August 5, 2025 • 34 mins
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Are you looking to be better prepared for life? Combining 3 lifetimes of experienced, tried, and true prepping and self-reliance with diverse backgrounds educationally, vocationally and regionally. Aligned on the principles of God, family and country to help build a stronger, more prepared community and Nation. We believe every person and family has an obligation to be or become self-reliant and to help build stronger, more prepared communities for all of life's unexpected emergencies, BIG or small. It doesn't matter if you call yourself a prepper, a survivalist, a citizen or patriot; we are all in this together. Our mission is to survive, thrive and carry on traditions of liberty and self reliance through our faith and fellowship
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to another episode of Prepper Talk Radio Radio for
the ready Minded, the podcast for the prepared. We've got
a great show for you today. We're super excited Shane
Scott Shane.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Came out of mi i A. We found him.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Where in the world was shy? We found him, We
brought him back. He's home for now. Who knows where
he'll be next week, but we got him. So Scott,
Shane and I and a very special guest. For those
of you who are watching on YouTube, you'll see a
much part of your face and the three of ours.
And we've got Sarah thrushback Peele's and Pedals. She's known
throughout the interwebs and so if you're interested in learning
(00:40):
about canning food preservation, she is the one. So before
we get started, let's remind everybody to go to our website,
preppertalkradio dot com, click on our resources there and we've
got her book listed there. And so we're gonna talk
a little bit about the book, probably, and we'll also
talk about some things that she's gone through since the
last time she was on the show, and then what
(01:00):
we can do to prepare as we were heading in.
I know it's August, but now's the time to be
preparing for winter, so we're going to be talking a
little bit about some of that.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So we're excited for the show.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Also, remember about our new affiliate program that we're working
on with Preppertalkradio dot com forward Slash Good Life.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Make sure that you go check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
If you want to have an opportunity to be healthy,
stay healthy, and do it in affordable way, you're going
to want to check out that opportunity. Plus, there's an
opportunity for a little bit of a side hustle for
those that are interested in making more money right now.
And frankly, that should be all of you. I know
I am, so we all are, and so you know
some of you are. If you're making good money and
(01:42):
you don't want to have a side hustle, that's awesome, congratulations.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
But if you're interested in that, you go check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
But let's get started, Sarah, thanks so much for coming
to the show. Thanks for coming back. It's been I
don't know how many episodes. I guess I can go
back and look and see how many episodes it has been,
but it's been a minute. We're just oh really fast.
Actually before I'm sorry to cut off if you're about
to say hello, but we're recording tonight. This is episode
right now, episode four ninety one, and so we're nine
(02:08):
episodes from five hundred.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So make sure you're following, make sure.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
You're in our Facebook group, make sure you're on our
email list, because at episode five hundred, we're going to
run a contest. We're going to run a little bit
of a some promotions, we're going to give do some giveaways,
So make sure you're following us everywhere and stay tuned
for that episode because when we drop it, we're going
to have some fun. So all right now, Sarah, tell
us a little bit about what's going on, what's happened
(02:33):
since the last time you came on, and how are
you doing.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Thank you guys for having me back again. I'm so
excited to talk about a lot of different things today.
We've had quite a few challenges this year so far,
and we're only halfway through the year. So we had
a flood in February, and we've had a bunch of
our meatbirds die on us. We've lost flocks of things,
and it's been a year of challenges for sure, So
(03:01):
I'm glad to be here and talking about all of
my hardships. So hopefully it can help some other people.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Well, at least that didn't happen when it has already
hit the fan, Right, at least you can practice now
and have those failures now when it's low pressure, right
when it's not. And maybe it is critical for you,
but not terribly critical, right.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, it's it's always critical because every mistake you make
is money, right, and so that that always has a
ripple effect on the entire homestead. But so many of
the mistakes weren't weren't ours, you know, they were just
weather related and we had a flood, so it was
you know, a burst pipe. And you know, there are
(03:42):
things that we can learn from the situation. We definitely
learn where the gaps are in our preps, and we
definitely go into the situation the second time around looking
at it a little bit differently, and things that we
can do to kind of circumvent things like weather.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Wow, so you had a and you were telling us
earlier that in February you had a pipe burst in
your Yeah, and that was you were saying that it
was just a small section of the pipe that wasn't
covered and you know, you insulate your pipes. You do
your best to insulate the pipes and make sure everything's insulated,
but you missed a little section and that was the
very section that was kind of the weak link in
(04:21):
the chain, and that's where the burst and just devastating damage.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so we we lost the entirety of our downstairs
so everything, and the insurance they paid for like the cleanup,
but they're not going to pay to repair or replace anything.
So we're about forty thousand dollars in the hole right now,
you know. And we had a bunch of our preps
down there. But thankfully, you know, we had stuff put
(04:49):
in buckets and everything was in rubber made toats, so
when the pipe burst and everything flooded, it was protected,
which was good. We didn't lose a bunch of our preps.
But yeah, we start insulating pipes and preparing for winter now.
So August first, this week, we've already started looking at
(05:11):
what we need to do moving forward to get ready
to go into winter. That one tiny little section of pipe,
it was about one inch that burst. It sounded like
an explosion in the house, and I went running downstairs
and by the time I hit the bottom of the stairs.
It had been no more than ten or fifteen seconds probably.
(05:32):
I was like in a swimming pool. I was standing
in water, and I was like, you have that moment
of like you know, and so I ran to the
room to shut off the main valve. My children all
know where the main valve is, but I use this
again as another teaching exercise to you to them. After
this was done, I was like, where's the main valve?
Go shut it off now? And I had one kid
(05:53):
that was like, I kind of think it's this one.
I'm like, no, you don't have time to think. You
need to know right now because when that pipe burst,
it flood in a matter of seconds, you know. So
we always try to use that time to reintroduce ideas
to our children and make sure that we're you know,
laying that foundational work of Okay, this happened, how are
(06:15):
you going to fix it right here, right now, real quick?
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Yeah, memory, I didn't know who the pipe was as
a kid, Like my dad didn't have the thought. Maybe
he did tell us. Maybe that's on me, but we
just weren't told where things were until I was probably twelve.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And I'm like, where is everything.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
You know where the electrical panel is already, but like,
where's the main water shut off?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Then?
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Yeah, Like I just thought, thinking about what you just
went through. I'm like, Okay, my kids. My eight year
old she got she gets it, she knows where it is.
I've gone through it a few times with both of them,
but she gets it. My six year old, he's on
his own. I'm like, dude, come on, but yeah, in
a moment.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Notice, it's like that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Was everything every So one of the things we always
do in our preps. And I've done this since my
children were small. My youngest is nineteen now, so it's
a little different. But twice a year I would cut
off all power to the house, so in the dead
of summer and the dead of winter, all power out.
When we lose power, we also lose water, and so
(07:20):
it's you know, the children know where the jaggeries are
and what needs to be plugged in, and how to
save the food and you know, like all of these
things because we practice that. It's the same thing with
a fire. It's like, okay, you have a fire, right now,
what do you do? Where is the fire extinguisher? Where's
the fire blanket? So it's not just you can't just
have the stuff, right because I just have all the
(07:40):
stuff and all the preps, and you're not practicing with
your whole family, Then what happens when that thing actually happens.
