Highly Recommended - 10 Day Food Storage Challenge

If you are new to the concept of food storage, please check out Crystal's 10 Day Food Storage Challenge. By accepting her challenge and by completing her steps each day you will become a believer. Eating from food storage is not only possible but delicious.

Digitize Your Food Storage

If you are just beginning your food storage program, Jodi and Julie at Food Storage Made Easy have spreadsheets available for determining a 3-month short-term and 1-year long-term storage needs, customizible to your family size and what you actually already eat. Scroll down on the right to the Free Downloads section. Julie offers video instruction on using your spreadsheets. Enjoy!

Food & Supplies, Medicines and Sundries - A One Year Plan

In 1996 I took a homesteading course at Idaho State University in which we received as part of our handouts a ONE YEAR PLAN on how to set aside all food, supplies, medicine and sundries a family would need in a year.

Here is the Table of Contents:
•Essentials of Home Storage
•How to Store
•Wheat
•Sprouts
•Powdered Milk and Cheese
•Honey
•Soybeans
•Dehydrated Foods
•Home Canning
•Sourdough
•Gardening
•Water Storage
•Fuel
•Soaps and Cleaning Supplies
•Sewing Needs
•Emergency Pack
•First Aid

Edible Weeds or Free Food

The Herb Companion's list of 10 edible weeds and a recipe for using weeds in a fritter.

A «Mid-Term» Assignment …

My husband teaches English in a local university. This Fall he chose to use the upcoming «2012» movie and its trailer as a takehome mid-term exam. The following is a response to a student's comment that she would just give up and die, and since she felt that way, she didn't believe she should/could write about it.

"… what the essay addresses is the concept of genre, and the movie 2012 will be in the genre of other doomsday movies--and the expectations of the genre are that the protagonist survives despite all of the hardships, despite the end of the world coming upon civilization. In both Mayan and Greek thought, the end of the world did not mean the earth would become an astroid belt, but that the age (civilization) would end and a new one would begin that was unrelated to the first. And it is in this genre expectation that I want you to place yourself (this is also the expectation of native American narrative as well as biblical Scripture).

You might well be a person who, if a disaster were to occur, would roll over and die because living becomes too difficult. You, I suspect, know how difficult living can be. So what happens when it becomes much more difficult? Do you quit, or do you keep on enduring, adjusting to what you previously thought was impossible to endure?

If I remember correctly, you have been out on your own since you were 16 … I, too, have been on my own since I was 16; Marion County District Court (Oregon) ruled I was an emancipated minor when 16. I drove without a driver's license for two years; I drove all over the West because parents had to sign a form so that anyone under 18 could get a driver's licence in Oregon. It didn't matter that I was an emancipated minor. Same for getting a job using machinery. So I went to Reno where no one asked how old I was, and I worked in Reno for two summers. worked running a chainstitch sewing machine. A person does whatever the person has to do to survive. And this is what I want you to explore in the midterm.

My motives for the assignment are two-fold. First, popular culture carries within it the idea of living for the day (capre diem -- Latin for "seize the day"), for with the nuclear bomb and everything else (including the Mayan long calendar prophecy), we don't know what tomorrow will bring, or even if tomorrow will come. And second, many people live with the idea that the end can come, but they live without really thinking about what that means.

An athlete will visualize what he or she will do in certain situations so that when in the situation, reaction becomes the application of what has been visualized.

Why should I not do the same to you? Cause you to visualize what you would do if in a certain situation--the assignment certainly relates to a facet of popular culture. It relates to movie genre, as well as all forms of apocalyptic narrative. It dosn't require of you as a student to do too much outside research; it requires, though, thought and writing skills. And if a doomsday scenario were to truly occur, who knows that the assignment might not cause you to endure beyond what you previously thought possible, with that little bit of extra effort carrying you through the situation.

