Category Archives: Food

What exactly should you do to prepare for 2024?

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There are really two parts to what I am thinking, this post is Part #1 and won’t be that long relative to many, actually most, of my posts/articles. I am not sure when Part #2 will be ready…it will be an abridgment of my views, my perspective on the world today, and my assessment of where it is all heading…mostly in 2024, or at least starting in 2024. I guess it will be a manifesto of sorts; I will keep you posted.

This is the post where I will just be to the point and blunt about what I think a person should prepare for. And no, I am not being a hypocrite, I am preparing the same things for my particular situation…as should anyone.

The background to this is two-fold; 1) my assessment of where the world and the USA is today. Number 2 comes from multiple conversations with my wife over the last 3 months.

As for #1, if you have been coming to the site for awhile, or have researched my articles, you know my feelings of where the world and the USA is today…the status of it all. So no need to regurgitate that here in this post. I think the coming article will probably summarize a lot of that. For now let’s concentrate on the conversations with my dear wife which brought about this specific post.

Periodically my wife and I will discuss where we are in our lives, pretty much all aspects of it. We will talk finances, home projects, spirituality status, where our community and church is in relation to the rest of the country/world, and what are the biggest threats she & I face, etc.. Then we talk about what we should and/or could do in each of those areas to help mitigate those realistic threats/issues/problems/deficiencies.

As we recently reviewed those areas where we could/should improve on, it was clear that we should improve our food production and preservation capability. Yes, that means mostly improved gardening stuff. I will post something on that soon, but that project is going very well.

However, as I started contemplating what I should/could suggest to all website visitors I was stumped a little…until this morning (Monday, 1/9). This morning I felt a huge and serious ‘shift’ in my world. I am not sure if it was the world in general or just my world making a very substantial shift. Part of that shift event was knowing exactly what I needed to put out there as the #1 prep item to suggest to all my website visitors/users for 2024.

What I am not going to do is tell you ‘why’ I am suggesting this…I am just suggesting, strongly suggesting, this for you to consider. How you do it…or even ‘if’ you do it…is entirely up to you. But, I think you would be wise to give this some consideration…maybe a lot of consideration…a lot of serious consideration.

So here it is…

Part A (food) –

Store as much food as you can, and then store it as safely as you can against all threats of losing it…or having it taken.

If you want to know my thoughts on food acquisition and storage…my ‘layering’ method…then simply < click here >

Part B (water) –

Store as much potable water as you can, acquire multiple ways to harvest water, and acquire the ability to purify water for drinking and cooking.

You can only realistically store a certain amount of water, max that out. More importantly acquire multiple ways to harvest and then create safe (i.e. purified) drinking water…including highly-portable methods. Remember, you can only carry so much water…but something as simple as a LifeStraw is highly portable and a very good method of providing safe drinking water.

If you want to know my thoughts on water storage and purification…my layering method…the simply < click here >

Summary –

That’s it…nothing more to add. I feel strongly that I should suggest this to you. My reasoning is private and I won’t share it on this website. If I know you personally you can ask me directly.

Food & Water in 2024…early in 2024…as early as you possibly can. Please get to work on this.

Part #2 is now out “the collpase” < click here to read it >

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Lessons Learned – Garden 2023

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  1. Soil is Everything!

I put together some nice raised bed planter boxes…good call on my part. But, what really made the difference was the super high quality soil I made up for those boxes. Plenty of compost, mostly compost actually. And mostly organic fertilizer to help amend the soil even more.

  1. Gotta go Vertical

When you limit yourself on space, as I did with the raised bed planter boxes, you still gotta have space for those plants. I learned that next year I will trellis cucumbers, pole green beans, snap/snow peas, and maybe my small sweet watermelons.

Added benefit…I can grow less sun tolerant veggies under the trellis framework. I will be using the 16’ cattle panels for the trellis work.

And I am going to try tomatoes on cattle panels as well. The tomato cages don’t work for me. I tired wood frames and string this year…fail! So I will try the cattle panel method next year and see how that goes.

