Emergency Prep Drills

[moolie]

Pretty sure the Food Storage Made Easy girls will kick off their 7 Day Challenge sometime this week, based on the dates on the previous years' challenges--anyone planning to join in and test their emergency preparedness?

 

[moolie]

So the 7 Day Challenge has begun this morning over at www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net: Day 1

Today's challenge centers on food storage and having the ability to plan meals for a week based solely on shelf-stable foods, advanced task is to plan shelf-stable meals for a month. No fridge or freezer foods. Anyone up to the challenge? Post your comments here!

I've already got our meals planned for the month of September (see my journal) but if I had to feed my family solely based on shelf stable food we'd have to make some changes...

 

[moolie]

So I made up a (fairly boring) meal plan based solely on shelf-stable foods. Never came up with a decent weekly Sunday brunch, so I left Sunday mornings blank for now--our family needs eggs for that meal and the challenge rules said no fridge food and your chickens (not that I have any) got stolen, so no fresh eggs--and we don't personally have any stock of dried eggs so we're hooped for that meal. I guess we'll be having toast with peanut butter or something similar, or maybe even leftovers, instead of a nice Sunday brunch

Here's my month of shelf-stable meal plans, sans Sunday brunch--all items listed as "canned" are home-canned foods:

Planning meals and cooking without fresh dairy and eggs would really be interesting!

 

[moolie]

Today's Day 2 Challenge is all about water and only used stored water to accomplish all daily tasks: bathing and sanitation, cooking and drinking.

Is anyone else playing along?

 

[moolie]

So, from the Day 2 Challenge :

Todays Tasks:

Cook all meals (and CLEAN UP) using only stored water
Breakfast was frozen berry/yogurt smoothies with cold hard-boiled eggs (I cooked these on Tuesday) and toast with butter plus apple juice
Lunch is home-made pizza pockets, the girls filled their water bottles from our stored water (we have a 55 gallon barrel plus some smaller 1 gallon jugs) as did I
Dinner will be Chicken Enchiladas from the freezer plus veggies and dip, easy to wash the veggies with stored water, kids will have milk and hubs and I will have juice rather than water because I'll be tired of stored water by then.

Take a shower or bath using stored water (Dont cheat and skip this one!)
Neither of my girls had a shower this morning because they had to be at school extra early for volleyball tryouts, hubs took a shower before I got the email so he isn't really playing along on this one, and I have set our camp shower bag out on the deck to catch some rays so I can hang it in the shower and "take" a shower later--I don't actually need a shower today because I took one yesterday afternoon after doing some garden clean-up, but I'm heating the water anyway--we'll probably use it to wash dishes after dinner, the breakfast and lunch prep dishes are sitting in the sink waiting for one big wash-up after dinner.

Use stored water for flushing toilets
Not going to be an issue with me being the only person home today, yellow will mellow and without getting into too much personal detail I will use an ice cream bucket of water from the outside rain barrels to flush anything more "solid" when the need arises. Good thing I haven't emptied them yet, but will do so soon to give the trees a nice drink and ensure we don't crack our barrels once we hit freeze-up.

Calculate your usage for the day and use that number to determine how much of a water supply you actually have
I'm going to guess and then see how we did: I think I'll need a gallon of rain barrel water for the toilet, a gallon of potable water from our stored water (55 gallon barrel and various 1 gallon jugs) for cooking, 4.5 gallons of potable water for the solar shower (I don't fill it all the way to 5 gallons) for washing up and dishes (I'd have to double this if I were going to actually take a shower/wash my hair today), and about two gallons for drinking and miscellaneous. So maybe about 15 gallons max?

FILL any empty water containers you have been procrastinating on filling
I actually followed their advice on their website by bleaching out and filling up ten 1 gallon juice jugs after use over the past few months because I knew this challenge was coming again, so I don't have any empty water containers other than a collapsible plastic 5-gallon water container we take camping, I could use that for the next item if need be. We also have lots of 5 and 6 gallon buckets around, 4 are out in the greenhouse right now acting as heat sinks to keep the greenhouse warm at night when the temperature dips down to freezing.

Make a plan for how you will collect/purify additional water if/when you run out
We live near a creek and have the afore-mentioned collapsible 5 gallon water container plus lots of 5 and 6 gallon buckets around, easy to drive down (or walk with the kids' old wagon) and bring some water home. If we had to use the creek water for real we'd let it settle for a while, filter it through some clean sheets, then boil it. If we had no power or fuel for boiling we'd put it into canning jars and lay them out in the sun to purify .

Todays Limitations:

For this day, and ALL days of the challenge: no spending money, no going to stores, and no restaurants

Do NOT use running water at all. To help you not cheat, you can turn off your main water supply for the day
Advanced Tasks:

To conserve water, use a sanitation kit rather than flush stored water down the toilet.
We do have a camp toilet (bucket with toilet lid and garbage bags, but not going to mess with that today, we've done it when camping and know how so that's the important part.

Get ambitious and do a load of LAUNDRY with stored water.
Our front loader won't work without a hose hookup, so I'd have to do this by hand--5 gallon bucket or the bathtub and a plunger to agitate with. It would take a lot of water to wash the big things like jeans, but it's easy to wash out socks and undies in the sink with not too much water as long as they are rinsed well. Fortunately we don't have much laundry at the moment so I don't need to bother with this. Have done laundry by hand lots in the past and I'm sure I'll do it again though!

Go to the nearest source of fresh water and fill up several water containers and purify it.
Not going to, but certainly know how (see above).

