Greensboro Cannery getting new managers

Brother Midkiff emailed me that he and his wife are down to their last month as managers of the Greensboro Home Storage Center, the church's dry pack cannery. The new managers will be the Mangums, and their assistants will be the Paynes.  Bro Davis will be there till early 2012.

 

The email address at the cannery is wel-hsc-greensboro@ldschurch.org

 

the phone # at the cannery is 336-668-2284

 

the fax # at the cannery is 336-668-4212

 

"The Mangums told me that for now they will keep the same schedule we've used; ie open by appointment only, available to be open Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Wednesday evenings and the mornings of the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month. The August calender still has some Tuesday and Thursdays open but the next available Saturday is the 2nd Saturday in December."   Brother Midkiff

Tropical Storm Don to Hit Texas

The weather reports are giving the first reports that Tropical Storm Don is probably going to hit Texas on Saturday.

What if it was North Carolina instead?  What if that tropical storm turned into a hurricane?  What should you be doing right now?

Well, if you were like everyone else that lives in this state and has a clue, you would be preparing for power outages, high winds, and flooding.

If a tropical storm or worse, a hurricane, was coming through here, you would want to bring in all your lawn furniture.  Make sure you had enough batteries for your flashlights.  Get propane for your grill.

Fill every empty space in your freezers with soda-pop bottles filled with water, to make lots of ice.  (A full freezer stays frozen longer without power.)

Have many different types of food that you could eat without electricity.  Easy to warm-up foods, that don't require much to prepare.

Lots of water stored in empty soda-pop or juice bottles in case the city water got contaminated or had no power to operate.  You can buy drinking water if you want, but about 3/4 of the water you use is for washing, so you can store that water for free by storing tap water.  (Just put it in the bottles.  According to ProvidentLiving.org, city water that is chlorinated does not need extra treatment.)

Do ALL your laundry.  Run your dishwasher a few hours before the storm hits.  No need of having stinky laundry sitting around, or having to hand wash a whole load of dishes if you can help it.

Fill up all your cars with gas.  If gas stations have no power, gas won't pump.

I'm sure you can think of lots more things to do.  But please think about it.  Some parts of Cary had no power for 9 days after Hurricane Fran.  So you want to prepare ahead of time.

Bucket Opener Tool for 98 cents

I have paid around $12 for a metal one of these, and around $4.50 for this same type of plastic one from Emergency Essentials.

But I found this one at Northern Tool and Equipment in Cary, for $0.98.  You should all get a couple of these, how else are you going to open all those buckets of wheat?

It is called a "5 Gallon Lid Opener" and it is in the paint aisle at Northern Tool.  (All those professional painters need them to open those gigantic buckets of paint.)

Hay expensive, grass gone, cattle getting sold

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/drought-withers-smallest-u-s-hay-crop-in-a-century-to-boost-cost-of-beef.html

"The smallest U.S. hay crop in more than a century is withering under a record Texas drought, boosting the cost of livestock feed for dairy farmers and beef producers from California to Maryland.

The price of alfalfa, the most common hay variety, surged 51 percent in the past year, reaching a record $186 a short ton in May, government data show. Hay and grass make up about half of what cattle eat over their lifetimes, so parched pastures are forcing ranchers to find alternative sources of feed, pushing some spot-market corn to the highest ever.

Farmers in Oklahoma and in Texas, the biggest producer of hay and cattle, may harvest only one crop from alfalfa and Bermuda grass this year, compared with three normally, said Larry Redmon, a state forage specialist at Texas A&M University."

"Rising feed costs are prompting a reduction in cattle herds and eroding profit for milk producers. The USDA yesterday forecast retail-meat prices may increase this year as much as 7 percent and dairy products may jump 6 percent, more than the rate of overall food inflation at 3 percent to 4 percent."

Ballard: "We're in the last days---you can quote me on that."

Elder M. Russel Ballard said at BYU-Idaho on Jan. 30, 2010, as told in the Church News. 

"Excerpting entire passages of scripture from Matthew 24, 2 Nephi 28 and Mormon 8, Elder Ballard firmly established that ancient prophecies regarding the last days preceding the Savior's second coming aren't just being fulfilled but are coming to pass at an accelerated rate.

"I'm telling you what the Savior said would be the signs of the acceleration towards that day when He shall come," he said. "We could stay here for a couple of hours talking about all of the prophecies of what will occur in the last days. We're in the last days---you can quote me on that. And it is moving more rapidly."

Conditions that Elder Ballard specifically cited as fulfillment of prophecy and signs of the times include "pornography and how real affection and how true and real love are being disturbed by Satan and his minions." (see Matthew 24:12); "an acceleration of the gospel going to all nations" (see Matthew 24:14); and how "Mother Nature is letting its power be seen throughout the world at a more accelerated pace" (see Mormon 8:30-31).