  1. Quality not Quantity

I did plenty of planting this year…wanted to see what and how plants would grow with the new system. Yeah…planted too much for sure. Next year I am adopting the “square foot” system and going for just what we eat on a daily basis.

Yup…that means one, ONE, a single zucchini plant!!!

  1. Squash can take over Everything!

So my wife loves squash…butternut, straight neck, etc. So I made sure I planted plenty of it…WRONG! That stuff took off and I can’t the pick-up truck now. On a sad note it took out some of my new raspberry bushes…just choked em out.

Next year the squash gets planted on the outside of two sides of the garden and it will be ‘trained’ to go for the outside chain link fence for some vertical space.

  1. Water Timers

I put it a pretty decent drip and soaker irrigation system. Had to run the soakers during the daylight hours to keep up with the plants and evaporation. This coming year I will have about twice the raised bed boxes and the watering will need to be rotated to ensure the right amount of water getting tot he plants. Timers will be a must to ensure that everything is getting watered regardless of my attention or not.\

I am also planning on ‘grouping’ my boxes so that plants that needed similar watering can be grouped together on the same timer.

  1. Fence

I mentioned in a previous year’s article that one of my dogs thinks organic fertilizer pellets are nothing more than appetizers. So I put up a flimsy wire fence to keep her out of the garden area. Oooooopppppppsssssss…she is smarter than me…she learned she can just push her nose into it and it separates. She then has access to all of the little nuggets goodies she thinks I left just for her to gobble up.

  1. Ground cover between boxes.

I guess I should call this something more appropriate…”Weed/Grass Control”.

You can guess by the title that I will be putting down landscape cloth between the boxes to suppress all of the weeds and grass that invariably will do as well, or better, than the plants in the planters. Downside…I could’ve sold it for hay.

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Plan B, Plan C, and Strawberries…

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So let’s do this in reverse order…strawberries first. But stick around for the Plan B & Plan C part…or jump directly to it.

You know there is always method to my madness 🙂

Strawberries –

Last spring (2022) I put in an amazing small strawberry patch, 8 plants total. Did a great job of prepping the containers, getting compost for a local source, and setting in the plants correctly with love and care. They all died.

Yup, the compost was too ‘hot’…meaning the compost hadn’t sat long enough and was extremely high in nitrogen. Yeah, the new plants ‘burned up’ and died…basically chemical burning from the nitrogen.

So for 2 weeks I flushed the boxes with lots of water and got the nitrogen out, planted 6 plants, and they flourished like crazy. I wasn’t looking for berry production, I just wanted to get strong healthy plants to produce lots of runners to create a large patch. And it worked well. I think the final count by the end of fall was 52 great looking plants ready to hibernate for the winter after I mulched them in.

Then spring hit and I was patient and didn’t ‘unmulch’ them too early which resulted in a great looking strawberry patch with 50+ plants ready to give us plenty of big, juicy, sweet berries. That amount of plants would produce about 25 – 40 pints of berries if all went well. ‘If’ being the operative word…and it didn’t.

I am switching my gardening style over to water-soluble fertilizers…mostly fish emulsion based, but others as well. So, early in the spring it was time to give my plants a good start with fertilizer to bring em up right…a nice dose of fertilizer. Each plants already had a nice bunch of berries started and it looked to be a bumper crop. And that was fine with me because I love strawberries!

I won’t go into all the details but it was a heavily weighted nitrogen fertilizer and I put too much mixture on each plant. Within 10 days all of the berries that had been on the plants were dead or completely gone. Well, with the exception of the 5 berries that I picked, each the size of a marble.

So what happened? Uh, strawberry plants don’t like a bunch of nitrogen…at all…especially in the spring with fruit on the plant. So I had to do some research on the best way to fertilize strawberry plants. Yeah, I know what you are thinking…you’re right.

Generally speaking, I will be using a 10-10-10 water-soluble fertilizer…and apply it after the plants have produced its fruit but well before fall sets it, probably about late August. This will give me strong healthy plants, plenty of runners if I need them, and the plants will be ready for the next year. If the plant flowering looks too thin and spotty I will add bonemeal as needed to the soil and water it in generously.