Think of the movie Forrest Gump, with Forrest representing "Everyman": the movie is subversive for it conveys that message that if you do what you know is right, everything will turn out all right--and you know this not to be the case. You know that things don't always turn out well, even when you are not at fault and have done nothing wrong. Why do you suppose that is? Now take your answer and move it to a doomsday scenario: what did you do wrong to bring about the scenario? Anything? Or more than you can imagine because your thoughts are imprisoned in a spacial reality from which you cannot escape (this is a concept addressed in the essay about movie trailers). So are you going to "just take it," or are you going to fight back against the injustice that has come upon you (the injustice of the world ending)? And if you fight back, how will you initiate that fight, for your body needs food and shelter? Will you be like Jenny (in Forrest Gump) and try to reinvent the wheel, or like Forrest, doing what you know is "right" when each opportunity arises? When does it pay not to be too smart, for dying would seem logical in a doomsday scenario. Not-dying is illogical, but is what Forrest would do. Would he not continue, running from one coast to the other because he didn't know what else to do? And that is what surviving would be like, living day by day because you [the person] doesn't know what else to do.

Why do we work every day? Because we don't know how else to live other than to work? And is this not the problem with gang drug dealing? The gangs have figured out another way to live day-to-day other than working? And is society not angered by drug dealers and white collar thieves because they live day-to-day without working the way most folks do? Both groups would seem to have the "good" things that this world offers without working in a mundane job that has no more meaning to the worker than running from coast to coast.

You are in college to do more than just bodily survive in this world. If you are only here to get a job so you can survive in the outside world for, how long, forty, fifty years, why bother? But if you are in college to do more than just survive—to do more than run from coast to coast—then break out of the mental space that presently confines you and think about what would be required of you to survive in a scenario when most will not survive for most will quit because this "most" will be without hope and with be mentally defeated by the situation. Are you not tougher than "most"? Or has your will to survive already been extended beyond its elastic limits?"

Worldwide Childhood Obesity - It May Be Their Saving

Childhood Obesity: Our newest global epidemic …

Lisa Pawloski, PhD, posits that America is not alone in battling this crisis; researchers are now finding childhood (11-18 years old) obesity rates soaring in nations still plagued with hunger and poverty. That indicates to Pawloski there is something beyond the spread of Western culture that may be contributing to the problem. However, I suggest an alternate explanation: God may be preparing "little ones" to survive. If this is truly the end of the age, as a significant portion of Christendom believes, and if food will be the leveraged commodity that compels individuals to join with one or another religious theology, then it might well be, and certainly seems the case, that God is preparing the youth of the world to survive extended famine.

Num 14:29 Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,

but …

Num 14:31 But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised.

Famine Insurance

Can it be that God is providing people worldwide with famine insurance? Those extra pounds may save your life when there is nothing left to eat without selling your soul for a bowl of soup as Esau did [Heb 12:16-17]. Those extra inches cannot be taken from you when someone breaks in to steal any food you may have in store.

Morning Edition, January 24, 2007 • recently reported, "The rate of obesity in France has doubled in recent years, to 12 percent — a figure approaching U.S. fat stats. A nation once eternally trim must now rethink its approach to eating and even dress sizes."

Obesity Not Just A U.S. Problem "Nearly one-third of all Europeans are obese because of fast-food consumption and sedentary lifestyles, and nations must encourage healthier habits, a U.N. agency warned
Friday.

Obesity, once considered mostly an American problem, now is prevalent in European countries, where traditional diets have been associated with long life and good health, the World Health Organization said. The problem reaches around the world.

In countries like India and Malaysia, people still wear flab around their waists as a badge of prosperity."

These people have lived on little or nothing …

A second or a third year into the Tribulation, will it be said of Americans that these people have lived on little or nothing for years, but never have they lost courage or faith in God? Or will those disciples who today sincerely believe that they will be raptured to heaven lose faith in God when loved ones perish from hunger? Will they have the courage to walk uprightly before God when they have no covering for their spiritual nakedness but their obedience to God?

