As I say in the video, my favorite prepper resource is Amazon.com,  and food storage is a major issue for paleo and primal preppers. Since we eschew grains and legumes, our options for storing food is somewhat limited. We have to focus on fruits, vegetables and meats. Our primary methods for storing food are going to be dehydration, freezing and camping.

That’s why I absolutely love buying a case of tuna fish from Amazon online. It’s delivered to my door, it’s cheap, and it’s a great resource in an emergency situation. It has a lot of protein, a little bit of fat, and will not cause me any digestive problems when I need to be on top of my game. The last thing I want to do in an emergency situation is have abdominal cramps or diarrhea!

So if you want to get your own case of tuna fish, or something similar, go ahead and click over to Amazon and get your case today. If you are a Prime number like I am, then you can do a subscribe and save and get an additional 5% discount.

Today’s installment of paleo meals is oyster ceviche. I love, love, love oysters, and, as a side benefit, they are very good for you. So I bought a couple pounds of Appalachicola Bay oysters at the market and had the brilliant idea to make ceviche! Of course, since I got new batteries for my Flip, I took a video (or three):

• seafood
• lemon or lime
• garlic & onion
• tomatoes (optional)
• a bit of oil
• hot peppers
• cilantro (very important!)

As it turns out, I should have made more. My wife just about ate it all!

Over the past few years, I’ve seen the idea of storing nickels as an inflation hedge touted more and more. On the surface, it makes a lot of sense. Let’s briefly review the case for nickels:

The value of the metal in a nickel is currently 5.09 cents according to coinflation.com. When you get a nickel, you already have a built-in profit of 0.09 cents (a 1.8% return). That’s not bad.

Even if the value of the metal goes down, you can always use the nickel as a nickel. That means there is no down-side to holding nickels.

If the value of the metal goes up, then you will be able to sell or trade the nickels just like you can do today with old silver quarters.

All of the above is true. No doubt about it. In fact, I just read an article that goes over how to buy nickels, store them in PVC tubes, and bury them in your back yard.

This gets to the heart of why hoarding nickels really isn’t the greatest use of your time and money:

1. Nickels Are Heavy

1 nickel has a mass of 5 grams. A dollar of nickels (20), has a mass of 100 grams (3.5 ounces). $100 of nickels has a mass of 10 kg (22 pounds)!

Sure, 5 grams doesn’t seem like a lot, but a single nickel isn’t going to go very far. You have to think in terms of the total value that you want to store.

When you want to spend your nickels at some point in the future, it’s unlikely you are going to be using just one at a time.

2. Nickels Take Up a Lot of Space

So you’ve decided to stock up on nickels. You are convinced by the fact that they will never be worth less than 5 cents. Over time, you build up your supply of $500 worth of nickels. That’s 10,000 nickels. Where exactly are you going to put all of those? You can do the ammo can thing. You can store them in PVC tubes. You can build a wishing well in your back yard and cover the bottom with nickels to look authentic. Whatever method, or combination of methods, you choose you are going to be spending a lot of time and labor in doing it.

3. There Are Much Better Alternatives!

Nickel and copper are not precious metals for a reason. They simply are not very high in value density. They cost very little compared to their size and weight. Precious metals on the other hand, have a very high value compared to their size and weight. That makes them portable, an essential feature of money.

Basically the only reason people stockpile nickels instead of silver is that nickels have that guaranteed downside protection. It’s the fear of loss that drives people away from silver, gold, platinum, and palladium. But let’s step back a minute and remember why you are stockpiling metal in the first place.

The monetary authorities of the world have gone mad.

In the US, the Federal Reserve has increased the quantity of base money at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. And the fractional reserve banking system has multiplied that base money into trillions of dollars. In other words, massive inflation. And real goods like metals (and lots of other things too) go up in dollar terms.

Eventually, society’s trust in the currency as a store of value will evaporate and the whole currency system collapses. In most cases of recent history, people do not learn their lessons and the government just creates a new currency.

So the purpose behind stockpiling nickels or silver or anything else is to maintain purchasing power. You will not be making a profit this way. It is a form of savings.

It is technically possible that the monetary powers of the world will abruptly see the light, give up their power, and return to a sound monetary system. In that case, the metallic value of your nickels will plummet, but you will have your 5 cent insurance to protect you. But I give this outcome a likelihood of 0%. And that’s not a rounding error. It will not happen.