(as quoted in the Church News, Week Ending Feb. 13, 2010, p. 3)

(Some of the above was also quoted in the August 2011 Ensign by Elder Allan F. Packer, in his talk entitled, "Solidly Anchored in Our Testimonies")

Black Cans for Solar Oven

You can also save some large cans and spray paint them black.  (Most of these had held kidney beans or spaghetti sauce.)   Use black High Heat Grill paint, you can find it in the spray paint aisle of any hardware store.  I just lay the cans and bottles on the grass and spray them.  ( The grass gets mowed later and then the evidence is gone.)

You can use these instead of pots and pans inside your solar oven.

Useful Little Solar Oven

Here is a homemade solar oven.  I sprayed a large glass pickle jar and lid with black High Heat Grill Paint, you can find it in the spray paint aisle of any hardware store.

Put a strip of tape from top to bottom.  Spray paint the whole jar and lid black.  Then pull off the tape strip (this creates a clear place where you can see if the food is boiling.)

Just spray the outside of the jar.

Buy oven roasting turkey bags, or oven roasting poultry bags.

Fill the jar with something that only needs heated, like a can of soup.  Put on the lid.  It won't come to a boil, it will only heat up to about 160 degrees.

Puff the bag around the jar.  Seal it with a twist tie.  Set the jar on something to insulate it from the ground (mine is setting on a block of wood.)  Set it in full sun.  (This will not work on a cloudy day.)

If you dump a can of soup into this jar, it will be hot enough to eat in about a half an hour.

Got Gardening Tools?

I am not a gardening expert, I have only been gardening for 3 summers now.  But I got to thinking, what will happen when there is no longer food at the store?  When we have economic turmoil, or natural disasters that stop our food supply arriving, or when the droughts get so bad there is no food being grown elsewhere?

 If we have to grow all our own food, I am really going to have to step up my game quite a bit.

So far I have been doing four little 4' x 4' gardens.  They are small enough for me to kneel down and dig with a hand trowel.

But if I have to go into full-scale production, I need better tools.  I just purchased this hoe and this pointy shovel.  And eventually, I hope to buy about 3 more of each, because, face it, the whole family is going to have to be out there shovelling and hoeing at the same time, and we will each need our own tool.

Sometimes you can find shovels and hoes at yard sales, that is where I hope to find more of these.  (Good luck getting to the yard sale before I do.)

More news on the beef sell-off

The drought in the central plains states is making conditions untenable for raising cattle.  Ranchers are selling off their cattle so fast, slaughterhouses are now at capacity.  So that means beef might be much cheaper for awhile, but watch out, the prices will be much higher later.

Beef Prices May Jump As Drought Creates Cattle Surplus

July 18, 2011 5:35 PM

 http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/drought-creating-surplus-of-cattle-at-auction-beef-prices-may-jump/

"Ultimately, the drought will affect what customers will pay for beef at the grocery store, cattle owners said.

Since a mature cow only has one calf per year, it will take years for the ranchers to rebuild their herds. That could cause the price of beef go up as early as the end of this year."

Drought cripples southern US farms

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc615ace-b056-11e0-a5a7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1ST52fqPe

July 17, 2011    By Gregory Meyer in New York

While you read the following quotes from this article, think of the implications for your food storage.  

"The Lone Star state is at the epicentre of a once-in-a-generation drought stretching from Arizona to Florida. The US’s southern underbelly is scorched like meat on a grill....

The drought has spawned wildfires, turning grasslands to ash. In Texas, the leading cotton producer in the US, 59 per cent of the cotton crop is in poor condition or worse. Harvests of hard winter wheat, prized for yeasted breads, have plummeted in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas as yields and acreage contracted. Ranchers cannot feed their cattle on parched pastures....

The state has more than 13m cattle, more than any other. But the size of the herd, dwindling for years, may shrink faster as ranchers are forced to sell calves and breeding cows they cannot feed.....

The USDA estimates the just-harvested domestic hard winter wheat crop will this year total just 791m bushels, down from 1bn last year. Wheat prices, which took off last year after a grain export ban was declared in the Black Sea, have remained supported by the dismal US outlook...."

Doesn't this make you want to buy more food, while it is still available in the store?

Cattle Sell-off

http://www.reporternews.com/search/?q=cattle+auctions&t=&sortby=date&image.x=42&image.y=10

(I hope that link shows you all the news headlines about cattle auctions.)

I have heard from several sources that cattle ranchers in Texas are selling off their cattle because of the drought.  That means that there is will be a glut on the market for a short while, and beef prices may go down temporarily.

But beware, because after all those cattle are butchered, there will be a huge shortage of beef, because there won't be many more to sell.

I am going to get a lot of beef and can it in the next fews weeks.

Buckets

Someone just asked me where was a good place to get buckets for storing food.

Here is my off-the-cuff answer (I don't have time to check the prices right this minute.)

The best deal recently was through Wanda M. in the Chapel Hill ward.  I think they were $3 or $4 each.  She might do another order in a few months.

Then I bought some through Emergency Essentials, they are $6 or $6.50 each.

Lids through Wanda M. and EE were similar.

People tell me they ask for free buckets from bakeries, Sam's bakery dept, ChickFilA pickles, candy companies.  But you usually have to wash them out yourself.  And buy new lids for them.