Now you just have a mountainous stuff and you don't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So it's really important to practice, especially if you aren't there.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yes, and you know, we have We were just we
just back from Ontario, Canada. We were there for ten
days completely off great no cell service, no satellite, no nothing.
And the children were here in charge of all the animals,
the farm, the gardens and everything. And I was like, okay,
do your thing. You guys do it, and they did,
(08:16):
you know. So it's you have to practice those things,
and you have to practice them with the kids because
if you're not there, they need to know what to do.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
So while you were gone, how do they do with
keeping the homestead going?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Oh? They did great, they did great. So they each
have their individual jobs. They know this because this is
what we do, you know, basically every day. So my
son is in charge of the meat, birds, food, water,
moving the tractor every day. He's also in charge of
the house animals, so like the dogs, the cats, stuff
like that. And then our other child is in charge
(08:51):
of the egg layers, the baby chicks and the baby
meat birds. So those are their three things. Oh and
then my son's in charge of the so the watering,
the weeding, and the the pulling up the produce and stuff.
So they each have their thing that they're good at
and that they enjoy doing, and so I try to
(09:11):
keep their chores to that. And then they know that
if they're falling behind or they slept in or whatever,
that they can rely on each other and text each other.
Because they won't talk to each other, but they'll text
each other, hey, can you know what I'm talking about?
Like I got one upstairs, one downstairs and that. But yeah,
they'll they'll text each other and be like, hey, I
can't get to the you know, the poop box in
(09:35):
the in the coop. Can you do that today for me?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So, so you said that you lost a bunch of
meat birds.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
What was the cause of that?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
You know, shipping shipping. I don't know if anybody else
is having problems with shipping, but up here in the
up our packages have been taking weeks to months to
get to us. So typically I order the birds and
they get here like within two days. This time it
was four days, and they were completely shell shocked. So
(10:02):
when I got them in the house warmed up, they
immediately just started dying. Boom boom boom boom boom boom
boom deay. So I called the Hatchery Meyer Hatchery, and
I've worked with them for years. They're a fantastic company
to work with. And they said, we're going to resend
them obviously no charge to you, but we're going to
(10:22):
resend them Priority Express I think it's called where it's
like guaranteed two days. They sent the second shipment. Four
days they all die boomom boom boom boom boom boom.
So they said, you know, we're going to fix this,
and I said, do not send me any more birds
because now at this point it's going to be on
it ethical for me to, you know, say, yeah, send
(10:45):
me more birds, because I know we have a missing
link somewhere. So they're working with the post office here
in my town and in their town to try to
figure out where this disconnect is that these are not
getting shipped in the appropriate amount of time. In the meantime,
I have eight meat birds to feed us for the
rest of the year. Right, So now we're looking at
(11:07):
you know, am I going to need to take an
extra deer this year? Are we going to have, you know,
need to get an extra pig or something. We're trying
to plan ahead of. We know we're going to have
less chicken this coming year. What are we going to
do to circumvent that?
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Do you raise your own birds and could have your
own chicks next year? Is that part of your plans? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, I mean we have plenty of egg layers, but
we just order the meat birds every year. It's just
a lot easier. I like the Cornish cross. I know
a lot of people don't, but I get seven to
eight pound birds out of every single Cornish cross, and
their return on investment as far as their feed to
pound ratio is really low. So that's good for us
(11:49):
in our farm.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Smart man.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
That's pretty devastating though.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, and it happens, right. You just have to keep
like failing forward, and that's what the props are there for.
So we're going to have a little less chicken. We
still have some in the freezer, and then we still
have probably thirty or forty quarts of chicken and the cantry.
So and I have you know, my my thrive freeze
dried chicken that's got a twenty five year shelf life.
(12:17):
So you're always building your system with a backup system
to that system. So we have less chicken this year,
We're not going to go without chicken. We're just going
to have to change the way that we eat the
chicken or the way that we prepare the chicken that
we have.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Horrible that happened, but awesome how the layering of the
layering effect of pre planning is coming into fruition where
it's actually being used right right, well, and I love
to call it a cantry. It's a pantry for all
the canned stuff, right right, the cantry.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I love.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
The whole family says, is it in the pantry or
is it in the cantry?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well, and like you know, like financial versification, right, diversifying
in not just food bird, not in your your meat birds,
but in really all of our different preps. You know me,
when I diversified financially, it's you know, it's it's two things, right,
gold and silver and the different sizes and shapes and
(13:17):
and so forth. But uh, yeah, like you said, you
have your You've relied on some freeze dried with you
know the thrive. I guess you mentioned the thrive of
the brand, and then your other other sources of meat,
canning and and fresh and so forth. And and I
think I can take What I can take from that
is is looking at my own preps individually in the
(13:38):
different different sources. Of course, I'm not nearly as advanced
in canning, and I'd like to talk more about that
with you, as canning in particular is how. And we
talked about this briefly the last time, and I did
nothing about it, right, I have done nothing. I bought
some more I bought some more jars. I did do that,
but I have not moved on to actually take some
more steps. So I'd like to ask you about how
(13:59):
can I get into this more simply? You know, it
gets complicated for me, and I'd like to be simple.
Of course, we're still living in the world. We all
have our full time jobs. We're not on homesteads like yourself.
I've got my little getaway, but I'm too far away
from it to actually grow much there. So I'm jabbering
(14:21):
as I usually do.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah. So as far as getting into canning goes, I
just gave a speech on this. I was in Ohio
and my speech was future proofing your pantry And it's
basically I call it a food pyramid or a food
leveling system, and canning is a big cornerstone of that system.
(14:48):
So the first thing you want to do, if you're
getting into canning and you're doing it for the sole
purpose of having that extra backup food or eating more healthy,
is you need to know what your family eats. Don't
looking at oh I want to make pie filling, or
I want to make jams and jellies. If you guys
aren't eating that that much, you're wasting your time, you're
(15:08):
wasting your resources. So you need to know what your
family eats. So start by tracking everything your family eats
for a week, every single thing. Don't eat out, don't
order door dash, don't you know. Just write down for
an entire week what you guys eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks.
You start there because that's the foods that you need
(15:32):
to be canning. And then if you're not canning them,
then you need to be buying two and stashing one
so if your family, if your kids like macaroni and
cheese out of the box and that's what they like
to eat, and you know you go through three boxes
a week, you should every time be buying three boxes
and then stashing one. And that's how you build up
(15:53):
your food preps. Right, it doesn't matter if it's canning
or if it is store bought food. You have to
know what your family eats or to move forward with
how am I going to preserve that or how am
I going to get my hands on extra of that?
And then you build this layering system. So you have
that first tier, which is what you eat on the
norm every single day, canned foods, fresh foods, whatever. The
(16:17):
second tier up is your short term pantry, so that
is things like the things you're going to be canning.
