Today I signed a lease to rent a farm house. It is on two acres of land I can use and I am more than ecstatic about it. I can't wait to get out there. Moving at this time of year doesn't seem like a good idea to most people, but because it isn't planting season yet, it is the best for me. I have a month to look over the land and plot out where things can go on the property. I also can see how much of my time can be allotted to actually running some farm like stuff.
I am so happy to finally be able to have a garden, an area to store my jars, and the landlord showed me where to put the chicken coop! Fresh eggs, gardening so I don't have to spend $40 a year alone in tomatoes from the farmer's market (I will still need to go to friend's farms for pears and apples since I can't plant trees on a rental place), and I am thinking of maybe getting rabbits to raise for more meat purposes.
Stay tuned everyone for pictures!
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
Saving Emergency Water Without Going Broke
Down in a numerous parts of the United States we have been having unusual weather. How many could have ever predicted seeing snow in Florida or Louisiana? I am up in the area that usually has that type of weather. The storms brought about outages of power and supply chains all over. Without power a lot of people lose water supply. Not many know this fact, and it can come as surprise to those who don't have weather like this often.
So, this made me think about things here. How much water do I have stored if we lost power and couldn't get a fresh supply? I am bad at this, unfortunately. I live in a small apartment. I had only one gallon per person in my house for a day, which means I had only five gallons of water stored. Sadly this isn't enough. According to most sources, like FEMA and other agencies, they recommend having a gallon of water for every person per day. This means my family of five needs five gallons per day. They also say we should have enough stored for three days of not receiving services. In my house that is at least 15 gallons of stored water.
I don't use a lot of water in jugs on a daily basis, so I needed to figure a way of storing water that wouldn't spoil. In plastic jugs the water needs to be rotated every 6 months. From everything that I have read about this, it is mainly because plastic leeches into the water. I didn't want to do this due to money of buying water purified and sealed, and because I didn't have a need of water in this form to be able to rotate it every six months.
I needed to do something that didn't need rotation like this.
My solution came to me while restocking my shelves after my daughter was released from the hospital last month. My sister had used up a lot of my food to feed my other kids and her own while she watched my sons. I moved around my home canned foods and took stock of what had been used. I have quart and pint jars sitting empty now. Could I put water and seal them like with food?
The answer is: yes. Sealing water in canning jars is actually what I needed to do. Glass doesn't leech into the water, they can be purified tap water (filtered through a BRITA if you feel like it), and they don't need to be rotated as long as they stay sealed and stored correctly. The only other problem I encountered was "stale" water. This is easily fixed at the time of use by pouring quickly between two glasses a few times to add air back into the taste. This was my solution to every problem I could come up with.
So, taking my jars that had been emptied I boiled BRITA filtered tap water on my stove for ten minutes and then poured it into my canning jars. I then processed in a water bath for twenty minutes to seal them. After they popped and cooled on my table top over night (in the dark) I stored them on my shelves in a cool and dark space.
Now I have my first three days of water stored. I know that in a real emergency I could actually end up with more than my five immediate family members. This is bringing me to the goal of storing as much water as I can for my family, my sister's family, and some extras for possible friends stranded at my place. I also know that some of my friends don't believe in being prepared and will end up at my door for help.
So, a new problem has developed itself in my prepping. Can I store enough for my new calculations of expected "guests" in an emergency? Probably not. That is a lot of gallons of water and if the problem goes for longer than three days then we have a lot of people suffering. Up here it is possible to go up to a week or longer without power due to ice storms or constant blizzards. Back to the drawing board for me, then.
I am continuing to find jars on sale, for free or giveaway. I will continue to store water into them for now. First harvest isn't until June here, so I don't need any jars for any food at this moment and I have to store them even empty. I feel they are being put to wonderful use sitting on my shelves with water for emergencies.
So, this made me think about things here. How much water do I have stored if we lost power and couldn't get a fresh supply? I am bad at this, unfortunately. I live in a small apartment. I had only one gallon per person in my house for a day, which means I had only five gallons of water stored. Sadly this isn't enough. According to most sources, like FEMA and other agencies, they recommend having a gallon of water for every person per day. This means my family of five needs five gallons per day. They also say we should have enough stored for three days of not receiving services. In my house that is at least 15 gallons of stored water.
I don't use a lot of water in jugs on a daily basis, so I needed to figure a way of storing water that wouldn't spoil. In plastic jugs the water needs to be rotated every 6 months. From everything that I have read about this, it is mainly because plastic leeches into the water. I didn't want to do this due to money of buying water purified and sealed, and because I didn't have a need of water in this form to be able to rotate it every six months.
I needed to do something that didn't need rotation like this.
My solution came to me while restocking my shelves after my daughter was released from the hospital last month. My sister had used up a lot of my food to feed my other kids and her own while she watched my sons. I moved around my home canned foods and took stock of what had been used. I have quart and pint jars sitting empty now. Could I put water and seal them like with food?
The answer is: yes. Sealing water in canning jars is actually what I needed to do. Glass doesn't leech into the water, they can be purified tap water (filtered through a BRITA if you feel like it), and they don't need to be rotated as long as they stay sealed and stored correctly. The only other problem I encountered was "stale" water. This is easily fixed at the time of use by pouring quickly between two glasses a few times to add air back into the taste. This was my solution to every problem I could come up with.
So, taking my jars that had been emptied I boiled BRITA filtered tap water on my stove for ten minutes and then poured it into my canning jars. I then processed in a water bath for twenty minutes to seal them. After they popped and cooled on my table top over night (in the dark) I stored them on my shelves in a cool and dark space.
Now I have my first three days of water stored. I know that in a real emergency I could actually end up with more than my five immediate family members. This is bringing me to the goal of storing as much water as I can for my family, my sister's family, and some extras for possible friends stranded at my place. I also know that some of my friends don't believe in being prepared and will end up at my door for help.
So, a new problem has developed itself in my prepping. Can I store enough for my new calculations of expected "guests" in an emergency? Probably not. That is a lot of gallons of water and if the problem goes for longer than three days then we have a lot of people suffering. Up here it is possible to go up to a week or longer without power due to ice storms or constant blizzards. Back to the drawing board for me, then.
I am continuing to find jars on sale, for free or giveaway. I will continue to store water into them for now. First harvest isn't until June here, so I don't need any jars for any food at this moment and I have to store them even empty. I feel they are being put to wonderful use sitting on my shelves with water for emergencies.
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