don't pressure me, bro

DON’T PRESSURE ME, BRO

Don’t I feel all Super Ninja Prepper now!  One more skill set, I successfully after only one minor glitch succeeded in pressure canning.  Super easy, barely an inconvenience.  Now I’m not so sure why I waited lo all these many years before I started.  It sure would have made my off-grid no fridge years a lot easier.  Of course, I did first learn on a pressure cooker, and I’ve seen so many videos and read so much on the process, I guess I was already semi-trained.  That is not to inflate any achievement on my part.

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Most prepping skills are just like this.  You worry overly much on how complicated and expensive it is going to be, then discover it isn’t all rocket-surgery-like.  It is just having the patience to make the mistakes before you get good enough to proceed, then stick with it until you become a semi-pro.  I’m only a bicycle mechanic ( single speed, NOT geared bikes ) because I continued through feeling like an idiot and having the same thing explained to me over again and again, until it seemed so simple I was confused about the initial fuss.

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Most people can’t see spending the $85 for a pressure canner.  I bought mine because I’m committed to an initial canning run that the unit amortizes within a month to merely an additional eighty-five cents a jar canned.  It will just get cheaper from there.  I’m sure you all remember my comments on turning cash savings into food.  I have always been concerned about cash sitting around waiting for our inevitable Zimbabwe Moment of hyper-inflation.  Yet, if I didn’t have year’s worth of living expenses saved, I wouldn’t feel confident or relaxed in my self-employed role of World Greatest Non-Fiction Writer.

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Yeah, I don’t know if I can ever claim I’ll be a marginal or even good fiction writer.  It is easy enough in principle, even if I was late learning of those principles ( goal, conflict thwarting goal, overcoming each thwart, resolution.  In principle, easy ).  In practice?  Anything you practice enough you get better at, plus there is the Thousand Monkey’s Writing Shakespeare theory.  But while fiction is actually better for our brains to grasp as life lessons, the whole Show Don’t Tell rule is what has my dander up.  What I can tell you in a thousand words, it takes five to ten thousand to show.

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Not very economical of my time.  Anyway, back to savings.  I don’t like the savings in cash, because of hyperinflation ( when you do save cash, only save Twenties.  Retailers might have an issue with larger bills, plus they might be Drug War banned like in India.  Although India was trying to stop tax cheaters ), but I know I need some. I don’t like savings in silver, because of its coming inflated value. All indicators tell me that most likely, silver will soar to gold levels of value.  It just might not happen in my lifetime.

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So, what silver I have, I’m keeping if at all possible.  It is there if needed, but I’ll do everything I can to keep it.  So, it is there for ONLY super duper emergencies.  Not just as a store of purchasing power.  But since I’m mostly going to be grocery shopping if the writing income stops, if I have food stored I can worry 90% less about stored money.  If the economy ( well, WHEN, not “if”, but you take my meaning.  IF it happens in my lifetime, estimated to be for five to fifteen more years ) goes to complete crap and my income drops to effectively zero, I raid the savings.

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And since I’ll be living back out at the B-POD when that happens, I’m back to food, propane and bike parts as most of my expenses.  Food is 90% of that.  If I have 90% of my food in storage savings, only needing to buy potatoes and cabbage and the occasional piece of meat, that means I can relax a little on the feasibility of my savings being adequate.  Right now, I’m covered. I want to have a back-up to my back-up of being covered.

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You can easily be prepped.  It is much more difficult to be Better Prepped, longer.  Well, not difficult.  Time and resource consuming.  Don’t get me wrong.  Extra food storage has its own issues.  Like mobility.  And theft.  They are just LESS negative issues than storing money to buy food.  I have more than enough food to eat now, grid up, for six months.  I have post-collapse food in excess of six or seven years, just in wheat.  What I want to do is stretch out that initial six months to a year and a half.

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For that, I need canned meat.  I would of course prefer metal canned meat, but what the supermarket sells is nitrate stuffed crap.  What I can buy at mail order is a great deal compared to freeze dried, but still NOT on the all that cheap side.  So, glass canned meat is the best I can do right now.  However.  I’ve noticed a perceptible lessening of meat sales.  You can still get cuts of meat through Kroger’s that are nipple tingling awesome, but they now seem to be occurring monthly rather than weekly. Rut Row, Scooby!

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Not that I am REALLY concerned.  I can still stock the heck up on chicken with the occasional pork ass thrown in ( the way I cook the pork, it tastes divine.  Butter and sauce in first thing, medium heat in a covered skillet for a half hour.  Only stir two or three times. It makes $1 pork taste like $3/$4 pork ).  I just don’t like chicken.  It isn’t “stick to the ribs” like beef.  Well, nothing is like beef.  But at least pork is closer than chicken.  So, the days of below cost meat is probably almost over.

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If I started canning today, at six quarts a day ( what the canner holds ), in two months I could have my year’s worth of meat, and in my estimation at a cost of about $500 in meat cost.  Almost doubling that figure with the jars and the canner cost itself thrown in.  But I think I have a much better way to proceed.  I’ll cover that tomorrow.  Hint-butter.  I know it isn’t technically an animal protein.  All that and more, tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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note: free books.  Zombie https://amzn.to/2Jf0Nte .  Another https://amzn.to/2JcADHo .  Here is a non-fiction one, death of democracy in America.  Not sure if it is a leftist spew or a catalog of dysfunction https://amzn.to/2q6pS0E .
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