So if you are hedging against inflation, do it in a form that won’t break your back and have you working for $5 an hour. Use precious metals, bullets that you might want to have anyways, or other value-dense materials. You can go to any coin shop in the country and buy a bag of junk silver.

The Bottom Line

Nickels will do the job of maintaining your purchasing power in an inflationary environment. But so will lots of other things. The so-called protection of always being able to use the nickel as a nickel is a meaningless guarantee. There will continue to be more and more inflation into the future, all around the world. Don’t sacrifice your time and energy for the illusion of security!

I’m probably a year or two late in writing this post. But I don’t think I’ve ever said exactly what The Primal Blueprint is. So here’s a quick run down of what it is, and what it is not.

The Primal Blueprint is a book written by Mark Sisson. In it, Mark lays out what he believes to be an evolutionarily adaptive way of living. In other words, following the so-called Primal Laws will lead people to living in harmony with their innate strengths and weaknesses as human beings. This is so because all people come from the same evolutionary past.

In The Primal Blueprint, Sisson also reviews what is wrong with our modern way of living. This includes both the food we eat, the way we move (or don’t move as the case may be), and everything else we do that fights against our natural ways of living.

What I focus on here on theprimalprepper.com is how living Primal makes for a better life for myself and my family. It’s pretty easy when you get down to the basics.

When I eat grains, I feel bad. So I don’t eat grains.

When I eat whole, natural foods, I feel good. So I eat whole, natural foods.

Lifting heavy things, occasionally sprinting, and moving around a lot a slow pace makes me feel even better. So I (try to) do that too.

Following the patterns of daylight and night make me feel much more alert and refreshed as opposed to staying up until 3 in the morning. So I (again, try to) do that.

In short, following The Primal Blueprint makes me healthier and happier. Maybe even wiser, which might lead to richer. You never know!

One of my ongoing projects is building up garden terrace beds in my front yard. In the video above you can see the results of what turned out to be an accidental experiment.

I knew when I moved into this house that I wanted to turn the front yard into an enormous, bountiful garden. The idea of mowing the lawn week after week after week just seemed like torture to me. So the long, slow project of transforming my yard began.

The first thing I did was to identify a contour line near the base of my property. Along this contour line, I dug out a shallow ditch, called a swale. The grass soil and dirt that I dug out from the swale was put on the downhill side of the ditch.

Next, as you can see in the video, I got some landscaping timber and made a neat box for the raised bed. The reason I did this in was to placate neighbor sensibilities. If the nieghbors were not a consideration, I would be building 6 foot tall garden berms.

So I got that squared away and started on the second garden bed. The important difference here is that for the second bed, I did not dig out a swale yet. That will come a bit later.

Just yesterday I went back to the first bed and started adding a bit of soil and wood. I noticed something very interesting though. I found the soil in the first garden that to be very easy to dig up and turned as I added the new material. This is surprising because my yard pretty much has a half inch of soil on top of red clay. When I dug the trenches for the landscaping timbers, I had to deal with this red clay. But now it seems to be gone.

The only explanation I can think of for the change is the swale that I’ve put it. Even though it’s only a few inches deep, it has done his job to trap moisture and put that moisture into the soil. That moisture then created a habitable environment for all the soil microorganisms. They did their thing, aided decomposition, and created a living humus layer where before there was just clay.

So even if you are in a suburban environment, like me, swales work. You should be using them in on your gardens to reduce your need for watering and to increase the organic content of your soil.

If you have any great examples of swales working on a small scale, please leave a comment or comment on the YouTube video.

Truckers on Strike = You Don’t Eat

There are many reasons to prepare for disasters. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in your life. It might be a big storm, it might be losing a job, it might be all kinds of things. One of the events that can really wreak havoc on your life, that is often overlooked, is what happens when our delivery system stops.

I was reading zerohedge this morning and found this article:

South African Economy Paralyzed As Miner Strike Spreads To Truck Drivers

ATMs lacked cash, fuel stations were running dry and hospitals saw vital coal supplies diminish Tuesday as South Africa felt the pinch from a truck drivers’ strike that entered its second week.

The strike has halted the delivery of goods across the country, as more than 20,000 workers dig in on their demand for higher wages.

