BE PREPARED!

Tim and I have made an effort to be more prepared for whatever might happen: power outages & propane shortages, a pandemic, supply-chain shortages, civil unrest, or any other big event that might cause an inability to get food & supplies. Our communication needs are well taken care of with ham radio.

ELECTRICITY
We are off-grid, utilizing solar power for our electrical needs. Unless there is some sort of major EMP directly overhead, we shouldn’t lose power. We have a generator as back-up if necessary. We can get around the property & neighborhood in our solar-powered golf cart, too.

HEAT/COOKING
Our house is heated with propane, and our range/oven is propane, so we recently got a large propane tank that should keep us supplied for 3-4 years. Since our electricity is supplied by the sun, we try to limit our propane use by cooking with countertop electric appliances as much as possible, such as the Instant Pot & Air Fryer. Our generator is also rigged up to run off the large propane tank as a backup.

COMMUNICATIONS
Our communication needs are taken care of with our ham radios. We are able to communicate world-wide with other hams, who can pass along messages if needed. We are also able to email using the radio when there is no grid power or internet in our local area. Our local internet provider is powered with solar power also, so we often have our internet even if the power grid is down. 

We also have made a plan to help our neighbors out by offering them use of a GMRS radio (like a walkie-talkie) if phones/cell towers are down during an emergency, so they can contact us if they need anything.

FOOD, WATER & HOUSEHOLD SUPPLIES
We keep stocked up with canned goods, dry beans, grains & rice, pasta, waxed cheese and other foods with a fairly long shelf-life. Toilet paper, paper towels & cleaning supplies are also kept well-stocked. 

We’ve purchased a larger freezer and keep it stocked up with meats, cheeses, fruits & vegetables, and other frozen items, including leftovers of meals I’ve prepared. This not only keeps us well-stocked, but saves us money, as we now only buy meats when they’re on sale. We save on gas, too, as we don’t take as many trips into town. Since we are on solar power, we aren’t too concerned about possible long-term power outages thawing our frozen food. 

A grain mill allows us to store & mill whole grains. Whole grains have a long shelf-life, and we’re able to grind our own flour as needed, for our baking needs.

And, I know how to cook from scratch!

FREEZE-DRYING OUR FOOD

This year we purchased a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer to join the freeze-drying craze. We had become acquainted with some friends who told us all about their freeze-drying experience. I had heard about freeze-drying prior to this conversation, but had passed it off thinking it was an unnecessary expense. 

This year things became different with our focus on being prepared. In addition to freeze-drying our duck eggs & home-grown produce, we can freeze-dry other items such as meats, leftover soups & casseroles, food items that are purchased more cheaply in large quantities, etc. (Such as large jars of things like green chile that we cannot go through before it goes bad.)

We bought the small size freeze-dryer from Harvest Right. Since there are only two of us, we didn’t think we’d need anything larger, and we are happy with the purchase. Our house is small & the machine is a bit noisy, so it is located in our walk-in crawl space. We added a counter & sink with materials we purchased from a thrift store, and there is additional space for the grain mill as well. It’s very nice to have a sink with hot/cold water and space to wash/dry the pans & containers needed in close proximity to the freeze-dryer. It’s also very nice to have the freeze-dryer near the freezer and other storage shelves & cabinets for storing the freeze-dried food.


We are very pleased with our freeze dryer. Having it allows me to know I can grow & preserve larger quantities of veggies, so we’ve begun to expand our garden space to accommodate more food harvests. The freeze-dried vegetables not only last longer than those that are merely frozen, and the quality is much better as well. I’ve begun to thinking about how to rotate the garden in such a way to keep some veggies available for eating fresh, as well as plenty for long-term freeze-dried storage.

Foods I’ve cooked & freeze-dried reconstitute amazingly well. After reconstituting & warming up soups, you WOULD NOT KNOW they had been freeze-dried. Since these foods are homemade, they are much better quality than freeze-dried food you might buy for camping, and a lot cheaper (excluding the cost of the freeze-dryer). We take our freeze-dried eggs, mochas & other things out on our camping trips for easy-to-make and lightweight treats.

