“[He] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” Colossians 1:15-20 (KJV)
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Notes for Saturday – June 07, 2014
Apparently, today is Freeze Dry Day. The final installment of the three-part review on Harvest Right’s freeze dryer is posted today. If you feel that, after reading the review, owning one of these machines is not for you, be sure to check out our advertisers below, as they are having sales on Mountain House freeze-dried foods.
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The Freeze Dry Guy is having a 1 month sale on Mountain House freeze dried foods as well.
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Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer, by HJL – Part 3
Note from the Manufacture
Harvest Right has been very responsive to their customers feedback and, in fact, responded to the first two parts of this article with the following letter:
Thank you for using the freeze dryer, and thank you for your article. Because of your thoughts, we have made the following modifications to our unit:
- We have changed the riveting of the tray holder assembly. It is now quite stable.
- We extended the length of the drain tube.
- We are also using shrink-wrapped solder connections instead of electrical tape. It is much faster and looks better. (We don’t know why we weren’t doing that before.)
- In terms of the vacuum pump and the hard shut down that you were worried about, we have been told that is a concern with high CFM pumps but not with the low CFM pump we use. In two years of using this pump and with all of our sales (as far as we know), no one has ever seen the pump stall before running due to oil being sucked back into the cartridge. The JB pumps we use are remarkable. We have tried 20 different pumps and are extremely happy with the durability and reliability of the pump. – Dan
In short, they answered all of my concerns and fixed three of them in their manufacturing process within two weeks. Now that’s what I call responsive! The fourth item, as they describe, is apparently not a real issue on the small vacuum pumps and is easy to mitigate if you spend a few moments managing the system.
Feedback
As there has been a delay between the publication of the first two parts of this article and Part 3, SurvivalBlog received some feedback from its readers that should be addressed. One of the most common complaints heard was that at a starting price of $3899, this is not a cheap machine. The readers are right in that regard but compared to the alternatives, which list at over $10,000 at the time of this writing, this machine is the best deal out there for what it does. Just like a fine Springfield M1-A1 or a good BOV, this purchase will require some forethought on the part of the purchaser. If you are satisfied with the mushy vegetables of canning and are certain of your year-round supply of dairy, this may not be the route you should go. Certainly, if you are just starting out prepping, you probably need to look elsewhere. The target audience for this machine is going to be those who have the first few rounds of priorities in prepping taken care of and are looking at deep, high-quality larder options.
Of course, as we explored in Part 2 of the article, by the time you calculate in the base cost of purchasing that second freezer along with the electricity required to run it, this freeze dryer starts becoming attractive. Especially if you consider the loss of food incurred from a freezer failure.
Another option is for several families to split the cost of the unit and share it. The unit will easily produce approximately one gallon of food every 24 hours. If you live by the mantra “store what you eat; eat what you store”, then you simply look at how much freeze-dried food your family can consume within that same 24 hour period. You will supplement it with fresh foods when they are available in season, so it is not unreasonable to see a single unit capable of supporting 10-12 people when no other foods are available and easily 20-30 people during harvesting season. I believe that I could share this unit with 3 or 4 families similar to mine, bringing the cost to 1/4 of the original.
Tips and Tricks for Better Performance
Mechanical Setup – The first decision you are going to have to make (after the purchase decision) is where to place the unit. While the unit is built robustly with off-the-shelf parts, it was built with efficiency of operation in mind rather than sound. We have grown spoiled by the sound insulation and design of kitchen appliances in today’s world. As a child, I remember our first dishwasher, where you had to leave the kitchen to have a conversation without raising your voice when it was running. This unit is like that. The refrigeration system is heavy duty and produces a noticeable hum that I equate to the sound of a running water faucet. With my middle-age hearing loss, that sound is right in the frequency range of the normal conversation of women, making it hard for me to hear them. (My wife calls it selective hearing, though.) The vacuum pump is a different story. It is a one horsepower motor running what sounds like gears in oil. There is no way to make that quiet. Part of the way the cost is held down is by making the vacuum pump a stand-alone module in the unit, so there is no sound barrier at all. When the vacuum pump is running, no one can have a normal conversation standing next to it. Given that I have the unit on the kitchen counter for this review, that means that the family has taken to eating in the living room, due to the inability to converse during meal times. If we have company over, I have to plan carefully so that the unit is not running during their visit. Additionally, if you have a headache, you won’t want to be near the machine.
Given those issues, the kitchen may not be the best place for operation. However, the kitchen is where you generally prepare food, so you will need it within a comfortable distance. For us, when the review is done, the unit will be relegated to my shop (where the food freezers are, anyway). The walk from the kitchen to the unit is no different than walking to the food storage area for us. You may want to look at placing it in a walk-in food pantry if you have one available that has a solid door (to keep out the noise), gets air conditioning (since this thing puts out a good amount of heat), and is close to the kitchen (for carrying prepared food trays). Even the garage would work, as most attached garages have access to the house near the kitchen. In any case, you will need a counter-height stand to put it on for comfortable use. I might actually look into purchasing a counter-height cart on wheels for it so I can store it out of the way when it’s not in use and then move it where I need it when using it.
The particular location where we live is rather dusty (to the chagrin of my wife). If you have the same conditions, you will need to access the sides of the unit at least once a month. The condenser for the refrigeration is on the right side and has a fan to pull air through the system. After only a month of operation, I noticed considerable dust build up on the heat transfer fins– enough that the air flow was being partially obstructed. You will need to remove the right side panel and use a vacuum hose from your house vacuum, with the soft brush attachment, to clean that dust accumulation off. Because of the dust situation here, I plan on doing this every two weeks of operation. Your maintenance schedule may vary depending on how much dust you deal with. It might be a good idea to cover it when it’s not in use, to help keep dust out of the machinery.
Next, make sure you have the unit level. I made the mistake of leveling the unit by the case. Unfortunately, the chamber may not be perfectly parallel to the case. In this unit, the chamber had slightly less than a 1/4” slant towards the front of the unit. I didn’t notice that until the first defrost cycle, when the melted ice mostly ran out the front of the unit onto the counter and floor, rather than through the drain in the rear. You want only a slight slant toward the rear to encourage proper drain function. The manual states a 1/4” drop towards the rear, which works fine for normal foods. If you plan on working with liquids though, that is too much slant. With less slant, you may have trouble with water draining through the door as well because of small ice dams on the bottom of the unit. I chose to level the unit flat and defrost with the door closed to keep water from draining out. If I have to open the door before the small ice dams have melted, I have to grab the unit and lift the front slightly to force the drain first. It also helps to have a towel or something in front of the unit to catch water drips when you do open the door. I found a small plastic level designed to hang on a string at the hardware store that works really well. I just keep it on the top of the unit (no string necessary), and it is available for whenever I need it– mostly for leveling the food tray rotation within the chamber when dealing with liquid foods.
Also, as tempting as it is to leave the insulating plug/pad out of the unit so you can observe the food, DON’T do it. The chamber temperature floats around -20F, and the humidity will simply condense on the outside of the door making a real mess to clean up– similar to having it defrost and drain out the front.
Operation – These are things that you can do to help the unit operate more efficiently. Remember that they are not necessary. You can stay within the bounds of what the manufacture says and simply load the food, push the button, and let the machine do its thing, and you will successfully freeze dry food. These are simply things and operations that I used to help the machine operate more efficiently. As you use the machine, you cannot refrain from sampling its product when it comes out, and you will learn most of these yourself just by operating it.
- Shutting the Vacuum Pump Down. Even though the manufacture assures me that the cold start-stop of the vacuum pump is not harmful to the small CFM pumps, I still don’t like it. I use this procedure when I can to alleviate the issue. When monitoring the system, if you determine that the unit is nearly finished, either by the timer or by the vacuum, simply walk to the back of the machine, on the vacuum pump itself, turn the isolation valve to off, and open the gas ballast valve. You will hear the vacuum pump start to work harder, as it can now breath and is pulling room air through the cartridge. Walk to the front of the machine, and turn the switch off, shutting the system down. Relieve the vacuum in the chamber by opening the drain. You can now close the gas ballast valve and re-open the isolation valve to reset the motor. That’s all there is to it. Automating that would probably add several hundred dollars to the cost of the machine, so I agree with their decision to not do it. The motor most likely will not be damaged if you do not perform this step, but, having experience with vacuum pumps, I prefer to do it.
