Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #59: Building Food Storage with Joel Salatin

Transcript

Episode #59: Building Food Storage with Joel Salatin · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right now, this for the first time in America's history, 20% of all food eaten in America is grown outside the country.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So one in five bites is grown on foreign land somewhere.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's never that's never been true in in the U.S.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so so 20%.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean just think about this as a nation right now, 20% of our food we're already dependent on somebody else.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everybody, welcome to Beyond Labels.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McKellat here with farmer Joel Salatin.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And today, Joel is going to talk to us about creating an emergency stash of food.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks, Cena.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, uh those of us who enjoy Dave Ramsey, the uh financial guru, uh, you know, he's always talking about uh a six-month emergency fund uh for cash, you know, that you you should you should look at your living expenses, take your budget, and and look at what you need for six months, and you should have that literally as cash in the bank so that if you know if the transmission goes out in the car, if you know, if if if suddenly the roof springs a leak, um, you know, and and uh Cena, the the amazing thing right now is that um 50 percent get this 50 percent of Americans right now cannot put their hands on$400 of cash.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's that's alarming.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it is alarming.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and what that means is you don't have wiggle room, you know, i in in your in your life.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You everything's just well, we we talk about hand to mouth.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um so so we you know, we intuitive we we get this in in financials.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like to take this Dave Ramsey concept and move it forward to uh um a a six-month, you know, maybe not six months, maybe that's too long, but three or four.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, a a multi-month uh stash, uh, you know, the um uh in food, the average city, the average city has three days worth of food on hand.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you take the population of a city and you take all the supermarkets and you know, the Walmart, the Costco, the Krogers, the you know, the piggly wiggly, you know, wherever you are, um, you know, HEB, and you take all that food, the average city has enough food on hand for three days.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I talked to a I talked to a restaurateur in Washington, D.C.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: the other day.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: He said that every day, you ready for this?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every day, four tractor trailer loads of French fries go into Washington, DC.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Every single day, four tractor trailer loads of french fries go into DC.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's just that's just one city.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not, you know, it certainly isn't as big as New York, it's not as big as LA.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um, you know, as a farmer and as a as a direct marketing farmer, you know, I'm constantly amazed when I when I hear those kinds of things of just the the sheer magnitude, the size of these kinds of things, and may I say the the the um uh the fragility of it all.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right now, this for the first time in America's history, 20% of all food uh eaten in America is grown outside the country.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So one in five bites is grown uh in on on foreign foreign land somewhere.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's never that's never been true in in the US.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so so 20%.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, just think about this as a nation right now, 20% of our food, we're already dependent on somebody else.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, as I've rattled off a couple of these little items, you know, the average American goes to the supermarket, what, three days a week.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, your household doesn't have uh any storage.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, we run into people all the time.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't buy a quarter of beef, I can't buy a cooler full of meat at once because I don't have a freezer.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so what I what I want to uh uh I want to juxtapose uh that then with what happened in the spring of 2020.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the spring of 2020, if you'll recall that, uh supermarket shelves went bare, there was no food.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would simply ask everybody listening, I would, I would ask, what do you think it would have done to the psyche, to the psyche of our country, to the average person, if in the spring of 2020 every household had a couple, three months uh worth of food in their pantry.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly people wouldn't have been quite so uh whatever, you know, concerned.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Afraid.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: They were we were afraid.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Afraid and fearful, and and and and seeing as we've discussed on this multiple on this uh podcast multiple times, you know, one of the the the number one uh um whatever destroyer uh of the immune system is stress.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And fear is one of the biggest stresses in life.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know it becomes a domino effect.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's no food on the shelves.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, what am I gonna eat?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm fearful, now I'm stressed, and now I get now I get sick.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this, you know, there's this domino thing.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So uh around our around our house, so I'll just I'll just cut to my my chase here and and give it over to you, Cena.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we um uh Teresa every summer uh you know we've been married now, you know, 42 years and and um she cans uh she cans uh I don't know what you know uh hundreds, hundreds, um I think sometimes as as many as 800 quarts of of food a year.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have we have multiple freezers.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, we uh and we have you know big pantry, she's got she's got these big um uh uh tubs.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: She gets uh you know um flour in like 50 pound sacks and puts it in these big, you know, like Tupperware uh mouseproof tubs and um buys we buy a lot of bulk.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We get you know bulk food stuff.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's got all these big you know canisters of of of things, you know, from brown sugar to to whatever.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um and we just we just have all this food and and and uh um you know we we feel I mean I haven't inventoried it right now, but uh my sense is that we could go for literally months um and not have to go to the grocery store.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so there's a tremendous amount of uh relief of just stress-free living, knowing uh that uh the the the the cities, the store, the stores, the the truckers could collapse tomorrow and and we wouldn't be in a in a big trouble.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'm just I'm just wanting to you know kind of put that out there for folks to think about um as you as you plan, as you think, as you uh, you know, whatever, uh get ready for vulnerabilities, to not just think about cash or gold, and there's a lot of interest in gold right now, um, but to also think about really your daily bread.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's so important.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I what's so interesting is that if you and I had talked about this before COVID, I don't think many people would have listened to this podcast, right?