That could be things like your box macaroni and cheese
or your velveta or something to that effect, where it's
got a little bit longer shelf life. And then you
build up to that next tier, which is your long
term food storage, your things like your wheatberries or your flowers,
(16:40):
your sugars, your honey, your syrups, vinegars, things that have
long storage life. And then At the top of that
tier is all of your tools to do the things
that you need to do to build up those pantries. Okay,
so at the top of that tier is you're canning,
your freeze drying, you're fermenting, you're salting, your meat drying,
(17:03):
whatever type of food preservation you want to get into.
That's the top tier. But you can't start there until
you know what your family eats every week. You got
to know that part first. If you can't tell me
off the top of your head how many ears of
corn your family goes through in six months or twelve months,
then there's no point in learning how to can because
you need to know what your family's actually eating first,
(17:25):
and then plan your canning around that.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
And going to the farmer's markets and stocking up and
then creating that surplus for the winter when you can't
go to the farmer's market.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Sure, and I tell people there is no food shame
and getting your stuff from a supermarket. There is no
food shame in getting your foods from the dollar tree,
at least not for me. I'm not into food shaming.
I'm not a purist. I'm not somebody that's going to
be like well, that ear of corn didn't come out
of your garden, so you know, not as good. That's
(17:57):
not the point of prepping, and that's not the point
of of building up a future proofing your pantry. The
point is to get the food on the shelves, right.
The point is that you have food available to you
when you need it, when there's no other way to
get it. And so there's no there's no harm in
going to a farmer's market or supermarket and being like,
(18:17):
you know what, I'm going to buy a couple of
bushels with corn because I don't want to grow corn
or I didn't grow corn. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
Ndred percent agree with that. It's funny because, like you know,
the three of us live in Utah, and so we're
in this little bubble of what Utah does right, right,
But you're in the up. It's a completely different world.
The seasons are longer in some cases winter right shorter
on the summer. Temperatures and climates are different, we have
different growing zones. R So I love that you're like,
(18:47):
you don't food like, you don't can shame, you don't
source shame. Like as preppers, I find oftentimes there's so
much shame in the game. Like if you're not a
purist of all, you're using the wrong ammunition. Oh, you're
using the wrong seed production company early Like, I like
what you said, get what you can get, right, because
(19:10):
if you don't, you won't have it when you need it.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
We were talking about this last week. We were talking
about how North Carolina one of the biggest things that
they've they've that's come out as they've they've said, we
thought we had enough food storage, and it's lasted half
the time we thought it would and so we need
three times as much. Yeah, And I was just like,
holy cow, Like.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Do you know how much food your grocery store carries?
Like how many days worth of food your grocery store
carries right now?
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Up to seventy two hours?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, up to seventy two hours. That means is everybody
in your local area needs food all at once. Your
food is gone in three days. Okay, that's really scary.
And then on top of that, eighty four percent of
Americans say they only have one week's worth of food.
On top of that, eighty four percent, fifty four percent
(20:01):
of Americans have in the last three years lived in
a zone that has had a natural disaster. We are
talking millions and millions and millions and millions of people
that don't have enough food to last them more than
one week or seventy two hours.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
And I guarantee those people overestimate what they have as well.
Probably That's been my experience.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Probably, And I'm not you know, I am not a
doom and gloom type of prepper at all. I don't
consider myself like an apocalyptal prepper or whatever. For us,
prepping is a part of our lifestyle because it's part
of how we live, right, so I can I can
put my money where my mouth is, so to speak,
(20:43):
because we live in an area where these things happen
to us consistently, and it's important for us that we
are comfortable enough during these periods, because that's all really
prepping needs to be for us. It's just to get
us over the hump of whatever the burst pipe is
or the chicken's dying or whatever. It's to get us
(21:05):
over that hump to the next event. And so we
use our preps. We're constantly in our preps, We're using them,
we're rotating them. We rotate our pantries from our every
day and our short term and our long term, and
we just we've created a food system. I've created a
food system here where you know, it's we're not as
(21:26):
reliant on a grocery store as a lot of people are.
And it's not as hard to do, and it's it's intimidating,
but it's not as hard to do as long as
you know what you eat. If you know what you eat,
you know how to prep for it.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
It's funny because I've got an eight year old and
the six year old, and like I knew up until
about five months ago, the six year old what he
would eat, when he would eat.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
It, how much we could eat.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
And now like he hit this patch where it's like,
all of a sudden, half the stuff that we've been
stalking is irrelat yeah, and I'm like, oh no, he's autistic.
And so he's like, now that's out. This is it,
and it's like like spaghettios is in. I'm like, oh, okay, fine, right,
but at least he's eating something. Where it was peanut
(22:16):
butter and jelly and pizza and we had a few
other things, but getting that kid to eat anything different
was near impossible. So I stocked those things, and I'm like, well,
I'm gonna eat I'm gonna be eating a lot of
these things that he won't eat anymore. And I'm that
but the rest of the family not so much. So
it's like you are right on. You've got to know
(22:36):
what you eat, how much of it, and to break
it down that way and really think about it. It's
like a lot of people are doing it wrong.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Well, and that seems common sense too. But but as
you say that, I realized, and I've done this exercise
with myself and my family, is essentially that is okay
if do I actually truly have And like what I mentioned,
I think people will rest what they have on their
cupboadge as well, Oh yeah, we've got eight weeks worth
of food. They're just guessing, right, But do you have
(23:05):
every component of what you make? Do you have the spices,
do you have the flour, the oil, the eggs and
so forth? And how how long will those last? And
how will they run? How fast will they run out?
And right now in Utah we are in the fruit
stand season right This is the Farmer's Market fruit stand season.
By the way, Utah has the best corn there is.
We'll have to somehow get some up to you because
(23:26):
and watermelon, is there a way to can watermelon?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
There is a recipe in my book for watermelon lemonade concentrate.
That is the best way to preserve a watermelon because
once it's heated, it obviously reverts back to water. And
then you can use that watermelon concentrate to make things
like syrups or ice cream toppings, you know, so you
can transform it later or just drop joking.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But yeah, sorry, no, the fact that she came in
with an actual answer is like, dude.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
You can then take the rhines and you can either
pickle the riines and can them. They're delicious, or you
can candy the rhines where you turn them into like
a jelly kuh sugar coated candy. So yeah, you can
really use every and then of course you would take
the seeds and grow your own watermelon. You were just
talking about. Not to interrupt you, but just while it's
fresh in my head, but you were talking about, you know,
we have all this food kind of stocked, and people
(24:24):
overestimate like how much food they've got. So when you
have food stocked, if you're not using that food, you
don't really know how quickly you would go through it.