It's tempting to trust in grocery stores or those cans and barrels of food you have stored in your basement--and if you're a survivalist, you've got something put by for a rainy day. Home economics classes of old, as well as your grandmother's teachings helped you learn to can (bottle in the UK), freeze and dry summer's bounty for use later in the year. In fact, adequate and sustainable food storage is a hallmark of a civilized society--one which has arrived at settled housing instead of the yearly seasonal round of hunting and gathering. And storage means lots of stuff--glass bottles, metal cans, poly bags of dried foodstuffs--and it also means having to carry all of that stuff if you have to move or run for your life from maurauding thugs and thieves. And when that stored food is gone or spoiled from vermin or weather or stolen or just used up--and there is still much tribulation ahead--will your faith fail?

When God took Israel out of Egypt and into the desert sands just a few days journey, their hunger tempted them to return to slavery and the fleshpots of Egypt: "and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul [is] dried away: [there is] nothing at all, beside this manna, [before] our eyes (Num 11:4-6)."

What is coming upon America and the world will not be pretty or easy--there is no escaping tribulation--Christ reckons it to be like a woman caught in travail (birthing)--once labor starts there is no way out except giving birth or your own death Matt 24:8).

Americans today, and much of the "have" nations rely on the corner grocery or the farmer's market, or the microwave oven and boxes and cans for their food. They have no idea what it is like to grow their own or slaughter their own meat--if the power goes out, what foods they do have spoil, because they lack the old fashioned knowledge to "make do."

Begin now to rummage in the attic for that old Girl or Boy Scout manual that taught you how to make a fire and a tin can stove or a buddy burner to conserve fuel. Look into alternative power sources--wind and water wheel generation, rewinding motors, etc. Look around you for what is edible in your landscape--tear up that grass and put a "victory garden" in your parking strip. And when worse comes to worse, and you are faced with only manna to eat, if you haven't learned how to cook without power, you won't be able to "go about, and gather [it], and grind [it] in mills, or beat [it] in a mortar, and bake [it] in pans, and make cakes of it: and the taste of it won't be as the taste of fresh oil (Num 11:8)" because it will be raw.

The one commodity that God is looking for cannot be bought, even by Him--it's faith (Luk 18:8). Will the harvest of your life result in good grain, either barley or wheat, or a tare that only looks like wheat but has no substance? "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they (Matt 6:25-26)?"

Hunger is a terrible tyrant

Recently an article appeared on the AP wire about a tiny Western Idaho community near the Oregon border. Greenleaf, a hamlet begun as a peaceloving Quaker abode was advocating each homeowner obtain and license a gun for protection [exemptions for religious conviction would be granted]. The village fathers, when questioned about their reasons in support of this gun law, stated that "we could get refugees," and they did not want the social chaos that occurred after Katrina. The only refugees Greenleaf has ever come close to getting were three Kryptonians who landed in Huston, a village down the road in Superman II.

What these village elders were really saying is, "We will not share what we have. Go away--if you come here we can now shoot you."

Not sharing what little she had left crossed the widow of Zarephath's mind when Elijah asked for a piece of bread and drink of water, but because she was willing to share, her needs were met until the drought and famine ended (1 Kings 17:8-16).

When chaos and natural calamities occur you must be willing to share. You and the one whom you help may, indeed, lose your physical lives should the upheaval be prolonged, but your attitude of sharing will keep you from losing your spiritual life and eternal reward (Mat 10:42 And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.).

Do not look at the one who asks for succor, the color of his or her skin, or the religious markers you may deem to be missing, and turn them away from your door or your town or demand that they join your church before you will feed them (Rom 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit and Mat 6:25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?). Begin now to put by a little food for emergencies that are surely coming--and, above all, be willing to share with those in need--don't let hunger rule your life.