But what does that have to do with Plans B & C?????? Ahhhhhh yes. Remember I was expecting 25 – 40 pints of berries earlier this spring. Yeah, well, didn’t work out so well did it? But what does that actually mean?

25 – 40 pints of strawberries means 3000 – 4700 calories, 180 – 285 grams of dietary fiber, and most importantly…5300 – 8400mg of vitamin C. OK, the absolute heaven of eating them as well…meaning to help stave off food fatigue. So how would you replace that in a grid-down prepper scenario?

Plan B & C, etc. –

Late last August we had a hail storm hit us…destroying our garden completely. And I just shared how I screwed up the strawberry patch this year. Fortunately for us we are not in a grid-down prepper situation or in dire need to eat from our garden last year, or depend on our strawberries this year. But what if it had been different…and we were dependent on both?

My point, we would have been fine. We have sufficient and appropriate food storage to handle a worst case scenario. We would not have starved and we have enough supplies to replant a garden.

So it looks something like this:

  • Plan A – Buy our food at the store just like normal.
  • Plan B – Supplement store-bought food with garden produce.
  • Plan C (hard times) – Plant larger garden and reduce store-bought food. Barter food with neighbors as needed and appropriate.
  • Plan D (hard times, limited store available food) – Plant much larger garden, supplement with food storage, utilize green house for additional food production. Barter food with neighbors as needed and appropriate.
  • Plan E (very hard times, no store available food) – Plant seriously larger garden, supplement with food storage, utilize second green house for additional food production. Barter food with neighbors as needed and appropriate.

Will my plans work? I have no idea with complete certainty. I do know that without a plan I will fail. But my plans do give me a framework to build on. Starting with Plan B I have to acquire gardening skills and supplies. With Plan C I have to have considerably more garden supplies plus multiple years worth of seed bank. Plans D & E require that I have either built, or have the supplies to build, two greenhouses. That gives me a clear path on what to buy, when, and either store the supplies or produce with them.

Something to think about…for a family of four, to have a large enough garden to feed yourselves you are realistically looking at about 2 acres of well planned, good quality land. Put in your head about 1-1/2 football fields of garden. Yup, that is about what you are looking at on average. Yes, you can go vertical, do ‘square foot gardens’, greenhouse gardening, etc.

My point is this…have you done enough planning to put in over a football field of garden? If not, how long will your food storage last your family? And no, I didn’t ask if you had already put in a huge garden, I asked if you’ve done enough planning to do so.

When it comes to long-term food storage the general rule of thumb is one case (6 cans) of #10 cans of food is enough food for one person for one month. How many cases of food do you have? A family of four would need 48 cases of #10 cans of food stored…properly stored. How many cases of food do you have? Are they all stored in one place such as your house? What happens if your house is flooded, burns down, or is vandalized?

Plan B & C: Generally Speaking –

prepper ics planing section long-term and special projects planning branch responsibilitiesThe point to this article is get you thinking about back-up plans. And back-ups to your back-ups…with every aspect of prepping.

Consider self-defense tools (i.e. guns & Ammo). First, do you have some? Second, are they all stored in the same place? What is your plan if your guns are confiscated or stolen? What happens if they have a part that breaks?

Is all your ammo in one place? What if it is destroyed, stolen, or confiscated? Can you reload your spent brass?

What I am asking you to do is simple…review your plans. What is your Plan A? Do you have a Plan B…if so, what is it? Do you have a Plan C…if so, what is it? Does you family know what your plans are and how to execute them?Basic emergency preparedness for emergencies, disasters and grid-down. Plan Planning

And this review process applies to ALL aspects of prepping!

If you need a guide to help you through this review the 7 Common Risks & Threats to help get you organized in this effort. Another helpful guide would be to review the ‘layering’ aspect of prepping in regards to the 7 Common Risks & Threats – Layering.

Summary –

In April of this year I wrote that I believe that it all falls apart by the end of 2024…ALL of it! < click here to read the article > No, that is not a 100% certain revelatory fact. It is what I see coming based on the cumulative of current events as of April 2023…and as of today as well.

