Article Contest Entry – Prepare With a Friend
Great advice today from Tim in the Land of 10,000 Lakes about preparing with a friend. Only 2 days left to get your entries in. Due to the number of participants, I guarantee everyone who has participated so far but doesn’t win one of the first three prizes will get at least a little something from the Random Survival Hoard! For those who have participated but didn’t leave me your address, please email it. Gift Certificates will mail next week. My wife is having knee surgery tomorrow (prayers welcome!) so I’ll be picking up a lot of extra tasks, so it might be the following week to be able to mail the other prizes.
From Tim:
If I could give any advice on food storage from my limited experience, it would have to be doing it with a friend. My first time storing food didn’t go so well. I had 5 pails with the Mylar bags inside them and had filled them with food, and the oxygen absorbers still in their sealed bag. I only did 5 pails my first try because I was not aware how much work it would be, but I learned it would have been a lot nicer to do it with a friend.
When I had all the food in the bags (rice, and pinto beans) I had already heated up the iron to seal the bags but I had not anticipated how long I would be leaving the absorbers open. When I broke the seal I threw each absorber into a pail and started sealing the bags with an iron but it took longer than I thought it would, exposing the absorbers to air for a longer period of time. Though I have read that this isn’t too big of a deal, obviously it is best to keep them exposed as little as possible.
My next time around I filled ten pails with a friend of mine. This went a lot smoother and a lot faster than if it had been just me. We each sealed five pails in a quicker fashion than I had last time, saving a lot of work and time. It was also good to talk to someone about why I was doing this, and it got him to start thinking about doing it as well. So not only was the efficiency of my food storage increased but I also exposed a friend of mine to it. As a younger guy with little income, I can’t include friends or neighbors in my storage plans so much, I am focused on myself and my family but; I think helped expose the world of preparing and self reliance to a dear friend of mine.
