How a Homestead Family Prepares for a 2nd LOCKDOWN

well it looks like more shutdowns may be coming wyoming hasn't instituted anything yet but i know other states are getting ready or have already started another lockdown phase so we are getting prepared even if you're super isolated like we are grocery stores still get weird things go out of stock shipping times are delayed and we were caught a little off guard this spring and i'm not going to be caught off guard again so in this video i'm going to show you exactly what we've been doing slowly and kind of methodically over the summer and fall to just prepare ourselves a little bit more and honestly having a little bit of food on hand and being prepared is a really good idea regardless of what phase of history we're in okay first things first oils and fats it's a big one we do have milk cows that give us some butter but another thing that i use a ton of is coconut oil i get five gallons at a time so i keep the five gallon bucket down in my basement and then i fill up this small white bucket as we need it oh and the other fat i depend on heavily is lard now i render my own lard i ask butchers to save the leaf fat for me from pigs or when we butcher our own pigs we save the fat and i render it down i have tutorials for that here on youtube and on my blog so i'll link those and you just can't beat it because it's really really cheap when you render it yourself [Music] we all noticed there was this bizarre flower shortage this spring and i don't know if that'll happen again but regardless i want to be prepared just in case i do have some extra bags of all-purpose flour saved up but i am relying heavily on my grain mill and i've had this grain meal for years now the benefit of a grain mill in times like these is that you can purchase wheat berries which are just the whole wheat pieces and those will store for years and years without going bad so if you want to buy a 50 pound bag of wheat berries keep it in your pantry or in your basement and as long as you have a grain mill of some sort you can grind that up and use it for flour now the only downfall with this is that grain mills are sold out across the country because a lot of people are having the same idea so if you can't get your hands on a grain mill you could also get a grain mill attachment for your kitchenaid mixer or if you have a high-powered blender like a blendtec or a vitamix you can use those to grind smaller amounts of wheat as well i am making sure my sourdough starter is active and ready to roll now i had them in the fridge all summer but i brought it back out reactivated it and i'm starting to make more breads in the event that yeast is sold out and also bread is sold out i had a hard time finding dry beans in bulk so i just bought smaller packages whenever i went to the store throughout the summer and i have a pretty good supply now i like to buy dry beans versus canned beans because i know exactly what's in them i have less waste i have to throw away in the garbage and they're really not hard to cook up especially if you have an instant pot okay i think the rest of the things i want to show you here in the house are down in my basement pantry it's not glamorous but it works okay i'll give you a walkthrough of what we have down here in these cardboard boxes i have our potato harvest you saw me talk about those in a previous video how we store those and why we store those down here we have spaghetti squash we grew extra of that in the garden much to my children's dismay they hate spaghetti squash for some reason we have our garlic homegrown what else do we have over here i want to show you we have our big giant bucket of coconut oil i have some rolled oats here in this bucket i think i got these from azure standard which is a food co-op that you can buy in bulk from we have some organic evaporated cane sugar i think i got a bag of that from costco i hope you can appreciate all of the creative prowess that went into the labeling of my buckets it's pretty classy down here we have some more sweetener it's a granulated brown cane sugar pinto beans navy beans and my personal favorite a giant bucket it was about 25 pounds worth of awesome sea salt i used a lot of salt in my fermenting and my cooking so i went and just splurged on a 25 pound bag from redmond's i'll drop a link for them in the show notes it was one of the best purchases of the year i think okay a few other things i have down here that i bought extra of this year we bought extra maple syrup because this really doesn't expire i don't think or at least it doesn't expire for quite a while another go-to sweetener we depend on is honey i was so thrilled to find a local beekeeper this year he was selling these pails of honey so i stocked up on a couple of those honey is not gonna go bad so this will probably last me i don't know well over a year and then my favorite part the giant wall of canned food i can every year regardless of what is happening with the world but this year i canned extra we had a pretty good tomato year so we did extra sauce so i won't have to buy that at the store the cucumbers went gangbusters so we did relish and lots of pickles i found some semi-local peaches at the farmer's market so we stocked up on those we also can some pumpkin to be used in pies and breads as far as our dairy products go we've been milking cows for a long time and we have had those regardless of covid or not one of the big changes we did this spring you might have seen the video on it is that we built a little bit nicer milking parlor and we invested in a milking machine part of that was for ourselves