• 8:06
  unknown: Like this.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you mean back in yeah, you you mean back in BC.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Before COVID, I love that.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: BC, yes, before COVID, people were like, yeah, what are the what's the odds that that's gonna happen here in America, right?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Then COVID, and then now we see, as you said, how fragile our system really is, particularly our food system.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and also not only does I want to piggyback on what you were talking about with the fear, you know, not only does fear um destroy your health, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: But what are the ways that the governments in the past have controlled people?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's largely through food, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you control the food supply, you can control the people.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I won't be labored at this point, but we have seen this throughout history amongst many different countries.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: They have controlled the people with the with control of the food supply.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for me, it's really important to have your um food security, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: To have your food freedom.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So going into COVID, my husband Donnie and I, we already had a huge food supply on hand.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's something that we've done um almost since the time that we were married.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, he started teaching me about history, and I saw the pattern that they control the people largely through food.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I'm not gonna allow them to do that to me.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we started building up our food storage and we did it slowly, gradually.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: We created a sales fund so that when things went on sale, we bought a whole bunch of them instead of just one to have on hand.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like we'd we buy a whole bunch of cereal instead of one box, and we just slowly built it up that way.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when COVID hit, we could have easily gone six months with having no food whatsoever, you know.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's yeah, that's amazing.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, I I read a book uh recently.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the it's it's the story of the family who housed the Anne Frank family in uh you know in Amsterdam when the um when the Germans occupied uh the Netherlands during World War II.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um it was fascinating to me that um and and and in fact you know history corroborates this, that there was a tremendous amount of starvation in Amsterdam.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, hundreds of thousands of people starved.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the people who did not starve, including this family that that that um that hid the Anne Frank family, um the the ones who did not starve, all of them had direct connections to somebody in the country.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh they they could bicycle out, and of course they did all sorts of things to hide, hide what they were doing, you know.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: They had all sorts of ingenious ways to to hide hide the sack of potatoes on the bicycle, you know, rack.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I'm not bringing potatoes, I'm taking, you know, sewing over to ant whatever, you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and there was a tremendous amount of of that sort of thing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: But but but the thing that struck me about the book was that the people who who survived and and made it through were people people who had direct connections.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So part of your part of your stash is a direct connection to um to to purveyors, whether they're local or people that you know that that can ship you stuff, but um you know, a direct link to turbo to purveyors.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't want to get off the get off the thing.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is that there's been uh a lot of musings.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: If there's one thing we've learned from COVID, it is when when big wheels muse about things, they're not just blowing smoke.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when the World Economic Forum did their um their their little thing in 20, in 2019 in the fall, said, uh, I wonder, I wonder what would happen if there were a pandemic, you know, and uh they did that dry run, suddenly we had a pandemic.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're being told about famine and starvation and supply chain issues and and all that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So as these big wheels from you know Bill Gates to Biden to you know Klaus Schwab, as they muse about the coming food shortages, let's not just dismiss it as the musings of a wacko and realize these people are so arrogant that they let their agenda out in moments of of uh, you know, um they let their hair down once in a while.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we need to be we need to be listening to that.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um what are Cino, what are some of the uh most important things?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh could could we, I think we should probably tick off kind of um a priority list.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because as you said, you you developed yours over time.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I mean we here we we've just always lived this way.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, we produce a lot of our own food.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I very much understand that you know that we're in a little different.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could go out and you know, shoot a shoot a I could shoot a cow a month for you know for 10 years and we'd be okay.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that's unusual.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But we're we're again, we're not telling people to run out and buy a farm and all that, but we are we are saying take take some food inventory seriously, you know, Y2K and all that, you know, there was all this uh this freeze-dry.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all sorts of companies that sprang up that you could buy, you know, a one-year stash of food, you know, freeze-dried and that sort of thing.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when we talk about a stash of food, is that what you're talking about, or is it something else?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that's a great point.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so because you're kind of an anomaly, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because you have a farm, and I'm on the other side of that.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably more like most of our viewers, where I don't have a farm.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So let me run through some things that were important for us.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, when building our um emergency emergency food stash, we diversified, just like Ramsey would tell you to do with your money, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: We diversified where we were procuring our food from.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So not only did we get food from the local grocery store, we also got food from online grocery stores.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, like Thrive Market, um, and yes, buying things from Amazon at times.