People are starting to notice that Central Banks worldwide(especially China) have started to divest themselves of US dollars through one means or another. That means the bill is in the mail. When it arrives, hyperinflation has a good chance of being the result.(See German Hyperinflation story below.) Since the average American uses only US Dollars, they stand to lose everything that isn't a hard asset. A good place for the average American to put their money, is to pay off their home. The property will continue to retain value. You won't be able to sell it, but if you live in it, you are getting the value of it. The monetary value will eventually return.(Probably after the issuance of a new currency.) The stock and bond markets ARE NOT the place to go.(Think 1929.) Even overseas investments will tank when the US goes down the tubes. In a world where the primary concern will be the next meal, precious metals will be useless as a barter instrument. It will regain it's value post monetary collapse. Since what you would be bartering for will probably be food, think about secure storage of a couple of years worth of food for personal use. For a barter instrument food will be king during the crisis. Several smaller secure storage sites for barter would be a good investment. Just remember, not all your eggs in one basket. These will be desperate times and people will do desperate things. Which leads me to personal firearms and security. Investing in a security fence and weapons capable of repelling small bands of people might be in order. Think personal survival. Don't, under any circumstances, show your assets. Friends in fair weather will stab you in the back if desperate enough. Strangers won't think twice. If you look well fed, when others around you are starving, you will attract the attention of "Local Authorities" who may try to commandeer your assets with promises of payment after the crisis. Avoid the situation in the first place. Dress down for the duration of the crisis. Avoid contact with "local authorities". Do your best to be invisible.
Mohammad Ali Khatibi, deputy director for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said, “In the most optimistic situation, future supply and demand will seriously get close to each other and we will not have any additional supply, in the pessimistic situation, oil demand in winter will reach an amount which supply can not meet ... “
Isna also reported him as saying non-Opec production was disappointing but that Opec members did not have major additional reserves available to boost output, so consumers may have to use their own reserves.
Khatibi is saying THEY HAVE NO SPARE CAPACITY. He is telling you THEY CANNOT INCREASE PRODUCTION beyond current levels. He is also saying THEY WILL BE LUCKY IF THEY CAN MEET DEMAND THIS WINTER.
With the Natural Gas situation It could be difficult to stay warm this winter.
Looking at the top book cover, I don't hold much hope that people are going to grow or can their own food.
They don't have seeds (OP naturally).
They don't have fertilizer or compost.
They don't have sufficient water.
They don't know how to can.
They don't have a canner.
They don't have canning jars.
They don't have jar lids.
Even in my boondocks area where you'd expect many people to preserve/can food, my wife and I are one of the few who do.
I wonder how useful canning will be if energy gets really expensive. It takes a lot of energy to boil everything and sterilize it properly. Heck, even glass was not affordable for the poor before the age of fossil fuels, because it took so much energy to make it. (Hence the Bible saying that wisdom is worth more than gold, glass, or rubies.)
Well, in my case I can run the electric stove off our PV system if necessary and, in a worse case, fire up the wood cookstove in the kitchen.
What's even worse is that many foods require pressure canning. How many people have a pressure canner these days? We're the only ones of the four families within a mile of us.
I agree, preserving food would be difficult for most people. Of course, they could always dehydrate. Unfortunately they won't have a dehydrator and won't know how to make one. Even our 2 bushel one would be hard pressed to dehydrate a significant quantity of food.
"...I can run the electric stove off our PV system... "
Really? I haven't spent a ton of time on PV calculations but I do know that electric resistance takes a LOT of electrical energy. How big is your PV system?
The system is 3.6kW which isn't huge. The thing to remember is that no one is going to crank all the burners up to high and turn on the oven when they can.
In our case, we run the jars through the dishwasher and leave them there so they stay hot. (And, if you've missed it in my other posts, I run a 40 gallon electric HWH on the PV everyday the sun is out.) Then we have one small pot simmering for the jar lids which takes hardly any juice.
We use a big burner for the hot water bath or pressure canner. Again, there is no need to turn the burner up to high. The thing to remember is that burners cycle. In other words, the temp control is not like the burner was on a rheostat by rather it pulls a mimimal load of juice and them periodically calls for more juice, maybe 2-3k, for maybe 10 or so seconds. Therefore, the PV system isn't being challenged for any prolonged periods.
Finally, we almost always use the grid for canning since it's sort of set and forget. I was refering to using PV were it the only choice. And, I'll tell you, it would beat the heck out of having to use the wood cook stove on a hot day!
the dishwasher? ... I take it you have no children?
Also as far as a wood stove on a hot day, have you not heard of the Russian summer kitchen (all out doors), or even noticed the intrusive barbecue. Actually I envy your PV system, my remarks are from jealousy there and as well, from the sound of it, the dependable Sun you have.
