Day #7...and 4,5,6

First of all, let me just say how irritated I am right now. I just spent that last 4-5 hours updating this blasted post (10 minutes at a time) and Mark's laptop DELETED IT!! If course, computers do things "all by themselves". :- I had nothing to do with it. Simply an "I-D-10-T" problem.

Anyway....I thought I would take a minute to update you on our suffrage experiment. This has turned out to be a bigger pain in the butt than I could have ever anticipated. I am learning so much though. I'm so glad that with all of the little (and not so little) kinks we have had, that we are able to fix and compensate for them now instead of worrying about them later. The scriptures are right...if we are prepared we will not fear. Here are some of the things that I have learned...

1. A 25 lb bag of sugar goes really far when you are only making sweets every once in a while. It does NOT go very far when you are cooking, baking, canning, freezing and drying your livelihood in addition to every day living. I never realized how much sugar we really do consume in syrups, sauces and other condiments.

2. Same thing goes for flour (see #1). 11 cups of flour sounds like a lot. However, considering that it only makes 4 loaves of bread and we can eat a loaf every 2-4 days...it isn't that much.

3. Making your own flour is a royal pain in the neck!! We don't have a generator so an electric grain mill wouldn't work during a power outage. So we pulled out our hand cranked mill that we use for cracked wheat cereal in the winter. We had to run the wheat through 4 times to make it even a remote resemblance to flour. We were able to make whole wheat waffles with it though. Very...very...very dense waffles.

4. Don't stock up on "novelty items" for food storage. These would include special marinades, "limited time" products, etc. They just expire, go bad and you've wasted all that money. This also goes for new items you haven't tried before. A new brand of Spaghetti sauce that is $1 a bottle isn't a good deal if you buy 12 and no one likes it.

5. Earthquake proofing is important. I had an experience where my "backyard bunker" (see previous post) knocked a small bottle of raspberries off the shelf. What a mess it made!! Wow. What would happen if we ever had an earthquake? Oh yeah! WE LIVE ON A FAULT LINE!!

So we have almost completed our food storage safety plan as much as we know how. We have sorted it by item, date, size and quantity. We have them put it in a box just tall enough for the bottle and put a label on it. Then, we take our shredded junk mail, cardboard, bubble wrap, newspaper, old clothing, etc and put a little cushion between the bottles inside. The boxes go on the food storage shelves and it's completed with bungee cords being stretched in front of the shelves where the Plexiglas doesn't cover. That way, they will be less likely to fall off the shelves when bounced up and over the "lip" of the shelves. We haven't quite completed it all yet, but we're well on our way. It might seem like overkill, but if we do our part, the Lord will do his when "the big one" hits. As far as flood proofing goes, we're still working on that one.

6. I am grateful that Brynlee likes wheat bread, wheat waffles, wheat cereal....because Landon doesn't.

7. Mark's biggest thought actually relates to the Internet. This is only an experiment, but what would happen if this were "real" and we had no Internet access. It's easy to look up canning processing times, recipes, ideas, food safety,etc. with Internet access. If we didn't have that, we'd be eating canned beans from the jar. So planning becomes necessary.

8. Time banking becomes critical when you are cooking all your meals. It is just as easy to make 10 loaves of bread as it is 1. (This is hand making it, not using a bread maker.) But you only need to haul out your ingredients once. You only knead the batch once. You only put it in the pan once. Making 1 loaf of bread each day for 5 days takes a lot longer than 5 loves at a time. The same thing goes for waffles, cracked wheat cereal, oatmeal, granola, etc.

9.Kids are resilient. When we announced to Brynlee that we were going to do this, she thought her life was over. No McDonald's. No Jungle Jim's. But she looks forward to helping me with the new recipes. She loves to make up her own lunches by choosing individual bottles of fruits or veggies and coming up with new creations. She loves to crack the wheat by hand. "It's good exercise" she says. I'm just glad she is helping.

10. Eating plant based proteins are cheaper than animal based proteins. This should be no surprise. A pound of kidney beans or black eyed peas cost a lot less than a pound of hamburger or chicken.

11. WATER, WATER, WATER!!! It's great that we have a bunch of dehydrated food, but did we plan the extra water to reconstitute it? Why do we have 8 of those 5 gallon, orange coolers sitting empty in our driveway? We can put water in those. Even if the water becomes undrinkable, we can still use it for cleaning, washing dishes, flushing toilets, bathing, etc.

So those are some of the things we have learned so far. We still have a LONG way to go before we will be self sufficient. I think that is why the law of consecration works so well though. Our food storage strengths and weaknesses come together to create safety and security for everyone. Mix your 159 cans of tuna fish with my 71 bottles of canned relish, adding someone else's homemade bread...put all of it together and we may not be living "high on the hog" but we'll survive, nourish our bodies and spirits, and be none the worse for the wear. We may even learn a lesson or two about obedience. I know I have.

If you have any suggestions about fuel/energy sources, communications, transportation. etc...these are the next things we are going to be working on.

We love you all. Here's to suffering!!