Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Not a lot going on here. Zucchini, tomatoes, jalapenos, and bush cucumbers starting to produce. Vine cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplant, and cabbage still need some more days in the sun. Although the cabbages are starting to form heads.

Picked up 500 rounds of M855.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Picked up 50 more pounds of pinto beans. And some more Beano.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Two more cases of quart mason jars at Ace Hardware. Received my #10 can of 16 different garden seeds from Emergency Essentials. I plan on a nice big garden next year. I'm gonna spend this year getting it all ready (fencing, tilling, drip lines, etc). I'd like to get a chicken coop built as well.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Picked up a ruger 10/22 at Walmart - I don't see the model online, but it's stainless with a 21 or 22" barrel. Also grabbed 2 more federal 550 bulkpacks of 22lr. Went to the range and shot my Glock 30 and Ruger 22/45 for the first time.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Got the garden tilled. Hope to get it all planted this weekend.

Bought a couple used dehydrators (same brand/model) so I'll now have a 10 tray fan driven unit (with 2 fruit leather trays), as well as a spare base and top. That is in addition to the 5 tray no fan one I've been using the past 10 yrs or so.

Bought another 10 lbs of pretty lean chuck pot roast beef for $1.99 a lb on sale, and got the 1st one sliced and marinating to make into jerky. I've got about 20 lbs worth done so far, and would like to get to 50 or 100 lbs total, basically making more anytime beef is available under $2.00 per lb. As long as farmers are killing off cattle to avoid feeding them, the prices will be depressed by the supply, but once that's no longer the case, the prices will rise dramatically to reflect the cost of feed. I figure within a year the price of beef will rise at least 50% as a result.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Put up 1 lb. of Horseradish in pint jars.. WHOOOEEE!!! ..That's why I'm online right now...I had to take a break.
Built a new 4'x4' dedicated bed for the rest of the Horseradish root.
This bed is made for easy dis-assembly, so I dont have to dig the root..just remove the sides and harvest.
This is one homegrown condiment I love on fish, shrimp ,beef, and pork.

Not much store bought stuff this week except 2 large bottles of Stabil for future reference.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Bought 2 30lb propane cylinders from walmart for 44 bucks each, no tax shipped to my local wal mart. Not a bad deal, hope to buy 2 more next month.

Also received 2, superpails of white wheat and one superpail of popcorn from beprepared.com

Started thinking about how I am going to cook all this food.

Plan is to head to south houston next week to buy a new 55gal drum for diesel storage. You would think it would be easier to find a good used barrel.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

Garden rototilled, planting tomorrow, this has been a cold spring for us. Shopping today, another 20 lbs of jasmine rice, 5 lbs of lentils, 5 lbs dried split peas, 5 lbs assorted pasta assorted seasonings and gravy mixes, instant coffee. I buy in small quantities weekly. Received O2 absorbers and powered eggs from Honeyville grain, waiting on gamma lids.

Any advice on food dehydrators?

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

The Excalibur is a really nice food dehydrator.

I ordered a pallet of 84 six gallon buckets and lids from US Plastic. I also ordered oxygen absorbers, dessicants, assorted mylar bags and a hot jaw sealer (backordered as they are out of stock, and they raised the price from $109 to $134) from Sorbent. I've got hundreds of pounds of food just waiting for the buckets and bags.

Re: Weekly Prep Thread 11 May - 17 May
 

I've been using an old no fan dehydrator that I bought used for $5 some 10 or 15 years ago. It only draws 55 watts of power, but makes great jerky, dried apples, pears, and onions, that I've tried. For best results you need to rotate the trays once every 4 hrs or so, and it takes about 12 hrs to dry a 3 lb batch of jerky.

I'd say it depends how much you want to spend. The no fan units are cheap and will last literally forever and use minimal power, but take longer to dry things.

Tomatoes, potatoes, beans, spinach, lettuce, radishes are planted, still have to plant melons, squash, pumpkins and cukes, and put up chickenwire fences.

Hoping to pick up another 16-20 lbs of $1.99 lean roasts to make jerky out of today. I'll start marinating them immediately, and just run them thru the dehydrator batch after batch for the next week.

PS: Got the roasts, and they were choice and on sale for $1.79, not $1.99 a lb. What a bargain for these days....