- Always Sample the Food When Done. Occasionally, especially if you are just letting the machine run, the food isn’t really done. The food should be warm from the heating elements and completely dry. If you pop a piece in your mouth and find that the center is cool, or worse, still frozen, you know it isn’t done yet. Restart the machine per the next step quickly. Most foods are actually quite enjoyable when freeze-dried, but there are those that are not. Meat, in particular, is very hard to eat. You may need to keep a glass of water handy when you eat freeze-dried meat, as it zaps the saliva out of your mouth in a hurry.
- Restarting the Unit. Every once in a while, you have to restart the unit, because the food wasn’t done or you had to shut the unit down to do something, like change the pump oil. To restart quickly, simply close the unit back up (making sure the drain is closed as well) and turn the unit on. Using the side knobs, turn the drying time to the desired time, then rotate the cooling time to zero. The vacuum pump will kick on, and the unit will resume the freeze drying process. You have to make sure that you set the drying time first, as the timer will reset to the time displayed every time the heating unit cycles. If the unit goes into drying mode and then you set the timer, the timer will reset to the original time if the heating element cycles.
- High Liquid Foods. Occasionally, you may freeze dry foods that have a high liquid content. After a month of use, I determined that the max amount of water extracted is approximately 3/4 to 1 gallon. Certainly, in this category, you would include liquid foods, such as raw eggs and milk, but also peas, corn, green beans, and most fruits. If the unit has run for 30 hours or more and is still not done, you have reached this maximum amount of extraction. The extracted water refreezes on the wall of the chamber, and if too much builds up, the heating elements for the trays simply remelt it, causing an endless cycle. Shut the unit down, using the procedures above, take the trays out, and place them in your freezer to hold them. Defrost the unit, place the trays (that have been kept frozen in your freezer) back into the freeze dryer, and restart the unit. It is important to not let the trays defrost. If they have reached the point where they are mostly warm, let the unit cool them back down for a couple of hours before starting the drying process. I tend to perform this step at the 24 hour mark.
- Defrosting the Chamber. The chamber has a defrost mode, but it is really gentle. If you have the time, just let it work. If you are hurried, because you’re working with high liquid foods or you need to be someplace, you can speed things up by using a hair dryer. You just use a hair dryer to blow warm (not hot) air, as if defrosting a non-self-defrosting freezer. Be careful that you do not let the chamber wall temperature get too high, as you can damage the insulation. You will usually need to defrost with the food tray carrier in place, as the ice forms around it and locks it in place. If you have the chamber relatively level, as I do, know that you will have issues with water running out the front, because of the ice dams near the drain. Either tilt the unit back or place a towel in front to catch the water.
- Working with Trays. I used both the aluminum trays and the stainless steel ones. The aluminum trays are stiffer and lighter, but I don’t like aluminum touching my food. Nearly everything will stick slightly to the trays, but parchment paper works really well as a separator– even with liquids. With most foods, the food will not stick to the parchment, and if there is no obvious staining or strong odor, you can reuse the same parchment. Costco sells large rolls (205 square feet) of 15” wide paper. You can simply cut a sheet 18” long and split it in half lengthwise. You end up with a sheet that just fits in the bottom with about 1/4” up the sides of the tray. Press to fit it in the tray, then add the food. For liquids, like milk or raw eggs, I use the stainless steel trays. The product does stick to the trays but rinses off easily in hot water.
- Trays Filled with Liquid. It doesn’t matter how steady you are, you cannot fill a tray with a liquid, like scrambled raw eggs, and then move it from the counter to the dehydrator without spilling some. Harvest Right’s suggestion was to use ice cube trays, but I ended up with a product that is thicker than 1/2”, and it makes a difference in processing time. A tray filled with 1/2” of liquid product will take about 30 hours to complete (assuming four similar trays in the unit). The same trays filled with the same amount of product, but in the form of ice cubes, takes nearly 48 hours to finish; even then you may have problems. After 48 hours of processing, milk cubes (in ice cube trays) still were not finished, and I had to crush them in the tray to get the batch completed. It’s much simpler to just pour milk into the tray. The trick is to level the tray holder in the unit and place the empty trays on their shelves. Then pull the tray out just enough to pour the product directly into the tray– pulling the tray about four inches to the front will generally do it. Be careful not to pull too much because the front of the tray is heavier than the back during the pouring and you don’t want the tray to tip. Milk was especially easy this way as each tray held one quart of milk. When freeze-dried, the same tray would just fit in a one quart mason jar, which was sealed with the jar attachment of the Tilla Food Saver. Voila! All you have to do is add water for 1 quart of milk! Eggs are also similar. There is very little shrinkage; two coffee scoops (tablespoons) of raw egg product equals one egg. Just be sure that if you are freeze-drying raw eggs, you blend them well before freeze-drying and afterward label them “RAW”. Bacteria may still be present. The freeze-dried raw eggs can then be reconstituted for use in recipes for cakes, muffins, pancakes, and such or reconstituted to cook as scrambled eggs.
- Keep the Food Frozen. The default time on the machine is nine hours for freezing. It is also tempting to just place the trays on the counter when resetting the unit from a high-liquid batch, especially if the trays feel warm. You must avoid this temptation. Even if you are pre-freezing your food, you must allow some time for the refrigeration of the unit to cool the food down. At room temperature (72F), water boils at 20,320mTorr of pressure (0.393 lb/sqin). Even at 0F (the temperature of a really cold freezer), water boils at about 1000mTorr of pressure. This means that even if you have pre-frozen your food, but especially if your food is closer to room temperature, the water will vaporize way too fast for the freezer to condense and refreeze it to the side of the chamber. All water vapor not condensed out on the wall of the chamber will go straight through the vacuum pump and the oil will pick some of it up, thus contaminating it.
At $22/gal, you want the oil to last as long as possible; just one batch of too much water vapor can destroy the usefulness of the oil, forcing you to change it. The solution is to always let the freezer have some time to cool the food down to the operating temperature (~-20F) before allowing the vacuum pump to kick on. If you are filling the trays with a liquid, like eggs or milk, even nine hours may be questionable. On those foods, you should open the unit at about the 8.5 hour mark and check the food. I have often found that the sugar in the milk will keep it from completely freezing until about 10 or 11 hours into the cooling cycle. Eggs tend to be right at nine hours, but I will usually give them 10 hours of cooling. If you are pre-freezing your food to cut down the freezing time, leave a few hours of cooling to bring the temperature all the way down.
- Changing the Oil. Whether you destroyed your oil by running unfrozen liquid through it or through the normal use of the oil (in about a week of full-time operation), you will eventually need to change the oil in the vacuum pump. Changing the oil is a snap and easily accomplished. The instructions on the pump are complete. You will need to dispose of the oil, but I do not recommend sending it down the drain. Treat it as you would used motor oil. There are two methods of managing the oil, and they both give you about the same life. The first method is to just run the oil until the machine has trouble pulling a full vacuum below 800mTorr, shut the system down, and do a complete oil change. The second method is to open the drain cock and draw off a couple of ounces of oil each time you load the unit with product. Replace the oil drawn off with fresh oil through the filler. This procedure should be done after the defrost cycle, so that the water in the oil has a chance to separate out and settle to the bottom. When you drain the oil, you will drain most of the water off as well. Both methods will use roughly a quart of oil every week. The advantage of the gradual change is that you have consistent performance from the pump. With the batch method of changing the oil, you will tend to have poorer performance the closer you get to the time you have to change the oil. Even with the gradual method, you may still have to do a complete oil change on occasion, due to other contaminates. When the pump first starts up, you will smell the oil as it freely moves the available air through the pump, and you will be able to smell the contaminates. If it is foul smelling, change the oil. You should also look at the oil through the sight glass. In addition to checking the level of the oil, check the color. If it looks foul and green, change it. It should be clear when you first start it, and it turns cloudy as it picks up moisture. White to light brown is OK, but green and darker colors indicate that you need to change it.
Storing the Product
Any method you normally use to store your food will work with freeze-dried foods. If you are looking for 15+ years, you should look at the #10 can processing machines. Fill the can with product, throw an oxygen absorber in, and seal the can. (Don’t forget to label the can.) Harvest Right does sell mylar bags with a heat sealer, which also work well for long-term storage. However, mylar bags don’t provide any structural support, so the contents can be easily crushed or damaged. You must store these bags within a structural container, such as a plastic tote from Amazon or Costco. I like the totes that have the interlocking lids with a metal hinge pin. They are normally around $20, but you can get them at Costco for $7 when they have them in stock. We used mason jars with the Food Saver adapter, because I don’t need any longer than a three to five year shelf life, and I have an abundance of jars that we normally use for canning. The jars will actually work better for long-term storage than the cans, but they are expensive. I like them because I can see the food in them, so the only label I need is a date written on the lid with a Sharpie. Except for a few tomato-based items whose flavors are improved through the canning process, such as spaghetti sauce, I will be replacing the normal canning process with the freeze dry process, so those jars will be available for that. There are quite a few items that we have not had the opportunity yet to freeze dry. When our garden is in full swing, we are looking forward to freeze drying homemade salsa, among other things, that don’t can well. We don’t need a 20 year shelf life, because this food will be in the normal food rotation of our household.