We also enjoy freeze-dried snacks, such as fruits or applesauce chunks, and take them in the car with us when out for the day. It’s healthier & less expensive than stopping to buy a lunch.

MY FREEZE-DRYING TIPS

There is a bit of a learning curve to using the machine, preparing your foods, timing your loads, packaging the items, etc. The instructions provided by Harvest Right are somewhat helpful, but also somewhat lacking. There are many youtube videos about freeze-drying, but in addition to those, it takes some personal experience and trial-and-error to get the best results. 

Here are some of my tips:

  • When first setting up the freeze-dryer, change the “Extra-Dry” time setting from the 2-hour default to 12 or more hours. This doesn’t mean it will actually run for 12 hours, but gives you the flexibility to check & unload at your convenience, not the middle of the night or not when you’re away from home.
  • Keep a log of every load you do. I use a computer spreadsheet to log the following information. When I want to do the same item again, or something similar, it will gives me an idea of how long the load will take and whether I might want to do it differently.
    •  the date, start time & end time
    • what & how much is on each tray 
    • how many hours the load took, whether it required extra-dry time & how much total time
    • what the product weighed before freeze-dry and what it weighed after
    • how things were packaged and where it’s stored
    • notes about the process or results
    • note whether the food was raw or cooked prior to freezing (all raw meats & eggs must be reconstituted & cooked before eating)
    • the date of each oil change and the number of loads between each change. 
  • Always freeze-dry similar things together: i.e. 4 trays broccoli & cauliflower, or 4 trays herbs, or 4 trays milk, or 4 trays of various soups. It’s helpful to keep similar odors together as well as similar textures & moisture levels.
  • Weigh everything before you put it into the freeze-dryer, and again after the process is complete. Record this information for reference.
  • Number your trays with a permanent marker on the ends to keep track of items & weights for each tray. By numbering the trays it’s also easier to keep track of which tray is in which location on the rack of the freeze-dryer.
  • The lowest tray on the rack is usually the last to fully dry. Once the dryer has changed from “Drying” to “Extra-Dry” I usually pull the trays out, change their location on the rack, then give them some additional Extra-Dry time, more or less depending on how dry the item feels when I pull it out, In some cases it’s helpful to “stir up” the tray contents before returning it to “Extra-Dry.”
  • Don’t turn off the freeze-dryer until you are absolutely sure the load is completely dry. Pull out the trays & let them cool a bit. Feel of everything on the trays with your hands to see if there are any cold or wet gooey spots. Many people use an infrared thermometer to check the temperature, and this is helpful, but I find I sometimes miss a spot with it–the hands are better. You can break it up a bit with a bench knife/scraper on the tray and move it around a bit. Or, you can dump the contents of the tray into a bowl and sift the food around with your hands. If anything is questionable, cold or gooey, put it all back into the freeze dryer in a different placement order on the rack for additional extra dry time. Put the wettest trays on the top or middle positions.
  • Have your storage jars clean & dry or your mylar bags ready, with a vacuum-sealer nearby when your load is ready to package.
  • Understand the need to use oxygen-absorbers & the size needed for each size container. Learn about oxygen absorbers.
  • Store longer-term things by sealing them in sturdy (7mil) mylar bags.
  • Store shorter-term things in vacuum-sealed mason jars.
  • Label everything with the date, the amount in the bag or jar, and the amount of water needed to reconstitute. 

ARE WE PREPPERS?

In our quest to keep well stocked up, we don’t intend to be greedy with our preparations or keep everything for ourselves. Part of our desire to be prepared is to be able to share our bounty with other neighbors who may be in need. Tim wrote up an article about this, FOUND HERE.

We have made plans to be able to share our food, water, and radio communications with neighbors around us, particularly a couple of elderly neighbors. Our entire neighborhood & town relies on wells for water, so in a power outage people are unable to pump water. We’ve gotten some extra water containers to allow us to be able to share good water from our well with those who don’t have it. We’ll also be able to share our freeze-dried and home-grown veggies.

We’re all in this together, and we have taken on the “Good Samaritan” approach to emergencies: when someone is in need we will help.