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Eden's Eve will not be held responsible for the goods and services of others, listed at this site. This is an information site for exchange of information, and entertainment. Explore at your own risk!

BJ Pemberton

Survival Notes-From our Readers

Fire Starter

Better Than MREs

Dinty Moore "American Classics" Retort meals.
>
>I just bought an assorted case of dinty moore retort meals. The
>flavors I bought were :
>Salisbury Steak W/ Sliced potatoes.
>Beef pot Roast W/ Potatoes and Carrots.
>Chicken Breast W/ Mashed Potatoes.
>They are real simple to cook. Microwave, or Boil.
>I chose the boil method for my review. I taste tested the chicken
>breast meal.
>Preparation was simple, I used my U.S. GI Mess set, I placed
>boil-in-bowl in fry pan, filled with water and boiled for 3 minutes.
>I was quite pleased with the taste, way better than MRE's.
>Pot roast meal = 200 Cals.
>Salisbury Steak Meal = 320 Cals.
>Chicken breezy meal = 220 Cals.
>
>Slightly smaller than a TV dinner, lightweight and compact. 2-3 year
>shelf life.
>
>http://www.hormel.com
>
>Enjoy,
>North.

Testing your gas mask

I know a lot of us have invested in Chemical warfare equipment such as gas
masks and bio suits but the one question most if us must be wondering is
"Will they work?".  One way to test out your gas mask is to contact your
local National Guard armory. Here in Jacksonville Florida at Camp Blanding
they will if you call up and ask nicely allow you to wear your mask (with
filter of course) in their test chamber while they set off a couple of tear
gas canisters.  While not an exhaustive test it will at least ensure you
have a good air tight seal and that your mask is not leaking.  I would
presume that other National Guard armories around the country would do this
also.  You do have to sign a waiver stating that you will not hold the U.S.
Government responsible should your mask leak during the test, but that's
just a C.Y.A. 

As always your mileage can and probably will vary but it does no harm to
ask.

Take Care & Stay Safe
David

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence
of our friends." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Locating Water on your property

This is just a little something that may be of interest to others who are looking for rural land to buy.  The placement of your water source can make a huge difference in the amount of work required to get it into your house!  I didn't realize this until AFTER we'd bought our property.  Fortunately, we got lucky and our spring is located about 300 feet higher than the house.  We've just finished plumbing the old house and bought a propane water heater and now have running water that requires no energy to bring to the house, other than freely available gravity.  It reaches the house at about 95psi, though, too great for the pvc piping to handle, so we installed a regulator at the house to bring it down to 50psi.  Before the regulator, we have a heavy duty garden hose attached and we use the full force pressure for things such as light hydro blasting and for power washing the mud off tires and boots.  In spring the water levels are high and springs such as ours are flowing strong, so we are installing some catchments to store it for leaner seasons such as late summer and early fall.  I just had no idea how important the location of the water source could be and feel very blessed with what we accidentally acquired, lol.

Roxanne

_Making Butter

You can make butter very easily.  A quart of "heavy whipping cream"
will give you a pound of butter and a pint of buttermilk.  The only
"critical" thing about churning is the temperature of the cream.  Get
it as close to 61 degrees Fahrenheit as you can.  Even five degrees
higher or lower will significantly lengthen the churning time.   If you
are interested, that was pinned down by research at the Dairy Industry
Department of Iowa State University way back in the 50's.

You can simply "shake" a half full jar of cream to churn it.  it is
slow, but it works.

It is more practical to just use your Kitchen mixer.  Set it at high
speed, and stick around.  First it "whips," then the whipped  cream
starts to get a slight yellow tint.  In another minute or so, it will
get kind of "chunky" and not all smooth on top.  That means the butter
is "coming."  Watch carefully, do NOT leave the kitchen with the mixer
running.  The butter "comes" very suddenly, and you need to be there to
first turn the mixer down, and then to STOP it in time.  If  you are
not there, you will have buttermilk all over the kitchen.  I speak from
experience!

Use a WET wooden spoon or a wooden butter paddle to squeeze the chunks
of butter into one mass.  Pour off the buttermilk.  You can drink it or
use it in cooking.  Now you have to "wash" the butter.  It is a process
of mashing the butter together, then "cutting" it apart, then mashing
it again, in COOL water.  You keep on doing this and changing the water
until the water stays perfectly clear.  It is important to wash the
butter, because any buttermilk left in the butter will make it spoil
(turn rancid) very quickly.  Adding some salt to the "clean" butter is 
optional.  It does not take much.  When it is "clean," you can mash it
together and put it into a suitable bowl, or even use wooden "butter
prints" to make little decorative blocks of butter.  Butter will not
stick to WET wood.  My personal favorite butter paddle is the curved
one you can get at www.lehmans.com.  The number is BP0.  That is "BP"
with a zero.  They also have butter molds, if you are interested in
them.