Thanks Gilgamesh, for a while I thought I was the only crank about dishwashers and dishwashing. I actually enjoy dish washing, not drying though, air dry is best anyway and cleaner. Also when you have a headache it's better than all analgesics, with the possible exception of Demerol. ;>)
Actually, it is kids who are the energy suck - we chose to never have any. As far as my case, it is run off the PV system in the afternoon. The water is solar heated. It uses 6 gallons a load which is once or twice a week. My experience is it is more energy efficient than hand washing. But, suit your self.
I'm not sure about the 'water' bit...dishwashers have been shown to use less water than handwashing.... although it's not clear whether any water required in the manufacture & disposal of the dishwater, as well as that required to cool the power generation plants is included.
A standard "Stove circuit" in a North American breaker panel is 40 Amps @ 240 Volts = 9.6 kw, there are a few 30 amp stoves available (= 7.2 kw) , used mostly in mobile homes or old houses with 60 amp electrical services but they are getting hard to find and are more expensive than the larger ones.
Solar dehydrators can be made using a variety of scrap or recycled materials that will likely be available, especially once the abandoned suburban houses start to be salvaged.
We've got a pressure canner, but the truth is that there is very little that we absolutely would have to can under pressure. Sweet corn could be dehydrated instead, and green beans could be salted away in crocks; lots of other vegs could be salted away as well. (That presumes that there will continue to be a salt supply; as salt is among the oldest of all trade goods, that seems like a pretty safe bet.) As I'm sure you know, tomatoes and fruits can be canned by hot water process rather than pressure -- considerably more people would have a large enough pot do do this over a wood fire outside if all else fails. It is also a more forgiving & foolproof method; almost all beginners start with this and later move on to pressure canning.
Then of course there are also root cellars, which can include a variety of non-structural underground storage methods. In many locations, some root crops can just be wintered over right in the garden.
Finally, as I said in another post on this same thread, people traditionally would keep pigs, and a lot of the garden produce that was not immediately eaten would end up being fed to the pigs. That was not waste, but rather a different and highly efficient form of storage.
As I explained on another post, I anticipate that people with the equipment and know how will specialize in this. People that don't have a clue when it comes to producing and preserving food will have to produce something else of value to exchange with these neighborhood specialists.
As I'm sure you know, tomatoes and fruits can be canned by hot water process rather than pressure -- considerably more people would have a large enough pot do do this over a wood fire outside if all else fails. It is also a more forgiving & foolproof method; almost all beginners start with this and later move on to pressure canning.
Of course, every book I've read on the topic strongly cautions about water-bath processing, since you have to have a high enough acid content to naturally kill botulism bacteria. The only thing we water-bat process is tomatoes, and even then only when our pressure canner is full. I certainly haven't found water-bath canning to be more forgiving, especially when we were newbies. Our pressure canner takes much less time, energy, and effort than our water-bath canning. It only takes a tiny flame to get our pressure canner up to pressure and even less to hold it there. Our water-bath pot takes gas at full blast and you can't turn it down much until you're done.
Then of course there are also root cellars, which can include a variety of non-structural underground storage methods. In many locations, some root crops can just be wintered over right in the garden.
Root cellars rock! We had some of our potatoes in there until a few weeks ago (eight months!). And that was just a closed-off corner of our basement. "Putting Food By" covers both canning and root cellaring, but "Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables" covers root cellaring in much greater detail.
I have two large pressure canners and two waterbath canners.
I use the pressure only for foods that require it. Tomatoes,jams,jellies..etc, and pickles don't require it as plenty of acid.
If questionable then I pressure can.
As to Leanans statement on energy. Its easy to do outside with a wood fire. With waterbath all you are really doing in most cases is creating a vacumn to seal the lids.
Botulism and salmonella prone foods need the higher heat (via pressure) to destroy the spores and such. But with greenbeans many did not pressure can in the older times but just cooked them a long time to destroy whatever might possibly be tainted and thats IMO why country food like greenbeans are very throughly cooked down here. To be sure no getting sick. That translated so most southern cooking is highly seasoned with jowl,fatback or bacon and cooked extra long.
Canning is a lot of fun. You get great satisfaction from seeing all those nice jars full of healthy food and no middle men involved ,except for flats(lids),everything else you saved.
You can also ferment foods. Very healthy too.
I know you are aware of all this Todd but just using your post to speak on the subject.
However even here in the rural outback many (most) do not can food anymore. They go to Walmarts or whatever. Just lazy or the younger folks just don't care to. Having never had to do it before.
Blue Ball puts out and excellent book. Also 'Putting Foods By' is very good.
I ferment,can,dehydrate and freeze. I just dehydrate fruit and tomatoes,,some peppers. I usually also grow my own spices. Garlic,oregano,basil,sage and so forth.
Its the only way to go.
Today I brought a sack of cane sugar. Now they are putting it in 4 lb sacks and charging $2.49...no more 5 lb sacks I guess, so I went and brought a 25 lb sack for $5.00 at Sams Club.
