We just added another 500lbs of white rice to the stores. Buckets were at least 25% more expensive and organic white rice was almost 100% more expensive vs 2019, the last time I did a big run.
All signs point to dramatic price increases due to lack of supply come this fall. Biden spoke to the UN and said we should all be expecting food shortages.
The combination of general supply chain issues, with specifically low supply of fertilizers and diesel, combined with an epic drought here in the US, on top of already miserable soil conditions, makes for a pretty scary outlook…
Here’s an old document that is still relevant today. Nuclear winter was a myth intentionally created in the early 80s to sell countries on signing the non proliferation treaty. Nuclear war is quite survivable. If a detonation were to occur, more people would die from lack of preparation and ignorance than from the actual blast.
Knowing the direction of the wind at the time of a blast is very important. Wind is more important than proximity to the blast when predicting fallout.
My only insight is the more the better… We have a chunk right now, finally to a level I feel borderline comfortable (I saw comfortable lightly, because tbh, I don’t think I could ever be “over stocked”) with, our prep room (MB’s walk in closet got dedicated to this) and shed are getting pretty full (despite setting them up with racking etc)
We are stocked very heavy on different rices (and other shit like barley) and beans & lentils. Have a variety of canned goods and seasonings. Lots of salt. Also have mre’s and lots of freeze dried meals (mainly mt house and Auguston farms). In my area the amount of wild game is insane, so ammo for hunting is just as important to me, so been continuing to stock that as well. Really want to get into trapping also, one of the next things I plan to get into.
Doing 150 meat birds this season, just one round. Also Building a root cellar this summer and plan to expand our garden area. Also plan to plant more apple (and pear) trees on our creek (there is already 4 old ones that all still produce really well, along with a couple plumb trees)
Really thankful this has been an ongoing “hobby”, would be shitty to just be getting into it imo…
Salt, and to a lesser extent sugar, are too often overlooked as essential preps.
Root cellar and dedicated pantry were at the top of our list for our improvements as well. Pantry complete, root cellar excavated but incomplete unfortunately
We do just basic meat specific birds (we have about 25-30 eggers in a seperate area). I buy all the feed for the entire run at the start (we buy for 10-12 weeks and if I harvest Earlier the rest of the feed goes to the eggers), grow them for 8-12 weeks and then harvest. (They can live way longer just fine though, we kept one from our first batch last summer and put it with the eggers, it’s fucking huge now lol)
For processing/storage we have a plucker and basic gas burner. Goes pretty quick actually. Once they are plucked we pre chill them in ice/water baths, “shrink wrap” and then they go into the freezer.
I really need to get a larger gas tank (or get set up on solar) for my generators so I could keep atleast my freezers running if shit went south.
Currently if shit went south, the chickens become the first protein on the menu until they are gone haha
We have a fenced area (maybe 50x50) for them with a couple basic lean to structures for cover. Left uncovered since We don’t really have owl issues because of our dogs (or at least that’s what I have attributed it to) and these fuckers don’t really fly. Nothing fancy, but works well. They are super lazy compared to our eggers and don’t really do jack shit lol could probably even do more in that space tbh…
Let me shoooow yuuuuuuuu a betta waaaaaaaay 