Say you're doing like freeze dride foods, You're not going
to know how much until you start cooking with it
every single day. And the important takeaway from this conversation,
in my opinion, is you have to be using your
(24:46):
preps to get a good idea of how much you
actually need. Food is a renewable resource, but only if
you know how to renew it. So if you aren't
practicing the things you need to do to renew the
things in your pantry, then that's an entire skill set
that you're not using. That is, you're not going to
have for later.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
And renewing could be bartering with the farmer down the road,
with the farmer's market with fruit stand if.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
That's available, yeah, yeah, what if it's not available anymore?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Right, or they hold it back during an emergency or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, Or you know, like my grandmother's in the in
the twenties when they had food booklets, you know that
were given to them the eh, it slipped my mind,
but the rations booklets. Right, So is everybody in the
family got one pound of flour once a week and
you know, two cups of sugar once a week, and
the government came in and said, this is what our
(25:41):
food supply. This is how canning started. I mean it's
been around for thousands of years obviously, but this is
how it started back during war times because the government
was encouraging us, yes, grow a garden, learn how to
can because we were on these rations of food. All
of our food was being sent to the troops for
war times, and people had so learn how to do
these things because it it was either you learned how
(26:03):
to do them or you didn't survive. So that's another possibility.
The government could come in and start rationing stuff out.
It's not. You have to build a community. You have
to know where your food comes from. People laugh because
I have what I call a honey dealer. I would
love to get into bees and do honey. I just
don't have any more time to do anything else. So
I have a honey dealer and I go once a
(26:24):
year and I buy five gallons of honey. It cost
me three hundred dollars. That five hundred or that five
gallons of honey usually lasts us about twenty four to
thirty six months. And then I go back and I
buy another, you know, so I'm always keeping it in rotation.
But yeah, you got to have community. You got to
know who has what, because at any given moment, the
grocery store could close, or the government could come in
(26:46):
and say, sorry, we're not giving out any flour today.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
No, I believe your book also has recipes for canning
meals correct.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, whole meals, yeah, tacos, sloppy Joe's burritos, and a
jar world cuisine. I've got different types of chicken recipes
from Asia areas, and it's got everything. One thing I've
learned is food fatigue is a real thing if you
have never experienced it. So I used to travel with
(27:15):
Drum Corps International. I was the food truck mom for
one of the drum corps and every day we fed
two hundred children, four times a day, and the calorie
intake had to be between fifty five hundred and six
thousand calories a day because of the amount of calories
they were learning. And what you learned real quick is
everybody becomes sick of food if you don't have spices
(27:40):
and salts and a variety of you know, taco seasonings
or whatever. So it's not just about getting the food
and stocking the food. Everybody wants to feel secure. Everybody
wants to feel that a little bit of ease of
anxiety go away when they look at a pantry full
of food or full of emma. We all love that, right,
(28:02):
But at the end of the day, if you're not
eating like that every single day, you don't understand what
food fatigue can do to your your mentals.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah. I think we've somewhat experienced that from the freeze dride,
all the freeze dried stuff we've tried over the years.
That gets old really quickly. Yeah, So I'm definitely renewed
in my enthusiasm to to can some actual meals. So
that were it would really work in our particular family,
is actually having a preprepared meal in a can, in
(28:33):
a bottle, in the jar and be able to serve
that up quickly whether I get to eat it or not.
You can just eat it right from the jar.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah. And you know things like say taco meat or
sloppy Joe me. You don't want to think just tacos
just rolling it up in a taco, right, You want
to think about loaded nachos or loaded tater ties or
making enchiladas out of it, or throwing it in our
breakfast scramble. You know, you want to take that one
meal in a jar and go, what four or five
(29:02):
meals could I make differently out of this? That way,
when I can up forty quarts of it, you know,
for forty meals, we're not repeating the same forty meals
over and over again. We're only repeating six or seven,
you know, once or twice a month.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
That's such a powerful thing. Like we just don't think
wide enough on our options, right. Creating It's like you
create this menu in your brain. You're like, Okay, we
need this and this and this and this for this meal,
and this and this and this and this for this meal.
But it's like it's like an outfit. I can switch
shirts and pants and have different things will go together.
(29:39):
I got to think that way with my food, and
you just gave me that like analogy in my brain.
I'm like, okay, I got to think more creative with
what I've what I've stockpiled, what I'm canning, how else
I can use it. My wife, she bought me this
giant thing of chilata sauce, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Like, what that normal.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
I'm like, I'm gonna be making like a giant batch
of enchiladas, and when I'm gonna need a can at all,
just so that it'll last. Once I crack this thing open,
it's huge. I'm like, I don't we don't make it
enchiladas enough. But I'm like, it was on sale, so
she got it right.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And when you get something like that, also think about
preserving it in different ways too, right, So like, if
I get a giant thing of ancelota sauce, I might
put some of them in ziplock bags and store them
in the freezer. I might can some of them, and
then I might throw some in my freeze dryer. Now,
I have three different methods of food preservation, so if
one of those methods fail, my freezer goes out, I'm
(30:37):
going to get a can. The can comes unsealed, or
the lid pops in a snow good anymore. Okay, I'm
gonna go grab my freeze dried stuff. I don't have
any water for freeze dried stuff. Okay, I'm gonna go
grab a bag from the freezer. You know you you
have to create these food systems that compliment each other
and are also a backup for each other at the
(30:57):
same time.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Love it.
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Thank you so much. It's refreshing to hear your perspective
because you're in the thick of it and you're living it,
and it's like, there's so many people that are hobby
hobbyists in this world, sure, and it's like they've got
some good understanding. But like you're in our opinion, you're
(31:20):
one of our top top echelon knowledgeable scientist of food preservation.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Guys.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
If you don't have her book, go get Preserving with
a Purpose.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
It is.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
It's fun read, it's got amazing recipes, and it's got
instructions on how to put together your menus, how to
save like ten thousand dollars a year by planning ahead.
I'm like, dude, we all need to save money today.
That's a huge what's a maybe a twenty dollars book,
that's a huge savings to get to ten grand saved.
(31:53):
So thank you so much, Seriously, we love you and
appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Thank you guys so much for having me again. If
I am gonna just give your listeners one one takeaway
from this, it's that The food is never going to
be cheaper tomorrow than it is today. So when people
say I don't have the time and I don't have
the money, I guarantee you tomorrow you have less time
and you have less money. So do what you can
(32:19):
with the resources that you have. Start small. Write down
what your family eats. Pick three of those foods, just three.
This week, it's going to be corn, a box of
macaroni and cheese, and some crackers. We know we eat those.
How am I going to get more of those? Buy two,
stash one, or how am I going to food preserve
those so we have them in the future. Three foods,
(32:41):
that's all you need. Start with three foods and then
start building on top of that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
And that's the truth.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, that's excellent. That's really good advice.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Well, Scott Shane, any least final thoughts on you guys. Sarah,
thanks so much for being on with us again, and
we will we'll have you on again. We can have
little longer and there's not as many technical issues, but
thank you so much for coming on and sharing your
wisdom and your experience, because somebody who's really after it
and really doing it knows the kind of those things
(33:12):
that the rest of us wouldn't even think about, and
you actually have lived it and done it, and that's awesome.
So thanks for being on the show with us today.
We hope to get this out far and wide and
get a couple of your books sold so that you
can have a few more dollars to help towards that
forty thousand dollars deficit you're on. So go help Sarah
(33:33):
buy her book off our site she gets. Help support
the show, and help support Sarah. She needs it right
now to help finish her downstairs. So thank you so much.
