How to Make an Herbal Tincture

Herbs are highly valued for both their nutritive and medicinal value. Adding herbs to foods can enhance the flavor and make what might be a blah meal a wowza!

In addition, herbal medicine has been used for centuries to treat health issues. Herbs as medicine can be prepared as infusions (like a tea), salves, or tinctures. There are different qualities for each of the preparations. For instance, infusions are often considered to be more nutritutional than medicinal, in that they will be used as a tonic or immune-boosting supplement, rather than to treat an illness, although they can be used in both ways.

A tincture is most often considered a medicine and should be used with great care, as the process of making a tincture involves the extracting and concentrating the medicinal qualities of the herb. In short, a tincture is like a turbo-charged version of the herb. A tincture is made by steeping herbs in alcohol, usually vodka or rum. According to Susan Weed, the process of making a tincture leeches the nutritional value out of the herbs, but it enhances the herb’s medicinal value.

As a Prepper, I wanted to learn to use herbs both in my kitchen and in my medicine cabinet. It's not so much that I think herbs are inherently better than pharmaceuticals (although I do believe that herbs are a more gentle and more natural remedy for most non-life threatening ailments), but as a Prepper, I am keenly aware that things happen. Systems break down. Resources become scarce or depleted. And things that we take for granted, may not always be so readily available. In the event that finding a doctor or getting OTC rash cream, becomes problematic, I wanted alternatives.

When we first bought our property, Deus Ex Machina and I resolved to only grow plants that were medical or edible. What we found is that they are often both. For instance, everyone knows that Oregano is wonderful when added to Mediterranean/Italian cuisine. Oregano oil (which is extracted from the oregano plant using a distillation process) is also a powerful immune booster. Cloves are fantastic in pumpkin pie, but the clove oil can be used for dental issues, like a toothache. It's these multi-purpose plants that found a home in my garden. Jewel weed is a wonderful pot herb when its young, but it's a really good treatment for poison ivy.

Of course, growing the plant is only a portion of the process. Once I figured out what and how to grow it, then, I needed to figure out how to use it. The following are the steps to make a tincture out of herbs in your garden.

Step 1

Gather 1 oz of dried herb or enough fresh herb to fill a pint-sized glass container 1/3 full with the herb. Chop into pieces and place into the jar.

Step 2

Fill the jar to the top with rum or vodka. Susan Weed advises using 100 proof alcohol. She states that lower proof alcohols don’t work as well and higher proof can cause damage to liver and kidneys.

Step 3

Cover the jar and allow to steep for six weeks.

Step 4

Strain the herb out of the alcohol through a cheesecloth or paper filter. Discard used herb.

Step 5

Using the funnel, pour the strained tincture into a dark colored bottle. Label bottle with type of tincture and the date, and store the tincture tightly closed in a cool, dark place.

Skill

• Moderately Easy

Things You'll Need

• 1 oz dried herb or enough fresh herb to fill a pint-sized jar 1/3 full

• Alcohol = vodka or rum

• Pint-sized glass jar

• Cheesecloth

• Colored glass jar with a lid

• Funnel

Tips

• Properly stored a tincture will keep for as long as five years.

Warnings

• Herbal tinctures should be treated like all other medications. Before using any herbal remedy, consult a physician or certified herbalist.

References

• Healing Wise: Be Your Own Herbal Expert

• About Herbal Tinctures

Returning.

If I had to look back on the last six months and pinpoint the things that wildly deviated from our normal lifestyle, I couldn't.  

There have been little things that were different.

In July, I called my butcher.  We have been raising meat chickens for just about as long as my youngest daughter (who will be an adult this year) can remember.  I asked her before I wrote that, and she verified that she doesn't really remember not having chickens in our yard.  She was five when we got our first three hens.  That was the year that everything got all shook up, we started seriously looking into homesteading our quarter acre, and I started finding ways to transition us from a typical American diet to a mostly local diet.  

During those early days, it was a challenge to have even one item in a meal that was local.  Creating a meal with ALL local foods was a huge and blog-worthy (with pictures) accomplishment.  Last night for dinner, we had pork chops (from the pig share) with cheesy baked potatoes (from our garden with cheese from a local creamery).  The night before that, we had tacos.  The only thing that wasn't local were the shells and the seasonings.  Everything else, including the homemade salsa, was Maine grown.  Last week we had chicken (we raised), cole slaw (cabbage from my garden), boiled eggs (from our hens), and buttered potatoes (from our garden with butter from a local creamery).  It was all local, except the dressings, and most of it was from my own yard.  In "locavore", we call that the 100 foot diet ;).  As the saying goes, "We've come a long way, baby."

So, when I called my butcher in July, and he hesitated before scheduling me that was a new thing for me.  In the decade - or more - that we have been raising meat birds, he has never hesitated to put me on the schedule.  This year, though, so many people, worried about the future, worried about their finances, worried about getting food from the grocery store, started to raise their own.  

In March, just as I always have, I filled out my chick order forms at the local feed store.  I had my birds on order, just as I always have.  

Then, I started hearing stories about people trying to find laying hens and/or meat birds, and there just not being any available.  All of the usual places where baby chicks are sold were completely out-of-stock.  I was lucky, I guess, that I have always pre-ordered mine.

As with all years past, we split up the meat birds into a couple of different groups.  We only have a quarter of an acre, and so we can't really raise 50 birds at a time, like most folks do.  We place two to three orders of 10 to 15 birds each, to be received at intervals throughout the summer.  

This year was no different.  I placed an order for hens in early April, for my first set of meat birds to arrive mid-May, and for the last set of meat birds to arrive mid-June.  