Recipes
What can I say here… there is very little that you can not freeze dry. Foods that are high in oil or fat may not work so well. Pork bacon does not freeze dry well, nor do foods which have a very high cream content. Ice cream does surprisingly well, but only if its cream content is below 1/3. The things to look for to create successful freeze-dried foods is that the product must have a cellular structure or a relatively high solids content. Milk does well because of the dissolved minerals in it. You end up with a light flaky product that resembles the structure of mica. If the oil content is high, there must be a correspondingly high solids content, either with dissolved minerals or cellular structure, to hold the oil. Butter has neither, so the product just melts into a pool of oil– and boils vigorously in a vacuum, making a mess. Here are a few of the more difficult items that worked well for us:
- Eggs. It doesn’t matter how you prepare them, they just work. Our first batch was scrambled eggs. The finished product took less than 20 hours and looked just like the freshly-cooked product, but it had almost no weight. I made a steak and egg biscuit sandwich for breakfast the other day with a fresh biscuit (made from freshly ground wheat flour), a reconstituted scrambled egg, and some reconstituted steak. You couldn’t tell it from freshly cooked egg and steak. It was wonderful! The egg was scrambled with a bit of coconut oil, then cooked and freeze-dried. To reconstitute, I simply placed the amount of cooked egg I wanted in a bowl and poured hot water (from the tap) over it. Less than two minutes later, it was ready to go on the biscuit. Since I used too much water to reconstitute the egg, I reused the same water for the steak and then simply placed both on a paper towel to absorb the excess water.
Raw egg is a little different. Its freeze-dried texture is more like milk’s, in that you end up with a crystalline product that looks like colored mica. It is light and airy, crushes easily, and reconstitutes well. Due to the high water content, a full batch (two dozen eggs per tray) will take about 30-36 hours with a defrost/restart cycle in the middle. There is virtually no shrinkage of the product, so a 1:1 ratio of water to product makes for easy measurement. Two tablespoons of hot water and two tablespoons of product (or coffee scoops) makes one large egg. You can use it in recipes dry, by increasing the required liquid in the recipe, or you can reconstitute it and then use it as you would any scrambled egg. The final, reconstituted product does not fluff as well as a fresh egg, but it’s hard to tell the difference when you cook it. In recipes, there is no difference. For scrambled eggs, you can tell the difference if you have the fresh eggs right beside it, but without that reference, you would be hard pressed to determine that it is not fresh.
Fried eggs work very well, too. I didn’t try sunny-side-up eggs, but freeze-drying over-easy eggs was easy, and they were also easy to reconstitute. Raw, unscrambled eggs will freeze dry, but the resultant product has no structural integrity and fractures/breaks easily. When reconstituting, it’s basically the same as a raw egg in which you have broken the yoke.
Eggs are rated based upon the amount of watery egg white when you break it open. AA eggs are about the best you are going to get, when you buy from a store that gets them from an egg farm. If you raise your own, you are probably used to AAA or AAAA eggs, where there is basically no or very little watery egg white. When you freeze the egg, you destroy the gel of the egg white, and all your eggs basically turn into A or B quality. Because of that destruction of the gel structure, don’t bother trying to whip freeze-dried egg whites. It doesn’t work.
- Cheese. I expected cheese to be difficult, but nothing could be further from the truth. It doesn’t even matter what kind of cheese (as long as it is real cheese). Simply grate and spread evenly on the trays. Because of the airy nature of the grated product, I piled it on about an inch thick on each tray. This worked well, because a six-pound block of Sharp Cheddar from Costco can be quartered; each quarter, shredded, fits upon one tray. We tried Sharp Cheddar, Mozzarella, Swiss, Monterrey Jack, and even Sonoma Jack (Pepper Jack). All worked well, as long as they were grated. It turns out that grated cheese is one of the easiest foods to freeze dry, despite the high fat content. It only takes 18 hours, including freeze time. Plus, a six-pound block gives you 1-1/2 gallons of shredded product that reconstitutes easily. The dry product has an intensified taste and is absolutely scrumptious. This is one product that has to be stored immediately, before all the little two-legged mice (or teenagers) in the house discover it. I should let you know that, when reconstituted, freeze-dried cheese can be melted for use on pizza or casseroles, just as if it were fresh. With all of the shredded cheese we have freeze-dried, my wife has frequently given me a kiss and told me how much she appreciates my gift of a Kitchen Aid accessory pack, which allows her to quickly shred six pounds of cheese or zucchini and crush tomatoes, while removing the skins and seeds, with little effort. (Husbands, Kitchen Aid mixers and their accessory pack could be a nice gift for your prepping wife. I have received countless kisses and thank-yous from my wife for this surprise gift.)
- Yogurt. Yogurt is easy to prepare. You can use parchment paper, if you like. You just dump the yogurt into the tray and spread it so that it is no more than 1/2” thick. Thinner is better, but you get less out of a batch. Because yogurt retains a dense closed-cell structure, it will take longer to freeze dry. My first batch ran about 28 hours from start to finish, and part of it still wasn’t done. It just got eaten before I could restart it. You can break it up into chunks and eat it like candy (yummy!), or you can reconstitute it in a bowl in the refrigerator overnight, and it is just like fresh the next morning.
- Sour Cream. We tend to like sour cream, so I was excited when it turned out to freeze dry easily. However, the reconstituted product is watery, just like when you freeze and thaw fresh sour cream. In cooking, it doesn’t matter, but it does make a difference on my baked potato. It tastes just fine; there is just not much “gel” to it. A batch is similar to milk, running about 30 hours. Prepare the tray the same as you would for yogurt.
- Berries. They’re better than candy bars! As I write this, I have a batch of blue berries running through the machine now. Berries take a bit longer, because they have the skin on, so a batch will run about 30-36 hours. They also have a high water content, so you may end up having to defrost/restart in the middle. I make it a habit to always perform that defrost/restart at 24 hours on any food. I actually haven’t tried reconstituting any berries yet, because they are so good in their freeze-dried form. I’m sure the reconstituted product would be like any frozen-then-thawed berry, where it is fine for cooking but questionable for just popping in your mouth due to texture changes. That’s just fine by me. I can’t think of a better or healthier sweet snack.
- Corn/peas. These are easy, but you either spread it out less than 1/2 thick in the tray or be prepared to defrost/restart, due to the massive water content. It takes 20 to 36 hours, depending on how many you run in the batch. The corn is like little sugar bombs; it’s sweeter than even the candy corn that is so popular with the kids at Thanksgiving. I wonder how the grandchildren will feel about getting real corn instead of candy? (They like the freeze-dried carrots that are almost sweet as candy, so I’m pretty confident they will like the corn– “sugar bombs” we shall call them.)
- Raw Meats. Yes, you can freeze dry raw meat. Nearly any meat you can freeze successfully, you can freeze dry. You can even freeze dry steaks, if you cut them less than 1/2” thick. Due to the thickness restraint, you can get a thicker cut by freeze drying it cooked. However, it works raw just as well. You can get a quick marinade/sauce flavoring by simply reconstituting the meat in your marinade/sauce (made with more water than usual).
- Potatoes. You can shred the potatoes and have instant hash brown potatoes, though it’s tough to beat Costco’s price on freeze-dried hashbrowns. I like to slice the potatoes so my wife can make scalloped potatoes easily. You can also freeze dry baked potatoes. Just cut them open, mash them to about 1/2” thick and load them with your favorite fixin’s.
There is very little that you can’t freeze dry. If you have special dietary needs or eclectic tastes, this is your answer for both long-term storage and easy, enjoyable food. Leftovers are a breeze and don’t need to be refrigerated afterwards. Our family uses very little salt, for health reasons, and this has been our major complaint of commercial freeze-dried foods. Now we can make them exactly like we want our meals. We have freeze-dried both basic ingredients to combine however we want and complete meals for convenience. It works either way. This is definitely going to be in our preps.
I encourage any of our SurvivalBlog readers to consider purchasing one of Harvest Right’s freeze dryers on their own or to get with another family or two to invest in one of these. You won’t have to buy some food that you really don’t want to eat, store it in the back of your garage for years only to find that it is ruined, due to heat, pests, or water. The Harvest Right freezer, especially with our gardens and orchards about to burst forth with fresh goodness, will enable all of us to store our produce, fruits, meats, eggs, and dairy for daily, enjoyable consumption over the years to come.