You've been listening to Prepper Dock Radio Radio for the
ready Minded, the podcast for the prepared.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Have a fantastic day and we'll see you on the
next one.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Thank you, Sarah, thank you, thank you.
Welcome to another episode of Prepper Talk Radio Radio for
the ready Minded, the podcast for the prepared. We've got
a great show for you today. We're super excited Shane
Scott Shane.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Came out of mi i A. We found him.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Where in the world was shy? We found him, We
brought him back. He's home for now. Who knows where
he'll be next week, but we got him. So Scott,
Shane and I and a very special guest. For those
of you who are watching on YouTube, you'll see a
much part of your face and the three of ours.
And we've got Sarah thrushback Peele's and Pedals. She's known
throughout the interwebs and so if you're interested in learning
(00:40):
about canning food preservation, she is the one. So before
we get started, let's remind everybody to go to our website,
preppertalkradio dot com, click on our resources there and we've
got her book listed there. And so we're gonna talk
a little bit about the book, probably, and we'll also
talk about some things that she's gone through since the
last time she was on the show, and then what
(01:00):
we can do to prepare as we were heading in.
I know it's August, but now's the time to be
preparing for winter, so we're going to be talking a
little bit about some of that.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So we're excited for the show.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Also, remember about our new affiliate program that we're working
on with Preppertalkradio dot com forward Slash Good Life.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Make sure that you go check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
If you want to have an opportunity to be healthy,
stay healthy, and do it in affordable way, you're going
to want to check out that opportunity. Plus, there's an
opportunity for a little bit of a side hustle for
those that are interested in making more money right now.
And frankly, that should be all of you. I know
I am, so we all are, and so you know
some of you are. If you're making good money and
(01:42):
you don't want to have a side hustle, that's awesome, congratulations.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
But if you're interested in that, you go check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
But let's get started, Sarah, thanks so much for coming
to the show. Thanks for coming back. It's been I
don't know how many episodes. I guess I can go
back and look and see how many episodes it has been,
but it's been a minute. We're just oh really fast.
Actually before I'm sorry to cut off if you're about
to say hello, but we're recording tonight. This is episode
right now, episode four ninety one, and so we're nine
(02:08):
episodes from five hundred.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
So make sure you're following, make sure.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
You're in our Facebook group, make sure you're on our
email list, because at episode five hundred, we're going to
run a contest. We're going to run a little bit
of a some promotions, we're going to give do some giveaways,
So make sure you're following us everywhere and stay tuned
for that episode because when we drop it, we're going
to have some fun. So all right now, Sarah, tell
us a little bit about what's going on, what's happened
(02:33):
since the last time you came on, and how are
you doing.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Thank you guys for having me back again. I'm so
excited to talk about a lot of different things today.
We've had quite a few challenges this year so far,
and we're only halfway through the year. So we had
a flood in February, and we've had a bunch of
our meatbirds die on us. We've lost flocks of things,
and it's been a year of challenges for sure, So
(03:01):
I'm glad to be here and talking about all of
my hardships. So hopefully it can help some other people.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Well, at least that didn't happen when it has already
hit the fan, Right, at least you can practice now
and have those failures now when it's low pressure, right
when it's not. And maybe it is critical for you,
but not terribly critical, right.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, it's it's always critical because every mistake you make
is money, right, and so that that always has a
ripple effect on the entire homestead. But so many of
the mistakes weren't weren't ours, you know, they were just
weather related and we had a flood, so it was
you know, a burst pipe. And you know, there are
(03:42):
things that we can learn from the situation. We definitely
learn where the gaps are in our preps, and we
definitely go into the situation the second time around looking
at it a little bit differently, and things that we
can do to kind of circumvent things like weather.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Wow, so you had a and you were telling us
earlier that in February you had a pipe burst in
your Yeah, and that was you were saying that it
was just a small section of the pipe that wasn't
covered and you know, you insulate your pipes. You do
your best to insulate the pipes and make sure everything's insulated,
but you missed a little section and that was the
very section that was kind of the weak link in
(04:21):
the chain, and that's where the burst and just devastating damage.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so we we lost the entirety of our downstairs
so everything, and the insurance they paid for like the cleanup,
but they're not going to pay to repair or replace anything.
So we're about forty thousand dollars in the hole right now,
you know. And we had a bunch of our preps
down there. But thankfully, you know, we had stuff put
(04:49):
in buckets and everything was in rubber made toats, so
when the pipe burst and everything flooded, it was protected,
which was good. We didn't lose a bunch of our preps.
But yeah, we start insulating pipes and preparing for winter now.
So August first, this week, we've already started looking at
(05:11):
what we need to do moving forward to get ready
to go into winter. That one tiny little section of pipe,
it was about one inch that burst. It sounded like
an explosion in the house, and I went running downstairs
and by the time I hit the bottom of the stairs.
It had been no more than ten or fifteen seconds probably.
(05:32):
I was like in a swimming pool. I was standing
in water, and I was like, you have that moment
of like you know, and so I ran to the
room to shut off the main valve. My children all
know where the main valve is, but I use this
again as another teaching exercise to you to them. After
this was done, I was like, where's the main valve?
Go shut it off now? And I had one kid
(05:53):
that was like, I kind of think it's this one.
I'm like, no, you don't have time to think. You
need to know right now because when that pipe burst,
it flood in a matter of seconds, you know. So
we always try to use that time to reintroduce ideas
to our children and make sure that we're you know,
laying that foundational work of Okay, this happened, how are
(06:15):
you going to fix it right here, right now, real quick?
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Yeah, memory, I didn't know who the pipe was as
a kid, Like my dad didn't have the thought. Maybe
he did tell us. Maybe that's on me, but we
just weren't told where things were until I was probably twelve.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And I'm like, where is everything.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
You know where the electrical panel is already, but like,
where's the main water shut off?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Then?
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Yeah, Like I just thought, thinking about what you just
went through. I'm like, Okay, my kids. My eight year
old she got she gets it, she knows where it is.
I've gone through it a few times with both of them,
but she gets it. My six year old, he's on
his own. I'm like, dude, come on, but yeah, in
a moment.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Notice, it's like that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Was everything every So one of the things we always
do in our preps. And I've done this since my
children were small. My youngest is nineteen now, so it's
a little different. But twice a year I would cut
off all power to the house, so in the dead
of summer and the dead of winter, all power out.
When we lose power, we also lose water, and so
(07:20):
it's you know, the children know where the jaggeries are
and what needs to be plugged in, and how to
save the food and you know, like all of these
things because we practice that. It's the same thing with
a fire. It's like, okay, you have a fire, right now,
what do you do? Where is the fire extinguisher? Where's
the fire blanket? So it's not just you can't just
have the stuff, right because I just have all the
(07:40):
stuff and all the preps, and you're not practicing with
your whole family, Then what happens when that thing actually happens.
Now you just have a mountainous stuff and you don't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
So it's really important to practice, especially if you aren't there.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yes, and you know, we have We were just we
just back from Ontario, Canada. We were there for ten
days completely off great no cell service, no satellite, no nothing.
