Prepping for June 2007

Just curious what people are doing.  

I have been buying bulk ends and pieces of bacon. It's usually sold per 3lb bulk. I use the bacon drippings on the dog food, after the can dog food problems, plus it helps their coat. I freeze the bacon pieces to use in the future for cooking, etc.

Sounds good! We raise rabbits and chickens. Also have a garden. We used to have goats for the milk. Keep Prepping!

We're sitting on ready. We have extra over-the-counter medicines and three months prescription medicines. About six months plus of food for four adults and four children. The two dogs and two cats have three months of food. We are blessed to have wild hogs ( I can't believe I said that) which we can shoot and feed the animals and us if need be. We also have cattle. This year the rains came after four years drought so hay will be cheaper and we have lots of natural grasses. I continue to buy extra toilet paper, laundry soap, bar soap, rice, and beans. I try to keep up on rotating. I did buy some Wal-Mart white solar lights ($15) yesterday, they are great to read with when the power goes out.
    

Picked up a bunch of free shelving and organizing supplies. Bought a small freezer off of craigslist to use to extend food's shelf life, kill bugs, and take advantage of specials.     

Hi BMW1! Their isn't really any need to keep med's. for rabbits and chickens. The main thing is to keep everything clean. Fresh water everyday for them.Put a lot of wood shavings in the chicken coup and clean out and put fresh shavings in twice a year. For rabbits use half inch wire fencing on bottom so coupes stay clean. Good Luck!

Good for you guys! Sounds like your right on the ball! Better safe than sorry!

BMW1 wrote: Hi Coyte, I was thinking about getting some rabbits and chickens.  Do you need to keep any kind of medicines on hand for the chicken and rabbits.  If so what would you suggest.  Thanks

Just a quick note. I read rabbits overheat pretty easy, so you might want to consider some access to shade.

Do you like bury the wire or dig a trench and then place the wire in said trench and cover with removed dirt?   What is to keep the little rascals from digging under the 3x3x3? 

OH!!  I thought you just had wire around them.........

Do you let them out for exercise??

us city folks have a lot to learn! 

That is great stuff to have around.

    Ro2935,

I think if you look in general discussions in this forum. The folks here got some good ideas on prepping.
I think you got time to get caught up. You may need to just shop a few more time each week than you usually do.
But you will be fine. I am happy you are prepping.
Congradulations another prepared citizen joins us to fight bf. Good luck in your prepping.
If you got a extra room with a closet just put all your preps in there. You could convert the closet with one of those portable shelfing systems they sell. And make shelfs to hold all you supplies.
Under the bed totes are a good way to utilize space.
And if you got a space where you can put up one of those
work bench metal shelfing systems you can put totes on each shelf almost like drawers. Label each tote. And you good as gold to fine what you need in a hurry. Not to mention if you needed to leave in a hurry. You just grab the totes.

PrepGirl

We are getting fuel for winter... now.

  Hi Floriduhgirl, I also continue to add to my preps.   The broken silver and gold that you want to buy,are these what you call damaged pieces.  It's a wonderful idea.  How do you determine how much you are willing to pay for the broken silver and gold?  Are you just running an ad in your local paper?  I would like to do this too.  Thanks for any help that you can give me.

I have also started prepping that little bit more and just 'Feeling Bad' I'm checking sites more often( which is how I found out about this site about a week ago) I also ,about 10 mins ago sent an email to ALL my contacts saying along the lines of 'For those who know me well you might know about my 'little' obsession with the current strain of bird flu, H5N1 which I believe could well mutate into the pandemic human flu that the world is overdue...' I sent them details of a few sites they might want to investigate ...and ended with' you might all think I'm completely off my rocker or want to have me sectioned, and never speak to me again, but for those of you who are interested particularly those in the medical profession or with contacts, I'd be interested to hear your views.   
      So now I've come completely out of the closet and hope eveyone is still talking to me later today. And I have never done anything like that before. Gut instinct tells me something is brewing.

BMW1 wrote:   Hi Floriduhgirl, I also continue to add to my preps.   The broken silver and gold that you want to buy,are these what you call damaged pieces.  It's a wonderful idea.  How do you determine how much you are willing to pay for the broken silver and gold?  Are you just running an ad in your local paper?  I would like to do this too.  Thanks for any help that you can give me.

I found the last paragraphy of this article important. Even those who don't have extra money to buy gold bouline, you may find your recycled gallon milk jug filled with rice or pinto beans being more precious than gold.

Wednesday, July 4, 2007
GOLD as Catastrophic Insurance?

Over the weekend Moneytalk radio host Bob Brinker chastised a caller for wanting to devote some percentage (in the area of 10%-20%) of his asset holdings to gold. The caller reasoned that in the case of some globally catastrophic event (major flu pandemic, largescale nuclear war, a big meteor hitting the planet) which sent international markets plummeting, gold represents the best stability of value guarantee. Even though T-notes and most bank investments are backed by the US Treasury, the infrastructure might not be there to deliver the cash, which in any case would probably be of little value due to astronomical inflation.

Brinker doesn't like commodity investments period, as the investment advice he dispenses is consistently targeted at the valuation of assets at retirement. And in terms of realizing a competitive return over some extended period of time, gold is really the bottom of the barrel, worth about the same today as it was worth in 1980. Brinker, in rejecting the caller's suggestion, agreed that gold is a bulwark against major losses during a recession, but so are treasuries, especially I-bonds which offer protection against inflation. Better to hold those, as they will continue to modestly gain value during much more frequent periods of economic growth.

It seems to me the two were talking past one another. Gold serves as an economic anchor, performing well during downturns. After the tech bubble burst earlier in the decade, gold rose steadily until the beginning of '06, and has since inched back downwards, suggesting the economic slump is fully behind us. Similarly, it spiked in the late seventies and early eighties during a period of high inflation. During the recession of '87, it also shot upwards, reaching a highmark that it wouldn't return to for more than a decade. Although comparisons over several centuries are confounded by new deposit discoveries (potentially altering the price of gold significantly without respect to other economic indicators), gold reached its zenith just as Columbus was sailing westward, presaging the era of the most explosive economic growth in the history of modern man.

This in contrast to I-bonds, which merely hold their value during recessions (but don't hemorrhage value during periods of economic growth or dollar strengthening).

The caller wanted absolute assurance, period, while Brinker wanted absolute assurance assuming the US federal government continued to exist as it does today. In his antagonism toward commodities, Brinker refused to give his approval, which was all the caller had sought after in the first place.

Brinker should've delved into the caller's plans more deeply, instead of rejecting him out-of-hand. If the goal is to find a guarantor of economic value given the most catastrophic of circumstances, how is he holding the gold? If he's using a company like Kitco, is he planning on using a pool account, storing with a global bank like HSBC, or keeping the bullion at his own residency? Only the latter would make sense, given an infrastructure meltdown.

Has he considered what might be superior even to bullion in the basement?
Like ten pound cans, jugs of water, knives, firearms, a maintained garden, gasoline and kerosene reserves on-hand,
a bike with durable tires,
residency outside of metro conurbation and preferably even outside of the suburbs,
proximity to a stocked body of water, fishing equipment, keeping in good shape, and the like?
If a disastrous return to the primordial state came upon our world,
these concerns easily trump what sort of currency stores he has in storage.