The first group of 15 meat birds were ready to go to the butcher in early July, and so I called on a Friday to schedule for Monday, because my butcher only does chickens on Mondays.  He told me that the summer is usually their down time.  Not this year.  This year, they were full out, every Monday, butchering chickens, because so many people had decided that now was a good time to start learning to raise their own.

While it makes me happy (really, it does) that so many people are finally getting bitten by the self-sufficiency bug, it's also a little sad, to me, that it took this emergency to spur people in this direction.  It's also a little ... annoying isn't exactly the right word, but it fits ... to come up against shortages for things that I have always done, because suddenly everyone else wants to do them, too.  But worse are the people who, then, act as if it's some new and great idea that they came up with.  Um ....  Yeah.   

So, I scheduled my first set of 15, and my butcher asked if I would have more later.  See?  He knows that I raise meat birds, 10 to 15 at a time, over the whole summer.  I told him that I would.  He advised me to schedule to bring them in and gave me a date in the middle of August.  "If they start to get too big," he told me (because Cornish-cross, which is the breed of meat chicken I raise, and he knows it, tend to grow really big, really fast.  It's exactly the reason I, and so many other people, raise them for meat), "give us a call and we can see about fitting you in sooner."

I didn't call.  

The average meat chicken in the grocery store is around 3 lbs.  It's the same breed of chicken that I raise, but those birds are butchered at between five and eight weeks.  My chickens were probably ten to twelve weeks old when I took them to "See Ken" - our family's euphemism for taking the chickens to the butcher.  The largest was over 8 lbs fully dressed.

It's not unusual for us to have such large chickens.  We've done it before. What is unusual is for us to have such large chickens, because the butcher was too busy to take my birds. 

Because I was home more, I had the best garden I have had in years.  I was able to do things this year that I have always wanted to do, but just didn't have the time - like successive plantings.  I planted lettuce in the spring.  We ate salads for a month.  Then, the lettuce started to bolt, because it got too warm.  I recently replanted lettuce for the fall.  I've never done that before.

I also planted more potatoes.  I plant my potatoes in old feed sacks.  My first crop was planted in May.  I planted a second set of bags in June.  In July, I started harvesting potatoes from the bags I had planted in May, and because I had empty bags, I planted more potatoes.

For seed, I used potatoes that were sprouting in my kitchen.  If I were a commercial potato farmer, I probably wouldn't want to plant those potatoes, because the crop is unreliable, and the potatoes are often small, but for my home garden, food grown from free seed is no small potatoes.  

Also in the garden, I was able to really nurture a few of the volunteers.  I ended up with yellow squash that was growing from seeds thrown into my compost pile.  

And my tomatoes, which were planted in buckets this year, THRIVED, because I was home more and was able to water them more regularly.

Spending more time at home, I have been doing a lot more cooking.  Between not wanting to be out in public anyway, and there just not being any really good choices for take-out for us, because of some dietary restrictions (we are, by doctor recommendation, gluten-free), I've really had driven home the fact that my home cooking is just better than restaurant fare.  Not that I'm such a great chef, but mostly because when we eat at home, I have total control over what we consume.  So, locally sourced, organic, or home-grown ingredients were on the menu almost every day this summer.  

The real benefit to my being home more was to our pocketbook.  Cooking at home saves us a lot of money.   Limiting trips to the store and/or shopping with a grocery delivery service eliminated most of those impulse purchases, which saved us a lot.  

We also had time, this summer (usually we are really busy with work and volunteer stuff) to think about later in the year.  For the first time, in a long time, we have all the wood we need for the winter ... and then, some.   We heat, exclusively, with wood, which means a lot of wood.  We had five cords delivered, and it's stacked and ready for this winter.  We have a full freezer.  We have plenty of toilet paper.  

A couple of projects that needed doing, but weren't a priority, got done, too.

And, because we are uncertain of what this winter will hold, we've already started talking about holiday gift-giving, and we have some ideas of what we want to do.  For certain, we know that we will be shopping early for things we plan to buy, and starting earlier than usual with things we plan to make.  

For me, this year has been a reminder of why we started doing things the way we do, and I have been given the opportunity to return to the lifestyle that makes me feel fulfilled.  

 

Flashback - I'm a Prepper

The following is an essay that appeared on Surviving the Suburbs blog (my original blog) in 2017.  Given the current COVID-19 pandemic with the shortages in so many surprising and not surprising resources, I felt that highlighting those of us who've been doing this for a long time was appropriate.

Enjoy the flashback ... and feel free to comment ... and invite your friends to comment ;).

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I'm a Prepper.

I'm accustomed to that suspicious, sideways glance from people who learn that I'm a Prepper.  I'm accustomed to being judged for writing about the very real possibility that some catastrophic, life-changing event will happen in my lifetime - what we preppers like to call TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) or when the SHTF (shit hits the fan).

What I haven't gotten used to, however, is being openly ridiculed, called names like "mouth breather", labeled a luddite, or accused of having only a 5th grade education, simply because of my certainty that our way of life is neither sustainable nor non-negotiable, and because I refuse to become a victim, but rather choose to be proactive, and yes, prepared.  

In 2015, Canadian writer, Leslie Anthony, who clearly believes himself to be of a superior stock, wrote exactly those things about the Prepper community.  In what was little more than a insult-laced, lazily researched essay full of nothing more than degrading epithets meant to characterize anyone who believes that things might be going to shit, Mr. Anthony derided an entire group of people - people who run the gamut from, as he calls them "meth-fueled, neo-Christian, anarchist bow-hunters" to professionals in all fields from accountants and teachers to doctors and engineers.  I'd also like to point out that some of the folks in the latter group are also bow-hunters ... and some in the former are also college-educated professionals.  