To purchase, contact Harvest Right through their website or by telephone: 801-923-4673.
Index
This is a three part review:
- Part 1 – The background and initial impression.
- Part 2 – How it works / First operations / Overall impression
- Part 3 – Tips & Tricks for Optimal performance / Recipes
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Two Letters Re: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer
Hugh,
Thanks for the review of the freeze dryer, I’m very interested. Just wanted to share that the first thing I thought when reading your review and clicking on their pictures is “that display is going to go bad”! And it did. Gotta worry about $4K and something major (and predictable) goes like that, with only a 1 yr warranty. – M.R.
HJL Replies: I was initially worried about that, too, but the company was very responsive in taking care of the issue. While I did the repair myself, they offered to have a local appliance repairman do the work. i felt comfortable enough with the simplicity of the machine to repair it myself. I think they’ve done an admirable job of keeping the cost down by using off-the-shelf parts as much as possible. Even the display that went bad was off-the-shelf. It had a part number written on it that I used to find a replacement on the Web for only $23. One of the questions that always worries me when dealing with a small business is “Will they still be in business in ten years?” I think this company will be around due to how they handle business. If not, if your google-fu has any strength to it, you should be able to find everything but the main processing board, vacuum chamber, and casing on the web.
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HJL,
In the product review of the Harvest Right freeze dryer part 2, the author had his butter make a total mess of the unit. If the author was either an astronaut or scuba diver, he would understand his problem. The problem is nitrogen!
In a freeze dryer, we are dealing with both pressure and temperature. The pressure is why the butter exploded in the freeze dryer. Butter is a lipid (fat) and likes to store nitrogen. This is part of the reason why the butter exploded. It is also part of the reason why a diver or astronaut will get the “bends” or decompression sickness. Also, butter is somewhat of a whipped product, and therefore contains trapped air as well. It was when the pressure was reduced to the point that the trapped gasses overcame the adhesion strength of the butter, and the butter began to melt and expand all over the dryer unit.
With a diver, he has to breathe air at ambient pressure just to breathe at all. As he descends, the ambient pressure increases, so the air he breathes must be supplied at higher and higher pressure. This drives gas into solution in his blood at higher pressures than at the surface. The diver has only so much time at these higher pressures before he becomes too saturated to safely return to the surface. If he becomes too saturated he must first decompress at a shallower depth before he can return to the surface, or the gasses will come out of solution in his tissues or blood. The body can withstand a pressure difference of about 2 atmospheres before the gas comes out of solution. An astronaut going on a spacewalk faces the same problems, as he’s going from a high pressure to a lower pressure. Currently, astronauts must “breathe down” for six hours before being exposed to space. This is the same decompression that a diver must do.
Lipids or fats have an affinity for nitrogen and like to hold on to it. Because of this, it may take more time than normal to fully decompress. Overweight divers are much more likely to get bent than thin divers. Since butter is a fat, it will hang on to a lot of nitrogen and not give it up easily. So the butter needs to be decompressed for at least 6-12 hours at about 368 torr or 14.5 inches of mercury, and then again for 6 – 12 hours at 184 torr or 7.25 inches before going to full vacuum. This staged decompression would be a rough guess as to what is needed, and another stop at 90 torr wouldn’t be a bad idea. 1 torr = 1 mm of mercury. 1 inch of mercury = 25.4 torr – H.W.
HJL Replies: Sadly, we have to work within the boundaries of the unit. The capabilities that you speak about are only available on laboratory-grade freeze driers with very high price tags. For this unit, the vacuum is either on or off. The heating element is also either on or off. While it would be nice to have such capabilities, I would rather have the simpler unit at the less expensive price. There are other ways of taking care of butter and fatty foods that don’t involve tremendous investments in machinery. I do appreciate your scientific explanation.
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Economics and Investing:
The Good And The Not- So-Good News About US Jobs In One Chart. Part of the problem is the skills mis-match. Many good (primarily blue collar) jobs remain unfilled as younger folks do NOT have the skills, nor do they want to learn them! – H.L.
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The Purchase Of Our Republic. – B.B.
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Items from Mr Econocobas:
Rising Resource Costs Escalate Odds of Global Unrest
Video: James Rickards ‘Inflation is Coming as it is The Only Way The U.S. Can Pay It’s Debt’
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Odds ‘n Sods:
In the UK You Can Now Only Buy Heirloom Seeds if You Are Part of a Private Members Club. – H.L.
Article quote: “The way we are being pushed and squeezed by regulations that govern every facet of our life, we will soon only be able to defecate when our allotted time slot comes around.”
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What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades. – D.S
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Holder to Create ‘Homegrown’ Terrorism Task Force – G.B.
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Just Another Anonymous Victim of the Economic Recovery. – H.L.
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Yet again, another reason why I like homeschooling: Honor student charged with 2 felonies for making a volcano as science experiment
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Hugh’s Quote of the Day:
“Blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.” Psalm 40:4 (KJV)
Notes for Friday – June 06, 2014
The 6th of June is remembered for both D-Day and for the birth of Dieudonné Joseph Saive (born 1899.) He was the designer of many well-known firearms, including the Browning Hi-Power and the FN49, and he was co-designer (along with Ernest Vervier) of the very popular FN-FAL, which was issued to the militaries of more than 90 countries.
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RepackBox is joining our SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest with a $300 certificate to their site.
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Today we present another entry for Round 53 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $11,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
- A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
- A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
- Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
- A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
- A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
- A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
- A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
- A roll of $10 face value in pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver quarters, courtesy of GoldAndSilverOnline.com, (currently valued at around $180 postpaid),
- Both VPN tunnel and DigitalSafe annual subscriptions from Privacy Abroad (a combined value of $195),
- KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
- APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
- TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.
Second Prize:
- A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
- A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
- Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
- The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
- $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
- A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
- A full set of all 26 books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
- Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),
- Dri-Harvestfoods.com in Bozeman, Montana is providing a prize bundle with Beans, Buttermilk Powder, Montana Hard Red Wheat, Drink Mixes, and White Rice, valued at $333,
- TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate,
- Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate, and
- RepackBoxis providing a $300 gift certificate to their site.
Third Prize:
- A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
- A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
- Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
- Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
- A MURS Dakota Alert Base Station Kit with a retail value of $240 from JRH Enterprises,
- Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
- Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208, and
- SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.
Round 53 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
Getting A Real Education– Why Becoming Self-Sufficient Is Better Than Going To College, by D.T.
Everywhere you turn experts are predicting that the world is heading into some very troubling times. At every level, they say we are heading into a period of history that will see major upheavals in economics, politics, education, food production, housing, jobs, and basically everything. These major changes will effect everyone on earth. That is why so many people are trying to prepare for these changes before they happen in full force, and most experts agree the best way to prepare to meet the challenges of living in this kind of future is to have a skills-based education rather than following the traditional model of theory-based education.
That is why it is better to learn to become self-sufficient rather than spend your precious time and money going to college, at least for now. In fact, if you follow this alternate path of education, in order to be best prepared for the new reality, in four years time you will be well on the way to financial independence; you’ll also be healthier, have a nest-egg to invest, and have well-developed multiple skills. You will be at least a decade ahead of your high school pals who went directly to college.
Recent college graduates are looking at spending the next 10 to 15 years of their lives working just to pay off the Federal student loans they took out to pay for their expensive college educations. Graduating into an economy that has 25% unemployment for college grads, most are not finding jobs in their chosen field of study and instead are consigned to work that pays $10 an hour or less. Is there any wonder why so many are forced to move back into the homes of their parents? It is currently estimated that fully 1/3 of college grads are living at home with Mom and Dad. How can they afford to live on their own and have an apartment, as well as pay for rent, utilities, food, transportation, and still have a life, when student loans must begin being repaid immediately after graduation?
According to CNN, in 2012 the average student loan debt is $29,400 and is expected to take 10 to 15 years to repay. By the time the loans are paid off, current college graduates will be entering middle age. How will many of them ever be able to save enough to pay for a home of their own, marry, or have children, let alone afford a new car and have any extra disposable income to pay for vacations, dining out, movies, or pursuing hobbies?
Here’s what you should be doing during the next four years, to be better prepared to meet the emerging “New Realty”:
- Learn to find or create a job to earn money,
- Negotiate a place to live until you can move into your own home,
- Plan how to invest the money you are saving,
- Learn to grow food,
- Learn to buy real estate, and
- Develop multiple means of income. (I will explain this later on.)