The merchants are starting to rape us with food prices. How is it that Sams Club can sell 25 lbs of sugar for $5 yet the grocery stores charge half that for 4 lbs? This tells me they are really screwing the public.
Thats one reason I preserve my own garden produce.
Next year,chaos suspended a bit I will bring up a hive of bees. Build my supers and uppers this winter. Then I won't need their sugar anymore.
I don't find canning a chore. Sit out on the porch with a fish cooker fired by propane,some mixed drinks and a good cigar and easy chair. Not that much work. Preparing the food is a tad of work. Cleaning cutting etc.
I can put up 3 canner loads easy before the day heats up. Two huge burners on my fishcooker brings them up to high temp fairly fast. I have a 500 gal propane tank I own and am going to rent another. Just using it for cooking I think I can get 5 to 10 years out of 1,000 gallons.
Each of the seven subtypes of C. botulinum produces a different botulin toxin.[3] These are labeled with letters and are called A to G types. Types C and D are not human pathogens. A "mouse protection" test determines the type of C. botulinum present using monoclonal antibodies.
In the United States, outbreaks are primarily due to types A or B, which are found in soil, or type E, which is found in fish. Optimum temperature for types A and B is 35-40° C. Minimum pH is 4.6. It takes 25 min at 100°C to kill these types. Optimum temperature for type E is 18-25°C. Minimum pH is 5.0. It takes about 0.1 minute at 100°C to kill type E C. botulinum.
This is why two of my principal items to stock from other peoples' street-waste has been glass and mirrors. (Also Aluminum Sheet Flashing and Foil-lined rigid insulation)
These materials are very durable if treated well, and can set you up to do that precious boiling and canning with a nice, sunny day.. also dehydrate foods for longer-term storage, bake, simmer, clean etc..
At the recycling center, nice big panes of storm-window glass are just smashed up into the bin. With all the people replacing old windows with DoublePane Vinyls, there are lots of storms windows floating around which could be working for you.
I wondered what your seemingly perverse fascination with mirrors was, glad to hear I surmised incorrectly, ... even here on the coast we get enough sun to make a food dehydration under glass a possibility instead of the usual mold infested stuff and with mirrors cut into parabolic reflectors, my goodness what a variety of joys to be had. We need some sort of depository to put good helpful ideas like that in.
My small addition here which, I mentioned before about self employment in a PO work environment, is to stock up on a few glass cutters.
If you have any more information on how you are building your sunshine machines, I for one am interested.
Yeah, I've seen dehydrator plans on MotherEarth News that are just a glazed box with black inner faces sending the heated air up into an 'oven' chamber where the food racks live. The Solar Ovens out there can be as simple as Tinfoil glued to cardboard walls, helping about 2-3 suns worth of light heat up a glazed, insulated container with a darkened pot or breadpan inside.
I'm also using some 30"x78" Patiodoor tempered glass to make Solar Hot Air boxes, which can warm up the household air by blowing it through a sun-warmed sheet of black felt or similar fabric that divides the box into front and rear chambers. Supposedly (and understandably) better heat transfer than the similar flat-plate versions. I scored a dozen of these from a neighbor, and another 8 to 10 that are about 44" square. In this game, it all becomes about surface area..
One of my clients tells of his grandma and her collection of wooden racks. Always had some veggies on these wooden racks all over the home, drying the veggies.
Those are WWII posters. The govt successfully campaigned for these things before, they could do it again. Leanan's concern about energy used for canning could probably best be answered by Airdale. He's here this morning.
not energy free but free energy : uses stored solar energy (in the form of heat) for evaporation. I have used this system quite succesfully for cooling some beer on sailboats.
Be aware that like all open-cycle evaporative coolers, that design depends on having a low relative humidity. It'll work wonderfully in dry areas like California, and not at all in places with 100% relative humidity, like NYC on a hot summer's day.
Ultimately, to can things you first need to mine the ore, and a smelter to render the ore into the metal needed to make the can. Mines could use renewable electricity. Smelters can be run on wood or charcoal. Then you need a rudimentary manufacturing facility to make the cans themselves, which could be run by solar/wind/hydro. It is a very complex process, but the technology is several centuries old, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning.
Vacuum sealing is my preferred method. I can stockpile several rolls containing several million plastic bags in a much smaller space than cans or jars and the solar and wind based electricity I produce will run the mechanism. It may not be sustainable over several generations, but for the moment it makes the most sense.
As for envious unfriendly visitors, the best defense is to have your whole community doing the same as you--a confederation if you will. It's the building of such a confederation that provides the challenge.
We've gone to mason gar lids because they are more foolproof and thus safer, but that isn't what they used to use. They used to use jars with wire bales and a rubber seals. The jar & bale are of course reusable over and over again unless they take a quick trip to the floor. The rubber seals should not be reused, but rubber is a renewable resource (presuming that at least a little trade can be maintained with tropical areas). Thus, once a sufficient inventory of jars has been produced to provide a sufficient storage capacity for the population, the ongoing resource flows required are quite minimal - glass and steel wire for a few replacement jars each year, and rubber for the seals.