Former President G.W. Bush owns an off-grid ranch in Texas that includes a 25,000 gallon cistern for storing water.  I'd call him a prepper.  

Yours truly is just shy of a graduate degree (significantly more than a 5th grade education) and is married to an engineer with a degree from an Ivy League college.  I feel like Mr. Anthony doesn't really know what a prepper is, in spite of his insistence that he has a full understanding of what that term means and the kinds of people who wear the label. 

So, let's discuss who preppers really are, and why more people should strive to be like us. 

First let's start with the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, which Mr. Anthony refers to as "that most authoritative tome."  The definition of a prepper, as published by Mr. Anthony, from the OED is:  "a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency [edited to add: *cough* COVID-19 *cough] is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies." 

I don't disagree with that definition, and I would also like to point out that no where, in that definition, is a prepper defined as someone with no education who hopes for disaster.  Rather, by definition, a prepper is someone who is pretty sure that something bad is going to happen, and strives to be ready for it ... whatever the *it* is. 

So, let's talk about some of the "its" that have occurred recently.

Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas causing severe flooding and massive damage, and Hurricane Irma, after thoroughly thrashing all of the islands in that area of the world where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean meet, descended on southern Florida with a fury only matched by a little league parent who is certain the referee has slighted his little star.

Both of those events could be described as "catastrophic disasters."  Prepping in the sense of stockpiling goods might not have done many people in the path of those hurricanes a lot of good, but Mr. Anthony also pokes fun at the "Bug-Out Bag", which is, usually a backpack filled with provisions and ready to be grabbed as one runs out the door.  

There were many areas in Florida that were under mandatory evacuation.  So, you tell me, when is it better to plan for an evacuation - when you're being shouted at by the police to leave the area, or now, when you're sitting, calmly, in your living room reading this article?  When are you more likely to be able to think, rationally, about what you might need in the event of an emergency?

When I was in college, the university provided low-cost housing to students who were married and/or had children.  It was a trailer park, and I lived there.  One evening when I was home alone with my two children, the police rolled through my neighborhood telling all of us that we needed to get out ... now!  A tornado had touched down nearby.  We were being evacuated.   I grabbed my kids, shoved a couple of diapers and a quick snack in my purse, and snatched up a ball - as something for my kids to play with.  It was a warm late spring day when we evacuated to the basement of a nearby building. Inside the bowels of that building, sitting on the marble floors, it was cold.  My children and I weren't dressed for the chill of the cold floor in the air conditioned building.  I didn't have a blanket.  I didn't have extra clothes for any of us.  Heck, my daughter didn't even have on shoes or socks (she was still a baby).  I didn't have water.  I didn't have any money.  

The list of what I didn't have was pretty long, and thankfully, after two hours, we were sent back to our homes.  Nothing happened.  We were fine.  The house was still intact.  I hadn't lost anything except two hours of study time.  

It could have been worse, though.  It could have been a lot worse.  That tornado could have destroyed my home, and I and my children could have been left with nothing more than the clothes on our backs, and the few silly things I hastily grabbed on my way out the door.  I didn't even have any identification for them, and I certainly didn't have any of my important papers.  

If back then, I'd had a bug-out bag, we would have had everything we needed, plus a lot more, and those other people who were stuck in that cold basement would have been really grateful when I pulled out blankets and snacks.    

Later in my life, I experienced other SHTF events.  These, like the tornado evacuation, were always short-lived, but the fact that I was prepared those times made my life a heck of a lot easier.

In 2008, much of the northeast was hit with a significant ice storm.  It was the second such storm I'd experienced since I'd moved to Maine a decade earlier.  The worst part of this storm, for my family, was that we were without electricity for a few days.  So, imagine.  It's the middle of winter.  There is no electricity in your house.  Quick!  What do you do?

Can you heat your house?  Can you cook meals?  Do you have candles, flashlights, or oil lamps? Would you even be able to stay in your house for the duration of the event?  Would your pipes freeze? Would you be able to care for your pets or, like too many people did during the recent hurricane emergencies, would you be forced to abandon them?

Some folks ended up in a hotel or a motel ... if they could find one that still had power and vacancies.

We stayed home.

We played games.

We read books.

We even rigged up the FM transmitter that we keep in our car (and is usually powered by the car lighter) so that we could listen to an audiobook through the solar-powered radio.

On day two of our power outage, Deus Ex Machina's nephew came over to our house to spend the day, because there was no school.  He asked us what we did all day with no television, and so my daughters showed him.  They played some games.  They made origami animals.  They colored.  They danced and sang.  

I made lunch on the wood stove.

In the mornings, I heated water on the wood stove.  We had hot baths.  We had coffee.  We were able to wash dishes.

In the evenings, we had plenty of light with my stockpile of candles, oil lamps, and flashlights.  Dinner, including fresh baked bread, was cooked on the wood stove.

On day three of our power outage, Deus Ex Machina went to work in the morning, just like usual, and I hooked my computer and transcriber up to the car jump-starter and did my job, too.

The day the power company crew came to my neighborhood to restore our electric service, I was hanging my freshly laundered clothes on the line outside.

Not much about our lives changed significantly ... because we are prepared.  We don't have a generator, but we know for a fact that we can survive without electricity without any hardship at all.

And without scrambling to buy a generator or running to the store for supplies, because, thanks to our prepper mind-set, we usually have most of what we need.

