Dennis Olson said:
Oh man, you do NOT want MY liver....
Okay, your heart then. And I want you to know that your dog will be well taken care of and assimilated in the pack in your absence. We're dog lovers.
I've always wondered why the sled dogs always got eaten first in the bad old artic exploration days? The Shackleton Expedition for example. Why didn't they just ask, "Okay everyone, if you voted Democrat, please raise your hand."
That's would have saved a lot of nice dogs I'm sure.
Anyway, that is thread drift.
I dehydrate using eight racks in the oven I bought at China Mart for something like ten bucks. No kidding, they are made by Eastman Outdoors if I remember correctly. They were four to a box and I got them on sale for something like five bucks each. I can do twenty pounds of meat at a time and I try to do that much about twice a month because the wife and kids like my jerky so much they eat it more than I wish they would.
2 hours at 200 degrees. It's over. Little salt, little soy sauce or pepper sauce or whatever ... 2 hours at 200 degrees and we are done.
I betcha I have 100 pounds of dry meat out there in the freezer, vacuum packed. I need to rotate some of it actually, but I have used some dated before Y2K and it is still good.
What I need more of is dehydrated peas. I never have enough of those.
Dried beans I got out the ying yang. And I know I keep hearing that you have to use them up every two years. But I am here to witness that I have made many a bean dish out of five and six and more year old dried beans.
For us, down here in the south, I am not sure seasons are so important to us. It's true, we do eat the prime cuts of liberals in hard times ... but other than that, our growing season never really stops. We've had maybe two days below freezing again this year. My tomatoes are up. My collards and lettuce and turnips are rockin' and rollin'. The spinnach is on a tear. The potatoes are already on their second covering. Even the bell peppers are starting to bloom already. I've already got the corn in the ground. Already got the okra in the ground. Etc., etc., etc.
.... and we're still plenty stocked from last year's harvest.
I got a round of golf in today - nothing else to do.
I think maybe January, Februrary, March, even April .... yeah, you may have to watch it pretty close then. But a lot depends upon if you have electricity or not? I think, the way it sounds, you may be talking year two or three of post SHTF OneByOne? Because that first year you should not have any major problems - you should overlap nicely if you are properly prepared IMHO. I will not get into my freeze drieds, dehydes or MREs unless we are really talking long term TEOTWAWKI. I'm talking year two or three at least.
That's MHO.
Russ