Jams,preserves,and jellies were once sealed in jars with wax.
Lasted quite well too. My step mother did this a lot. Myself I never tried it but it looks easy. No metal required and really any jar would work, pints or half pints preferrably since it can grow mold once opened in time,however the mold is usually harmless.
Tomatoes are the best and easiest to can IF you use ones with enough acid, like Rutgers. Hybrids usually need an infusion of citric acid or lemon juice.
Drinking home canned tomato juice in the winter is one of life's great pleasures.
Airdale-City folk don't know what they are missing.You can hardly buy something this good and this healthy. No additives, no chemicals, no middlemen.
My mother used to home can jellies and jams with parafin, I suspect you could also use bee's wax. My favorite was dewberry, a ground growing blackberry here on the Texas Gulf coast, followed by mayhaw, a kind of crabapple of the southern swamps.
My father kept a couple of hives of bees. Lots of honey, our big honey producers in Houston were chinese tallow and ligustrum and other privets. Bees also keep strangers out of the back yard, they're great security.
Momma also canned a few pickles-exotic varieties like watermelon rind and hot, garlic pickled okra. Also a few chiles, jalapenos and serrano peppers. Its all fun and good, and a few jars of jam or exotic pickles make excellent christmas gifts- they're very personal gifts. I got a great gift of one from a friend last xmas-a lime/loquat marmalade, my best present.
OilmanBob, I have several fig trees in my back yard and I still make fig preserves every year using pint Mason jars and parafin. The birds get about one third of the figs, the squrrils and raccons get about one third and we humans get the rest...if I arise early each morning and pick the ripe figs before the critters beat me to all of them!
I was just watching that David Attenborough show on amber, Jewel of the Earth. Inside the amber, the Poinars found these insects and miniscule parasitic worms that live most of their lives inside figs. They can't survive without figs, so they know there were fig trees millions of years ago.
Interesting, but it didn't make me want to eat figs.
I would not. Bees wax is a target for many different critters to eat. Moth larve, bacteria, et la.
You can even powdered beeswax and use it to break down fossil oil stains. The beeswax attracts fossil oil and provides an energy source boost for microbes.
Dewberries once were common around here. Not any longer. Haven't seen one in years and years.
My pear ,apple and peach trees produced nothing this year. No bees and hard freeze.
I will miss the pear preserves, bees wax or not. I have planted one hell of a row of okra and peppers as well. I am going to have a good time this fall.
BTW my garlic grows wild and rogue. I have a huge harvest coming up this July as a result.
I tried the parafin wax thing once, but couldn't get it to maintain a tight seal all the way around the lip of the jar. Maybe I didn't do it right. As long as jar lids are available I'll keep using those.
Leanan's concern about energy used for canning could probably best be answered by Airdale. He's here this morning.
I doubt it, unless his advice would be to burn a bunch of wood. His 1st posts where 'bout being a hunter gatherer ferchristsakes.
A project that has been mentioned here (and on worldchanging I believe) used evacuated glass tubes in a trough based heliostat with oil being the heat transport medium. The most recent post on this type of tech was MIT engine thingie.
The article mentioned how the output temp was over 400 Deg and is being used for canning by the remote villages in Central America. If there is enough interest in me digging up the links, I'll bother.
And drop your 'project' to harass me. Its getting stale and if you make me mad you will wish you hadn't.
In fact put the put the heliostat up your azz and I'll stick with the waterbath.
You need to go back to the teenybopper chat rooms where you could make a few good impressions and come off as the expert to all the cooing nimrods. All your 'googling' and passing it off as knowledge is quite obvious.
For my part you can ditch the plastic canning lids,,unless *YOU* have some real life experiences with them that you wish to share instead of googletrivia and hearsay claptrap.
Airdale-I'm getting tired of your dogging me. The next reply won't be so pleasant and likely result in some deletions. Save us all some bandwidth and change you mantra boyo.
As you asked so nicely, I opted to do a bit more digging.
In fact put the put the heliostat up your azz and I'll stick with the waterbath.
Normal English is ASS not AZZ. (and you are welcome for the correction)
And that hot water bath gets hot exactly how? A Heliostat is a good way to convert photons to heat. Far more direct than making wood to burn, natural gas, biogas, PV, wind, hydro ....
(and for all kinds of heliostats http://www.redrok.com/main.htm If you visit the MREA show this week, Duane should be there.
For the theory about them and showing how they are not at all applicable to anal insertion - a matter that seems to confuse Airdale.