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, not that I like to support Amazon, that's a whole another episode, but it is an avenue where you can get food.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we're talking about diversifying.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to make sure we had food coming in.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So local stores, online stores like Thrive and Amazon and other local markets, also our local farmer.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, that was you or and Joel, and actually, we're still getting our food from you.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we had built a relationship with our local farmer, and we knew we even talked about this during COVID.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my husband and I did, that we're like, okay, if it gets really bad, I'm gonna call Joel up and we're gonna drive to his farm and just get the food from him, like you know, like food insurance.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I started growing my own, um, which, you know, with little kids was difficult.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I started by growing like a pot of lettuce or herbals, um, like spices and whatnot in my kitchen, like in the window seal.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think most people could handle that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just you know, get a get like lettuce seeds, or sometimes your local grocery store will even be selling organic um, you know, little like the baby plants, little herbs you can buy in the pots that are organic or little thing of lettuce, and you could just start growing that to have something.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um Cena, let me let me interrupt you right there.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then this this is this is really this is really helpful.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is really helpful.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so first of all, you talk about diversifying your your sourcing, um, but then then the the type of stuff you're getting also um you want to do do you do I'll ask you, do you want to start with things that are shelf stable?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for example, for example, um, you know, dry, dried beans, for example, you know, one of the one of the uh a great uh nutritional thing is sprouts.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can uh all you need's water and and you can keep, you know, mung beans, for example, or alfalfa seeds, those will keep, if you keep them dry, they'll keep for literally years.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you put a little water on them in your windowsill uh sprouter thing, and boom, you know, you've got this super nutrition in a in a sprout pretty quickly.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so I I love the diversified provenance.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the chances are all the chains don't break at once.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's your point.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're you're trying to keep your foot in in multiple uh multiple food streams, if you will.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, because most of us rely just on our local grocery store.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And right, as we saw, that's that's bad, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could still go to the grocery store, but you need to diversify in case that chain goes down, which many people have experienced already did.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so let's get on to specifics of what we have procured.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you're absolutely right.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like sprouts and microgreens are fantastic, and you can buy seeds for um to grow those sprouts and microgreens for they're very inexpensive.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can keep those on hand.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we I actually have a seed, um, it's like a vault, a seed vault, like a little survivor's kit um that keeps them, you know, like away from the oxygen and whatnot.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I have seeds on hand if I need them.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm just gonna run down a list of some things that are in um in our food emergency kit.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And keep in mind, we are a family that's grain free.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it made it a little more challenging to come up with a list because none of our stuff has grain in it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, if you eat grains, you would want to get um grains, right?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: You would want to get the the dried grains and store.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Dried grains, yeah, yeah.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: So so some of the things that we got.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: What the first thing that I got was from the health ranger.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: He has um organic um food storage.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's already done for you.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like in these containers, it's already like vacuum sealed and whatnot um to last for years.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now it is expensive, so I had to save money um and buy that as as I got the money in.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: But he does have an organic version of some foods that you can that will last for years on your shelf.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that was what uh Sina, what are those foods?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is that is that pre, you know, pre-made foods?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it whole foods?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it unprocessed?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is it so?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: I bought the whole foods.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can buy either, but I bought the whole foods, you know, and these were like um freeze-dried organic wild blueberries, like you know, things like that.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I I tried to buy the whole foods um because I knew so.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I am in my food storage too.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, okay, if I'm if I'm breaking into that food storage, this is gonna be a bad time in the US.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's probably gonna be some type of fear running through me because there's some uncertainty.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to make sure I was gonna have the best food available to me and not processed food, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do have processed food in my my emergency kit, but I wanted to get as much like what I consider healthy food as possible.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I went for the whole foods.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let me just run down a few things on our list that we that we have.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have um, and when I list these, I mean we have massive amounts of them, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we and what we do is because they have expiration dates, when when we organize these into various closets to store them, we put the the one with the soonest expiration date is to the front.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then we will rotate through it.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if I pull, if I pull one out, like so I have oils, right?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Those are my main oils.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: If I need one, like if I ran out of the kitchen and I need one, I pull one, the one in the front from my storage closet, and then I replace it with one.