I am thinking it would be a pretty good idea with you and I were ready for that ‘fall’ of America. That way we can protect our families and communities/congregations as best we can. And it could be very, very ugly in this country by then. Then again, it might be all roses and butterflies with pink unicorns for all. But at least you would be ready if it is not that fantasy land and no one gets a unicorn.

Do you have to be perfect in your planning and prepping? That goal is impossible, let alone remotely realistic. But you can do your best and together we can do this!

PLan for bugging out and bugging in. failure to plan will bring failure and that means death or injury to you and your family.

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TIP: Canned powdered milk gone bad…

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Don’t throw that powered milk away if it has gone bad! Use it as part of a garden fertilizer program.

Yup, that old, out-of-date canned powered milk makes a great fertilizer when it is no longer drinkable. Cut the milk mixture by 50% and use it in place of water about once a month during the growing season. The milk has all kinds of great stuff in it that will benefit your plants like bacteria, calcium, etc.

Don’t use it more than once a month. Also, as commonsense dictates…apply it once and watch your plants’ reaction, then apply accordingly.

If you have an aphid infestation you can use a 25% milk solution (75% water) and wipe the leaves with it to help fight the aphid infestation.

If you are making compost at home you can mix in powered milk with the final compost product just before you apply it in the garden. Adds lots of good nutrition, etc.

So now you don’t have to throw away that old canned powered milk 🙂

If you need a source to buy non-fat dry milk for storage you can < click here >

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Food Fatigue & PB&J

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“Food Fatigue” is real and I have experienced it…you probably have too. Food Fatigue is simply when you get tired of eating the same food day after day to the point where you want to slit your wrists. Okay, maybe not bad enough to do physical damage to yourself, but you get the idea.

As I have been working on the garden non-stop for several months I started thinking about Food Fatigue. First off, we are not growing enough food to eat all year long…just not enough garden space or skill/knowledge…or desire.

Hear me on this one…I also wanted to ensure that we have enough herbs and spices on hand for spaghetti sauce to go with all the tomatoes we are growing, enough TVP bacon bits to go with the green beans, etc. And all of that prompted me to think about a food, or combination of foods, to eat to help stave off Food Fatigue.

Remember how many calories you will probably need during tough time (a.k.a. emergencies, disasters, and grid-down)…somewhere north of 2500 for a woman and probably well above 3000 for a man. A young man (14 – 30) doing lots of hard work would need more than 4000 – 6000 calories per day to stay healthy. With that in mind I wanted to not only alleviate Food Fatigue but supply enough calories as well. Then the idea of “other” nutritional requirements crept into my thought process…so much for chocolate chip cookies! Bummer 😦

One of the things I like to eat for breakfast at least 2 – 4 times a week is peanut butter and jelly toast. Yup, and I love it!

I decided that this simple food was delicious, tasty, and stayed with me for the entire morning. And sometimes I eat it on healthy bread, other times I eat it on really good tasting Arrowhead Country Style Potato bread. Yum, yum! It met all the initial requirements but how did it stack up nutritionally…dang, a tough question. I don’t like tough questions when it comes to food…hence, my earlier comment on chocolate chip cookies.

So here we go, to meet 1/3rd of the daily 3000 calorie count for me (1000 for breakfast).

Since I am saying we will run out of bread, and bread making capability, I am relying on our canned bread…Pilot Bread Crackers. And yes, they are very, very tasty and last a very long time…20 – 30 years properly canned such as the product from Saratoga Farms.

So here is how it looks…

PB&J Crackers only –

PB&J Crackers with milk –

PB&J Sandwich with milk –

PB&J comparison crackers vs sandwich –

Note: Don’t worry about the ‘fat’ category. Most of us will easily burn that ‘fat’ doing normal daily survival-type work.

Summary –
  1. Learn what food fatigue is…as it applies to you and your family.
  2. Learn what it takes for you to avoid food fatigue with foods that appeal to you.
  3. Figure out which is healthy…and which is chocolate chip cookies! Yeah, gotta have a cookie now and then 🙂

Okay, bottom line…peanut butter and jelly on pilot bread (a.k.a. crackers) is a decent combination. PB&J with a high quality bread is even better. And of course, don’t forget the milk…ice cold to make your teeth hurt.