And the children were here in charge of all the animals,
the farm, the gardens and everything. And I was like, okay,
do your thing. You guys do it, and they did,
(08:16):
you know. So it's you have to practice those things,
and you have to practice them with the kids because
if you're not there, they need to know what to do.
Speaker 5 (08:25):
So while you were gone, how do they do with
keeping the homestead going?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Oh? They did great, they did great. So they each
have their individual jobs. They know this because this is
what we do, you know, basically every day. So my
son is in charge of the meat, birds, food, water,
moving the tractor every day. He's also in charge of
the house animals, so like the dogs, the cats, stuff
like that. And then our other child is in charge
(08:51):
of the egg layers, the baby chicks and the baby
meat birds. So those are their three things. Oh and
then my son's in charge of the so the watering,
the weeding, and the the pulling up the produce and stuff.
So they each have their thing that they're good at
and that they enjoy doing, and so I try to
(09:11):
keep their chores to that. And then they know that
if they're falling behind or they slept in or whatever,
that they can rely on each other and text each other.
Because they won't talk to each other, but they'll text
each other, hey, can you know what I'm talking about?
Like I got one upstairs, one downstairs and that. But yeah,
they'll they'll text each other and be like, hey, I
can't get to the you know, the poop box in
(09:35):
the in the coop. Can you do that today for me?
Speaker 1 (09:37):
So, so you said that you lost a bunch of
meat birds.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
What was the cause of that?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
You know, shipping shipping. I don't know if anybody else
is having problems with shipping, but up here in the
up our packages have been taking weeks to months to
get to us. So typically I order the birds and
they get here like within two days. This time it
was four days, and they were completely shell shocked. So
(10:02):
when I got them in the house warmed up, they
immediately just started dying. Boom boom boom boom boom boom
boom deay. So I called the Hatchery Meyer Hatchery, and
I've worked with them for years. They're a fantastic company
to work with. And they said, we're going to resend
them obviously no charge to you, but we're going to
(10:22):
resend them Priority Express I think it's called where it's
like guaranteed two days. They sent the second shipment. Four
days they all die boomom boom boom boom boom boom.
So they said, you know, we're going to fix this,
and I said, do not send me any more birds
because now at this point it's going to be on
it ethical for me to, you know, say, yeah, send
(10:45):
me more birds, because I know we have a missing
link somewhere. So they're working with the post office here
in my town and in their town to try to
figure out where this disconnect is that these are not
getting shipped in the appropriate amount of time. In the meantime,
I have eight meat birds to feed us for the
rest of the year. Right, So now we're looking at
(11:07):
you know, am I going to need to take an
extra deer this year? Are we going to have, you know,
need to get an extra pig or something. We're trying
to plan ahead of. We know we're going to have
less chicken this coming year. What are we going to
do to circumvent that?
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Do you raise your own birds and could have your
own chicks next year? Is that part of your plans? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, I mean we have plenty of egg layers, but
we just order the meat birds every year. It's just
a lot easier. I like the Cornish cross. I know
a lot of people don't, but I get seven to
eight pound birds out of every single Cornish cross, and
their return on investment as far as their feed to
pound ratio is really low. So that's good for us
(11:49):
in our farm.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Smart man.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
That's pretty devastating though.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, and it happens, right. You just have to keep
like failing forward, and that's what the props are there for.
So we're going to have a little less chicken. We
still have some in the freezer, and then we still
have probably thirty or forty quarts of chicken and the cantry.
So and I have you know, my my thrive freeze
dried chicken that's got a twenty five year shelf life.
(12:17):
So you're always building your system with a backup system
to that system. So we have less chicken this year,
We're not going to go without chicken. We're just going
to have to change the way that we eat the
chicken or the way that we prepare the chicken that
we have.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Horrible that happened, but awesome how the layering of the
layering effect of pre planning is coming into fruition where
it's actually being used right right, well, and I love
to call it a cantry. It's a pantry for all
the canned stuff, right right, the cantry.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
I love.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
The whole family says, is it in the pantry or
is it in the cantry?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well, and like you know, like financial versification, right, diversifying
in not just food bird, not in your your meat birds,
but in really all of our different preps. You know me,
when I diversified financially, it's you know, it's it's two things, right,
gold and silver and the different sizes and shapes and
(13:17):
and so forth. But uh, yeah, like you said, you
have your You've relied on some freeze dried with you
know the thrive. I guess you mentioned the thrive of
the brand, and then your other other sources of meat,
canning and and fresh and so forth. And and I
think I can take What I can take from that
is is looking at my own preps individually in the
(13:38):
different different sources. Of course, I'm not nearly as advanced
in canning, and I'd like to talk more about that
with you, as canning in particular is how. And we
talked about this briefly the last time, and I did
nothing about it, right, I have done nothing. I bought
some more I bought some more jars. I did do that,
but I have not moved on to actually take some
more steps. So I'd like to ask you about how
(13:59):
can I get into this more simply? You know, it
gets complicated for me, and I'd like to be simple.
Of course, we're still living in the world. We all
have our full time jobs. We're not on homesteads like yourself.
I've got my little getaway, but I'm too far away
from it to actually grow much there. So I'm jabbering
(14:21):
as I usually do.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah. So as far as getting into canning goes, I
just gave a speech on this. I was in Ohio
and my speech was future proofing your pantry And it's
basically I call it a food pyramid or a food
leveling system, and canning is a big cornerstone of that system.
(14:48):
So the first thing you want to do, if you're
getting into canning and you're doing it for the sole
purpose of having that extra backup food or eating more healthy,
is you need to know what your family eats. Don't
looking at oh I want to make pie filling, or
I want to make jams and jellies. If you guys
aren't eating that that much, you're wasting your time, you're
(15:08):
wasting your resources. So you need to know what your
family eats. So start by tracking everything your family eats
for a week, every single thing. Don't eat out, don't
order door dash, don't you know. Just write down for
an entire week what you guys eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks.
You start there because that's the foods that you need
(15:32):
to be canning. And then if you're not canning them,
then you need to be buying two and stashing one
so if your family, if your kids like macaroni and
cheese out of the box and that's what they like
to eat, and you know you go through three boxes
a week, you should every time be buying three boxes
and then stashing one. And that's how you build up
(15:53):
your food preps. Right, it doesn't matter if it's canning
or if it is store bought food. You have to
know what your family eats or to move forward with
how am I going to preserve that or how am
I going to get my hands on extra of that?
And then you build this layering system. So you have
that first tier, which is what you eat on the
norm every single day, canned foods, fresh foods, whatever. The
(16:17):
second tier up is your short term pantry, so that
is things like the things you're going to be canning.
That could be things like your box macaroni and cheese
or your velveta or something to that effect, where it's
got a little bit longer shelf life. And then you
build up to that next tier, which is your long
term food storage, your things like your wheatberries or your flowers,
(16:40):
your sugars, your honey, your syrups, vinegars, things that have
long storage life. And then At the top of that
tier is all of your tools to do the things
that you need to do to build up those pantries. Okay,
so at the top of that tier is you're canning,
your freeze drying, you're fermenting, you're salting, your meat drying,
(17:03):
whatever type of food preservation you want to get into.