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm constantly replacing it, but I'm I'm replacing it with a, you know, a one that has a later expiration date, and I'm pulling the one out that has the soonest expiration date, right?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I have oils.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have peanut butter and other nut butters, you know, like almond butter, cashew butters.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: These last for a long time.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have, and by the way, I store these all in in closets away from the heat and the sun.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I try to keep it as cool as possible in there.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have wild rice.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can have other rices as well, but wild rice does not contain gluten.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: The other rices do.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I have wild rice.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have all kinds of flowers.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: These are grain-free flowers.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I have, for instance, tiger nut flour, um, arrowroot flour, coconut flour, you know, just to name a few, um, all kinds of nuts, seeds, um, dried beans, dried fruit, uh, beef jerky or all kinds of jerky.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have um and things like noodles.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I'm rotating these through so they don't expire.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have bulk spices.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I buy my spal my spices in bulk.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: I buy them from Frontier Co-op.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: I only buy the organic versions.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one company that does not um radiate the spices, and they don't the ones that I buy don't have fillers in them.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so like rice can be a filler in some spices.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: So mine are pure spices.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also keep things like sugar, um, so maple sugar and maple syrup, um, coconut sugar.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we do keep um some alcohol.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And number one is For being a disinfectant, but but also because if we need a barter with people, right?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Alcohol is a good thing to have because some people need their alcohol, and you can barter for food by giving them alcohol and they'll give you food.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then um, so that's that's kind of just basics in my pantry.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Then I have the regular freezer that's part of my refrigerator, and I have two additional freezers, like stand-up freezers, and those are in uh my garage and they are loaded with meat, uh polyface meat, meat and chicken, and also pre-made meals.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I like to do to save money is um in time, I will we like I said, we have our sales fund.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: So when certain things go on sale, I buy a lot of them, and that includes produce.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, like if avocados go on, avocados are expensive, you know, nowadays for an organic avocado.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: When they go on sale, I buy a lot of them and I will process them into like guacamole, for instance, and I freeze it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So um I have I have a lot of pre-made like meals and dishes already in my freezer.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'll make big crop crock pots um full of like stews and whatnot, so that if something happens, or even if we lose power, you know, like in Virginia, we lost power a lot during storms and I wasn't able to really cook.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: So this way we already had meals that were on hand.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: You could build a fire and defrost the food, you know, or turn on the generator and defrost it in the toaster and the in the convection of it.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so I have those frozen meals already prepared, frozen dishes, but it's just packed.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just packed with meat and it's always packed, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Once we whatever we use, we then replace, just like I did with the items in my in my closet.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: What what's your Cena, what's your sense of all that, all those um the the freezer stuff?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you have a rule of thumb on how on your rotation?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it six months, eight months, a year?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, what's what's your keeping, keeping uh, you know, keeping terminus on that?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't like to keep it in keep things in my freezer longer than six months.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it it it smells a little different to me after the six months, it tastes a little bit different.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some people go longer than that, but my window is really a six month.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I like to keep things rotating through.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do the same thing.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: The new stuff I like push in the back, um, and the old stuff comes to the front, you know, just kind of like moving it through, like setting up dominoes.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: You set it up at the back and move it through to the front.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, like one of those uh one of those little uh puzzles, you know, where you you you you move you move the things around.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's a lot harder to do in a chest freezer.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh but it it is harder, but a chest freezer, just to make the point, chest freezer generally be take a little less energy.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're they're a little they're a little more they're a little cheaper and a little more energy independent, but it is harder to rotate in them.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of you know have kind of a cat a catch 22.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we've we've certainly had both.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um our my our our our big chest freezer, it's a massive one.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh like a 45 cubic foot one.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was a Sears, it was a Sears and Roe Buck.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first uh uh thing that dad and mom bought when we came to the farm in 1961.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: They went down to the Sears and Roe Buck and bought this um this freezer, put it on the back porch, the inside back porch there.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: We call it the inside back porch because it's inside, but it's back porch.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we put that thing in and listen to this in 1961, it has never been out, it has never been moved, it has never failed, it has never, I mean, nothing.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: 60 61 years now that that thing that trooper just just keeps on keeps on ticking.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, well, they don't make them like that anymore.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: They really don't.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's remarkable.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a great freezer.