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......