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Time to be thinking spring…garden, orchard, & berry patch!

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Yup, yesterday morning got me thinking about spring…garden, orchard, berry patch…YEA!

I’ve been putting it off because of weather, mud mostly, but yesterday was one of my most favorite times of spring (ok, late winter)…pruning my fruit trees.

I spent a couple of hours hacking away at my apple, peach, cherry trees like a man in love. Okay, that sounds a bit oxymoronish I know. But I am pretty harsh when it comes to pruning. Now remember, several of my trees are only coming into their third year, the other 4 are only starting their 2nd year. The single most important goal for new trees…setting really, really good root system. The #2 goal is as strong a trunk as you can get.

#3 is great shape…meaning strong branches, well-formed and correctly placed. To get the branches and shape right…I am pretty brutal when it comes to pruning…at least when the trees are young. I think the main idea…keep the center of the tree as open as possible to allow plenty of light in to ripen the fruit. And of course you want to ensure strong branches to begin with…and that means directing as much of the tree’s energy to producing those strong branches.

So the late winter, dormant, pruning is done. Now, I have to find the right location and dig 4 more large holes (3’x’3) for the 4 dormant apple trees my neighbor gave be last year. They have been sitting in a planter pot just waiting for me to not be lazy and get them in the ground. Maybe Saturday…we’ll see.

But the most fun yesterday…planting 30 dormant raspberry bare-root starts. One of my buddies, and a good neighbor, has a huge raspberry and blackberry patch. He offered some of his canes that had grown outside of his patch…duh, of course I took him up on the offer. We dug up 30 really good looking canes, some of which already had the new starts hiding in the ground several inches below the surface.

He also turned me on to a new product called Agri-Gel. It’s a formulation that absorbs and holds water to roots. The swollen crystals adhere to plant roots, reducing transplant shock. Safe, nontoxic, easy to use. Useful for garden seedlings as well as woody plants. Highly recommended for brambles and conifers. Let’s see if I can tell a difference.

I already had my holes dug, had filled them several times with water to get the surrounding area saturated with water. Remember, I live in a dry part of the country, starting out with moist soil is a must. I didn’t use the native sandy soil. I did a mix of my local compost plus Grow King composted steer manure. No added fertilizer at all in the hole to start out. Brambles should not be planted with fertilizer, wait till they are well established before fertilizing.

I saturated the holes really well with water after planting. I will do a light & loose layer of weed-free straw as a mulch today. I will also cut back the canes to 6” – 12” above the surface. Remember, it is not the old canes that will produce the fruit…it will be the new shoots that come up that will produce the fruit.

I checked on my strawberry patch when I was done. Some of the protective winter straw mulch has gotten a little thin but is still protecting my plants. I am not quite ready to uncover them yet, some cold weather still ahead. But they are close, within a month I am pretty sure. I will look for the new growth on the plants, then they get uncovered…should the weather look promising.

I am behind the curve on building my new above ground containers for the garden this year. I am just running out of time each week. I have already scrapped the cattle panel green house due to lack of time. But, I won’t ignore the planting boxes…and you know why…we must grow food this year!

So how are your garden, orchard, and patch projects coming along?

 

 

 

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Garden: Orchard Fall Maintenance

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January 2021 I started our fruit orchard…with 3 trees. So no, the picture to the left is not our orchard, just a nice picture to make you feel good and impress you.

We started our orchard with 2 apple trees and 1 peach tree. In January 2022 we added 2 sweet cherry trees and 2 more peach trees. One of the peach trees didn’t make it.

All of the above were bare root stock and this was my first real attempt at planting bare root stock and it went well. I should share that experience with ya’ll in another article. In March my neighbor was planting a large orchard…122 trees in all. I helped him and when all was done he was out of space and had 4 apple trees left over; 1 in it’s own planter/container, another planter/container had 3 apple trees in it. All trees were a little on the puny side. He gave them to me for helping. Nice! And unexpected…a blessing.