Aftermath of Catastrophe

If employing typology as a prophetic tool finds the world facing not one but two divinely caused mega-catastrophes intended to topple existing belief paradigms within a three and a half year period, then the power [God] that causes these catastrophes should also warn those who are of Him about what will happen—and this is the case. However, that warning contains the less welcome warning that God will not intervene in the lives of Christians or non-Christians for these three and a half years, but that even the saints will be delivered into the hand of the lawless one, meaning that when social structures break down help will have to come from individuals not from a supernatural power, nor from government agencies. All of the help a Christian will have is full liberation from indwelling sin so that the mind and heart can reign over the flesh. Humankind will be on its own in providing for itself food, water, and shelter for these three and a half years. Then those who will be of God will have to survive by faith without buying and selling for the following three and a half years, thereby making these seven years the most difficult period of human survival the world has known.

Of course, Christians employing differing reading strategies take different meanings from the same words. Some find divine escapism either upward in a bodily rapture to heaven or outward in a place of physical safety. Few will disagree, though, that the run-up to the seven endtime years of tribulation includes wars, famines, and earthquakes. Hurricanes can be added to this list. So a Christian can expect to again see what occurred immediately following the landfall of Katrina in the New Orleans area, September 2005; or what occurred following the tsunami in Southeast Asia, December 2004. Social and civil agencies were unable to fully cope with what were really localized catastrophes.

If a second Katrina would have hit Florida and the Carolinas within a few days or even a few weeks later—still a localized catastrophe—of when New Orleans was devastated, how would a third of all Americans have fared? How would another third fare if Mount Rainer erupts violently, or if an earthquake the size of the Alaskan quake of 1964 strikes the coasts of Oregon, Washington, California? And while thinking about such natural disasters, return to typology and consider the real probability of a second Passover giving of lives. What would have been short term catastrophes now returns humankind to a pre-industrial age that has cell phones and cell phone towers but not the social infrastructure to keep them operating; that has fields planted but a broken delivery system for distributing the crop or supplying fuel for harvesting the crop; that has everyone thinking about “getting right” with God but violent disagreements about how to do this; that has the Church as the only social organization trusted enough and resilient enough to intervene at the local level to provide needed goods and services; that has one particular denomination that has prepared for such a catastrophe leveraging food into discipleship.

The contemplation of all things not continuing on as they presently are tends to produce fatalistic exasperation expressed in some variation of Oh well, nothing can be done about it so why worry about it, or the inward protection of the self found in survivalists hoarding foodstuffs, arms and ammo in isolated rural locations. And while wheat, beans, and toilet paper might well be the currency of value during a period of social chaos, emphasis on protecting the self will inevitably lead to the self being killed, for with hoarding will go looting. Additionally, even the denomination that has its members putting-by a year’s worth of everything the family will need doesn’t store enough to survive on existing foodstuffs for three and a half years, let alone seven years. Survival of the body [the flesh] will depend upon social skills and specific knowledge most Americans do not today possess, but knowledge that can be acquired.

This blog is about what it takes to survive as a true disciple in a period of social chaos and natural calamities. It is about retrieving lost skills and knowledge, developing survival strategies, sharing what can be known, and warning against trading a person’s beliefs for a bowl of lentils. If any organization requires that a person be baptized in its water before feeding and clothing the person, the organization should be avoided. Hunger is a terrible tyrant, but it is only a spiritually fatal tyrant when it causes the person to do what the person would not otherwise do. Thus, this blog is about physically and spiritually redeeming the time a person has between now and when seven lean years come upon even disciples who worship God in spirit and in truth.