…

SAPIA warned the public to refrain from panic buying, saying the shortages were not yet widespread. [Emphasis added]

Note that little bit about the fact that shortages were not yet widespread. Yet is the operative word there. I don’t know about South Africa, but in America, the just-in-time delivery system is the preferred method of inventory control. In other words, stores don’t have a lot of stuff actually in the store. A grocery store will only have about three days worth of food. And that’s at normal buying rates, not at panic buying rates.

So take this as a preview of what could happen here.

You won’t be able to get money out of your ATM. You won’t be able to go to the store and buy food. You won’t be able to get to the store because the gas stations will be out of gas. You will be able to order things from Amazon or eBay.

In short, all the goods that we buy in our economy rely on truckers. If they go on strike, which they almost did a couple years ago because of high gas prices, then we are screwed.

Disaster Preparedness Can Save Your Life

The only good news here is that any such strike would likely be short-lived. After all, the truckers have to eat too.

So let’s take this opportunity to sit back and think about what kinds of things we would need to survive in our homes for, say, two weeks:

• Food - Everybody should definitely have at least two weeks worth of food on hand. This can include canned fish, canned meat, dehydrated vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen meats and vegetables, jerky, pemmican, and so on. But don’t forget the things you also need to go along with your food. Things like spices, oils, fats, and the like.
• Water - The general rule of thumb is to keep 1 gallon per person per day on hand. So if you have three people in your household, then you will need 3 gallons per day for 14 days. That’s 52 gallons total. You should also have filtration capacity for much more. Personally I use a Berkey water filter, and I love it. It will even filter out viruses, protozoa, and other bacteria.
• Fuel - Having two weeks worth of fuel is generally pretty easy for most people. My wife and I drive approximately 300 miles a week, and use about 18 gallons of gasoline to do so. So we would need about 36 gallons of storage gasoline in order to take care of normal business for two weeks. Keep in mind that we probably won’t be doing normal business during such a strike, but it’s great to have the option. Storing fuel is simple. Just get some gas cans, fuel stabilizer, and fill them up. With fuel stabilizer gas will stay good for upwards of a year. Just make sure that you keep the gas cans outside.
• Energy - Energy utilities are not likely to be affected by a truck stoppage. But you never know what will happen, so it’s a good idea to keep some level of energy independence. This can be in the form of solar panels, propane gas tanks, wind turbines, etc. Energy backup is very complex topic, so I’ll be covering that in a later post in more detail.
• Money - Note what the article said about ATMs. The cash in the machines doesn’t come from the sky. It has to be delivered there by trucks. If the trucks stop rolling, then the ATMs will be empty. It’s important for you to have cash on hand, safely secured, in your house. How much that is will depend on your situation. Since I’m talking about two weeks here, what would it take for you to run your household for two weeks on cash only? From there you can decide whether you want to have more or less, depending on what you think the odds of such a situation developing are.
• Medical – What will you do if you can’t go to the pharmacy for 2 weeks?  Do you have basic medical supplies for injuries? What about medications people in your household need?

Trucker Strike is a Warning

The vast majority of the people who read this blog are from America. So this strike in South Africa is not likely to affect you very much, except in terms of the price of gold, which is going up as a result of the related mine strikes. However, this is an excellent opportunity to realize what could happen to us if a similar situation developed locally.

Use this opportunity to figure out what your weaknesses are, where you need to prep more to survive a two-week period without the normal things you used to buying.

People in South Africa are suffering as a result of the striking going on right now. Make sure you aren’t in the same position if this kind of thing happens in the US.

Unfortunately, I have a pretty weird job and get home at 10 pm. This often plays havoc with my dinner.

Tonight, I was lying in bed when my stomach started growling because I didn’t have any real dinner. I have a hard time sleeping when I’m hungry, so off to the kitchen I went.

Fortunately, I had the perfect late night smack: wild smoked salmon.

It’s delicious, nutritious, and very fatty. The market I shop at makes some in house in addition to the prepackaged stuff. The in house version is way cheaper (good), has a milder flavor (bad), and comes with the skin (awesome)!

A little bit of salmon meat and skin, and I’m good to go. Fatty foods are fantastic for satisfying hunger.

Ugh. It’s been a bad month. I haven’t been planning my meals adequately, and with a schedule change at work, I’ve been grabbing lunch on the go.

The result: sleeplessness, lethargy, and weight gain.