People are starting to notice that Central Banks worldwide(especially China) have started to divest themselves of US dollars through one means or another. That means the bill is in the mail. When it arrives, hyperinflation has a good chance of being the result.(See German Hyperinflation story below.) Since the average American uses only US Dollars, they stand to lose everything that isn't a hard asset. A good place for the average American to put their money, is to pay off their home. The property will continue to retain value. You won't be able to sell it, but if you live in it, you are getting the value of it. The monetary value will eventually return.(Probably after the issuance of a new currency.) The stock and bond markets ARE NOT the place to go.(Think 1929.) Even overseas investments will tank when the US goes down the tubes. In a world where the primary concern will be the next meal, precious metals will be useless as a barter instrument. It will regain it's value post monetary collapse. Since what you would be bartering for will probably be food, think about secure storage of a couple of years worth of food for personal use. For a barter instrument food will be king during the crisis. Several smaller secure storage sites for barter would be a good investment. Just remember, not all your eggs in one basket. These will be desperate times and people will do desperate things. Which leads me to personal firearms and security. Investing in a security fence and weapons capable of repelling small bands of people might be in order. Think personal survival. Don't, under any circumstances, show your assets. Friends in fair weather will stab you in the back if desperate enough. Strangers won't think twice. If you look well fed, when others around you are starving, you will attract the attention of "Local Authorities" who may try to commandeer your assets with promises of payment after the crisis. Avoid the situation in the first place. Dress down for the duration of the crisis. Avoid contact with "local authorities". Do your best to be invisible.
Mohammad Ali Khatibi, deputy director for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said, “In the most optimistic situation, future supply and demand will seriously get close to each other and we will not have any additional supply, in the pessimistic situation, oil demand in winter will reach an amount which supply can not meet ... “
Isna also reported him as saying non-Opec production was disappointing but that Opec members did not have major additional reserves available to boost output, so consumers may have to use their own reserves.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Business_News&...
Khatibi is saying THEY HAVE NO SPARE CAPACITY. He is telling you THEY CANNOT INCREASE PRODUCTION beyond current levels. He is also saying THEY WILL BE LUCKY IF THEY CAN MEET DEMAND THIS WINTER.
With the Natural Gas situation It could be difficult to stay warm this winter.
Looking at the top book cover, I don't hold much hope that people are going to grow or can their own food.
They don't have seeds (OP naturally).
They don't have fertilizer or compost.
They don't have sufficient water.
They don't know how to can.
They don't have a canner.
They don't have canning jars.
They don't have jar lids.
Even in my boondocks area where you'd expect many people to preserve/can food, my wife and I are one of the few who do.
I wonder how useful canning will be if energy gets really expensive. It takes a lot of energy to boil everything and sterilize it properly. Heck, even glass was not affordable for the poor before the age of fossil fuels, because it took so much energy to make it. (Hence the Bible saying that wisdom is worth more than gold, glass, or rubies.)
Well, in my case I can run the electric stove off our PV system if necessary and, in a worse case, fire up the wood cookstove in the kitchen.
What's even worse is that many foods require pressure canning. How many people have a pressure canner these days? We're the only ones of the four families within a mile of us.
I agree, preserving food would be difficult for most people. Of course, they could always dehydrate. Unfortunately they won't have a dehydrator and won't know how to make one. Even our 2 bushel one would be hard pressed to dehydrate a significant quantity of food.
"...I can run the electric stove off our PV system... "
Really? I haven't spent a ton of time on PV calculations but I do know that electric resistance takes a LOT of electrical energy. How big is your PV system?
OC,
The system is 3.6kW which isn't huge. The thing to remember is that no one is going to crank all the burners up to high and turn on the oven when they can.
In our case, we run the jars through the dishwasher and leave them there so they stay hot. (And, if you've missed it in my other posts, I run a 40 gallon electric HWH on the PV everyday the sun is out.) Then we have one small pot simmering for the jar lids which takes hardly any juice.
We use a big burner for the hot water bath or pressure canner. Again, there is no need to turn the burner up to high. The thing to remember is that burners cycle. In other words, the temp control is not like the burner was on a rheostat by rather it pulls a mimimal load of juice and them periodically calls for more juice, maybe 2-3k, for maybe 10 or so seconds. Therefore, the PV system isn't being challenged for any prolonged periods.
Finally, we almost always use the grid for canning since it's sort of set and forget. I was refering to using PV were it the only choice. And, I'll tell you, it would beat the heck out of having to use the wood cook stove on a hot day!
Todd
the dishwasher? ... I take it you have no children?
Also as far as a wood stove on a hot day, have you not heard of the Russian summer kitchen (all out doors), or even noticed the intrusive barbecue. Actually I envy your PV system, my remarks are from jealousy there and as well, from the sound of it, the dependable Sun you have.
dishwashers are wastes of money, electricity, and water.
get your kids to do that, or both you and your significant other can get it done right after dinner, 5 mins tops with both working on it.
Thanks Gilgamesh, for a while I thought I was the only crank about dishwashers and dishwashing. I actually enjoy dish washing, not drying though, air dry is best anyway and cleaner. Also when you have a headache it's better than all analgesics, with the possible exception of Demerol. ;>)
A hint. If you use paper assiets, which you can throw away after dinner, you don´t have to dish at all.