There are some Prepper-fantasy scenarios that are a little far-fetched - more likely to occur in fiction than in real life.  All sorts of novels cover the possibility of a solar flare or an EMP attack that completely destroys all electronics, or a viral plague that wipes out 90% of the human race. Mostly those events are fiction, but both of them can happen, and have-ish.

To wit:  a solar storm (coronal mass ejection or CME) known as the Carrington Event knocked out telegraph transmissions in 1859.  If a similar event occurred in the US today, it could destroy significant parts of the electrical grid, and knock out power in some parts of the country for months ... maybe longer.  Such an event could happen and would be catastrophic.  It probably won't, though.  And, while an EMP, which would have a similar effect, can be accomplished by detonating a nuclear bomb up in the stratosphere (or, you know, up in the clouds, up there someplace), it probably won't happen, either.  You know, it's not like North Korea has nuclear bombs or anything, or that they don't like us.  Oh ... wait.

As for plagues, those have also happened.  In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague wiped out much of Europe (although some research is also suggesting that it wasn't just the Black Plague, but a combination of pestilence, including bacillus anthracis, or Anthrax).  Of course, that was a very long time ago, and we have a vaccinations these days.  But ...

Ebola is pretty awful.  There's no vaccine.  It probably won't spread to the rest of the world, but from 2014 to 2016, several West African countries fought to keep the disease from spreading. People were ordered to quarantine themselves in their homes.  So, imagine that you can't leave your house.  Can you feed yourself?  Do you have water?  Can you cook your food?  Can you heat your home?  Ebola probably won't happen HERE, where I live, but it did happen somewhere.  The Preppers in West Africa were living well in their quarantined, well-stocked homes.

Let's talk about some other possibilities that are not just crazy, "out there" ideas that are just never going to happen here, but rather some real scenarios that really could happen, over which we would have absolutely NO control, but for which we could be somewhat prepared.

In the 1990s, the USSR collapsed.  The USSR, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a massive entity in Eurasia that was formed just after World War I.   Land wise, it was huge.  We collectively referred to them as the Soviet Union, and most of us here in America thought they were all "Russians", but the USSR was actually made up of 15 different countries with several more countries, sort of, being controlled by the government in Moscow.

So, when the USSR collapsed, it was pretty catastrophic for a lot of people.  The Russians retreated back to Russia where there were shortages of everything.  Dmitry Orlov, who grew up in the US, but visited family in Russia, tells great stories about what he saw during his visits behind the curtain of how the people were dealing with the financial collapse.

Argentina, Cuba, Greece, and Venezuela have all recently experienced their own financial collapses, and lest you think it can't happen here, please note that Venezuela is one of the top oil producing countries in this world.  They should have plenty of money to sustain their economy.  Unlike Venezuela, the US does not have its own supply of oil.  If, by some crazy happenstance (oh, I don't know, like the 1970s OPEC-led oil embargo against the US), we lose our oil suppliers, things would be very bad.

If you want a very small glimpse of how it might look to have less oil available, and at a much higher price, do some research on what happened to Cuba when Russia stopped supplying the Cubans with oil.  

Or, perhaps, just harken back to 2008, right here in the good ole US of A, when the price of gasoline skyrocketed, almost overnight, and everyone freaked out.  Truckers went on strike in protest of the high prices.  Goods weren't delivered.  It wasn't too bad, but it could have been.

Shit happens all of the time, and being prepared for the "it" is not a bad thing.

One of the most popular lists for preppers is the 100 items list.  It was originally compiled by a survivor of the Sarajevo siege.  I'm sure you're thinking, why should I care about Sarajevo?

In 1992, Sarajevo was a beautiful, modern city.  It is the capital of Bosnia and hosted the 1984 Olympics.  That year (1992) opposing military factions laid siege to the city, trapping civilians inside the urban confines. The Siege has the distinction of being the longest in the history of modern warfare and lasted almost four years.

Thirteen years ago, I found this graphic novel, Fax from Sarajevo, at my library.  I had no idea what I was borrowing.   The story was horrifying in its harrowing details.  The civilians who lived in the city were constantly being shot at.  These were just regular people.  A man and his wife and their children, struggling not to get killed as these two opposing armies fought each other.  If that wasn't bad enough, they also needed stuff to stay alive, like food and clean water.  No supplies came in.  No one got out. Those cartoon images have stayed with me.

It is unlikely that southern Maine will end up in a siege.  But ... I'm almost positive that if I found Doc Emmett Brown and bartered a ride in his Delorean back to 1984, and I was able to buy a ticket to the Olympics and visit Sarajevo, and talk to the people who lived there, not one of them would express the belief that their beautiful city would be torn asunder by war in eight years.  They'd probably laugh at me.  Loudly.  And point and jeer.

Kind of like Mr. Anthony did in 2015 in his nasty little anti-prepper diatribe.

But the reality - for a lot of people in this world - is that the shit hits the fan all of the time.  War happens, and usually, it happens in places and to people who aren't thinking it could ever happen to them, like most of us living in the US.  War doesn't happen here, right?  In 1991, that is exactly what they were saying in Sarajevo.

I'm also pretty sure that in 2014 no one in Sierra Leone expected that their country would be home to more than 14,000 cases of a deadly and virulent hemorrhagic fever.

And if I could go back to a 4th of July party in Houston, not one of my fellow party-goers would believe me if I tried to warn them that they would be under a three-day siege from a Hurricane with the same name as some actor from the Carol Burnett comedy show.

Our mantra as humans is "It won't happen to me."

The difference between the Mr. Anthonys of this world and the Preppers he derides is that we, Preppers, DO believe it can (and probably will) happen to us, and instead of throwing up our hands in defeat, we decide to do something about it.