Lehmans has virtually everything that does NOT require electricity. 
They serve a huge local Amish population, plus the rest of us.  Some
folks on this List have said they are "pricey," but prices include
shipping, and lots of times they are cheaper than local sources.  They
ship so much stuff on UPS that they get a VERY good deal, which lowers
shipping costs.  It is a "fun" site for any Survivalist - you can
browse a long time.  The store has a lot more "stuff," so if you need
something not in the on-line catalog or the printed one, just call. 
They are the only source I have found for the Binder Twine my small
antique round baler uses.

Should you visit the store, it is an acre under one roof, in a SMALL
Ohio town.  To keep people from getting lost, there are two "paths" on
the floor, one  is green the other is red.  Follow the color you first
spotted on the floor as you came in the door, you can find that door
again.

Butter IS better for you than trans-fat.  :-)

Jean

  For large quantity food dehydration try
>       this homemade gem from the past
>
>       by Rev. J.D. Hooker
>
>       The thing I like the most about Backwoods Home is that, unlike a lot
>of other magazines, the articles are written by folks who are actually
>doing the things they write about. Folks like Massad Ayoob, Don Fallick,
>and Dynah Geissal have already learned their stuff by trial and error,
>which can save the rest of us the time, troubles, and expenses of initial
>experimentation. It's good to fool around with new ideas, but we can use
>other folks' experience as proven starting points, and then adapt our own
>ideas and improvements into their concepts. As an example of building on
>someone else's experience, let me tell you how I ended up building the
>perfect large-quantity food dehydrator.
>
>       Since our garden, fruit trees, strawberry patches, etc., have always
>produced abundantly for us, we've worked at developing the skills to
>preserve this abundance from one harvest to the next. Canning and freezing
>only go so far, so for a couple of years we fooled around with various
>types of dehydrators. The relatively inexpensive Ronco brand electric
>dehydrator we purchased at an area gun show works great for small
>quantities, and we find it very useful for that.
>
>              1. Dry-stack block to make three walls. Rest the barrel on a
>bed of stones. Set 4x4s in the corners and sheet steel on top.
>
>       However, solar dehydrators turned out to be an entirely different
>story. I can tell you from experience that unless you're living somewhere
>like one of our southwestern deserts, where you can depend on plenty of
>hot, dry weather for lengthy periods, solar dryers (whether purchased or
>owner-built) just aren't dependable enough for real backwoods-type use. As
>a result, I fooled around with several other ideas, but none of them worked
>out to our satisfaction.
>
>       I might have given up on the idea entirely had it not been for the
>intervention of an elderly friend whose family has owned and operated an
>apple orchard for several generations. Not only did this gentleman show me
>more than I'd ever thought of knowing about apple varieties (best choices
>for eating, baking, sweet and hard cider, applejack, etc.), but he also
>showed me what was left of the big wood-fired fruit dryers that his father
>and grandfather had used in the days before electric refrigeration, large
>commercial canneries, and such. While he explained how they were used, we
>looked them over. Remembering from his early youth, he also told me how his
>family, and other large commercial growers, would dry many tons of fruit
>every year. Demand always outran what they were able to supply.
>
>       Though the dryers on his property had pretty much fallen apart from
>years of decay and neglect, some simple measurements showed me that, when
>up and running, each one would have been easily capable of holding 30
>bushels of produce. He assured me that regardless of the weather
>conditions, 24 hours was the maximum drying time, even for the juiciest
>fruit.
>
>              2. Install supports for trays.
>
>       Although 30 bushels seemed much more than we'd ever need to dry in
>one shot, it was easy to see how such a simple wood-fueled dehydrator could
>be built in practically any size. There was a heat source at the bottom
>with interchangeable drying trays arranged over it, with eave vents and a
>sort of cupola vent on the roof (kind of like what you see on many older
>barns) to allow the rising warmed air to carry away the moisture from the
>drying fruit. I later learned that on cool nights, you can watch the vapor
>escape from these vents. After tossing this idea around for a while, and
>fiddling with some figures to come up with a size more
>
>       appropriate for our own use, I built a scaled-down version of those
>commercial dryers. Now, about 15 years later, it's still serving our
>family's needs perfectly. This simple design is so readily adaptable that
>you can include your own modifications to adapt it to your needs. So, while
>I'm going to detail the design that I used, remember that you can change
>practically any of the details and techniques to suit your own requirements
>and resources.
>
>              3. Cover three sides with plywood, hinged for access.
>
>       First of all, since I'd already located a reliable source for free,
>empty 55-gallon steel drums, I decided to build a simple barrel stove for
>the heat source. Laying the drum on the ground, I stacked extra-wide (16")
>foundation blocks around three sides of the drum, fashioning three
>un-mortared walls, two blocks taller than the drum. Next, I filled in the