That's the top tier. But you can't start there until
you know what your family eats every week. You got
to know that part first. If you can't tell me
off the top of your head how many ears of
corn your family goes through in six months or twelve months,
then there's no point in learning how to can because
you need to know what your family's actually eating first,
(17:25):
and then plan your canning around that.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
And going to the farmer's markets and stocking up and
then creating that surplus for the winter when you can't
go to the farmer's market.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Sure, and I tell people there is no food shame
and getting your stuff from a supermarket. There is no
food shame in getting your foods from the dollar tree,
at least not for me. I'm not into food shaming.
I'm not a purist. I'm not somebody that's going to
be like well, that ear of corn didn't come out
of your garden, so you know, not as good. That's
(17:57):
not the point of prepping, and that's not the point
of of building up a future proofing your pantry. The
point is to get the food on the shelves, right.
The point is that you have food available to you
when you need it, when there's no other way to
get it. And so there's no there's no harm in
going to a farmer's market or supermarket and being like,
(18:17):
you know what, I'm going to buy a couple of
bushels with corn because I don't want to grow corn
or I didn't grow corn. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
Ndred percent agree with that. It's funny because, like you know,
the three of us live in Utah, and so we're
in this little bubble of what Utah does right, right,
But you're in the up. It's a completely different world.
The seasons are longer in some cases winter right shorter
on the summer. Temperatures and climates are different, we have
different growing zones. R So I love that you're like,
(18:47):
you don't food like, you don't can shame, you don't
source shame. Like as preppers, I find oftentimes there's so
much shame in the game. Like if you're not a
purist of all, you're using the wrong ammunition. Oh, you're
using the wrong seed production company early Like, I like
what you said, get what you can get, right, because
(19:10):
if you don't, you won't have it when you need it.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
We were talking about this last week. We were talking
about how North Carolina one of the biggest things that
they've they've that's come out as they've they've said, we
thought we had enough food storage, and it's lasted half
the time we thought it would and so we need
three times as much. Yeah, And I was just like,
holy cow, Like.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Do you know how much food your grocery store carries?
Like how many days worth of food your grocery store
carries right now?
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Up to seventy two hours?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, up to seventy two hours. That means is everybody
in your local area needs food all at once. Your
food is gone in three days. Okay, that's really scary.
And then on top of that, eighty four percent of
Americans say they only have one week's worth of food.
On top of that, eighty four percent, fifty four percent
(20:01):
of Americans have in the last three years lived in
a zone that has had a natural disaster. We are
talking millions and millions and millions and millions of people
that don't have enough food to last them more than
one week or seventy two hours.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
And I guarantee those people overestimate what they have as well.
Probably That's been my experience.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Probably, And I'm not you know, I am not a
doom and gloom type of prepper at all. I don't
consider myself like an apocalyptal prepper or whatever. For us,
prepping is a part of our lifestyle because it's part
of how we live, right, so I can I can
put my money where my mouth is, so to speak,
(20:43):
because we live in an area where these things happen
to us consistently, and it's important for us that we
are comfortable enough during these periods, because that's all really
prepping needs to be for us. It's just to get
us over the hump of whatever the burst pipe is
or the chicken's dying or whatever. It's to get us
(21:05):
over that hump to the next event. And so we
use our preps. We're constantly in our preps, We're using them,
we're rotating them. We rotate our pantries from our every
day and our short term and our long term, and
we just we've created a food system. I've created a
food system here where you know, it's we're not as
(21:26):
reliant on a grocery store as a lot of people are.
And it's not as hard to do, and it's it's intimidating,
but it's not as hard to do as long as
you know what you eat. If you know what you eat,
you know how to prep for it.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
It's funny because I've got an eight year old and
the six year old, and like I knew up until
about five months ago, the six year old what he
would eat, when he would eat.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
It, how much we could eat.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
And now like he hit this patch where it's like,
all of a sudden, half the stuff that we've been
stalking is irrelat yeah, and I'm like, oh no, he's autistic.
And so he's like, now that's out. This is it,
and it's like like spaghettios is in. I'm like, oh, okay, fine, right,
but at least he's eating something. Where it was peanut
(22:16):
butter and jelly and pizza and we had a few
other things, but getting that kid to eat anything different
was near impossible. So I stocked those things, and I'm like, well,
I'm gonna eat I'm gonna be eating a lot of
these things that he won't eat anymore. And I'm that
but the rest of the family not so much. So
it's like you are right on. You've got to know
(22:36):
what you eat, how much of it, and to break
it down that way and really think about it. It's
like a lot of people are doing it wrong.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Well, and that seems common sense too. But but as
you say that, I realized, and I've done this exercise
with myself and my family, is essentially that is okay
if do I actually truly have And like what I mentioned,
I think people will rest what they have on their
cupboadge as well, Oh yeah, we've got eight weeks worth
of food. They're just guessing, right, But do you have
(23:05):
every component of what you make? Do you have the spices,
do you have the flour, the oil, the eggs and
so forth? And how how long will those last? And
how will they run? How fast will they run out?
And right now in Utah we are in the fruit
stand season right This is the Farmer's Market fruit stand season.
By the way, Utah has the best corn there is.
We'll have to somehow get some up to you because
(23:26):
and watermelon, is there a way to can watermelon?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
There is a recipe in my book for watermelon lemonade concentrate.
That is the best way to preserve a watermelon because
once it's heated, it obviously reverts back to water. And
then you can use that watermelon concentrate to make things
like syrups or ice cream toppings, you know, so you
can transform it later or just drop joking.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
But yeah, sorry, no, the fact that she came in
with an actual answer is like, dude.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
You can then take the rhines and you can either
pickle the riines and can them. They're delicious, or you
can candy the rhines where you turn them into like
a jelly kuh sugar coated candy. So yeah, you can
really use every and then of course you would take
the seeds and grow your own watermelon. You were just
talking about. Not to interrupt you, but just while it's
fresh in my head, but you were talking about, you know,
we have all this food kind of stocked, and people
(24:24):
overestimate like how much food they've got. So when you
have food stocked, if you're not using that food, you
don't really know how quickly you would go through it.
Say you're doing like freeze dride foods, You're not going
to know how much until you start cooking with it
every single day. And the important takeaway from this conversation,
in my opinion, is you have to be using your
(24:46):
preps to get a good idea of how much you
actually need. Food is a renewable resource, but only if
you know how to renew it. So if you aren't
practicing the things you need to do to renew the
things in your pantry, then that's an entire skill set
that you're not using. That is, you're not going to
have for later.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
And renewing could be bartering with the farmer down the road,
with the farmer's market with fruit stand if.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
That's available, yeah, yeah, what if it's not available anymore?