 

[moolie]

Not part of today's challenge, but along the lines of the kits that my kids and I made up for them to have at school, is our

Car Emergency Kit

Not really one kit per se, but several items that we always have in the car:

A small toolbox from the dollar store that we keep under the passenger seat holds various tools: multi-screwdriver/socket tools, crescent wrench, electrical tape, multitool, box cutter, tape measure, tire pressure gauge etc.

Under the front driver's seat we have a folding shovel and jumper cables plus a stainless steel "sierra" cup and can of sterno plus a pair of leather work gloves (not shown).

In the middle console we have a first aid kit that we've personalized for our own needs.

In a pocket on the back of the driver's seat we have a zippered plastic bag (from a sheet set) containing a folding stove, mylar emergency blanket, washcloth tablets, emergency candle and matches in waterproof orange container, small LED flashlight, garbage bags, plastic eating utensils, travel box of baby wipes.

And in the glove box we have (not shown) 2 sets of winter gloves, two toques (knitted winter hats), and a seat-belt cutter along with several maps--city, province, and a North America driving atlas that we use on road trips. When we go on road trips we also make sure to bring along specific province/state and city maps for where we are going and any places we'll go through along the way.

Our glove box also holds our car cell phone charger so we can always make calls (my cell phone is usually dead because I don't use it that much so I often forget to charge it, but if I need to make a call it is always in my purse and I can always plug it in with the charger cord).

Not shown (because I only had so many hands to bring this all in from the car) are 2 rolled fleece sleeping bags that can unzip into blankets. In our trunk with the spare tire underneath the trunk floor we also have (not shown) several sizes of bungee cords and a length of rope that we've used as tie-downs and for various camping purposes over the years.

In the bottom of the toolbox we have our tire repair kit--sticky "plugs" and a few tools to get the job done--this is the most often used item in our car emergency kit.

 

[Denim Deb]

If I was all set up for this, I would have followed along. But, I just haven't had the time.

 

[moolie]

If I was all set up for this, I would have followed along. But, I just haven't had the time.

I totally hear you. Time is a huge thing, and it definitely takes time and serious energy to DO what they are asking, let alone just THINK about the issues. We first followed along with this challenge last year and learned tons just by reading along. This year I'm doing the "on paper" things like planning the shelf-stable menu and tracking actual water usage etc. but we're not changing our life radically--just making sure that we could handle the challenges in real life.

I think there are definitely levels of participation, they say to take everything pretty literally and really do it because it's the best way to know what you can handle, but we do some of the things they talk about as a matter of course like say when we go backwoods camping (no water or any other services, dig your own pit toilets etc.) and have to know how to survive/thrive under those conditions. Of course things would be a bit different if we had to live like that at home, and that's where the real planning and prep comes in (for us, at least). Everybody's at a different point with it all and we're just trying to learn from the process.

I'd love more convo here about it all, especially from people who are way more prepped up than we are, but it doesn't seem that anyone else is really interested in this one.

So anyway today's challenge is all about getting your medical history organized, learning about first aid, and being prepared with medications and learning about alternative meds--totally in line with what several people on this forum have been talking about recently! Have a read: Day 3 Challenge

Oh, and yesterday we used less than 10 gallons of water, so that was cool to track

 

[Icu4dzs]

Interesting approach. Seems like those two gals are working to get people to think ahead, assuming they are who they say they are. (I am always skeptical of anyone who wants to know about what others are doing in this regard, particularly since you can't really know who you are talking to).
the concepts are interesting and I have thought about all of them. I come from a background that sent you out into the woods with nothing but a knife and said "come back in two weeks...if you survive!" That made all of this seem a little less daunting. Adding women and children to the mix does add complexity to the situation though. They have needs and issues we didn't have back then.

If you want to try those things I'd say do it, but keep the results to yourself.
Saepe Expertus, Semper Fidelis, Fratres Aeterni
Trim sends
//BT//

 

[moolie]

Well, I don't know about you, but a blog run by a couple of pretty transparent Mormon moms from Utah who've recorded their lives in pretty personal detail over the past 3 or 4 years doesn't scare me too much

Busy weekend so I haven't had a chance to update this thread, but...

Saturday's challenge was to prepare your family for (I assume) the Mom's absence while she stayed with a friend or relative that is ill. No biggie in my world, hubs and my girls know full well how to run this household and there would be nary a blip in our life, so there was nothing for us to think about there. I think for people with younger children it would be a way bigger deal, or perhaps for families where the husband doesn't really do anything around the house, but not an issue at our house.

Sunday's challenge was a day with no electricity, again no issue for us as it actually happened the other evening. No problem for our family to cook without power, we have lots of camping equipment as well as a propane grill and I've even baked bread in the grill in the past. Light in the evening was no problem either, we have the Lee Valley hand-cranked lantern plus a couple of kerosene lanterns and lots of mini-LED flashlights around the house. One thing they mentioned specifically was to "keep the family entertained" without power, also no issue in our world--we're not a very "plugged in" family, no video games, not reliant on tv (we don't watch much at all) etc. We all love to read and we have lots of board games, that evening the girls had lots of homework and then we played Clue and Monopoly before bedtime.

Today's challenge is an evacuation drill and to only eat the food in our 72-hours kits all day, so the kids will be eating from their at-school emergency kits--no lunches to make! I won't actually be "evacuating" but we did see how long it took to get everything on our list into a pile by the front door and it only took us 5 minutes--so we feel pretty good about that.