Coming - A Second Passover

The essence of Christian theology is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age, an event foreshadowed by the Creator of the universe coming as the man Jesus nearly two thousand years ago. So within the broad scope of Christian thought, an end to the world that we presently know is prophesied—and when this end is more closely examined within canonical Scripture, a thousand year long reign by Jesus Christ will serve to contrast the six thousand year long reign by the prince of this world. Still more closely examined, a seven year long period of tribulation marks the transition between the reigns of the prince of this world, and Christ Jesus, with the territory over which both reign being the mental topography of humankind. Thus, neither the prince of this world now nor Christ Jesus in the future will reign as President Bush does, or as any human leader does. Rather, they will reign through controlling the territory from which thoughts sprout and grow as weeds or wheat. The contrariness, the latent rebellion, the disobedience of human nature—all come from the prince of this world and his influence on or control of human nature. And here is where a differing reading strategy than usually employed by Christians opens up Scripture through the creation of a hypertext that is the same text taken upward into the realm where the prince of this world now reigns, and from where Christ Jesus will reign upon His return.

Taking meaning from Scripture through typology [typological exegesis] suggests that the prophetic endtime recovery of Israel from the North Country (Jer 16:14-15; 23:7-8) is similar to but of more significance than the recovery of ancient Israel from Egypt. As such, Israel’s recovery from the North Country would be preceded by a second Passover liberation of Israel, a reality suggested by the prophet Isaiah (43:3-4) and a reality that involves the revealing of the Son of Man (Luke 17:26-30). And if this second Passover liberation again sees the lives of men given as ransom for the release of Israel from [moving up to the level at which the prince of this world reigns] indwelling sin and death through Israel being filled with the Holy Spirit as foreshadowed by what happened on that day of Pentecost following Calvary, then worldwide catastrophes on a scale not previously imagined will occur: two plus billion people will suddenly die, a truly incomprehensible reality that will not only rock the foundational constructs of human society, but will focus every person’s attention on supernatural powers perceived today to be merely ancient myths.

God will suddenly seem real. He will have gotten the world’s attention, and He will be blasphemed for causing the deaths of so many “innocent” people. And here is where the figurative rubber meets the road: Israel consists of those individuals who, by faith, keep the precepts of the law, thereby causing both outwardly circumcised and uncircumcised persons to be counted as circumcised of heart and mind; for all of endtime Israel has hearts circumcised by the Holy Spirit (Rom 2:26-29). So it isn’t the entirety of the Christian Church that is Israel, nor is it all of Judaism. Rather, endtime Israel is that portion of the Christian Church that keeps the precepts of the law by faith, and that portion of Observant Judaism that by faith professes that Jesus is Lord and believes that the Father raised Him from the dead (Rom 10:6-9). Therefore, the difference between a Christian Israelite and a Jewish Israelite is not inward but only outward in the flesh, for both will live by every word that has proceeded from the mouth of God. And both will be persecuted for what they believe by the greater Christian Church as well as the remainder of the world. Both will see friends and colleagues slain. Both will be in constant danger of being killed themselves.

The transition between this present world and Christ Jesus’ Millennium reign are seven years of tribulation that begin with a second Passover slaughter of firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God. This slaughter of firstborns was foreshadowed by the ancient slaughter of Egyptians when the first Passover was instituted, and this slaughter foreshadows a third of humankind being slain when the four angels are released from where they are bound at the River Euphrates [the sixth Trumpet plague]. And as Egypt was devastated by the first Passover liberation of Israel, the world will be devastated by the second Passover liberation of Israel. In a figurative sense, the world will be hit below the belt. With one punch, God will double over and wobble the reigning kingdom of this world. With a second punch about halfway through the seven endtime years, God will topple Babylon. The kingdom of the world will be given to one like the son of man (cf. Dan 7:13-14; Rev 11:15). But three and a half years of very difficult living by faith remain before the Millennium begins; however, once the kingdom of the world is given to the Son of Man, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, thereby producing the situation that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13). And it is this good news that must be proclaimed to the world before the end comes (v. 14).

While others practicing differing reading strategies will take differing meanings from the same texts, if typological exegesis is valid and a second Passover liberation of Israel occurs as typology suggests that it will, then what can be done?