The goal of accomplishing the list above is to:
- Work and save as much as you can,
- Find a property you can purchase with some of your savings to own it free and clear,
- Learn to garden or provide other legitimate means to drastically reduce your grocery costs,
- Develop your property to its highest and best purpose, which will enable you to be financially free,
- Having accomplished all this, you will have learned multiple skills and the means to provide yourself and others with food and shelter. This will give you more choices, and allow you to become financially free, while you are still able to enjoy it.
The best way to accomplish all of this is to think of it as your “real education” and to commit to working your plan for four years as if you were attending college, only this is your practical education. Without a real commitment to accomplishing each step of the plan, you won’t reap the benefits it will deliver. So resolve right now to commit to the process.
Committing to the process means you will not allow yourself to be sidetracked! There will be many who will want to sidetrack you. You will have to discipline yourself to stay focused on the prize of becoming financially free and not let anyone talk or shame you out of it. Don’t listen to the naysayers or those who love to poke holes in your dreams. They only do this because they don’t have what it takes to accomplish it. So, rather than watching you suffer while you get there and accomplish something great through sacrifice and self-discipline, they will do all they can to bring you down and get you to abandon the idea altogether. Don’t allow this to happen! Commit to the work, do the work, and stay focused on the goal!
At the end of your real education you will:
- Be living in a home that you own free and clear, eliminating major housing costs,
- Be able to save more money by growing your own food,
- Be healthier, because you’ve been eating healthier food instead of the GMO’d food sold in the grocery stores,
- Be able to have a nest-egg to invest,
- Be in a position to help others, financially and materially,
- Possess the real skills needed to successfully meet the challenges of an uncertain future, and
- Ultimately have more choices and greater control over your life!
Step One– Learn to Find or Create a Job
Let’s assume you just graduated from high school. Your immediate task will be to get a job to earn money. It may seem to be a hard thing to do, given that many of you are living in households where parent(s) are having trouble finding work! However, you have more options in job selection then they do, because you can afford to not be picky.
Some of the best jobs are the jobs nobody wants. Jobs, such as working as a dishwasher at a restaurant, or cleaning rooms at a motel, or being a farm or ranch hand might be available to you. In fact, some of the least sought-after jobs can be the best ways to achieve your four-year goal. How’s that? Well, there are jobs that will pay you money, in addition to providing you with room and board. An example is being a farm or ranch hand. Many farms and ranches need workers who can do the manual labor required on a farm or ranch, such as milking the cows, mending the fences, feeding and watering livestock, stacking the hay bales, driving the machinery, tending the chickens, and gathering eggs. According to estimates released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, farm animal caretakers, such as ranch hands, earned an average wage of $11.56 an hour (as of 2012). Many ranches include giving workers a free place to sleep and all meals. Some ranchers may adjust pay to their workers to cover these items, but because good hands are very hard to find and keep, wages remain competitive. Since you won’t have to pay for room and board, you can save all the money you earn.
Do the math: Figuring a 30-hour work week, and after all taxes and FICA taken off your wages, at the end of four years, you could save $40,000–$60,000.
What if you want to stay closer to home? The best jobs are the ones that will pay you more, based on your own effort, sooner rather than later. Being a wait person at a restaurant is one such job. Food service type jobs, where you wait on tables and take orders, pay at least minimum wage as a base income, but when you give great service with a smile, you can earn tips from your customers that will boost your earnings! If you work where the minimum wage is $8 an hour and you work 30 hours a week, that equals $240 a week, but you could average tips of an additional $10 an hour more.
Do the math: Base wages are $8 an hour plus approximately $10 more per hour for tips equals $18 an hour equals $540 a week equals $2322 gross wages a month. After state, local, and federal taxes are taken off your pay, at the end of four years you could save $60,000-$90,000!
What If You Can’t Find Work?
If you can’t find a job, then create a job for yourself. Here are a few ideas: There is always a need for someone who can clean houses, clean and re-organize garages, do yard work like mowing lawns, trimming bushes, picking up yard debris. Are you good in math? Then hire yourself out as a math tutor. You can earn more money by organizing a Math Tutor class, with two to four students in each class.
Another way to go is to find things people don’t want and sell them to people who do want them, making a profit for you through the transaction. I’ve heard of people making a very good living finding broken things, repairing them, and then putting them up on Craigslist and selling them. If you are a gear head and can do oil changes or auto tune-ups, advertise in the Nickle Ad Shopper or Penny Saver newspapers, and offer to do these services at people’s homes, instead of them coming to you. If you charge less than what retail outlets charge for this service, your phone will be ringing!
Offer to babysit, pet sit, farm animal sit, or plant sit. Offer to clean the bathrooms at every gas station in town and get them under contract for this service. Do it for $20 a week. You can earn an extra $100-$200 a week! Offer to deliver food for several restaurants. Do it for 15% of the total order. Many times you will get an extra tip at the door when you deliver the meals!
Can you sew on a sewing machine? Offer to re-size clothes, do minor repairs, and alterations. Sew hems on cut-off jeans, or make long-sleeved shirts into short-sleeved ones.
If you can create simple websites, offer your services to new businesses. You can get the list of all the new businesses who registered and paid their license fees with the city. Just call City Hall to get the list. Then contact each new business owner and pitch them your service. Offer to keep the cost under $300. (Most new businesses can’t afford pricey websites.) Just keep it simple and classy. Then make sure you deliver the website on time and for the price agreed to. Do a good job, and you will get favorable word of mouth advertising and a lot more experience. This will lead to more jobs and more earnings.
One job you create is better than no job at all! Of course, while you work your created job, keep looking for full-time work. Eventually you will get hired.
Where Will You Live?
While you are looking for a job, talk with your parents about continuing to live at home. Offer to pay rent each month or to help with more housework in payment for room and board. It’s vital you negotiate a fair but cheap rent! Remember you are saving every penny you earn above your living expenses. Whatever you agree to do, do it! If you negotiated a lower rent in exchange for doing more housework and you don’t do the housework, then you are simply practicing being a liar. Pay attention boys! Boys are particularly notorious about promising to keep the room clean and then, due to laziness, end up trying to schmooz Mom or Sis to do it for you. It’s time to grow up and start doing what you say you will! It’s great practice for your first paying job.
What If I Know What I Want to Do?
If you know what you want to learn to do, then try to find ways to save money there, too. For example, if you are a gear head and you want to become an auto mechanic, then offer to work for a Master Mechanic as a shop gopher to start. Try to work as many hours a week as possible, even if for minimum wage. You can learn to become a mechanic very fast being essentially a paid apprentice. Don’t immediately think to attend a turn-key college that will teach you to be a mechanic, because those types of colleges, while every bit as valid, are still expensive and make more money off you as a student, if they can get you in by Federal Student Loans. That means more heavy debt for you. Don’t go there! Get in as a gopher-worker-apprentice somewhere with a Master Mechanic and save the tuition. You’ll be paid to learn.
Same thing works with wanting to be a chef. Offer to start as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Always be on time. Always be a conscientious employee. Then progress to food prep and side dishes. Observe the head chef and every one under him or her. Ask questions. Show an interest. People love to share what they love with others who are interested! You will learn to be a chef in four years or less this way. Why pay a culinary academy $25,000 a school year when you can be paid to learn the same things?
How many other professions can you think of where you can be a paid apprentice while you learn the trade? Apprentices can work in heating & air conditioning, electrician, plumbing, home building and remodeling, printing press operator and quick copying, meat processing, commercial delivery-driving, and commercial driving a long haul truck. If you want to design clothes, offer to make the costumes for the local theater production. There are so many ways to gain experience! Experience leads to higher paid work.
What if you can’t get into a trade apprenticeship? Then create a job! Don’t be idle. There are many ways to earn money, if you are willing to do the work. Be creative in thinking up ways to earn money while costing next to nothing to start. Try window washing. It costs almost nothing for buckets, squeegees, and window cleaner– $3 total at a dollar store. Use free newspapers to dry the window once cleaned. Start on a street filled with businesses, and go store to store. At each store, offer to do all their windows for $20 dollars. Even if it takes you an hour to do the windows at each store, that is only 5 hours a day of work for a full-time income.
Tell them you want to come back each week (or every other week) to clean the windows again. Try to pick up five customers a day, who will be repeat customers. At $20 a store, that equals $100 a day and $500 a week in profit. This is a gross income of $26,000 a year! You should be able to save at least $20,000 of this each year. In four years that will be $80,000. There are many communities where this amount will more than pay for a house. Ask yourself, are you willing to clean windows for four short years so that you can buy a house free and clear?
