It’s never as bad as all that
If you have good animal fat
Waymarkers for Bad Things Happening
Treasury Bond Interest Rate nears 5%
https://twitter.com/Brian_Riedl/status/1706433747971690983
Not good.
There are other waymarkers but even taken alone these look bad.
When Will It Happen
No one knows. All those old clichés are clichés for a reason. - There’s a lot of ruin in the nation. - The [national financial system] can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. - God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America.
No one wants a catastrophic economic collapse and everyone at every level will try all sorts of shifts and contrivances to stave it off. Some of these might work. In fact some of these kludges have already worked, or else it already would have happened.
Don’t bet the farm on everything falling apart.
How Will It Happen if It Does Happen
No one knows. A financial system that has a thousand kludges and contrivances to paper over problems is a rickety tower of sticks. Where it will break first is anyone’s guess. (If you know, tell us). The resulting shape of the catastrophe depends on the break but also on how government and people respond to it. Catastrophes are like the weather.
The Lost Decades Japan is one model. The Great Depression is another. So is Weimar or worse. In Weimar hyperinflation meant salaried middle class people would trundle around the countryside with all their possessions in a wheelbarrow or cart looking to trade them for food. Their daughters and even their wives sometimes turned to prostitution. (OnlyFans, hmm. Has the collapse already happened, we just haven’t realized it yet?)
What to Do
The best preparation for a coming crisis of uncertain timing, size, or substance is to strengthen your personal and network social capital. Build your group solidarity, especially with your family. Increase your life options. Have some hard assets (but remember in the right kind of crisis hard assets can and will be expropriated. Ditto soft assets, there are no guarantees). That should be the primary focus.
It’s also worth taking a look at your prepping portfolio. Even in the best of times, some prepping is probably always a good idea because it sends a message to your family that your family is not 100% bought in on the current social and financial order. It helps establish the necessary distance from the mainstream for you to maintain a distinct family identity. It is also a hard indication of future orientation.
The best kind of prepping are things that benefit your family concept even if no catastrophe comes. Household production. Gardening, livestock, food preservation. Certain types of self defense options and communications plans.
There are prepping portfolio options for people with any degree of financial and social capital, ranging at the elite level from arranging for a concierge homesteader to cultivate a plot capable of supporting your families in a pinch, to entering into a land or livestock sharing arrangement with extended family and friends (you may find the strengthened ties more valuable in the end than the actual land), to simply meeting local farmers or preserving foods.
Grow Food, Store Food, Reach Out
Easy Food Stores – Rice and Beans, Jerky, Tallow
Poultry, Lambs, and Milk Goats
Stockpiling and Storing
Even so, we do recommend some storage of food items and other necessities as a hedge against worst case scenarios, even if temporary. It is amazing after the lockdowns exposed all the weaknesses of just-in-time manufacturing how many families are still running just-in-time homes with no cushion at all.
What do you actually use … in a week … in a month … in a year? How desperate would you be if you couldn’t buy?
The best principles for storing food are
1. Store what you use.
2. Look for cheap, durable, and dense (storage takes space).
3. Better to start small than not at all.
4. Have something on hand for trade. Worldwide experience is that the best items are
a. Alcohol
b. Cigarettes
c. Salt
d. Fuel
e. Fats
f. Sugar or Honey
We strongly encourage storing animals fats and using them as a huge part of your heart healthy diet. The reward factor is very high.
https://steader.substack.com/p/navajo-tacos
Animal fats store surprisingly well.
We have a few jars left from the tallow we put up in Spring 2022. It’s still fine. No discoloration or mold, no change in flavor or smell. We just opened a jar to fry up green beans and zucchini from our garden with. Delicious. This tallow was not canned although we did sterilize the jars first and were careful to filter the tallow.
18 months. Not canned. Stored at room temperature. Amazing.
(Part of) the original supply
18 months on, and going strong
(The jars in the rear are canned butter, going on three years now and still good
)
Here’s your walkthrough on making tallow or lard (skip down).
https://steader.substack.com/p/put-food-away
we live in a dry climate
we were fanatical about letting the fat cook off water for a looong time
We filtered really well
Sometimes you will get a clear brown sort of liquid at the bottom of a few jars when they cool. We used those first.
I've been storing tallow, but it wound up moldy. Any idea where I went wrong? Maybe didn't fully render the water out?