Welcome Pantry Paratus

I'd like to welcome Pantry Paratus to our list of advertisers on the right-hand side of this blog. I've mentioned this fine business before and am pleased to be able to help promote them.

Besides being run by the coolest young couple you'll ever meet, Pantry Paratus is like a general store for self-sufficiency folks. It's like Lehman's in miniature. They carry tools, implements, supplies, books, and lots more.

But the website does more than list products. It's a whole treasure-trove of advice, articles, how-to's, tutorials, and folksy wisdom, all meshed together with beautiful photography and excellent writing. It is, in short, a remarkable achievement for a hard-working devoted couple who honestly walk the talk of a prepared lifestyle.

Hop over to their website and scroll through their broad range of topics. You won't be disappointed.

Photo contest

The fine folks at Pantry Paratus are hosting a photo contest. Here's the announcement.

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Pantry Paratus is excited to celebrate our second year on as an e-store. We are looking to expand our digital marketing appeal with real pictures; so in order to do that we are hosting our first annual 2013 photo contest to celebrate all the harvest of this season's bounty. All the official rules are here, but the basics are these:

• All photos must be original work and submitted to photocontest@pantryparatus.com between Friday, September 6th through Friday, September 20th.

• There are two categories: "Canning" and "Food Preservation." The first one is easy to define, but the second one can be anything from saving seeds to rendering lard to making jerky -- surprise us!

• We have one Grand Prize winner ($200 of selected merchandise) and one First Place winner ($150 of selected merchandise), one Second Place winner ($100 of selected merchandise) and one Third Place winner ($50 of selected merchandise) for each category. There will be seven big winners in all!

• Since people tend to be private about their food supply, people need only supply their name (any name will do really) and a valid email address so if they win we can contact them -- or else the contest is pointless, right?

• One entry per person, per email, per category (e.g. John Smith can submit one (1) entry for "Canning" and one (1) entry for "Food Preservation" from johnsmith@emailaddress.com).

Please feel free to use the attached graphic. We are announcing the contest with this link on Friday, September 6th so if you could help us out by pushing it out through social media either Friday or later this upcoming weekend (whichever works best for you) we would really appreciate it--we want to make this hugely viral!

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If you've never visited the website for Pantry Paratus, I highly recommend it. They have every conceivable item for canning, food storage, water filtration, and other items for preparedness and the domestic arts. Really really cool place.

Tattler lid sale

I just noticed a post on SurvivalBlog that the fine folks at Pantry Paratus are having a Tattler canning lid sale.

The notice reads as follows: The discount $1.25 per box and you get free box of gaskets when you get 10 or more boxes of a single size. The discount and bonus shows up at checkout.

Pantry Paratus is one super-dooper cool website with a blog, radio interviews, homesteading advice, prepping advice, and everything else under the sun.... and incidentally run by one of the nicest couples you'll ever meet.

So if you've been wanting some Tattler lids, now may be an excellent time to stock up.

Picking up the pieces on the East Coast

We've been following with great concern the situation on the East Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In conjunction with a magazine article I recently submitted, I spoke with a woman in New York City yesterday. After we finished talking business, I asked her how she had weathered the storm. The only way to describe her reaction was "traumatized" -- and she was one of the lucky ones. She was staying with some friends, she had food and water, and she was able to talk business.

There are so many displaced people who are cold and hungry, and they all need prayers as well as donations. Please respond to their needs.

Our friends at Pantry Paratus knows someone in the Washington D.C. area who visited a Walmart on Monday, the day the storm hit. He documented some things that were still abundant on the shelves that people overlooked, and which could be useful in emergency conditions.

They put up a blog post (here) documenting what was still available.

While it's too late for those on the Eastern seaboard to prepare for Sandy, it's not to late for other folks to prepare for emergencies in general. Hint hint!

Blog talk radio interview

When I was at the Self Reliance Expo in Colorado Springs last May, I had the pleasure of participating in a blog talk radio interview with Wilson of Pantry Paratus.

They just posted the podcast for this interview here. My computer is being persnickety this morning and won't let me listen to it, so hopefully I haven't made too big a fool of myself during the interview.

Derecho storm -- a taste of grid-down

Doubtless there are many of you who were (or still are) impacted by the massive super-dericho storm that slammed across the eastern United States this past week.

When I was at the Preparedness Expo in Colorado Springs last May, I met a delightful couple named Wilson and Chaya who run a spiffy online store called Pantry Paratus (really cool store, go check it out). Wilson happened to be in Washington D.C. on business when the storm hit. He sent pictures of some results:

I am traveling through DC at the moment (jealous?), and last night we had some kind of storm. You can see the tree down.

