This is in response to this thread:
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=189540#Post189540

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Please share your opinions, and ideas for our experiment and how best we can relay it to the readers.

Todd, very bold. For food, I am assuming you are looking at stapeles, correct? I have no planning ideas, other than what was maybe used by pioneers oh so long ago. Les Stroud did a similar thing years ago too, except he went into the wilderness with NOTHNING modern-I am sure, by being here, you already knew that though.
Either way, I wish you the best of luck, and look forward to the reports-and, am a little jealous too

best of luck!!!
Bill

Are you making an exception for perishables? (milk, eggs, meat)

Do you have a garden at home to provide fresh veggies or any fruit?

Do you have pets?

Be good to keep a detailed journal of consumption this next month and tally what you are accustomed to, and what you need.

Perhaps separate logs for food and non-food.

Hi Bill! Thanks for the encouragement.

I think for the month experiment we are going to see if we can hold-out eating and maintaining a 100% normal routine in terms of food. This will give us and our readers the chance to learn about how much food will fit in the average sized freezer and fridge.

Also, if we start in the next few weeks it will be in the middle of winter and will even be a little better with the potential for more power outages, and generator usage.

For the long-term experiment we will most likely be going for staples, and our garden, and that will allow us to report on other things like cooking oil consumption, growth rate in the garden, pounds of grains, rice, beans etc we consume and more.

I think doing it over a couple tests 1mo, 3mo, 1 year (the plan so far) it will allow us to report back a wide range of things needed, not expected, and the like.

If people are interested I could see us doing a 1 week test just to provide some consumption data.

Another thing we want to do is a "Trash Report"... where we report our trash, and compost information.


(All things not related to the experiment will not be counted... IE: Trash from constructions projects, purchasing things for construction projects, etc. During the test we will still continue working on the house but this data will not be counted, and items purchased will not be used in the 'day-to-day' routine.)

Anything that we buy for routine living will go into our report as "oops" we neded ____.

I want the experiment to not only be a test but a HUGE learning experiment in as many ways as possible.

We are not too sure on exceptions. We may make some depending on what the neighbors or we have. W/out killing our birds (eggs/chicken). We want it to be real at the same time and we do have powdered eggs and milk stored so we may utilize these and include them in our report. Keep in mind, we are not against buying during the experiment it's a learning experiment not a contest if we can make it 1 year on our own.

We do have a garden, and are expanding it greatly for next year. We are also planing 3 or 4 fruit trees in spring though they won't be producing anytime soon. We have dehydrated fruits and veggies too.

Again the experiment could go a few different ways here... we could utilize our stock or we could buy-new and just subtract from our inventory as if we were utilizing our stock (we don't want to drain our preps! hehe).

Whichever way we do it we want it to be 100% legit as we would only be cheating ourselves.

We do have a pet. 1 Dog, standard poodle, 55lbs. I am not sure his food consumption exactly but I do know 1 bag lasts him well over a month and we always have 2-3 on hand. He will need to get groomed every 5 weeks too, and we will continue paying for this. I have done this for a year myself so I know I can do it for him if we had to stay home and I had to do it. He has at least 8 active toys he has in use, and I have 5 to 10 more in packaging still from when petsmart moved and I was able to get 50% off, so other than illness or injury his toy and food stock would go 1-6 months pretty easily. I believe we also keep on hand 6 month of heart worm medicine, and soon flea/tick medicine.

Thanks!

Keep them coming.

Sounds like an exciting and well planned uh, plan. Recording your trash production will be interesting. I'll also be curious to see what tools and hardware (leaky faucet repair kit, drywall screws, washers, etc) you end up wishing you had. Will you also be scrounging/freecycling goods and materials? If so, a rough idea of the size of your nearest population center would be useful for judging the effectivness of scavanging.

Have fun!

-Blast

Here's an idea:
Start by simply logging what you consume during, say, 1 month. Make your list based on that. This will make your first "no buy" period more productive.

Great ideas!

I will log all that stuff as far as what is consumed and what I wish I had.

As far as scrounging/freecycling our nearest town is a 20 minute drive and the population is less than 900 with 1 main street. Nothing there probably From there we can go about 30 minutes and be in a few small towns where there would be dumpsters or folks who would be willing to donate. However, in the event we had to be on our own neither of these would be likely options due to distance.

Anything we need we don't have we`ll end up buying (like we normally would) and record it.

If things are given to us during this time we will account for that in or input and it will be used in the experiment. IE: Neighbor gives me a broken tractor I get it to run w/only tools and items I have it can now be utilized in the experiment. We`ll only cheat ourselves if we cheat, so we won't be doing that!

(Obviously that's a huge example that I dream of happening.. hahaha.)

Any resources available will be used if needed and will be reported.

I like that idea!

I think we`ll track this entire week consumption as a starting point for what we are actually using during the week.

The experiment is not technically a no-buy period, but more of a "oops" we had to buy ____ and we learned ____ from it.

I want to make it a HUGE learning experiment for us and anyone who wants to follow along.

What About Gasoline- It is used for not only fueling your car but also generators and lawnmowers..... and my personal favorite use. Dumping it on pesky anthills and lighting it.
Adventureboy

Reason for Editing- Terrible Grammar......

For tracking consumption this first month, your digital camera could come in handy and prove telling. On Day 1, and the last day, take photos of:

Your open fridge and freezer.

Open cupboards/pantry.

Cooking oil bottle(s), jam, peanut butter, other basics (hygiene products).