You might decide that you want to reach your four-year goal in three years. That may mean working more than one job. Do whatever it takes, and stay focused and committed! If you can earn money while learning a trade, go for it! If you can earn money while also being given free room and board, go for it! The money you save will help you achieve your goal that much faster!
I’ve Got My Housing, Food, and Job(s) Squared Away. Now What?
This is where it gets really fun.
When you get your first paycheck, sit down and do some figuring. Take your paycheck and figure out what you will earn per month. Then deduct for your room and board, if you have to pay for this. Allow a little bit as fun money, but when I say “little” I mean it! If you have a car, budget for the gasoline for the car, to get you to and from work. Once all of your obligations are written down including your fun money, deduct them from your net monthly pay. What’s left is what you are going to save, religiously and without fail, each and every week.
Check out all the local banks and credit unions and decide which one is the best for you, with respect to opening and managing a personal account. Research the costs involved. Is there a minimum balance required? What are their bank fees and debit card and overdraft fees? Credit unions usually have less fees for their members. Once you have decided which financial institution to use, go there and open an account. This is something to do in person. Introduce yourself to the banker. Get his or her business card. This will be a valuable relationship to you, especially in just a few more years when you buy your real estate property. They’re not for you to borrow any money from but to use as references. So, get to know them now. Often, in large real estate transactions, using bankers as references can help you. Keep the business cards and make note when someone gets promoted at the bank or someone new is hired. Always introduce yourself to the new people and get their business card. Cultivate these business relationships!
I advise you open only a savings account at first. Checking accounts are too easy to tap, and once you start tapping that money, the faster you lose everything you’ve saved. This is going to be a real test of how self-disciplined you are. This is the time in your life to master money. The sooner you do this, the better for your financial future. Seriously, don’t be tempted to blow the money on a depreciating asset. (A depreciating asset is one that loses value over time, like a car or motorcycle.) And for heaven’s sake, DO NOT buy anything on credit! Making monthly payments is DEBT, and you end up paying more than whatever it’s really worth. So, just open a savings account. Once you feel you can trust yourself to not touch any of your savings, you may open a checking account and only place your “fun money” there. Use the credit card that comes with the account to spend the fun money, which will help build your credit score. You want to start on the right foot and build your credit! Just don’t overdo it. Purchase only what you have the money in the account to cover immediately. Remember: Do not go into debt for anything. Paying immediately for something you charge will help you gain a high credit score. A high credit score will help you when you are ready to buy your real estate. Just stick to the savings account as the place where you put most of your earnings.
There’s something magical about seeing the amount in a savings account increase over time. What starts as just a few hundred dollars, quickly turns into more than a few thousand dollars. You have big plans for this money. If you take any out and think you’ll replace it later, forget about it. It won’t happen. You will only be practicing stealing from yourself, so don’t go there. Stay the course, and don’t touch that money! Concentrate on the large amount you will need in just a couple more years and what you will be able to do with that money. Keep your eyes on that prize! Learn to master money; don’t let it master you!
Here is Wisdom
If you can discipline yourself to save money and not be tempted to spend it, even when others are encouraging you or guilt-tripping you to spend it, then you will be successful! Remember that you have really big plans for this money. In fact, your plans will make you rich beyond your dreams, but if you can’t discipline yourself to save the money and spend only what you allow yourself to spend, you will never realize your goals or finance your dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You will not get anywhere if you rob Peter to pay Paul.
Here’s the Prize
Your goal is to find a job and save money so that, in four years, you can buy real property to live in. Notice I said “real property”, not a “house”. I want your to think in terms of owning something outright and not “financing” it. Financing it means you go into debt. You don’t want to be in debt. Avoid debt like the plague! You want to buy something outright– free and clear. In other words, once you pay for it, the only thing you will need to pay will be your property taxes and upkeep. Once you know what that amount will be annually, divide it by 12; then you will know what your “housing” costs will be each month and can then budget accordingly. Why do you want to own something outright? Because if you can greatly reduce or eliminate this expense, you can spend what you would’ve spent on housing on other things. Your cash flow will improve. You will have more money to save and invest! You can have financial freedom when you own a home free and clear. This is your ultimate goal.
What If I Only Can Save $20,000 or $30,000 in Four Years?
That’s okay. Buy what you can buy, in that price range, so that you own it free and clear. You may only be able to buy a small piece of undeveloped land. Don’t despair! You will be able to live there; it will just take a little longer. Alternatively, it may be that you will need to re-think what you consider housing in the short term, in order to reap a great financial benefit in the long term.
Here’s what I mean. You have worked and saved for four years, but you can only afford to buy a piece of land for $20,000 outright. That’s alright. You did your homework. You know there are no codes or covenants that force you to build a certain type of house on the land; therefore, you are free to live in a tent there, if you want. However, you may want to park a used RV on your land, until you’ve saved enough to build a house. Remember, the RV you buy to place on the land is to be purchased free and clear. There are many used RV trailers for sale under $1000 on Craigslist everyday. In fact, it’s possible to find RVs and travel trailers someone would be willing to give away for free, so long as you haul it away!
Now you have 1) land, and 2) a dwelling to live in for free. You’ve now eliminated the biggest item in most people’s monthly budget– the cost of housing. Your monthly expenses will be utilities, food, and annual taxes. That’s it! For most people, (and depending where you buy), those costs could be under $400 total every month. A good rule of thumb is this: Try to keep your cost of living below 1/4th of your monthly net income. Save the difference between your monthly income and your expenditures, and you will be able to make improvements on your land in no time. Remember to pay for everything with cash as you go. Always make sure to own it free and clear. If you do that, you can’t go wrong.
How Important Is This, Really?
Learning to save for and then buy something you want, so that you do not go into debt to pay for it, may be the hardest thing to do, but it is absolutely the most rewarding way to go. In fact, it was THE way most Americans did things as little as 75 years ago.
Seventy-five years ago, World War II was just starting in Europe. People in America were still living with the effects of the Great Depression, where 25%-30% of the working-age population were unemployed. Back then, there was no safety net provided by the government. People helped each other. Churches and benevolent associations took care of the poor and needy. People found ways to create their own work. They spent less on groceries, by planting and cultivating gardens. They learned to barter with farmers for fruits, vegetables, and meats. They had backyard chickens and a cow for milk. They learned to can what they didn’t immediately eat and store the extra for future consumption. This is a mind-set and a skill-set different from today, where people are used to going to the grocery store for food one to three (or more) times a week.
Today, grocery stores do not keep as much inventory on the premises as before. The logistics of food distribution has become so sophisticated that stores can replenish their shelves in one to three days. The large trucks on the nation’s highways are actually warehouses on wheels, bringing goods and perishables to stores on a “just in time” basis. In America, this process has become so efficient we have become lulled into believing it will always keep going.
It is difficult for us today to imagine a time when people grew most of their own food, created and repaired their own clothes, and even built their own houses. In fact, the modern mortgage banking system, where you save for a down-payment and then are loaned the balance of the purchase price at an interest rate based on your credit score for a term of 30 years, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to this model, most folks negotiated a home purchase with the owner directly and maybe with the help of an attorney drawing up the agreement. People routinely paid all-cash for land and then set about building their own homes. Most able-bodied men in America at that time were capable of laying a foundation and completing the construction of a house. This was done to stay out of debt and make it easier to live. If you owned a home and some land, you did not have a mortgage payment to meet every month. You had a roof over your head already paid for. You had a yard for a garden to grow food to feed your family. You may have enough land for a chicken coop, or a small grazing pasture to keep a cow or small herd of cows. By owning your own home, you had no monthly mortgage payment. There wasn’t anyone, who owned the mortgage note, who you had to pay or risk losing your home. No one would think of purchasing a home unless they had the money to buy it outright. It wasn’t done, because it wasn’t prudent. It wasn’t good for the homeowner to go into massive debt to have a home, precisely because a situation could arise where you could lose the home.
