Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[Speaker to Animals]

Buys you time to get your shit together though.
Saves a lot of time and effort when you've got feeding yourself to worry about.
Better start collecting bottles too unless you have time for glass blowing or stoneware jug making.

It does buy you time. There is nothing wrong with it per se. I do it. Everybody should do it.

The danger, however, is that people do that and then do nothing at all about the fact that they live in a city or a suburb and have zero capacity to produce their own food going forward. If you are living in some suburb, consider the implications of your prepping. This buys you time for what, exactly?

My position is that prepping is approached through the lens of consumerism, and that's going to get people in trouble. It's not about how many goods you have stockpiled, and how many guns you have. It's about whether you have developed living systems that right now produce the food you'd need. That should be your goal.

[Montegriffo]

Buying malt kits is eliminating a lot of consumerism though.
Better than filling your bunker with bottles of 90-95% water in ready-made beer.
Specializing as the local beer Baron is only going to work as part of a successful community.
Otherwise, you ain't gonna have time for that shit.

[Montegriffo]

A bit of brewing as a sideline on your farm is a good old tried and tested recipe going back to medieval times at least.
Your livestock can eat most of the spoils of your beer/cider production. Spent barley, apple pulp, dead yeast etc.
In fact, if you have cattle, some barley is a good feed for the winter cowshed and you'll be growing it anyway.

[Speaker to Animals]

Brewery waste should be used to feed compost worms which then convert it to vermicasings that you use to fertilize your crops. The cycle of life and shit.

[Montegriffo]

I think step 1 is to simultaneously work on just producing a regular bread production without any external inputs while developing your brewery. Then slowly try to eliminate the inputs to your beer using what you learned in your wheat and bread program (probably starting with the hops and any other additives, making barley and malting your final challenge).

Bread is much more forgiving and allows you to learn to develop the wheat strain for your immediate environment. It also teaches you how to develop a yeast culture and keep it going over time, at a much reduced difficulty level, I suspect.

If you have goats or dairy cows, you could run a similar program for cheeses.

Products like those, traditionally, were valued highly in the past before the industrial revolution. A frontier community, for instance, would set out to produce a basic subsistence of food, but would very soon afterward develop bread, whiskey, beer, cheese, etc. Also, those were among the most heavily bartered goods.

You can also make beer with the bread that doesn't come out very good.
https://moonshiners.club/bread-beer-recipe/

Lol, just reading the recipe for beer bread and found this classic line in the introduction.

Ultimately you’ll end up with a natural beverage slightly reminiscent of the legendary English Guinness.

I hope no Dubliner ever reads that.
It's not long calmed down over there and that could restart the troubles.

[Speaker to Animals]

Get out get out get out


The guy at 7:00 fishes from his living room while drinking a beer, Fife.

[Fife]

The guy at 7:00 fishes from his living room while drinking a beer, Fife.

Outstanding!

I wish Heinlein was still alive and writing about life in 2019. I may have asked before, have you read Farnham's Freehold?

[Fife]

Ultimately you’ll end up with a natural beverage slightly reminiscent of the legendary English Guinness.

I hope no Dubliner ever reads that.
It's not long calmed down over there and that could restart the troubles.

OMG Monts it's not only Dubliners who would crack a fucker for a quip like that.

Whether you believe this or not, there is a healthy number of Tennesseans who only drink Guinness given any choice on the question.

I have one mate around 55 years old now who knocks back 15 or 20 pints when given a head start and something substantial to eat.

Guinness days are special days in these parts.

:goteam: :drunk:

[Montegriffo]

Ultimately you’ll end up with a natural beverage slightly reminiscent of the legendary English Guinness.

I hope no Dubliner ever reads that.
It's not long calmed down over there and that could restart the troubles.

OMG Monts it's not only Dubliners who would crack a fucker for a quip like that.

Whether you believe this or not, there is a healthy number of Tennesseans who only drink Guinness given any choice on the question.

I have one mate around 55 years old now who knocks back 15 or 20 pints when given a head start and something substantial to eat.

Guinness days are special days in these parts.

:goteam: :drunk:

Makes you wonder how good their recipe is if they know that little about
beer.

[Montegriffo]

Get out get out get out


The guy at 7:00 fishes from his living room while drinking a beer, Fife.

Hippies had it right all along. Who knew?