I transplanted the single tree shortly after I got home and it is doing really well. The container/planter with the 3 trees I kept in the pot. They weren’t dormant and I knew that I would probably kill all 3 if I tried to untangle their roots and plant them. So, I kept them on the east deck and took really good care of them. They are all doing well and I will transplant them once they go dormant this winter…after I untangle their roots.

My maintenance system/process is fairly simple and based on the growing conditions here at our place. I will write more about planting them, but for now I will speak to my “maintenance” process. After the windy season, usually mid to end of June, and again in the fall after the weather turns cold but well before they lose their leaves, I perform the routine. And, I only plan on doing so for the first 2 – 3 years the trees are in the ground. After that, the tree will only be tended/maintained as needed.

This is my second article using this new article system with LibreOffice suite…basically from my Impress presentation (PowerPoint equivalent) program into pictures for posting. Then adding a link at the bottom if anyone would like to download the basics in PDF format. So here you go…

< click here to download the PDF file >

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GARDEN: Strawberry Patch 2022 Fall Update

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OK, this is a new kind of post for me. Yes, it is about our strawberry patch, that stays the same. What is different is how I produce it.

Recently, about 2 weeks ago, I upgraded from our old laptop computer to a new unit. Our old one was running system software and programs from 16 years ago. Yeah, ancient stone tablets…I know. The main problem was the old laptop keep heating up and shutting down…losing work in the process. We didn’t have a lot of choice, had to upgrade.

Along with the computer upgrade I wanted to get away from Microsoft products…that meant leaving Microsoft Office…Yea! After a whole lot of research I decided on LibreOffice suite. It basically looks and acts just as Microsoft Office…but it is free! I have been using it for two weeks, and there is a small learning curve, but it is working out great.

So, I am using LibreOffice Impress (Microsoft Powerpoint) to take photos, adding narratives, and then producing JPEG pictures for the actual post. Then I take the Impress presentation and create a PDF file to attach to the post so folks can download it should they desire to do so.

So now on with the strawberry info…

I have been working on our strawberry patch all summer. My goals were to: 1) establish the original 6 plants in the most healthy state as possible, 2) increase the size of the patch for next year. Goal #1…done! The original 6 plants are in fantastic shape and produced a ton of runners. From those runners I was able to start a whole bunch of “daughter” plants.

So the first round of transplanting yielded 15 plants that I put into 5 more containers. That project can be looked at in a previous post < click here >. Once I got those plants transplanted I was able to start 10 more “daughter” plants. That was successful…and I mean it went really well and the new plants looked great! But I was out of containers and I wanted to test my new raised bed concept.

Next year we are going with raised bed gardening. We tried “post hole” and it just didn’t work out. We ruled out conventional gardening due to the soil and HUGE amount of amending we would have to do…simply wouldn’t make sense from a work or cost perspective.  So we wanted to try container and raised bed styles. This past summer we tried container gardening and it went well. But, I could tell it wouldn’t be practical for any kind of large gardening…meaning, we simply couldn’t grow enough food in containers. But, it would work for something like strawberries. The last of the strawberry patch plants gave us the opportunity to test our raised bed plans.

The last of the plants would go in a 2′ (wide) x 12′ (long) x 14″ (height) that I would build myself. I didn’t want the planters to be complicated, expensive, or difficult to build. So I went with four 2″ x 6″ x 12′ along with some scrap 4″ x 4″ that I had laying around. Yeah, I don’t throw out any lumber anymore…its worth way too much money and comes in useful down the road. I went with a 14″ tall bed, 10″ – 11″ will be soil, then a little bit of wood chips on top, and enough space to allow the water to not flow off and cause erosion problems. I only needed the stacked 2×6’s for a total of 11″ height since strawberry roots only go about 6″ – 9″ deep.

I decided on 2 stacked 2″x6″ boards because they were about 2/3rds the price of a single 2″x12″ board.