And of cource onetime use plastic knifes and forks.
Actually, it is kids who are the energy suck - we chose to never have any. As far as my case, it is run off the PV system in the afternoon. The water is solar heated. It uses 6 gallons a load which is once or twice a week. My experience is it is more energy efficient than hand washing. But, suit your self.
I'm not sure about the 'water' bit...dishwashers have been shown to use less water than handwashing.... although it's not clear whether any water required in the manufacture & disposal of the dishwater, as well as that required to cool the power generation plants is included.
A standard "Stove circuit" in a North American breaker panel is 40 Amps @ 240 Volts = 9.6 kw, there are a few 30 amp stoves available (= 7.2 kw) , used mostly in mobile homes or old houses with 60 amp electrical services but they are getting hard to find and are more expensive than the larger ones.
Solar dehydrators can be made using a variety of scrap or recycled materials that will likely be available, especially once the abandoned suburban houses start to be salvaged.
We've got a pressure canner, but the truth is that there is very little that we absolutely would have to can under pressure. Sweet corn could be dehydrated instead, and green beans could be salted away in crocks; lots of other vegs could be salted away as well. (That presumes that there will continue to be a salt supply; as salt is among the oldest of all trade goods, that seems like a pretty safe bet.) As I'm sure you know, tomatoes and fruits can be canned by hot water process rather than pressure -- considerably more people would have a large enough pot do do this over a wood fire outside if all else fails. It is also a more forgiving & foolproof method; almost all beginners start with this and later move on to pressure canning.
Then of course there are also root cellars, which can include a variety of non-structural underground storage methods. In many locations, some root crops can just be wintered over right in the garden.
Finally, as I said in another post on this same thread, people traditionally would keep pigs, and a lot of the garden produce that was not immediately eaten would end up being fed to the pigs. That was not waste, but rather a different and highly efficient form of storage.
As I explained on another post, I anticipate that people with the equipment and know how will specialize in this. People that don't have a clue when it comes to producing and preserving food will have to produce something else of value to exchange with these neighborhood specialists.
Of course, every book I've read on the topic strongly cautions about water-bath processing, since you have to have a high enough acid content to naturally kill botulism bacteria. The only thing we water-bat process is tomatoes, and even then only when our pressure canner is full. I certainly haven't found water-bath canning to be more forgiving, especially when we were newbies. Our pressure canner takes much less time, energy, and effort than our water-bath canning. It only takes a tiny flame to get our pressure canner up to pressure and even less to hold it there. Our water-bath pot takes gas at full blast and you can't turn it down much until you're done.
Root cellars rock! We had some of our potatoes in there until a few weeks ago (eight months!). And that was just a closed-off corner of our basement. "Putting Food By" covers both canning and root cellaring, but "Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables" covers root cellaring in much greater detail.
Canners,
I have two large pressure canners and two waterbath canners.
I use the pressure only for foods that require it. Tomatoes,jams,jellies..etc, and pickles don't require it as plenty of acid.
If questionable then I pressure can.
As to Leanans statement on energy. Its easy to do outside with a wood fire. With waterbath all you are really doing in most cases is creating a vacumn to seal the lids.
Botulism and salmonella prone foods need the higher heat (via pressure) to destroy the spores and such. But with greenbeans many did not pressure can in the older times but just cooked them a long time to destroy whatever might possibly be tainted and thats IMO why country food like greenbeans are very throughly cooked down here. To be sure no getting sick. That translated so most southern cooking is highly seasoned with jowl,fatback or bacon and cooked extra long.
Canning is a lot of fun. You get great satisfaction from seeing all those nice jars full of healthy food and no middle men involved ,except for flats(lids),everything else you saved.
You can also ferment foods. Very healthy too.
I know you are aware of all this Todd but just using your post to speak on the subject.
However even here in the rural outback many (most) do not can food anymore. They go to Walmarts or whatever. Just lazy or the younger folks just don't care to. Having never had to do it before.
Blue Ball puts out and excellent book. Also 'Putting Foods By' is very good.
I ferment,can,dehydrate and freeze. I just dehydrate fruit and tomatoes,,some peppers. I usually also grow my own spices. Garlic,oregano,basil,sage and so forth.
Its the only way to go.
Today I brought a sack of cane sugar. Now they are putting it in 4 lb sacks and charging $2.49...no more 5 lb sacks I guess, so I went and brought a 25 lb sack for $5.00 at Sams Club.
The merchants are starting to rape us with food prices. How is it that Sams Club can sell 25 lbs of sugar for $5 yet the grocery stores charge half that for 4 lbs? This tells me they are really screwing the public.
Thats one reason I preserve my own garden produce.
Next year,chaos suspended a bit I will bring up a hive of bees. Build my supers and uppers this winter. Then I won't need their sugar anymore.
I don't find canning a chore. Sit out on the porch with a fish cooker fired by propane,some mixed drinks and a good cigar and easy chair. Not that much work. Preparing the food is a tad of work. Cleaning cutting etc.