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, so good.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and of course, you know, if the power goes out, uh, you know, I can hear people say, well, if the power goes out, everything's gonna defrost in the freezer.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not waving the door, um generally, you know, your your freezer will will not, it's not gonna actually uh whatever, defrost where you're gonna have blood all over the place, uh, for you know, three or four days at least.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a pretty long time for the power to be out.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the main thing is just don't keep opening the door and staring in it.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you the power's out, uh know what you're wanting to get, grab it, shut that door immediately, and uh it'll usually hold for you know for up to three days, which is you know, in the US now, a three-day power outage is pretty long.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if it gets that far, well, then you gotta fire up the barbecue grill and just cook everything and have a neighborhood party and everybody come and eat it.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and also you can use um your generator.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we did.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it was this last January.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: We lost power for several days.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, in Virginia, it was the first time, like you said, most of the time it was like the power's out for one, maybe two days.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: We lost it for several days and it snowed and they couldn't get to all the downpowered lines.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: So um, during that time period, we did actually plug in the generator.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: The freezers were totally okay, but I needed to get into them to get my food.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to open it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we did use our generator um and plug them in, and it was just perfectly fine.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um you want to be smart about it.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you're putting if you're investing the money into freezers and then you're investing all that money into like meat and chicken to be in that freezer, you do want to have a backup plan.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, that was our our generator, and it worked just fine.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, in the in the previous uh Cena, we we focused on participation, and I think this one we're focusing on on this one, we're focusing on preparation.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe maybe we're we're creating a new uh kind of a new you know content kind of thing for uh should we say um you know liberated fear-free living.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way my brain works, you know.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I just get on a get on a tear.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh, you know, um these are these are these are good skills.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as you went through that list, I I was struck by a the uh the the the the purposefulness of it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's not just well, let's stock some of this, let's stock some of that.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and I think of what the ad what what I see stocked in the average household, you know, things like hot pockets and Coca-Cola and um and and things like that.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and obviously your list doesn't have any of that in it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And no, oh, and I'll add too, we also have sardines, so lots of sardines in the those last a long time.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those are those are canned.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great source of protein, great source of omega-3s, which would also help you during a state of fear.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they're canned, you just pop it open and you could just eat it just like that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to cook it or anything.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: But go ahead, Joel.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's no junk food in our and you know, the little bit of the sugar, but that's also to trade.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but go ahead.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Alcohol and sugar.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny, you're your two barter items are alcohol and sugar.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, if people actually get get uh get nuts, they're probably more valuable than gold because you oh yes, it would be.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's really funny to think about.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and of course, another thing you can barter, of course, is is skill on something.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, for so our stockpile is primarily our freezers and then all the canned goods.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we can out of the garden.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And for example, in the fall, we go to an orchard and we buy, you know, we buy uh 10, 12 bushels of apples and spend a couple of days canning a hundred quarts of applesauce, but that you know, that'll last for goodness, it'll last for four, five, six years.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: It lasts a long, long time.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can can meat.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you're gonna cook it anyway.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you can can meat.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you um uh from what Teresa's told me, that the uh the secret to canning meat is to not fill the jars clear up because meat has a little bit of a little bit of um you know grease and oils in it.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you fill the jars way up, I mean, I don't know, you know, she's always wanting to fill the jar.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: You you don't want to have a bunch of wasted space in the jar.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna you're gonna can it, you're gonna fill it all the way up.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do that, if you're canning chicken or beef or we've canned venison, um if you're if you're doing that, you want to leave about you know a a good inch or more in the top of the jar, uh, so that as it as it's in the canner, um those oils and the the meat grease doesn't come up and get on the rubber seal and then it won't seal.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then it won't seal.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that is definitely something that that we learned.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: But again, that will keep.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the the beauty, the beauty of of that kind of thing is it doesn't matter if the power goes out, it's not frozen, so it's already it's you know, it's in the jar and it's vacuum sealed, and it's good.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, we um I have a friend that that that bought this place, went down in a basement, and um kind of the first visit to the basement of this, you know, this place, and there was stuff in there.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: There there were canned goods in the basement that were 30 years old.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: They had the dates on them, you know, when they'd been put in there like from you know 1990, 1987.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at this stuff, I mean, it looked fine, you know, it looked great.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there were a couple seals that had broken, and you could tell there was some mold and stuff on them, but uh generally uh you know you can you can keep stuff for a long time.