-- you might also mark the start and ending levels on the bottles with a sharpie

TP supply


A picture is worth a thousand words.

This is an interesting project. Most of us aren't really aware of our rate of consumption (which makes it impossible to accurately plan for long-term sufficiency).

It was only this summer-fall that I actually tracked my dog's consumption of her food. With surprising result. A bag of her food lasted a lot longer than I had guessed it would.

Dagny, brilliant.

Wonderful idea using a sharpie, now that I've learned something useful I'm going to go mark my oil.

I really like the tracking idea.

I think it will help save a good amount of money knowing what you will run out of and possibly getting it on sale etc.

For my list, I went through in my head everything in our house and how often we replace the consumables. I left out alcoholic beverages since that is such a big variable. My focus waned towards the end so I know I missed a lot, but for what I do have, the quantities are about right based on our history. Bear in mind I have to accomodate two grown daughters on occasion, so there's a bit of distortion in my estimate. However, I think that provides a decent buffer. You could replace a fair amount of my larder with ready made meals, like frozen dinners, shelf stable meals and such, but since I like to cook and can probably save a buck or two doing it myself and have a higher quality end product, I figure it's a wash. My list discounted forage and cultivation, so if you are going to garden, hunt, fish, or pick wild edibles, then that would relieve the burden of having to stock all your food up front, but the amounts should remain about the same either way, just the source would differ. For instance, I can pay someone $30 a gallon for huckleberries, or I can go pick them myself and if my time is worth $60 based on what I make at work, then the cost for the huckleberries would theoretically double, as it takes me about an hour to pick a gallon on average.

I also didn't bother to estimate hardware and maintenance consumables as I have accumulated so much of it I seldom have to buy any. Cans full of nails, screws, bolts, nuts, and various assorted items have filled half my garage over the past decade. This is a carry-over from the hoarding my grandparents did and taught me based on their life living through harder times.

We will be seeing how long it lasts for 'around the house' duties.

For my wife driving to work, etc it won't be counted because in the case of staying home we would not be driving 1hr down the mountain. We would be driving around the neighborhood, probably in something that gets great gas mileage and has a trailer IE: 4x4 ATV.

Great info thanks!

Yeah, we have tons of hardware too from projects.. seems I always need something I don't have or more likely can't find HAHA

Todd,

There are a number of on-line calculators that may help you with overall planning. Most of them take number of adults/children and then plan based on a basic number of calories per day per individual. Just do a search on food storage calculators and you will probably bring up several of them.

Non food items will be more difficult to plan without any real data on consumption I imagine. Plus everyone is different of course, I know looking at Ben's list that we would blow through a few of his items in no time (like olive oil), but others might last us 5 years.

Interesting concept though, I look forward to learning from your experiences.

Greg

Appologies if it's already been discussed, I didn't see it. What about electrical power or fuel? Are you already independent in that area? In addition to the obvious of cooking and heating, power/fuel makes cleaning people, clothes, and dishes a lot easier.

We have a generator (2 actually), I want to get a propane conversion, and within a year add a 3rd, the Honda EU2000i.

We can run our entire house minus the dryer on an EU2000i, and our well can run on one of the other generators. Fuel is the biggest issue for generators thus the desire to get propane conversion. In a long-term emergency the fridge would probably be fazed out, and power would be used for essentials only and it would last a very long time.

We have 250g propane tank and use it only for cooking and hot water (on-demand system), so it will last 2-3 years full. It's been almost a year since it was filled and I think it may have gone down 15%. We also have 2 33g tanks, and 2 13g tanks as well as a couple 5g tanks.

Our hot water heater can run on any generator, or even a battery backup.

In the end, our home is setup in such a way that electricity is ultimately a luxury. It's used for cloth drying, washing, lighting, and other luxury items like a microwave, toaster oven and fridge/freezer (combo). Ultimately the ONLY thing we need power for is to get water from our well, and I have the wire, adapters, plugs, etc, so that we can do this with our generator.

We plan to add a 2600g water tank and another pressure tank within a year too so our water supply will be much larger w/out the need to run the well itself... the pressurizing pump will not be 220v, and the tiny generator could then run it. 2600g + 80g + water in the lines would last the 2 of us a very long time, especially if we were conserving it.
This also doesn't count the water we have in 5g containers or the fact that we live near a stream, and a river a little walk away.

Thanks for the comment

Ultimately we'd love to go solar but since our electric bill never really tops $60 a month it's just not cost affective right now, and in itself a luxury. To maintain our exact lifestyle in an emergency it would be essential but we can survive w/out electricity a lot easier than most. (No real need for AC in summer, and wood stove for heat.)

This may be a moot or fickle point and not so much for just yourself but also others that are planning.. If your working from home there would be less temptation. However, if you are going to work somewhere where do (and to each their own) vending machines at work, coworkers putting together a take out list of fast food to be brought back for lunch, tobaccoo, coffee/soda figure in? Not a biggie in a week scenario, but a year would be a stretch for some.

(I do work from home.)

And the idea of the experiment is more of home consumption and if we HAD to stay home a year... so eating out will be counted as food, but not against a supply at home. Yeah, the experiment is not perfect and is not fully planned out yet but I think the general idea is solid although thats why I made the thread, to get ideas hehe


Thanks for the contribution T_Co!

Yeah, it's a balancing act, so my list is really to give a general idea of quanity, knowing that the longer the list, the greater the itemized variance for others will likely be.

It is a lot of supplies to consider.