Preppers: What Are You Excluding?
Kevin Felts 04.10.17
Preppers, what are you excluding from your preps because you have a reliable source?
In the grand scheme of things, the less items you have to stockpile, the better. This frees up money, time, and resources to focus on other stuff. If you have a reliable source for something, would you want to stockpile a large amount of it? Of course not.
I would like to take a few minutes to about some of the items I do not stockpile or stockpile limited amount of.
Hopefully, we can use this as a topic of discussion.
Eggs
While working on a recent video and article about stockpiling freeze dried food, I made a comment on the video that I do not buy freeze dried eggs. Why am I excluding freeze dried eggs? Because I have around 30 hens and can get close to a dozen eggs a day.
Egg production varies depending on the time of year, with production peaking in the summer and slowest in the winter.
When stockpiling breakfast items, I look for foods to help prevent food fatigue with eggs, such as the Mountain House biscuits and gravy.
However, I do buy pouches of scrambled eggs and bacon that are taken on hiking and camping trips. For around the house, it is the #10 cans of breakfast items that do not contain eggs, such as sausage crumbles.
Water
Water is another item I do not stockpile. There is a clear running stream and a well on the property. Rather than storing water in drums, I focus on water filters such as the Royal Berkey, Lifestraw, and Sawyer mini.
Royal Berkey has up to four filters, with each filter having a 3,000 gallon estimated rating. There ceramic filters I am considering to improve the filter life.
Lifestraw cost around $20 (as of April 9, 2017) and filters an estimated 1,000 liters of water.
Sawyer mini cost around $20 (as of April 9, 2017) and has a rating of 100,000 gallons. However, there are reports of the mini slowing to a crawl before it ever gets close to the 100,000 rating, even with back flushing.
The next filter I plan on adding to the collection is the Sawyer Squeeze.
Rabbits
Awhile back I decided not to keep rabbits. I live in a rural area, and it is easier to hunt rabbits than it is to keep them. Keeping rabbits and having to feed them takes away resources from other projects, such as fruit trees and chickens.
Why spend the money to buy cages, water bottles, and feed, when I can walk out of my back door and see wild rabbits running around the field?
To ensure a source of wild rabbits, the tractor is used to pile up brush and limbs. The rabbits use the piles for breeding habitat. Inside the piles, the rabbits are safe from hawks, dogs, and coyotes. So, rather than using cages, I attempt to create natural habitat for the wild rabbits to use.
Fruits
This is a topic I am somewhat divided on. Even though I have a couple of pear and several young fig trees, I feel they are not mature enough to produce a reliable source of fruit. Because of this I continue to purchase, freeze dried fruits from time to time.
Then there are the wild berries that grow all along the rural roads in the area. There are also wild plums that grow all over east Texas.
Rather than excluding fruits from my stockpile of freeze dried food, I still buy dried fruits but not a lot.
What Are You Excluding?
Now that you have some items from my list, what do you feel you have a reliable source of?
Someone who lives on a river or lake would probably exclude freeze dried fish.
If you live in a desert you may don’t stockpile fishing gear.