FYI…”experts” have opinions on the ideal soil depth in raised beds ranging from 8″ – 11″. Problem is there is no one ideal depth for soil. The depth of the soil is strictly dependent on the plant type…and it varies quite a bit…6″ – 18″ more or less. Here is a chart to give you an general idea…

And even with the chart you can make adjustments…such as with tomatoes. You can actually plant tomatoes horizontally. Since water uptake is the main need for tomatoes they don’t generally care about how the roots are arranged, just the fact that they can get enough water into the plant.

So here are the specifics of the project. You can click each picture/graphic to enlarge it. At the end of the article you can click the link to download PDF file.

Page 1 –

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< click here to download the PDF file >

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TIP: Canning Jar Lids – BUY ‘em!!

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Think about it for just a minute…if you want to eat one jar of food per day and you want to have a year’s supply of food, that means you need 30 dozen canning jars. And that my friend means you need to have 30 dozen canning jar lids…and that is just for one year’s worth of food. That’s a lot of lids.

Now, another thought…what happens to all of those canning jars that other folks have right now, filled with food, and stocked on their shelves, after they empty them and eaten the contents? Meaning, next year when they go to can their garden goodies and they have no lids? Or, about the 2nd year of an extended “grid-down” event and they have no more lids?

My point…buy lots of canning jar lids! Look, if you have the lids then you can use your jars. No lids means no usable jars for canning.

I started the habit that each time I go in Walmart to shop, regardless of the item(s), I always buy a box of canning jar lids (12). Most of the time it is regular mouth, sometimes large mouth. Occasionally I will buy the box that contains 12 lids and 12 rings. The rings I have might go bad via rust, etc. But, I think to myself…if things are bad, a person has jars without lids or rings…then I might get a pretty good trade out of it and end up with a bunch more jars. Or conversely, they have an item or skill that you need…trade your rings and/or lids for what you need.

If you have plenty of cash laying around and you want to invest in a durable, practical item then lids and/or rings are a pretty good option if you ask me. I would only buy Ball or Kerr lids and/or rings if realistic. But, I also don’t have a problem with Golden Harvest. Yes, you can buy lids online at places like Amazon. I have heard and read that most of the Ball or Kerr lids purchased on Amazon are actually counterfeit.

Just a thought…When it works out budget-wise (meaning occasionally), I also buy a case (12pk) of canning jars at Walmart when I am there. I may not need the jars right then, but I will need them eventually. Yup, I will either use them to can next year’s garden produce…or, I will use them for barter when the time is right. Either way, I am putting up a valuable commodity to be used later. So far, since May, I’ve bought an extra 10 cases of canning jars…without any noticeable financial pain. Look at it as a “precious metal” without any metal involved. And maybe, just maybe, in the future they will be more precious than precious metals.

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TIP: Canning Jar Lid Size

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This is going to be a very subjective, possibly controversial, topic. Why? Personal preference for many folks.

If you are into canning you know there are two basic size of canning jar types. No, not pints and quarts…there are a lot more sizes than that. I am talking about the size of the “mouth” of the jar…regular mouth and wide-mouth. Simply put…the wide-mouth is slightly large in diameter than the regular mouth. No, I am not going to give exact measurements…no need to, that is not my point for this post.

So what is the point? Money.

A 12pack of regular mouth lids are $2.97 at Walmart, 12pack of wide-mouth lids are $3.90. Yup, that is 8cents a lid more for wide-mouth vs regular mouth. Big difference?

Let’s go with eating a jar of food per day from your pantry, that’s 30 dozen jars per year, 360 jars. That’s almost a $30 difference in cost…meaning you can buy 10packs of regular mouth lids with that savings. Now, think about having 3 years supply of lids on hand, giving you enough time to wait out an extended supply chain problem…or a grid-down issue. Saving that $30 for each year of lids you buy gives you a four year supply of lids vs 3years supply!!

Yes, I know…there are lots of folks out there that prefer the wide-mouth jars for ease of use, I get it, I really do. And there are folks out there where $30 isn’t a big deal…I get that too. But I am talking about folks who think $30 is a big deal…or $90 is a big savings (if you are talking a 3-year supply).

And just a reminder…don’t forget to have some extra rings laying around as well.

 

 

 

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