So it is back on the wagon time. One day at a time.

I did pretty well today. Breakfast was bacon and eggs. I chowed down about half a stick of boars head pepperoni for a snack. Dinner was a steak. There was some dark chocolate and plenty of tea in there too.

Weekends are the hardest times though. Hanging out with non primal friends is temptation city. I really just need to load up on the healthful fats before I leave the house.

I call myself the Primal Prepper, so obviously living the Primal lifestyle is a big part of my day to day life. Yet it was not until yesterday that I did something that seems almost standard for Primalists: go work out at a crossfit gym.

A Crossfit Gym

For those who don’t know, crossfit is an exercise organization that follows the philosophy that in order to function well as a human being, one must be in all-around physical condition. So they avoid exercises that focus only on one body part or one type of skill. Instead, by the time you are an experienced crossfitter, you should be in a good overall shape and be able to do lots of different physical things.

Since one of the Primal Laws is to lift heavy things, I thought I would give it a try.

So the crossfit gym that I went to, Crossfit HD (one of the best crossfit gyms in Atlanta), had a pretty wide variety of “crossfit equipment”. There were gymnastics rings, tons of barbells with weights, rowing machines, pull up bars, squat racks, and a few things that I didn’t even recognize.

A Primal Workout

I’m not gonna lie. I got my ass kicked by an 8 minute workout. The workout of the day was doing thrusters and rope climbs. Since I was a beginner, I got the baby version: squats and ring pulls. This particular day was a sprint type of workout. So it was just one exercise after the other. 30 squats then 9 ring pulls then 20 squats then 6 ring pulls then 10 squats then 3 ring pulls. My hamstrings were jelly by the time I finished.

I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had started before I lost a ton of weight by eating Primally.

The Paleo-Crossfit Connection

You’ll find a ton of Primal or paleo people at crossfit gyms. In fact, my trainer for my first workout was wearing a shirt that said, “Snatch is Paleo.”

This particular crossfit gym is also hosting a Primal/paleo pot luck this weekend.

The most amazing thing was that nobody even looked twice at my Vibram KSO treks!

So I’m pretty sure I’m in the right place!

So I was looking at my kiddie pool aquaponic system the other day, and I noticed a couple small fish coming to the surface to investigate bugs and such. This is pretty normal. But then I realized that these fish were really small.

I put about 8 large goldfish in the pool several months ago, and it looks like they have spawned!

I like getting more resources for free. I had no idea that the goldfish would reproduce in a pool environment. I thought that they required gravel and tidal action. Apparently I was wrong.

The other day I put up this video on my new flow through worm bin:

The reason I decided to make this new worm bin is that my old bin just wasn’t cutting it. My old bin was the pretty standard design that you’ll find on the web. It was two rubbermaid tubs, one nested inside the other. The major problem with it is that harvesting the worm castings was a total pain. You had to dump the whole contents of the bin, separate the worms from the castings (a tedious process), then put all the stuff you weren’t going to use back in the bin. Way, way too difficult, and so I didn’t end up using much of the castings.

I knew there were better designs out there. So after a little Google-Fu, I found the trash can flow-through worm bin. The basic idea is simple.

You take a regular trash can and cut out a window on the bottom. Above the window, install a screen of some sort. On top of the screen, dump in all your worms and bedding material. Then just add new bedding and scraps to the top of the heap. Over time, the worms will process all of the scraps and bedding and migrate upwards, leaving perfect-for-the-garden worm castings below.

Give it a little shake, and your vermicompost will come out the bottom window.

So I built one, and you can see it in the video above.

So far, the only adjustment I’ve had to make is to add a plank of wood to the left side of the window cut out. Apparently the super cheap trash can I bought was too weak to maintain its structural integrity without that window of plastic, and it started bending over. A little bracing and all is well.

As per one of the YouTube comments, I am considering adding some 1/8″ hardware cloth between the scraper and the screen pipes, just as an added protection. I am still undecided though, so I’ll just have to wait and see. After all, the most important permaculture principle is observation!

So far, using the worm bin has been a breeze. We create a lot of food scraps since we cook almost all of our meals at home. I just keep everything in a trash bowl, and then dump the bowl when we’re done. Throw in some cardboard from egg cartons and Amazon boxes, and that’s it.

Later I’ll post some pics or info about the uses of verimicompost in the garden as fertilizer.