which has an actual use for someone... 

People will barter what they have for what they need until society rebuilds, or in any black market for those living outside of "society".

[Ninurta]

@"Snarl"#9 - I don't understand the precious metals thing unless it's brass which has an actual use for someone... 

People will barter what they have for what they need until society rebuilds, or in any black market for those living outside of "society".

There are a lot of folks around who have a hankering for pretty, shiny baubles, same as theivin' crows do. Gold and silver don't have that value to me, because I can't eat 'em, but lots of folks take a different view of things. It'll go hard for those folks trying to trade trinkets to me for things I DO value, but they can just move on to someone else that likes shiny trinkets to do their trading, no harm done. They'll not get whatever they're looking for here for bits of shiny, but I'm sure they can find someone, somewhere, that they can get it from for trinkets.

I mean hell, the Europeans got all of Manhattan Island for 24 bucks worth of glass beads, so there is always someone around willing to trade value for pretty baubles.

But in colonial Virginia, hard money was hard to come by, so it was a regular occurrence for folks to get paid in tobacco instead, which was the local medium of exchange. I had an ancestor (Christopher Nutter) that got in a little trouble with the law in VA for stealing an Irish slave girl from the Custis family to marry her. He and she ran off to Maryland where he got a job for the colonial government there as an interpreter to the Nanticoke Indians. He was paid in tobacco, 1000 pounds a year, by the colonial government of Maryland for his services, rather than hard coin.

The thing about gold and silver, or any other medium of exchange, is that it has value for some, but not value for others. The value of a thing is defined ONLY by the value others place on it.  If someone values my tobacco, for instance, then they'll bring something to trade that I value. Not gold or silver, but maybe a peck of beans, or a pound of lead, or something like that. Gold and silver have too high a melting point to melt into bullets, but lead is just right. I can't eat a silver quarter, but I can tuck into some soup beans and corn bread.

After the collapse, a fella could not hire me to secure his spread by offering shinies. I'd have no use for them. He'd have to pony up something I value in order to get me to work for him. For instance, he might be able to hire me for salary in ginseng, farm produce, or even hunting rights on his spread.

I've seen court documents where debts were settled in ginseng and hides. I've seen the records where Daniel McCune sold a wife he'd gotten tired of "for an averagable deer hide" - those sort of transactions are why a dollar is now called a "buck". Daniel Boone sold buffalo hides to the militia at Castlewood, VA, for powder, lead, flour, and coffee, the outstanding balance to be paid in coin "at some future date", which turned out to be the end of the war - Dunmore's War, not the Revolution... and to get that coin, payees had to travel all the way to Romney, in what is now West Virginia, to see the paymaster at the end of the war. No idea how many were actually willing to make that trip. My great great so many greats back grand dad (Adam O'Brien) did make that trip, because they owed him for 132 days service at 2 shillings six pence per day - a total of 16 pounds and 10 shillings - a kingly sum in those days, for scout work for the moving army on their way to Point Pleasant and destiny.

Other fellas reduced the amount that Lord Dunmore's government owed them in money by taking their muskets at the end of the war, which the government allowed but reduced their pay by 20 shillings - the value of the musket. Since the troops were getting paid one shilling and six pence a day, that musket they took was worth 13 1/3 day's marching or fighting. In modern terms, if one gets paid 500 dollars a week, that's $1333.00 worth of firearm, for what amounted to a shotgun shooting slugs... but they needed those muskets - there was a revolution coming just a couple years later, and a musket was faster to load than the rifles they carried normally... and that's an important consideration when other folks are shooting at you, and you want to be able to shoot back fast enough to stop them from doing that..

It's really all just a matter of what your vendor places a value on, whether a trade can be struck or not.

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[Snarl]

@"Snarl"#9 - I don't understand the precious metals thing unless it's brass which has an actual use for someone... 

People will barter what they have for what they need until society rebuilds, or in any black market for those living outside of "society".

Gold and silver don't have that value to me, because I can't eat 'em, but lots of folks take a different view of things.

in colonial Virginia, hard money was hard to come by, so it was a regular occurrence for folks to get paid in tobacco instead

The thing about gold and silver, or any other medium of exchange, is that it has value for some

The value of a thing is defined ONLY by the value others place on it.

Since the troops were getting paid one shilling and six pence a day, that musket they took was worth 13 1/3 day's marching or fighting. In modern terms, if one gets paid 500 dollars a week, that's $1333.00 worth of firearm

It's a "medium of exchange" ... and it doesn't weigh a lot compared to what one needs to get by on for a few days. Like most of us, gold and silver are valueless dead weight if they don't serve as that "medium of exchange". The value they can represent right now can't be controlled by the gooberment. You can mint your own coins with ease and these are just as valuable (actually, quite a bit more) than the gooberment's coins with a false face value stamped in to them.

One simply needs to reason out what that worth is, whether it's in the form of a Troop's pay or a cowboy's daily earnings. I'd hate to have to lug around a thousand pounds of tobacky (damn ... that's a lot of leaf!!) to any potential trade ... which might just fall through.

Best to have some trade-worthy metals on hand for SHTF.

@"Grace"#140  My hope was that people would look at what I wrote and takeaway that in this economy it's damn near impossible to set aside anything for the day the rains come. You could get a ten dollar gold piece for ten days worth of work as a cowboy. You might not collect that wage until you rode in off the range. Figure you're out riding for three months and you come in and collect $18,000 worth of gold in today's markets. You're going back out in a couple weeks ... and unless you've blown it ... that's all savings.

Who can do that these days? Nine gold coins floating in your pockets. No income tax. No inheritance taxes. It's a simpler world we're getting to and it's possible to be there already. "He who has the gold ... makes the rules wears the Vice Lord's Crown!!" 

[Infolurker]

I wish I could find an old post which referenced "Levels of SHTF".

Anyway, PM's are good for those "slow declines" in which hyperinflation becomes an issue (Think Venezuela).

I got some silver just in case in the event of a "Slow Burn".


But again, the only use they are for is to "buy things" that you need or as payment for transportation, mobile money, etc.

It is a prep to get after food, water, etc.

Unless you plan on bugging out to another country that is. 

I diversify to "try" to prep for any eventuality.