>area between these block walls with ordinary field stones to the level of
>the top of the first row of blocks, so as to keep the stove up off the
>ground.
>
>       I dropped 4x4 timbers into the hollows of the corner blocks and
>fashioned a wooden framework to hold the drying trays. On three sides of
>the dehydrator, I used half-inch CDX plywood to close them off completely.
>However, each piece is hinged at the bottom, being held shut by
>hook-and-eye fasteners at the tops, to allow for easy access for cleaning
>after each use. On the fourth side, I left openings similar to those of a
>chest of drawers for inserting and removing the drying trays.
>
>       I built the trays from 1x3s and the lids from 1x2s. I used hardware
>cloth for the tray bottoms and metal window screen to cover the tops, which
>are fastened to the trays with hinges. I also used metal window screen to
>cover the eave and cupola vents to further prevent any possibility of
>insect damage. I used painted canvas for the roofing material (as covered
>in the May/June 1996 issue of BHM).
>
>              4. Leave openings in the fourth side for inserting and
>removing trays.
>
>       Note: Since this will be used for food processing and there is heat
>involved, you should not use pressure-treated lumber and avoid lead-based
>paint.
>
>       I used a hammer and cold chisel to cut an eight-inch-diameter hole
>in one end of the drum for fitting a stovepipe, and I cut a square access
>door in the opposite end. I used cheap hinges and sheet metal screws to
>reattach the square of metal removed from the door opening, along with a
>simple hook-and-eye to hold this door shut. This works just as well as the
>door provided with a purchased barrel stove kit; it just doesn't look quite
>so pretty. Adding a damper in the stove pipe, and being able to remove or
>reinsert either or both of the original barrel plugs, allows for heat
>control.
>
>       The most expensive part of this whole setup (and it didn't cost that
>much), was a piece of 1/8" steel cut to rest on the inside two inches of
>the top of the block wall. This creates a much more even distribution of
>heat, and the extra width of the block wall keeps the heat just far enough
>from the wooden outer walls.
>
>              5. Install roof, vents, and stovepipe.
>
>       In use, you'll need to rotate the trays every couple hours or so.
>Just remove the top tray, setting it aside for a moment, and raise each of
>the remaining trays one position. Then take the tray you'd removed from the
>top, and reinsert it in the lowest position. It's also necessary to keep a
>low fire going inside the stove during the entire drying process. During
>the day, we work in shifts, adding dry corn cobs and keeping the draft
>regulated as required. Then towards bedtime, we load the stove up with
>large, unsplit, only-partially-dried logs (remember, this is out-of-doors,
>not inside your living room, so a chimney fire isn't a major problem) and
>damper the stove almost all the way down. At least two or three times
>during the night, one of us will get up to go out and reshuffle the drying
>trays.
>
>       Usually we begin the drying process early in the morning. That way,
>by the time we're up and about the next morning, the dehydration process is
>normally completed.
>
>       Generally, we use dehydrated fruits and vegetables in one of two
>ways. There are plenty of other methods for using dried foods, but these
>two are our family favorites. The first method is simply to reconstitute
>the dried food by soaking it in water overnight, then using it in exactly
>the same manner as frozen food, in any recipe. This tastes a little better
>than using frozen fruit or vegetables, but otherwise you can't really tell
>the difference. The other method we like is to run the thoroughly dried
>food through our hand-cranked grain mill, producing pumpkin, potato, and
>other specialty flours, as well as apple, tomato, carrot, onion, and other
>"powders," which are terrific cooking aids.
>
>              6. Hinge lids to trays.
>
>       Remember, you can vary the size, construction techniques, materials,
>and so forth to customize this design to fit your own circumstances. For
>example, you could build a really large masonry firebox, or use a smaller
>30- or 15-gallon drum, or even an inverted washtub, for the heat source.
>You could substitute dowels, laths, or sticks for the trays, if you'll only
>be making jerky, drying fish, and such. Or you could make any number of
>other customizations. So whatever your food storage needs might be, a
>similar wood-fueled dehydrator could prove just as perfect for you as ours
>has for us. Who knows, you might even find that there's a market in your
>area for some of your delicious dried fruit.

_Wild game

Allowing the carcass of a deer or other game animal to hang in a cool place
WILL make the meat more tender. But it WON'T change the taste of the meat at
all.
  The things I've found that do affect the flavor are:
1- the original condition of the animal (ex. a fat looking buck in prime
health is MUCH tastier than a beat up scrawny looking buck)
2- how far it runs after being shot, once that adrenalin starts pumping the
flavor deteriorates FAST
3- where it's been shot, gut shots make for bad tasting meat
4- how quickly & properly it's field dressed
& 5 - how quickly you can cool down the meat after the animal's been killed.
          Joe
P.S. the same things hold true for domestic animals as well.

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind:
     Hosea 8:7

_

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