He can laugh, if he wants, but come winter, if Maine experiences another electricity stealing ice storm, I'll be living life, pretty much, as usual.

A final word:

There are a lot of SHTF scenarios.  Some are huge events that are devastating to a lot of people, like most of the ones I mentioned.  All of the ones I mentioned HAVE happened, and millions of people were adversely affected by them.  With the exception of the catastrophic CME, all of them have happened somewhere in the world in MY lifetime.  I've been a witness, peripherally, to most of the catastrophic events that we, preppers, are hedging against.

But there's one more, and every one of us is likely to experience that SHTF scenario.  The last one is a job loss or some significant financially devastating event (like an illness).

Deus Ex Machina and I went through the job loss event this summer.  It wasn't bad for us, because we have a prepper mindset, because we are always aware that this modern way of life is not sustainable and not non-negotiable, and because we know that things can change on a whim, and do.

Deus Ex Machina found a job.   We didn't lose our home.  No one starved.  We didn't have to sell our kidneys ... or our children.   We didn't sell our cars or our furniture or our clothes to make ends meet. We didn't have to rehome our pets because we couldn't feed them.  We didn't have to take out loans or end up with credit card debt.  We're still happily married and happily together.

In fact, with the exception of having an awesome summer together with no one having to get up early every day to go to work, our lives didn't change all that much.

Honestly, the whole tone of Leslie Anthony's article was condescending, and yes, as a Prepper, I was deeply insulted.  I guess, I just think, as a highly educated "scientist" kind of guy, we should expect  more from him than just a nine paragraph rant about a demographic he clearly doesn't care to understand.

Maybe, instead of just trolling through a couple of Prepper websites, Mr. Anthony should have done some real research ... you know, like an actual scientist or journalist should be doing ... and gone out and actually met some of the real people in the Prepper world.  If he had done his due diligence, I'm certain his article would have had a very different tone.

But then, if he'd met some real preppers, he would have had to hop down off his soap box and admit that real-life Preppers are more than a reality show caricature.

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[edited to add]

And now that the world is in the midst of one of those "catastrophic" events, now that billions have been locked down and/or quarantined, millions have lost their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to this disease, I wonder what naysayers, like Mr. Anthony are saying.

To be clear, this isn't my "I told you so" moment, because we aren't done with this.  COVID-19 and its aftermath will be with us for a while.  We still don't know what the overall economic impact will be.  Things are still scarce.  People are still afraid.  At a minimum, we'll have to keep wearing that god-awful mask, and my job, as an office manager at a community theater, is in jeopardy, since we can't have folks congregating in enclosed spaces and theaters are, as a result, closed.  I don't feel "I told you so."  This is not a laughing time.  

It is a time for us to take stock of where we go from here.

For those of you who were preppers before all of this began:  how do you feel about your preparations?   

For those of you who weren't preppers:  what's your plan for the future?

Here at Chez Brown, we were well prepped.  In fact, because I had to come home to work, but Deus Ex Machina was considered an "essential worker" and still went to his job, our lives actually went back to what they were pre-2018, when I owned a home-based business.  It was nice. 

I had more time - and energy - to tend to my space: housekeeping, garden, cooking - all thrived during my lockdown.

We discovered new ways to get what we needed (curbside pick-up for the win!!).  We discovered new businesses (hooray!  Locally caught fish!).  We found a couple of really cool home delivery services for products we would never have considered having home delivered (there's a wine service that home delivers - I didn't subscribe, but how cool is that!). 

We returned to doing things we'd done before, staying home, spending time, doing things. 

For us, it was nice to be reminded of what is important and to return to those activities. 

Haircut or Hugs?

On FB today a friend posed the question - at this point in our "social distancing", would you prefer a haircut or a hug?

When I was in high school, I learned to cut my own hair using a book my mother had purchased.  I have no idea why she bought that book, but it was like a lot of things we had - a very eclectic mix of "why do we have that?"  "Hey, look what we have!!!" that has framed how I live my own life.  I have a lot of both, and usually (like the elastics I mentioned in my previous post), I find out why I thought I needed that thing sometime later, and I get to pause and give thanks for the foresight that prompted me to keep whatever it is. 

Several years ago, in an effort to become more self-sufficient, which (for us) translated to "save money", I started cutting Deus Ex Machina's hair.   We have a pair of clippers, which I use to cut the sides, and then, I trim the top with scissors. 

The other day, I gave Deus Ex Machina a haircut.  When I was done, I said, "You could start a juicy rumor that you're sleeping with your hairdresser." 

The longer we stay home, and the more stuff I read on social media about other people's experiences, the more I realize how capable we have become at this whole DIY thing.  Fact is, we really have learned a lot over the years, and I guess we kind of take it all for granted, because we don't need to go out for a haircut.  We don't need to commission someone else to make us masks.  We don't need to pay for take-out.

What skills are you thankful for having learned that have helped you get through this quarantine?

Mad Skills

When I was in high school, Home Ec. was a graduation requirement for all students.  Most kids took the general Home Ec. class, usually as a freshman or sophomore to get it out of the way.

I, being a sophisticated young woman with career aspirations beyond being a housewife (oh, Fate!  You are so very, very funny!), I put off taking Home Ec.  I think my actual goal was to find a way to get out of having to take it at all. 

That goal didn't quite work out for me, thankfully, and as it turns out, taking Home Ec. proved to be incredibly beneficial to me.