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Right, or they hold it back during an emergency or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, Or you know, like my grandmother's in the in
the twenties when they had food booklets, you know that
were given to them the eh, it slipped my mind,
but the rations booklets. Right, So is everybody in the
family got one pound of flour once a week and
you know, two cups of sugar once a week, and
the government came in and said, this is what our
(25:41):
food supply. This is how canning started. I mean it's
been around for thousands of years obviously, but this is
how it started back during war times because the government
was encouraging us, yes, grow a garden, learn how to
can because we were on these rations of food. All
of our food was being sent to the troops for
war times, and people had so learn how to do
these things because it it was either you learned how
(26:03):
to do them or you didn't survive. So that's another possibility.
The government could come in and start rationing stuff out.
It's not. You have to build a community. You have
to know where your food comes from. People laugh because
I have what I call a honey dealer. I would
love to get into bees and do honey. I just
don't have any more time to do anything else. So
I have a honey dealer and I go once a
(26:24):
year and I buy five gallons of honey. It cost
me three hundred dollars. That five hundred or that five
gallons of honey usually lasts us about twenty four to
thirty six months. And then I go back and I
buy another, you know, so I'm always keeping it in rotation.
But yeah, you got to have community. You got to
know who has what, because at any given moment, the
grocery store could close, or the government could come in
(26:46):
and say, sorry, we're not giving out any flour today.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
No, I believe your book also has recipes for canning
meals correct.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, whole meals, yeah, tacos, sloppy Joe's burritos, and a
jar world cuisine. I've got different types of chicken recipes
from Asia areas, and it's got everything. One thing I've
learned is food fatigue is a real thing if you
have never experienced it. So I used to travel with
(27:15):
Drum Corps International. I was the food truck mom for
one of the drum corps and every day we fed
two hundred children, four times a day, and the calorie
intake had to be between fifty five hundred and six
thousand calories a day because of the amount of calories
they were learning. And what you learned real quick is
everybody becomes sick of food if you don't have spices
(27:40):
and salts and a variety of you know, taco seasonings
or whatever. So it's not just about getting the food
and stocking the food. Everybody wants to feel secure. Everybody
wants to feel that a little bit of ease of
anxiety go away when they look at a pantry full
of food or full of emma. We all love that, right,
(28:02):
But at the end of the day, if you're not
eating like that every single day, you don't understand what
food fatigue can do to your your mentals.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah. I think we've somewhat experienced that from the freeze dride,
all the freeze dried stuff we've tried over the years.
That gets old really quickly. Yeah, So I'm definitely renewed
in my enthusiasm to to can some actual meals. So
that were it would really work in our particular family,
is actually having a preprepared meal in a can, in
(28:33):
a bottle, in the jar and be able to serve
that up quickly whether I get to eat it or not.
You can just eat it right from the jar.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah. And you know things like say taco meat or
sloppy Joe me. You don't want to think just tacos
just rolling it up in a taco, right, You want
to think about loaded nachos or loaded tater ties or
making enchiladas out of it, or throwing it in our
breakfast scramble. You know, you want to take that one
meal in a jar and go, what four or five
(29:02):
meals could I make differently out of this? That way,
when I can up forty quarts of it, you know,
for forty meals, we're not repeating the same forty meals
over and over again. We're only repeating six or seven,
you know, once or twice a month.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
That's such a powerful thing. Like we just don't think
wide enough on our options, right. Creating It's like you
create this menu in your brain. You're like, Okay, we
need this and this and this and this for this meal,
and this and this and this and this for this meal.
But it's like it's like an outfit. I can switch
shirts and pants and have different things will go together.
(29:39):
I got to think that way with my food, and
you just gave me that like analogy in my brain.
I'm like, okay, I got to think more creative with
what I've what I've stockpiled, what I'm canning, how else
I can use it. My wife, she bought me this
giant thing of chilata sauce, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Like, what that normal.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
I'm like, I'm gonna be making like a giant batch
of enchiladas, and when I'm gonna need a can at all,
just so that it'll last. Once I crack this thing open,
it's huge. I'm like, I don't we don't make it
enchiladas enough. But I'm like, it was on sale, so
she got it right.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And when you get something like that, also think about
preserving it in different ways too, right, So like, if
I get a giant thing of ancelota sauce, I might
put some of them in ziplock bags and store them
in the freezer. I might can some of them, and
then I might throw some in my freeze dryer. Now,
I have three different methods of food preservation, so if
one of those methods fail, my freezer goes out, I'm
(30:37):
going to get a can. The can comes unsealed, or
the lid pops in a snow good anymore. Okay, I'm
gonna go grab my freeze dried stuff. I don't have
any water for freeze dried stuff. Okay, I'm gonna go
grab a bag from the freezer. You know you you
have to create these food systems that compliment each other
and are also a backup for each other at the
(30:57):
same time.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Love it.
Speaker 5 (31:00):
Thank you so much. It's refreshing to hear your perspective
because you're in the thick of it and you're living it,
and it's like, there's so many people that are hobby
hobbyists in this world, sure, and it's like they've got
some good understanding. But like you're in our opinion, you're
(31:20):
one of our top top echelon knowledgeable scientist of food preservation.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Guys.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
If you don't have her book, go get Preserving with
a Purpose.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
It is.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
It's fun read, it's got amazing recipes, and it's got
instructions on how to put together your menus, how to
save like ten thousand dollars a year by planning ahead.
I'm like, dude, we all need to save money today.
That's a huge what's a maybe a twenty dollars book,
that's a huge savings to get to ten grand saved.
(31:53):
So thank you so much, Seriously, we love you and
appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Thank you guys so much for having me again. If
I am gonna just give your listeners one one takeaway
from this, it's that The food is never going to
be cheaper tomorrow than it is today. So when people
say I don't have the time and I don't have
the money, I guarantee you tomorrow you have less time
and you have less money. So do what you can
(32:19):
with the resources that you have. Start small. Write down
what your family eats. Pick three of those foods, just three.
This week, it's going to be corn, a box of
macaroni and cheese, and some crackers. We know we eat those.
How am I going to get more of those? Buy two,
stash one, or how am I going to food preserve
those so we have them in the future. Three foods,
(32:41):
that's all you need. Start with three foods and then
start building on top of that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
And that's the truth.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, that's excellent. That's really good advice.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Well, Scott Shane, any least final thoughts on you guys. Sarah,
thanks so much for being on with us again, and
we will we'll have you on again. We can have
little longer and there's not as many technical issues, but
thank you so much for coming on and sharing your
wisdom and your experience, because somebody who's really after it
and really doing it knows the kind of those things
(33:12):
that the rest of us wouldn't even think about, and
you actually have lived it and done it, and that's awesome.
So thanks for being on the show with us today.
We hope to get this out far and wide and
get a couple of your books sold so that you
can have a few more dollars to help towards that
forty thousand dollars deficit you're on. So go help Sarah
(33:33):
buy her book off our site she gets. Help support
the show, and help support Sarah. She needs it right
now to help finish her downstairs. So thank you so much.
You've been listening to Prepper Dock Radio Radio for the
ready Minded, the podcast for the prepared.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Have a fantastic day and we'll see you on the
next one.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Thank you, Sarah, thank you, thank you.
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