Today, housing costs take up the largest monthly outlay in people’s budgets. Whether you rent or have a mortgage, you pay roughly 30-40% of your take-home income on housing and housing-related expenses. Failure to make those payments will get you evicted from your home. If evicted, ALL the money spent on keeping that roof over your head was spent for nothing, including the interest on the home loan you were paying. Interest alone adds nearly three times the purchase prince, paid over time. So a home price of $150,000 will actually cost three times that, or $450,000 over 30 years, all due to interest payments! The difference between $450,000 and $150,000 is money that you could have spent on other things for yourself, instead of enriching a banker. If you buy a house this way, you are agreeing to mortgage your own future and are robbing from your future self to pay for it! You are making yourself a slave to that debt. You are a slave to whoever loaned you the money. You must pay it back. There are no other options, other than bankruptcy, which is worse. ANY large debt you agree to pay back later makes you a slave to whoever gives you the loan. This includes the college students who have made themselves slaves to the Federal Government, because they are on the hook for all of the student loans they are taking to pay for college. They are making themselves vassals of an overlord who has draconian means to force them to pay the student loans back, via the IRS. New federal laws actually empower the IRS to get involved and confiscate your future earnings in order to pay back your student loans. This all begs the question: Do you really want to do that to yourself? Why would you willingly make yourself a slave, especially since a degree does not guarantee a job? This is why it is better to learn self-sufficiency now, while you can still do something about your future. If you’re right out of high school, spend the next three or four years getting yourself financially established, mastering money, saving, and saving some more. Then get your housing squared away. Pay cash. Don’t go into debt. Try to find free or low-cost ways to learn any desirable skill. Once you have the housing cost eliminated, THEN you can think about college, if you still want to go.
Letter Re: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials
Scot,
I enjoyed your article entitled Product Review: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials. I am a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School and a three-time graduate of the Wilderness Medicine Institute’s Wilderness First Aid Course (a re-certification is required every two years). I have three points:
First, Wilderness First Aid has a different orientation than regular Red Cross First Aid courses. The latter are quite practical for most of us who live in cities and towns and focus on assessing and stabilizing a victim, while an ambulance is on its way. In the back country when help is days away and climbers or backpackers have only the weight-limited gear that is with them, WFA requires more effort to stabilize and, to a limited extent, treat injuries. Think of two hikers three days into the wilderness. One falls and breaks a leg. It’s probably not life-threatening in the short-run, but it makes the hike home rather longer than planned, and they have no radio to call for help. How does the First Aid provider use the limited materials at hand to splint and maybe even reduce the fracture, so the person can hobble towards civilization before their food runs out? I have taken this course with EMTs, emergency room nurses, and doctors. While they have vast knowledge, they are used to all of the equipment of a well-stocked ambulance, emergency room, or doctor’s office. The challenge to them is to use their knowledge with extremely-limited resources. The medical professionals I studied with absolutely love the challenge of figuring this out, but it certainly is sobering to them to think of doing medicine that way.
Second, Wilderness First Aid courses may not require as much travel as you suggest. As an example, in my area near Pittsburgh, Venture Outdoors (a local outdoor adventure organization) conducts two weekend Wilderness First Aid courses annually with instructors from NOLS/Wilderness Medicine Institute. About half of each class is conducted outdoors, regardless of weather, to add reality to the situation. I enjoyed the winter sessions. Not only do the aid givers need to deal with a fracture, but they also need to keep the victim from freezing to death– a real dose of reality.
Third: You are so right about two days being insufficient for detailed training, though it sure can help with the limited resources mindset. A prepper might say the shorter courses have some holes in them (no coverage of gunshot wounds, for example), but there is something for everyone. In addition to the two-day WFA course, the Wilderness Medicine Institute has a one-week Wilderness Advanced First Aid course, a two-week Wilderness First Responders course, a month-long course for Wilderness EMTs, and even a Wilderness Medicine and Rescue semester-long course. The shorter courses are taught across the U.S. and in various places overseas, though a trip to WMI’s beautiful new campus outside of Lander, Wyoming, in the shadow of the Wind River Range, is well worth taking! Also, there are numerous books available from WMI and Amazon such as “Wilderness & Travel Medicine” and “Wilderness Medicine”.
Regards – Walks With Cats
SFE Replies: You nailed the reason why I think wilderness courses are what preppers need– we may not be able to get help. My comments on finding classes nearby were based on my own location. Other than the Red Cross Wilderness First Aid class, the closest ones I’ve been able to find involved eight hour drives. I hope that changes!
Economics and Investing:
Where Is The U.S. Economy Headed? – D.B.
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77,000 Foreign Banks to Share Tax Info with IRS – H.L.
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Items from Mr. Econocobas:
US Money Slump Flashes Warnings as Economy Contracts
The Velocity Of Money In The U.S. Falls To An All-Time Record Low
Ben & Janet’s Swell Housing Recovery: Sales Booming For The 1%; Heading Down For Everyone Else
Four More Signs That A Market Top Is Nigh
America’s Insatiable Demand For More Expensive Cars, Larger Homes And Bigger Debts
Odds ‘n Sods:
On this anniversary of D-Day, SurvivalBlog reader C.T. sent in this link to an interesting article comparing the Normandy beaches in 1944 to 70 years later. D-Day Landing Sites Then and Now
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Dr. Ben Carson: Obamacare More Damaging Than 9/11 – H.L.
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SurvivalBlog reader R.B. in Washington state writes in: Now Washington state is seeing detainment of motorists for roadside “surveys”. The online news video was edited from what actually was broadcast. One broadcast version has the same reporter saying (paraphrased) that a reluctance to participate in the survey might be an indicator of impairment.
Other states have conducted these “surveys”, including Pennsylvania, where a man has filed lawsuit for violation of 4th amendment rights. The common theme is they want a cheek swab and despite their saying it is voluntary, there is a lot of pressure to cooperate, and a policeman is present. Here, they want to possibly take a blood sample, too, and are paying $60 if you volunteer.
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An older article but worth the read. All Federal Gun Laws Are Unconstitutional . – B.B.
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Interesting facts about the lowly potato: Spuds – J.W.
Hugh’s Quote of the Day:
“The public wonders ‘Why are you giving all this money to the people who caused this crisis and taking the money from the public assets of the victims?’” – William Greider
Notes for Thursday – June 05, 2014
Today we present another entry for Round 53 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $11,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
- A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
- A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
- Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
- A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
- A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
- A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
- A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
- A roll of $10 face value in pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver quarters, courtesy of GoldAndSilverOnline.com, (currently valued at around $180 postpaid),
- Both VPN tunnel and DigitalSafe annual subscriptions from Privacy Abroad (a combined value of $195),
- KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
- APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
- TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.
Second Prize:
- A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
- A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
- Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
- The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
- $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
- A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
- A full set of all 26 books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
- Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),
- Dri-Harvestfoods.com in Bozeman, Montana is providing a prize bundle with Beans, Buttermilk Powder, Montana Hard Red Wheat, Drink Mixes, and White Rice, valued at $333,
- TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate, and
- Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate.
Third Prize:
- A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
- A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
- Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
- Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
- A MURS Dakota Alert Base Station Kit with a retail value of $240 from JRH Enterprises,
- Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances, and
- Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208.
- SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.
Round 53 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
Livestock Breeding Strategies For When SHTF – Part 2, by S.W.
The goat is called the poor man’s cow. They are inexpensive, easy to handle, and eat a wide variety of vegetation. They are basically browsers, meaning they eat leaves and stems from shrubs and trees. They are the most efficient animal to convert browse to lean meat. When commercial feeds become unavailable, they would be the most likely survivors. They are also easily trained as pack and cart animals, able to pack 20 to 40% of their weight and pull five times that. They can negotiate more difficult terrain than any other pack animal and continue with only the water they get from vegetation for up to four days, if not making milk. They would be the best animal to “bug-out” with to either the woods or range. They can make good use of cut-over areas, growing deciduous trees, and weeds June through September and grass pastures October and November and April and May. December through March requires winter feeding on some combination of evergreen blackberries, heather, dry grass supplemented with oil seed cake, hay, silage, grain, roots, kale, twigs, bark, even discarded Christmas trees, and ivy. The books say ivy is poisonous. However, my St. Croix sheep have kept my property ivy-free without a problem. It may be they have to get used to it gradually. The sheep were orphan lambs that incorporated ivy into their diet as they began eating solids.
The milk breeds are Alpines, La Mancha, Nubians, Saanens, Toggenburgs, and Oberhaslis. The Saanen gives the most milk and the Nubian the richest milk. The Alpines and Toggenburgs are the most persistent milkers, meaning they continue producing milk the longest before dropping off and going dry. Usually people breed their goats to kid every year, breeding them after seven months of production, milking another two or three months, and then drying them off for two months before kidding again. With the persistent goats, one can milk continually without rebreeding for 13 to 36 months. This means more feed goes into milk production and is less stressful for both the goat and owner. So these would be good choices for a family milk goat.
For someone who wants both milk and meat, Boers, Nubians, and Saanens are the best choices. They are the largest goats. The Boer is actually a meat goat, breeds year round, and commonly has twins and triplets. Therefore they give sufficient milk for a number of kids. One can reduce the number of kids they are nursing to the degree of milk needed by humans. The Saanen and Boer are also excellent work goats. The Nubian seldom has the temperament for work.