I didn't take the basic home ec. course.  It's a very long story that revolves around my having been an Army Brat and moving into a new community as a high school freshman, but having earned some high school credits in junior high school, and discovering that those credits would not transfer to my new high school, and then, attempting to retake those high school level classes - for the credits I had already earned - but discovering that my school would not allow me to retake a class that I was very much too advanced for.  Like I said, long story.

The short of it is, basically, I had a open slot in my schedule.  I needed Home Ec., but the only option for me at that time of day was to take an advanced Home Ec. sewing class. 

And that's what I did. 

I didn't, particularly, want to learn to sew, but it ended up being one of the most valuable classes that I had in my entire four year high school career.

When I started college, my great-aunt gifted me her sewing machine.  I put it to good use sewing my own maternity clothes. 

Later, I used the machine to sew Christmas gifts and make clothes for my kids. 

After a few moves and some life-altering events, the machine got lost in time, but then, Deus Ex Machina's grandmother gave me her old machine.  It felt like being reacquainted with an old friend.

I've made a lot of things on that machine, including costumes for the Theater, where I am now employed. 

My most recent project is making face masks for friends and family as a layer of protection against this COVID-19 outbreak when we are out in public.

Prepping is not just about food and "survival" supplies.  At its core, prepping is a little like fortune telling - and the ability to look at something for its potential.  The result, for me, is that I have not had to purchase any materials for our masks, because, as a prepper, I have kept old clothes and bed sheets over the years, because those things are fabric, and fabric has dozens of uses:  rags (instead of paper towels); rag rugs; feminine hygiene products; quilts; other clothes.  In the future, those old tee-shirts  are very likely to become "family cloth" (to take the place of toilet paper).

As I mentioned in a previous post, 1/4" elastic is hard to find.  One of the things that I've kept over the years is elastic - from worn out pairs of panties. 

I kept the elastic, because it's elastic, and because over the years I've used a lot of elastic in the clothes I've made for my children (in particular, pajama pants).   It seemed wasteful to be throwing away this perfectly good elastic, and then, purchasing more of it so that I could make things for my kids.

I have also kept old flannel bed sheets.  The fabric is great for all sorts of projects, and as it turns out, flannel is one of the preferred fabrics for making the face masks. 

After I started making masks, I realized an additional benefit of having saved all of those flannel sheets - elastic!  The fitted sheets have 1/4" elastic!

I've used at least a yard (one yard = three feet) of elastic in the past week on the masks I've made, and not only am I incredibly thankful to the Fates who pushed me into that sewing class, but also that I somehow had the foresight to hang on to all of those old clothes, flannel sheets, fabric remnants, and sewing notions.  It's come in handy - even if it looks a lot like clutter. 

The Elephant in the Room

It's the only thing that anyone is talking about these days, but it's also the only topic no one wants to discuss.  It's that proverbial elephant - COVID-19.

We're quarantined, mostly, although there are those individuals who are "essential" and still have to go to work everyday, and so, while, as a prepper, I have spent much of the last decade reading all about things just like this and what to do, the actual "on the ground" experience looks a LOT different than what we imagined back in the day. 

First off, there are no zombies.  There are no blood or pus spewing contagious folks infecting all of us at the grocery store.  In fact, it's a little anti-climatic.  I mean that in a positive way.  What we preppers imagined was a lot MORE than what we are currently experiencing.  People seem to be walking around in a daze.  The reality is a lot quieter.

I think that's always the case, though.  When we are living it, the *it* always looks different in the moment than it does in hindsight.  In a few years, we'll look back on this time and do some great analysis.  Books - both fiction and non-fiction - will be written about our individual COVID-19 experiences.  There will be dozens of "front-line" first person accounts from doctors and nurses. 

I'm looking forward to the grocery store clerk diaries, personally.  I've been shopping at the same grocery store for the past two decades, and I know many of the cashiers and stock-people by name, and they know me by sight.  In the past few weeks, when I've gone to the store, we've chatted, briefly.  When we're on the other side, I want to take a few of them out for coffee or dinner, and talk.

I'm looking forward - to the end.  And by "looking forward" I don't mean, "in anticipation", but rather I am imagining what our future might look like based on what I am seeing in the news right now.  It's April.  It's the beginning of growing season for most of us here in the United States. 

I am seeing way too many reports of vegetables left to rot, of milk being dumped, of farms going under, because they don't have the personnel to harvest, process, or transport the food from farm to customer - many of whom are restaurants that are currently doing only an nth of their usual business.  The food industry is in trouble. 

It's possible that the media is over-blowing things - like they do - but it's also possible that they are under reporting.  We won't know until we're in that hind-sight.  Next week.  Next month.  Next year. 

The thing is, it doesn't really matter whether the reports are optimistic or pessimistic, because we have plenty of material to show us what we could/should be doing right now.  We have plenty of examples of times when things got bad and what people did to make them not quite so bad, or failed to do and ended up suffering. 

We don't have to suffer.  We can be proactive.

As a prepper, that's what I preached for over a decade.  Be prepared. 

That doesn't mean a bunker in the back yard.  It doesn't mean keeping the bug-out bag in the back of your armored SUV and planning to high-tail it to Mt. Katahdin and live off the land.  It doesn't mean buying up 60 acres in the Alaskan wilderness and setting up your off-grid oasis.

What it means is taking Teddy Roosevelt's sage advice: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." 

And that means, if, like me, you live in the suburbs, you find out what YOU can do, where you are, to make sure that this disaster isn't ... a disaster.

The time to start is NOW.

Like, RIGHT NOW! 