I can put up 3 canner loads easy before the day heats up. Two huge burners on my fishcooker brings them up to high temp fairly fast. I have a 500 gal propane tank I own and am going to rent another. Just using it for cooking I think I can get 5 to 10 years out of 1,000 gallons.
Airdale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum
Each of the seven subtypes of C. botulinum produces a different botulin toxin.[3] These are labeled with letters and are called A to G types. Types C and D are not human pathogens. A "mouse protection" test determines the type of C. botulinum present using monoclonal antibodies.
In the United States, outbreaks are primarily due to types A or B, which are found in soil, or type E, which is found in fish. Optimum temperature for types A and B is 35-40° C. Minimum pH is 4.6. It takes 25 min at 100°C to kill these types. Optimum temperature for type E is 18-25°C. Minimum pH is 5.0. It takes about 0.1 minute at 100°C to kill type E C. botulinum.
This is why two of my principal items to stock from other peoples' street-waste has been glass and mirrors. (Also Aluminum Sheet Flashing and Foil-lined rigid insulation)
These materials are very durable if treated well, and can set you up to do that precious boiling and canning with a nice, sunny day.. also dehydrate foods for longer-term storage, bake, simmer, clean etc..
At the recycling center, nice big panes of storm-window glass are just smashed up into the bin. With all the people replacing old windows with DoublePane Vinyls, there are lots of storms windows floating around which could be working for you.
Bob
Thanks jokuhl,
I wondered what your seemingly perverse fascination with mirrors was, glad to hear I surmised incorrectly, ... even here on the coast we get enough sun to make a food dehydration under glass a possibility instead of the usual mold infested stuff and with mirrors cut into parabolic reflectors, my goodness what a variety of joys to be had. We need some sort of depository to put good helpful ideas like that in.
My small addition here which, I mentioned before about self employment in a PO work environment, is to stock up on a few glass cutters.
If you have any more information on how you are building your sunshine machines, I for one am interested.
My pleasure.
Yeah, I've seen dehydrator plans on MotherEarth News that are just a glazed box with black inner faces sending the heated air up into an 'oven' chamber where the food racks live. The Solar Ovens out there can be as simple as Tinfoil glued to cardboard walls, helping about 2-3 suns worth of light heat up a glazed, insulated container with a darkened pot or breadpan inside.
I'm also using some 30"x78" Patiodoor tempered glass to make Solar Hot Air boxes, which can warm up the household air by blowing it through a sun-warmed sheet of black felt or similar fabric that divides the box into front and rear chambers. Supposedly (and understandably) better heat transfer than the similar flat-plate versions. I scored a dozen of these from a neighbor, and another 8 to 10 that are about 44" square. In this game, it all becomes about surface area..
So many projects, so little (free) time..
Regards,
Bob Fiske
http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=2302&itemT...
One of my clients tells of his grandma and her collection of wooden racks. Always had some veggies on these wooden racks all over the home, drying the veggies.
Lehmans used to sell the wooden racks for drying.
Those are WWII posters. The govt successfully campaigned for these things before, they could do it again. Leanan's concern about energy used for canning could probably best be answered by Airdale. He's here this morning.
The flip side of that, of course, is that people used to put away food for the winter without canning.
Look what I found. Energy free refrigerator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator
not energy free but free energy : uses stored solar energy (in the form of heat) for evaporation. I have used this system quite succesfully for cooling some beer on sailboats.
Be aware that like all open-cycle evaporative coolers, that design depends on having a low relative humidity. It'll work wonderfully in dry areas like California, and not at all in places with 100% relative humidity, like NYC on a hot summer's day.
Ultimately, to can things you first need to mine the ore, and a smelter to render the ore into the metal needed to make the can. Mines could use renewable electricity. Smelters can be run on wood or charcoal. Then you need a rudimentary manufacturing facility to make the cans themselves, which could be run by solar/wind/hydro. It is a very complex process, but the technology is several centuries old, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning.
Vacuum sealing is my preferred method. I can stockpile several rolls containing several million plastic bags in a much smaller space than cans or jars and the solar and wind based electricity I produce will run the mechanism. It may not be sustainable over several generations, but for the moment it makes the most sense.
As for envious unfriendly visitors, the best defense is to have your whole community doing the same as you--a confederation if you will. It's the building of such a confederation that provides the challenge.
We've gone to mason gar lids because they are more foolproof and thus safer, but that isn't what they used to use. They used to use jars with wire bales and a rubber seals. The jar & bale are of course reusable over and over again unless they take a quick trip to the floor. The rubber seals should not be reused, but rubber is a renewable resource (presuming that at least a little trade can be maintained with tropical areas). Thus, once a sufficient inventory of jars has been produced to provide a sufficient storage capacity for the population, the ongoing resource flows required are quite minimal - glass and steel wire for a few replacement jars each year, and rubber for the seals.