to make it a little bit easier but we also did that in case we decide to sell milk in the future or if there's a need for us to supply friends and neighbors with milk we can have a cleaner and more efficient process to do that if i could pinpoint one weakness in our preparations i think our fruit and vegetable supply is probably the thing that's most lacking i mean yes we have canned fruit and vegetables and i have some extra frozen ones out in the big freezer but honestly that's the area i struggle with the most which is why we did build a greenhouse this year even though i'm not really sure how to use it correctly yet and we're experimenting with growing greens and certain cold weather crops well into the winter so that is our step in the right direction in that regard but we're still not where i'd like to be quite yet now in addition to food building up our immune systems and keeping our bodies healthy is also really important so we have stocked up on a few supplements and things like that that will keep us proactive in our health two things that we try to take every day are lipospheric vitamin c and glutathione elderberry syrup we have lots of herbal teas on hand i have been a long time user of essential oils and essential oil supplements so i have plenty of those on hand as well i use doterra products and the ones that we've been using the most during this phase of life are on guard soft gels and ddr prime soft gels vitamin d is one i've seen some really interesting studies about in relation to different viruses so we do have a vitamin d supplement along with a good probiotic we're also upping our fermented food intake so we have sauerkraut bubbling away over here and the kids are trying to eat a spoonful a day we also have our crock of continuous brew kombucha okay i think that's everything i can think of here in the house i'm gonna take you out to the freezers and show you around out there we have a number of freezers we have a couple residential freezers and a commercial freezer where we keep the beef that we sell commercially so after we saw the meat shortages we took a couple of actions this summer we had a little extra beef butchered now we grow our own beef so that wasn't too complicated other than finding a butcher wasn't easy if you don't grow your own beef just find a farmer or rancher or a friend and see if you can buy beef in bulk from them we also raised six pigs not all for us but we teamed up with some friends we raised a pig and a half for us and we split the other pigs among them to make sure they all had pork for the year and we raised extra meat chickens normally we raise one batch this year we raised two eggs were something we definitely saw shortages of in fact a local grocery store actually bought some eggs from me because they were so short which was kind of cool in a roundabout way anyway we were able to help out friends and neighbors by selling them eggs this spring so we did increase our floc size a little bit the bad news is that the days are shorter now so the chickens have stopped laying at the pace they were so we have less eggs now we can remedy that by turning on the light bulbs in here but it is a bummer to have only a couple of eggs a day versus 15. thankfully i know that will reverse in the spring if not sooner so we're just going to ride that out [Music] so not only do we need to make sure we have enough food stocked up for ourselves in case of a shutdown we also have to make sure the animals have enough to eat too we always buy our hay in bulk usually in late summer or early fall just because i like knowing that our horses and our cattle will have enough to eat throughout the winter and i won't have to scramble to find more and we greatly prefer large bales because they're easier for us to handle since we have the equipment to move them around [Music] we feed our chickens a lot of table scraps but they still need some sort of chicken feed to supplement them so we've been getting that in bulk as well we have a local feed store who mills it they put it into these bags and we get it a pallet at a time [Music] i was finishing up edits on this video today and i just want you to know what i shared throughout this little bit of time together these are just the things that we're doing they're a part of the lifestyle that we've chosen for the last decade and i understand 100 that not everyone can have greenhouses in cattle and gardens in the whole nine yards but if there's one thing you take away from this video please be encouraged and know that every single one of you can do something to be more in charge of your food supply to have better food security to have more of a role in where your food comes from or just to opt into better local choices that aren't as volatile and aren't going to be as shaky in the event of something crazy like i don't know a worldwide pandemic so whether it's canning or growing herbs in your window sill or just getting to know whole food ingredients instead of relying on pre-packaged processed options those are all simple things you can do and the cool thing is we do them out of a place of joy and fulfillment not out of fear and that's a really good feeling [Music] chill chill chill chill okay okay [Laughter] it's okay it's okay

Channel: Jill Winger - The Homestead Mentor

Views: 133,005

Rating: 4.9696651 out of 5

Keywords: the prairie homestead, Preparing for a second lockdown, How a Homestead Family Prepares for a 2nd LOCKDOWN, homesteading, homesteading family, jill winger the prairie homestead, creating food security

Id: 72yD09pq3Tc

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020