Pigmy goats and Nigerian Dwarf goats are small breeds that can give up to two quarts of milk per day. Their small size classifies them as pets, making them legal to keep in some cities. Three dwarfs can be kept in the space needed for one standard goat. If one’s bug-out location is a rocky hilly area with lots of brush, the Spanish goat would be the most efficient meat producer.
The best breeds to “bug-out” with would be the triple-purpose goats– Saanens and Boers. However, the Saanen, being a high milk producer, requires grain for that production. The wethers (castrated goats), however, would be fine to take along as pack and meat animals. That leaves the Boer as the most important breed to maintain when SHTF.
In using goats to rustle their own feed, consider the following rules of thumb. If a kid is fed an abundance of milk and grain, the rumen does not develop to handle the coarse feeds they need when rustling. The kid should be weaned off milk between 8 and 12 weeks and fed one pound of grain and protein concentrate a day, along with roughage until nine months old. By then the rumen has developed enough for it to continue developing on a roughage diet. If a goat has been fed in confinement as an adult, it will not adjust to grazing. Also, if a doe has always been dried off after 5 to 10 months of milking, she will persist in that pattern. So to have a goat that adjusts to your system, you best start with young ones. For the best tasting milk, you need to confine the doe off browse, silage, and turnips four hours before milking. Milk every 12 hours or 6 or 7 AM and 4 or 5 PM, but be consistent. You best confine her at night, then release her after milking until four hours before the next milking, then out again until dark.
In breeding the dairy goats, it takes two to keep a family in dairy products year round. So to use the system used for dairy cows, we would need six people with six does each, supplying two other families and each keeping a buck, which will rotate between herds each year. Goat milk is naturally homogenized, so it is harder to separate out the cream to make butter. Goat’s milk is not as universally used, so it may be harder to find the other 12 families to supply. This may be the place to discuss the difficulty finding a community of breeders who all have or agree to have the same breed. Our three lines could actually be three different breeds. The breed conservationists would never approve, but consider that during World War II some European breeds of livestock were lost or severely depleted. So, we should consider with all our stock which breeds could logically be combined if necessary.
With goats, I would put all the dairy breeds, except the Nubians, in one class. The Nubian is genetically different in some ways. Importantly, the polled (hornless) gene in both Nubians and Angoras is not linked with the intersex gene, like it is in the other dairy breeds. It is necessary to avoid breeding polled to polled in those breeds. I think the other breeds could be crossed, but Nubians, Angoras, Boers, and the dwarf breeds should be kept separate, though the dwarfs could be crossed with each other. Some crosses with Angoras to make the Pygora breed and with Pygmies on Nubians to make the Kindergoat have been done, and that is fine if one wants to maintain these breeds. The small Kindergoat gives nearly as much milk as the Nubian, and the kids efficiently convert feed to meat.
How it might work to maintain three breeds of goats in a community might look like this:
A = Alpine
B = Toggenburg
C = Saanen
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |||||
| Breeder | Does | Buck | Kids | Buck | Kids | Buck | Kids |
| 1 | A | A 1 | A | C 2 | AC Cross | B 1 | AB Cross |
| 2 | A | B 1 | AB Cross | A 2 | A | C 2 | AC |
| 3 | B | C 1 | BC Cross | B 1 | B | A 1 | BA Cross |
| 4 | B | A 2 | BA Cross | C 1 | BC Cross | B 2 | B |
| 5 | C | B 2 | CB Cross | A 1 | CA Cross | C 1 | C |
| 6 | C | C 2 | C | B 2 | CB Cross | A 2 | CA Cross |
| Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | |||||
| 1 | A & crosses | 2’s Alpine | A | 5’s C | AC Cross | 4’s B | AB Cross |
| 2 | A & Crosses | 4’s B | AB Crosses | 1’s A | A | 5’s C | AC Cross |
| 3 | B & crosses | 6’s C | BC Crosses | 4’s B | B | 2’s A | BA Crosses |
| 4 | B & crosses | 1’s A | BA Crosses | 6’s C | BC Crosses | 3’s B | B |
| 5 | C & crosses | 3’s B | CB Crosses | 2’s A | CA Crosses | 6’s C | C |
| 6 | C & crosses | 5’s C | C | 3’s B | CB Crosses | 1’s A | CA Crosses |
The average dairy cow or doe reproduces herself by five years of age but can easily keep reproducing for 10 years. So some purebreds will be maintained for some time. One person could manage Boers, Spanish goats, or the dwarfs for meat production part time, using the system of 30 does and three bucks used sequentially. Alternatively, one could maintain any breed pure, for a time, using 10 does and two bucks, breeding sons of one buck to the daughters of the other buck. Extend the generation interval by using them as long as able and keeping new parents from later breedings. Even with a 4-year generation interval, one could go 8 to 12 years before needing new blood.
Sheep are no more efficient in crude protein production per hectare than cattle, and they are subject to predation, disease, and parasites. They require more labor than cattle but considerably less grazing land per animal (1/4 acre/ewe-lamb pair). However, like cattle, they make efficient use of land too arid or too steep for cultivation (over 15-20% slope and 8-16 inches of annual precipitation). Sheep fit best in areas of medium to low rainfall, grazing steeper areas than cattle, short grass ranges preferably with lots of forbs (herbaceous plants like clover and dandelion).
Sheep are the most important wool producers. The six top dual purpose wool-meat sheep breeds begin with the Rambouillet. Only the Merino has finer grading wool, but the Rambouillet is more productive with respect to lamb meat. They are the breed of choice for extensive grazing and wool for light-weight comfortable clothing. The Targhee comes next for high quality apparel type wool, and it adapts to both farm and range conditions and even has some parasite resistance. Next are the Columbia and Corriedale crossbred-wool breeds. They are excellent range sheep with wool valued by hand spinners for making blankets. They have meatier lambs than the fine-wool sheep. The Long-wool breeds to consider are the Border Leicester and the Romney. The longer, coarser wool is most easily spun into yarn and used for making thick sweaters and rugs. These breeds do not have the same flocking instinct as the range breeds and do better on good pastures. The Leicester is valued for crossing on Rambouillets to produce a meatier lamb. The Romney is valued by hand spinners for hardiness in the wetter Pacific Northwest climate.
For strictly meat production, the blackface medium-wool breeds are most popular. These are the Suffolk and the Hampshire for large meaty lambs. They are kept on diversified farms where the feed and pasture are good quality, which is especially necessary for the Hampshire. Their wool has little value, but it still needs to be clipped every year. The Southdown is a smaller medium-wool sheep adapted to hillier pastures. If one wants primarily meat but would like some wool for spinning, the Southdown wool is similar to cashmere and easy to blend with other fibers. This breed does not eat shrubs and trees, so is used to weed orchards and vineyards.
If one wants lamb meat without the bother of shearing, three hair sheep breeds meet the requirement. The Dorper is the best meat breed, producing very meaty twin lambs with the highest value skins of any breed. They are good foragers in hot, dry climates. The St. Croix, also known for twinning, utilizes coarse feeds and has the most parasite resistance of any breed. They do eat trees and vines. The Katahdin also produces twins, utilizes a high forage diet and has good parasite resistance. All these hair sheep breed year round and if necessary could be combined. The Barbados is a hair sheep I do not recommend, due to wildness, making management more difficult. The same breeding program recommended for meat goats apply to sheep.
Dry lands, defined as a growing period less than 120 days encompasses 41% of the earth’s land mass and much of the Western U.S. Here, range animals provide an efficient subsistence base in areas otherwise unproductive for humans. Highest yields often occur where cattle, sheep, and goats all share the range. Cattle eat grass, sheep eat forbs, and goats browse. If one’s survival retreat consists of acres of range land with a water source, pastoralism could become the survival strategy. Seven adults with as many children could handle 30 horned Hereford cows and three bulls, eight Nubian does and two bucks, 30 Rambouillet or Crossbred-wool ewes and three rams, and use nine riding mares and one stallion for transportation. I would select Morgans of Western working lines. Successful pastoralists hold a wealth of ecological knowledge passed down through generations of experience. Since, in the U.S., pastoralism, other than under fence, is a dying way of life, the learning curve will be very steep for newcomers.
I am convinced that what will survive when SHTF are small communities pulling together. Your family’s stockpile of food, water, bullets, and band aids will last only so long. Over the long haul, communities producing their own necessities from farms and ranges will rebuild civilization.