Back in the day when I was first starting my prepper journey, I happened upon this list.  It was compiled by folks who survived the Siege of Sarajevo in 1993.  These people lived in the city.  They ended up being surrounded by enemy troops, which limited their movements.  Scrounging for food and basic supplies became the norm, and for most of them, the only hope was to get out alive.

Obviously, we aren't at that point of desperation.  At least most of us aren't being shot at from snipers in the next house, but we are at a point where some things are starting to get scarce.  I mean, toilet paper?  Really?

This is the toilet paper aisle at my local grocery store.
It's looked like this for over a month.

In a few months, we may look back and laugh about the run on toilet paper, because it will be funny that we were more worried about wiping our asses than we were about feeding our faces.

Of course, there are also shortages in that area, too.  If you've been to the grocery store, you will have noticed that the soup and pasta aisles are particularly bare. 

I went to the store two weeks before the lock down truly happened here where I live in southern Maine, kind of in the beginning of the panic.  There was no toilet paper.  There hadn't been hand sanitizer in a week or more (which was no big deal, for me, because I never used the stuff). 

But I was gobsmacked by the barren soup aisle, the empty shelves where the pasta and pasta sauce should have been, and the dearth of flour and yeast.  Since when did those items become so popular? 

Here we are - a month later, with limits placed on the number of items each person can purchase at a time, and a cap on the number of people who can be in the store at a time, and those aisles are still bare, which actually does surprise me.  I wonder.  I just wonder.  Are people still, really, stockpiling those things? 

I mean, it's probably not a bad idea, given that come August, we may be experiencing food shortages, like real food shortages, in that, there is no food, because food wasn't grown and harvested and processed.

What also surprises me, though, is the well-stocked produce section.  The other day, when the tomato sauce aisle was empty, a few aisles over in the produce section, the store had tomatoes for 25 cents a pound.  I can't even get that price, in season, from my local farmer!  I'm not certain I can even grow tomatoes that cheaply.  I bought as many as I thought they would allow without looking at me like I was a hoarder.

I guess what I'm saying is that WE should be reaching further up into the trees for that higher up fruit. 

We should be buying the fresh produce and preserving it - rather than having stores dump it and farmers compost it. 

Canning, dehydrating, freezing, fermenting, cold storing - there are a lot of ways to keep fresh food for later.  I mean, what did people do before Campbell's existed to make that Chicken Noodle soup in a can?

I alluded to this list a few paragraphs up, and here it is: 100 Items That Disappear First (in an emergency).  I've put an asterisks beside the one's that are already in short supply - in just a month's time.

One more note, before the list:  we are a month into this "emergency" here in the US.  Some predictions say that we will be open for business by May 1.  Most are saying the social distancing measures could last well into the summer.  Either way, nothing is going to go "back to normal" - at least not for a while.  The impacts on the food industry and supply chains will be felt for some time. 

Most of the hand soap and all of the hand sanitizer was sold out.  The bar soap was mostly gone, too. 
Those who usually purchase the organic and/or specialty soaps were in luck,
as those more expensive products were still available.