Jams,preserves,and jellies were once sealed in jars with wax.
Lasted quite well too. My step mother did this a lot. Myself I never tried it but it looks easy. No metal required and really any jar would work, pints or half pints preferrably since it can grow mold once opened in time,however the mold is usually harmless.
Tomatoes are the best and easiest to can IF you use ones with enough acid, like Rutgers. Hybrids usually need an infusion of citric acid or lemon juice.
Drinking home canned tomato juice in the winter is one of life's great pleasures.
Airdale-City folk don't know what they are missing.You can hardly buy something this good and this healthy. No additives, no chemicals, no middlemen.
Airdale,
My mother used to home can jellies and jams with parafin, I suspect you could also use bee's wax. My favorite was dewberry, a ground growing blackberry here on the Texas Gulf coast, followed by mayhaw, a kind of crabapple of the southern swamps.
My father kept a couple of hives of bees. Lots of honey, our big honey producers in Houston were chinese tallow and ligustrum and other privets. Bees also keep strangers out of the back yard, they're great security.
Momma also canned a few pickles-exotic varieties like watermelon rind and hot, garlic pickled okra. Also a few chiles, jalapenos and serrano peppers. Its all fun and good, and a few jars of jam or exotic pickles make excellent christmas gifts- they're very personal gifts. I got a great gift of one from a friend last xmas-a lime/loquat marmalade, my best present.
OilmanBob, I have several fig trees in my back yard and I still make fig preserves every year using pint Mason jars and parafin. The birds get about one third of the figs, the squrrils and raccons get about one third and we humans get the rest...if I arise early each morning and pick the ripe figs before the critters beat me to all of them!
Loonking forward to life in bananaville...
I was just watching that David Attenborough show on amber, Jewel of the Earth. Inside the amber, the Poinars found these insects and miniscule parasitic worms that live most of their lives inside figs. They can't survive without figs, so they know there were fig trees millions of years ago.
Interesting, but it didn't make me want to eat figs.
I suspect you could also use bee's wax.
I would not. Bees wax is a target for many different critters to eat. Moth larve, bacteria, et la.
You can even powdered beeswax and use it to break down fossil oil stains. The beeswax attracts fossil oil and provides an energy source boost for microbes.
OMB,
Dewberries once were common around here. Not any longer. Haven't seen one in years and years.
My pear ,apple and peach trees produced nothing this year. No bees and hard freeze.
I will miss the pear preserves, bees wax or not. I have planted one hell of a row of okra and peppers as well. I am going to have a good time this fall.
BTW my garlic grows wild and rogue. I have a huge harvest coming up this July as a result.
Happy canning,
Airdale
No peaches or apples here in my little piece of WNC either. Blueberries and grapes doing well, though.
I tried the parafin wax thing once, but couldn't get it to maintain a tight seal all the way around the lip of the jar. Maybe I didn't do it right. As long as jar lids are available I'll keep using those.
We ate our last jar of tomatoes from last summer this evening.
Leanan's concern about energy used for canning could probably best be answered by Airdale. He's here this morning.
I doubt it, unless his advice would be to burn a bunch of wood. His 1st posts where 'bout being a hunter gatherer ferchristsakes.
A project that has been mentioned here (and on worldchanging I believe) used evacuated glass tubes in a trough based heliostat with oil being the heat transport medium. The most recent post on this type of tech was MIT engine thingie.
The article mentioned how the output temp was over 400 Deg and is being used for canning by the remote villages in Central America. If there is enough interest in me digging up the links, I'll bother.
I was going to post about the plastic canning lids but the site seems to be gone.
www.canninglids.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tattler+lids&btnG=Search
Don't bother.
And drop your 'project' to harass me. Its getting stale and if you make me mad you will wish you hadn't.
In fact put the put the heliostat up your azz and I'll stick with the waterbath.
You need to go back to the teenybopper chat rooms where you could make a few good impressions and come off as the expert to all the cooing nimrods. All your 'googling' and passing it off as knowledge is quite obvious.
For my part you can ditch the plastic canning lids,,unless *YOU* have some real life experiences with them that you wish to share instead of googletrivia and hearsay claptrap.
Airdale-I'm getting tired of your dogging me. The next reply won't be so pleasant and likely result in some deletions. Save us all some bandwidth and change you mantra boyo.
Don't bother.
As you asked so nicely, I opted to do a bit more digging.
In fact put the put the heliostat up your azz and I'll stick with the waterbath.
Normal English is ASS not AZZ. (and you are welcome for the correction)
And that hot water bath gets hot exactly how? A Heliostat is a good way to convert photons to heat. Far more direct than making wood to burn, natural gas, biogas, PV, wind, hydro ....
(and for all kinds of heliostats http://www.redrok.com/main.htm If you visit the MREA show this week, Duane should be there.
For the theory about them and showing how they are not at all applicable to anal insertion - a matter that seems to confuse Airdale.