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so if we if we put our bottom line is if we put as much attention on our our food stash as we did on our entertainment center, we might actually um we might actually be more ready to handle uh the vagaries of life than um than the entertainment center.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I would argue, like you said, we'd be um ready to handle it not only on the physical level with actually having food, but we'd be better prepared mentally and emotionally, right?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what we're talking about here too, is freeing yourself from that fear, that fear of dependence.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is fantastic.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is a great way to start participating, right?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't require a lot of education.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: We just gave you lists that of things of types of foods that we have procured and added to our food emergency supply.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you could even just start with our list.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And as you get some money saved up, you know, like you say, uh take it away from Netflix or some other place, right?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we and our family, that's what we ask, which is more important to us, right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which gives us more uh sense of peace, which one's gonna give us more freedom?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we make that choice of what to let go of and then what to move toward.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and then we use that money to start buying these kinds of foods.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a simple way for anybody to start participating, and you could do it as slow or as fast as your budget and time time allows.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the other, uh, I think the important thing is to realize that the cost of eating out is really expensive.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even fast food.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you go to you go to even a fast food place.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh we eat out very, very seldom.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: A, the food here at home is always better than what you can get uh anyplace else, but but just the the cost of it.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you start dropping 50, 60 bucks, uh, you take the family, you know, uh 70 bucks at a crack, and um and and you can eat out like a king at home with the best stuff in the world, way, way cheaper than than eating out.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's a part of of uh you know, moving your participation on to preparation uh to be able to live liberated, fear-free.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a fun way to that's a fun way to do it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Cena, thanks for all these wonderful tips.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: They've been really good.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our family, we just live out here in the country on a farm, and we've just always had this big stash of food, you know, and and and and um I I'm struck, I'm struck by the the number of people that just um well, you know, if if there's a weather report about a blizzard, suddenly the the the supermarket shelves are cleaned out, you know, just in a in a in a 24-hour blizzard warning.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Those core those sorts of things are uh you know, a hurricane's coming up.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you just have that that that like a it's like everybody goes to this to the store and just it's like a big vacuum cleaner, you know, and it vacuums everything out.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you do realize, in fact, how little food there actually is.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, a hundred years ago, our ancestors had what was called a larder, a larder.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this larder was a was a fairly large room, not as big as a bedroom, obviously, but a a pretty good sized room, you know, eight, eight by ten.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was full of dried goods and and and uh um you know, cured that's where they had the you know, cured hams and and they had all this uh and canned goods and and it was just uh stashed with that.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, that that of course that was before before freezers were around.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um the the point is if you went to a city and said, Where's the food, it was not in a warehouse somewhere, it was actually in houses, you know, where people had food because you know they just couldn't get to the store all the time.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so again, we're turning that uh we're turning that clock back, um, refining and re finding satisfaction in um in in participating in things that have have kind of in recent days been considered whatever passe, unnecessary.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, you don't have to think about that.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's time to start thinking about that.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I know we're over time.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: One more thing though, before we go, um I'll be remiss if I don't mention this.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: When I talked about how I have bulk spices, one of the first things that I would put in my emergency food supply is salt, real salt, right?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not Morton's table salt, but like real salt, Himalayan salt, um, because you need salt in order to survive, right?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you can't get salt, you are gonna die.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: You need salt and you need water.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can go without food for quite some time, in fact, but you do need salt.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the first things that I would put and get a huge bag.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a huge bag of it for very inexpensive, actually.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I have that in my in our closet.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout history, throughout history, Cena, uh, salt, in fact, in the American uh Civil War, um the northern blockade of southern ports, one of their big strategies was to eliminate salt coming into the south because then you couldn't you couldn't salt down uh pork, you know, to make salt, pork, salt to to cure it.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was a way to starve out the south by um by uh um eliminating salt.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you study history, um salt has been a significant uh military strategy throughout history to starve out a population because now they can't cure anything.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're dependent day-to-day on day-to-day food.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in a uh in a military uh in a in a war situation, um people tend to be eating storage stuff, not day-to-day stuff, because their life is so disrupted.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: The more your life is disrupted, the more you depend on stored things, and without salt, nobody can store anything.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great, that's a great tip.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for putting that uh top and center and closing out with that.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, thanks everyone for joining us on uh another podcast of Beyond Labels.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tell your friends about it if you like what you're hearing here and sign up, and um, we'll look forward to seeing you next time.