Cable (not that I care about TV, but internet and phone) was down, power in some areas and traffic signals were out for about 3/4's of the day. We are due to get another storm tonight, so the panic begins.

I attached a few photos so for your analysis: long lines at the pump...

...empty shelves for water, etc.

But my favorite is the other Exxon gas station (and you can read the sign for Washington in the distance) is the one that I like the best.

Why? Because that particular gas station is out of gas, and you will never guess who the neighbor is behind the chain link fence . . . wait for it . . . The Dept. of Energy. May be it is just my twisted sense of humor, but I thought that you would find that interesting too.

Wilson's observations were echoed and confirmed by endless news articles over the past week. And of course if you're one of the millions impacted by this storm, you know what he's talking about first-hand.

If there's a silver lining to the massive disruption, impact, and tragedy this storm jas wreaked, it's that the need for preparedness was underscored and illustrated in graphic terms. There are various articles (such as here) which highlight this.

There was also a letter on SurvivalBlog yesterday from another person in the trenches. Usually I provide a hyperlink directly to the article, but for some reason it wouldn't pull the specific permalink up, so here's the text in full (with credits to the July 4 edition of SurvivalBlog):

Letter Re: Lessons From The Derecho Storms
Mr. Rawles:

Today is Wednesday, July 4, 2012. I am writing from a small town in central West Virginia and I would like to share some thoughts, observations, and lessons from the recent Derecho windstorm experienced by the mid-west and east of our great country. As I sit here, we are in day six of total power outage caused by a freak storm that came with little or no warning. Power may not be on for another four days.

I have been a long time reader of your blog and have lots of lists and plans but sadly my preparations for hardship were found lacking. We here in West Virginia are used to disasters such as floods but the mountains tend to shield us from tornados and high winds are rare. Within an hour span power was knocked out to 50 of the 55 counties in the state. The towers of major transmission lines were twisted wrecks. And then the “fun” began. This incident has galvanized me and my neighbors. My observations will be preaching to the choir in this forum but here goes:
· Gasoline was gone within 24 hours. Lines were just like the 1970s fuel embargo.
· Ice became the chief commodity and was in short supply or no supply.
· Water was out for most people at least for the first two days.
· Most big box stores and gas stations were up on generator power by day three.
· A new shipment of 250 generators was sold in a few hours.
· Temperatures in the high 90s added another layer of difficulty.

Most people kept their cool and neighbors helped each other. Many are much better neighbors now. With all traffic lights out it was hectic but for the most part people were safe and courteous. We used to have a tourism commercial about West Virginia that showed four cars pulling up simultaneously to a four way stop and each driver motioning for the other to go first. The tag line was “Traffic jam, West Virginia style”. I am happy to say that was true in most cases.

The holes in my preparedness were:
· I needed good high quality kerosene lanterns with reflectors and extra wicks. The cheap Chinese red ones at Wal-Mart are toys.
· Batteries, Batteries, Batteries.
· Propane, Propane, Propane.
· I needed a good tough portable radio with multiple charging sources. I was reduced to listening to a car radio and risking battery and gas.
· I should have had several barrels of water on hand
· A couple of deep cycle marine batteries would have been nice.
· A generator and fuel reserve have moved from the nice-to-have list to the have-to-have list.

The local radio station stepped up to the plate and suspended normal programming and went live 24 hours on generator with news and call-ins giving information. The unpreparedness of some of the call-ins was instructive. On the second day several were screaming for FEMA to arrive. Well, in our recent primary election, Democratic voters supported a prison inmate in Texas with over 40% of the vote, so I do not expect FEMA anytime soon. It is obvious to me now that there will be a die-off in any major disaster. Those on medical oxygen or diabetic will not survive. There is also an element of just plain stupid out there. One lady drove 30 miles to a neighboring town to get water for her children when simply listening to the radio would have directed her to a fire station two blocks from her house.

Mr. Rawles, I know your feelings about areas anywhere east of the Mississippi but I must say that, in general, West Virginia enjoys some advantages as a retreat. Property prices and taxes are low, low population density, low crime rate, no urban problems, minimal gun laws, and a conservative and religious population. For the most part, it is “Almost Heaven”.

I have turned a corner on preparedness and I hope my neighbors have too. Bottom line: We must have three days of supplies at a minimum and build from there. Thanks for your blog.

Wavetalker in West Virginia


Just FYI, folks...