100 Items to Disappear First
1. Generators (Good ones cost dearly. Gas storage, risky. Noisy...target of thieves; maintenance etc.)
2. Water Filters/Purifiers
3. Portable Toilets (ALT – 5 gal bucket with some saw dust or cat litter)
4. Seasoned Firewood. Wood takes about 6 - 12 months to become dried, for home uses.
5. Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps (First Choice: Buy CLEAR oil. If scarce, stockpile ANY!)
6. Coleman Fuel. Impossible to stockpile too much.
*7. Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots. (My note:  Gun sales are up here in the US, and some calibers of ammunition are getting harder to find).
8. Hand-can openers, & hand egg beaters, whisks.
9. Honey/Syrups/white, brown sugar
10. Rice - Beans – Wheat (and grow as much as possible!)
11. Vegetable Oil (for cooking) Without it food burns/must be boiled etc.,)
12. Charcoal, Lighter Fluid (Will become scarce suddenly)
13. Water Containers (Urgent Item to obtain.) Any size. Small: HARD CLEAR PLASTIC ONLY - note - food grade if for drinking.
14. Mini Heater head (Propane) (Without this item, propane won't heat a room.)
15. Grain Grinder (Non-electric)
16. Propane Cylinders (Urgent: Definite shortages will occur.
17. Survival Guide Book (this is a link to my book Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: the Thrivalist's Guide to Life Without Oil).
18. Mantles: Aladdin, Coleman, etc. (Without this item, longer-term lighting is difficult.)
19. Baby Supplies: Diapers/formula. ointments/aspirin, etc.
20. Washboards, Mop Bucket w/wringer (for Laundry)
21. Cookstoves (Propane, Coleman & Kerosene)
22. Vitamins
23. Propane Cylinder Handle-Holder (Urgent: Small canister use is dangerous without this item)
*24. Feminine Hygiene/Haircare/Skin products (my note:  there are fewer choices, for sure, and soap is scarce)
25. Thermal underwear (Tops & Bottoms)
26. Bow saws, axes and hatchets, Wedges (also, honing oil)
27. Aluminum Foil Reg. & Heavy Duty (Great Cooking and Barter Item)
28. Gasoline Containers (Plastic & Metal)
29. Garbage Bags (Impossible To Have Too Many).
*30. Toilet Paper, Kleenex, Paper Towels (my note:  stores are having a hard time keeping this in stock.  Ordering online takes a week or more for delivery.)
31. Milk - Powdered & Condensed (Shake Liquid every 3 to 4 months) (my note:  I actually stocked up a little on condensed milk, to make sure I had milk for my coffee :))
32. Garden Seeds (Non-Hybrid) (A MUST)
33. Clothes pins/line/hangers (A MUST)
34. Coleman's Pump Repair Kit
*35. Tuna Fish (in oil)
36. Fire Extinguishers (or..large box of Baking Soda in every room)
37. First aid kits
38. Batteries (all sizes...buy furthest-out for Expiration Dates)
39. Garlic, spices & vinegar, baking supplies
40. Big Dogs (and plenty of dog food)
41. Flour, yeast & salt (my note:  We can still find salt, but flour and yeast are hard to find).
42. Matches. {"Strike Anywhere" preferred.) Boxed, wooden matches will go first
43. Writing paper/pads/pencils, solar calculators
44. Insulated ice chests (good for keeping items from freezing in Wintertime.)
45. Workboots, belts, Levis & durable shirts
46. Flashlights/LIGHTSTICKS & torches, "No. 76 Dietz" Lanterns
47. Journals, Diaries & Scrapbooks (jot down ideas, feelings, experience; Historic Times)
48. Garbage cans Plastic (great for storage, water, transporting - if with wheels)
*49. Men's Hygiene: Shampoo, Toothbrush/paste, Mouthwash/floss, nail clippers, etc. (see #24 above.  Soap is definitely harder to find).
50. Cast iron cookware (sturdy, efficient)
51. Fishing supplies/tools
52. Mosquito coils/repellent, sprays/creams
53. Duct Tape
54. Tarps/stakes/twine/nails/rope/spikes
55. Candles
56. Laundry Detergent (liquid)
57. Backpacks, Duffel Bags
58. Garden tools & supplies
*59. Scissors, fabrics & sewing supplies (my note:  since there are so many people making face masks, 1/4" elastic is really hard to find)
*60. Canned Fruits, Veggies, Soups, stews, etc. (my note:  the aisles with these items are mostly empty - even with limiting of store patrons AND number of items)
61. Bleach (plain, NOT scented: 4 to 6% sodium hypochlorite)
**62. Canning supplies, (Jars/lids/wax) (my note:  these are seasonal anyway.  By the time the "season" is here, my guess is that no one will be able to find them, except those lucky first folks into the store)
63. Knives & Sharpening tools: files, stones, steel
64. Bicycles...Tires/tubes/pumps/chains, etc
65. Sleeping Bags & blankets/pillows/mats
66. Carbon Monoxide Alarm (battery powered)
67. Board Games, Cards, Dice
68. d-con Rat poison, MOUSE PRUFE II, Roach Killer
69. Mousetraps, Ant traps & cockroach magnets
70. Paper plates/cups/utensils (stock up, folks)
*71. Baby wipes, oils, waterless & Antibacterial soap (saves a lot of water) (my note:  these items have been in short supply for more than a month)
72. Rain gear, rubberized boots, etc.
73. Shaving supplies (razors & creams, talc, after shave)
74. Hand pumps & siphons (for water and for fuels)
75. Soysauce, vinegar, bullions/gravy/soupbase
76. Reading glasses
77. Chocolate/Cocoa/Tang/Punch (water enhancers)
78. "Survival-in-a-Can"
79. Woolen clothing, scarves/ear-muffs/mittens
80. Boy Scout Handbook, / also Leaders Catalog
81. Roll-on Window Insulation Kit (MANCO)
82. Graham crackers, saltines, pretzels, Trail mix/Jerky
83. Popcorn, Peanut Butter, Nuts
84. Socks, Underwear, T-shirts, etc. (extras)
85. Lumber (all types)
86. Wagons & carts (for transport to and from)
87. Cots & Inflatable mattress's
88. Gloves: Work/warming/gardening, etc.
89. Lantern Hangers
90. Screen Patches, glue, nails, screws,, nuts & bolts
91. Teas
92. Coffee
93. Cigarettes
94. Wine/Liquors (for bribes, medicinal, etc,)
95. Paraffin wax
96. Glue, nails, nuts, bolts, screws, etc.
97. Chewing gum/candies
98. Atomizers (for cooling/bathing)
99. Hats & cotton neckerchiefs
*100. Goats/chickens (My note:  A local farm that sold chicks sold out, interestingly.  Seems like a lot of people in my community are suddenly interested in raising chickens.  And eggs are on that list of things that the grocery store is occasionally out of, too).

Today, we're having a wind storm here in southern Maine with potential power outages, and it's "spring" weather for the rest of the US, too, which means tornadoes and hurricanes. 

Where we are on the availability of the rest of the items on the list in a few weeks will be interesting to see, as folks are hunkering down at home, and realizing that they are poorly equipped to a combat a fully locked and loaded Mother Nature.

Welcome Post and Intro

I have a long history of both blogging, working from home, and prepping. 

In 2005, I started my first blog.  I called the blog "Happily Home."  At the time, I was interested in promoting and "at home" lifestyle - home-based work, homeschooling, homesteading (in the suburbs).  That was the impetus behind the blog name, and for fourteen years, that was my blog. 

The blog address stayed the same, but over the years the blog title changed to:  Surviving the Suburbs.

There were a couple of books.  There was a lot of growing and maturing.

Eventually, I felt like I'd run out of things to say.  I'd said them all before, you know?  Anyone who looked back through the blog archives could find the message they needed.

For personal reasons, I took down Happily Home. 

But I think in my heart-of-hearts I am a blogger. 

So, here I am.  Milking Squirrels.

If you remember me from http://happilyhome.blogspot.com, please join me on this new/old adventure, because I'm still doing what I was doing ... and more ... and less. 

If I can figure out how to upload all of my old Happily Home posts, this blog will get really big, really fast :).