Laura’s Prepping Diary- 9/15/11

Much needed rain is still falling in these early morning hours.  I can hear it overflowing the rain collection barrel outside the window and find myself thinking how much we are not capturing yet because we have exactly one gutter on our old house.  Another thing that needs attention…

I’m glad to get another couple hundred pounds of food in mylar bags and stored safely away in buckets as Joe mentioned.  I was reminded again of the Achilles’ heel of those things, though-  punctures.

As always seems to be the case, I run short on buckets and then have the food sitting around in mylar bags for a few days until we can get “to town” again and get more.

I had no good place to set these bags while they waited and, as a result, they were shifted around several times.  When I checked each over before putting them in the buckets, I noticed one had gotten a hole.  Something pointy apparently had pierced the bag (fortunately, near the top so that the contents had not spilled everywhere) and it no longer had a seal.  The oxygen absorber inside would have been “full” and useless, so I had to start over on that one.

But, good to check each bag now before putting it away and than being disappointed later when it was inedible and I was counting on it.

By the way, one clue to search carefully for a hole is if one or more bags do not look as shrink-wrapped as the others.  (Part 2 on sealing food in Mylar is coming up).

The other main preparedness work I’ve done recently is painting a Craigslist find for use in our rabbitry.

I try to take a few minutes every morning to scan the for sale items in “farm + garden” and also “free” items for our area on Craigslist while I apply coffee to my sleep deprived brain.  I’ve found some great bargains- one was this custom made rabbit hutch that is so solidly built that it took 4 of us to lift each piece into the bed of the truck.  We got it for $50.  I’ll do a posting on it soon.

Anyway, I moved one of our does- which we hope is expecting a nice large litter within a couple weeks- into what is now our Maternity Ward.  I hope to have pictures of babies lined up in the nursery window before long.  🙂  Eight weeks after that, I hope to have pictures of rows of canning jars full of lovely white meat lined up on a shelf.  I’ll keep you posted.