Price increases and shortages

[ducks4you]

Regular mouth Golden Harvest lids are $3ish on Amazon now!

I have had cheap lid failure this winter while pressure canning. Granted, I didn't boil water and dip them in it before putting on the jars, something that might help, but I have N E V E R had a Ball lid fail on me.
No thanks...

 

[Zeedman]

See the girl in this photo? That is me. My mom was on duty at one of the hospitals that was severely damaged, and we went back to get her car.

Wow @meadow , that would have been a traumatic experience at such a young age.

I've been blessed to have dodged a bullet - so to speak - more than once, and have a knack for dodging earthquakes. While living in San Diego, I moved to San Jose just in time to avoid an earthquake there, then moved back to San Diego just before the big Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I was originally supposed to remain in the Bay Area, but my orders were changed... had I remained, I might well have been driving home on the section of freeway that collapsed just outside of Alameda. Furthermore, we had made an offer on a home near Santa Cruz, which we had to back out of; a beautiful home, surrounded by redwoods, built over a hillside. That "hillside" was the San Andreas fault, very close to the epicenter of the quake... I doubt it is still there. I can't help but feel that angels were looking out for us.

Just my 2 c's. Responding to a volatile supply situation in uncertain times, and shopping accordingly, doesn't make one a prepper... it is a reasonable response to changing conditions. Even in the best of times, it is good practice to keep at least a 30 day supply of food (and fuel if possible) in case of emergency. Fires, storms, and power outages can happen almost anywhere without notice.

I strongly suspect that most on this forum are at least somewhat prepared for minor emergencies... especially those who grow beans, and put up food in large amounts. To those who are able to be self-sufficient, my deepest respect.

 

[flowerbug]

I have had cheap lid failure this winter while pressure canning. Granted, I didn't boil water and dip them in it before putting on the jars, something that might help, but I have N E V E R had a Ball lid fail on me.
No thanks...

the ball lids said on them that you no longer have to warm them up before using. i still do it anyways. since the methods i've been using my whole life have been working fine, unless they change the formula for their sealant i'm not going to change what i'm doing.

i've had a few fail on me here or there but very few. mostly because of jar defects that i did not catch (chip or crack). last year when buying lids one box had a few that were stuck together. no idea how that might have happened but the box also had an extra lid in it so i didn't mind.

 

[meadow]

Ha! Dodged a bullet is right!

Yes, I suppose the earthquake was traumatic. I've been in a number of earthquakes, but never ones where I had to cope with people in shock and hear details about how someone was killed (from the security guard telling my mother while I stood nearby). Or stand by helplessly (and in terror) while my father went into the freaking building to get my mother's purse. I can see in the photo that I'm clutching my thumbs in each fist, a sure sign that I'm 'trying to hold it together.' Odd that I hadn't realized it was traumatic until just now.

Just my 2 c's. Responding to a volatile supply situation in uncertain times, and shopping accordingly, doesn't make one a prepper... it is a reasonable response to changing conditions. Even in the best of times, it is good practice to keep at least a 30 day supply of food (and fuel if possible) in case of emergency. Fires, storms, and power outages can happen almost anywhere without notice.

Couldn't agree more.

I really dislike the way some groups redefine words with the purpose of attacking/demeaning people they disagree with. "Prepper" and "hoarder" are both words that are being used in that manner, or at least they were in the early days of the pandemic. Having a stocked pantry is not hoarding.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

"Another idea from the video was to collect the 'warm up' water (like in the shower as you're waiting for it to come up to temp)." We've been doing that for decades. Even as a single mother with my first home in West San Jose in 1987, caught water in the shower. Up here in So. OR, I even added a 3 gal container to the kitchen sink to catch rinse water.

Rode thru the '89 quake in San Jose on the second floor at my work. Took me over an hour to go nine miles to get my toddler at day care.

I'm prepped for months of food as long as I have electricity.

 

[jbosmith]

I have had cheap lid failure this winter while pressure canning. Granted, I didn't boil water and dip them in it before putting on the jars, something that might help, but I have N E V E R had a Ball lid fail on me.
No thanks...

These aren't the cheap knockoffs currently lining hardware store shelves. Ball, Kerr, Bernardin, and Golden Harvest lids are all the same lids sold with different designs and in different areas.

I've canned a little over 8 dozen jars of beans and 20 something jars of red onion pickles in the last week without a failure. When I do I have the occasional jar that doesn't seal, the problem is almost always a small dent or twist in the band that I missed.

One word of caution about Golden Harvest that has nothing to do with the quality - the jars are metric and the middle of the jars are a little wider so they don't fit quite the same in canners.

 

[meadow]

@Rhodie Ranch Sounds like you're an old hand at this! I'd love to hear any tips you might have for conserving or reclaiming water if you'd care to share them.

Rode thru the '89 quake in San Jose on the second floor at my work. Took me over an hour to go nine miles to get my toddler at day care.

That must have been pretty intense! It is hard to imagine being separated from your child under those circumstances.

 

[Phaedra]

I am from a country with frequent earthquakes. However, I didn't learn how (or even knew why/what) to prepare a household as my parents never did that. The first time I was aware of the importance of at least a minimum preparation for uncertainties was after the great earthquake of September 21, 1999.

The real learning started after having my own family, especially moving to this small town in Germany four years ago. I think the personal background and cultural contexts resulted in different responses. However, being adaptive is always helpful - we really have no idea what will come next.

 

[flowerbug]

regarding TP, if you want to conserve it i think for some people they can use a washcloth to wipe wee vs. the main use of TP for poos. a change of habits and would not work for some people (for example if there's a lot of people in the house and only one toilet), but on the hole (pun intended) it can save a lot of TP.

we keep a pretty good supply of TP on hand here - if it were just me it would probably be a few year supply.

in recent weeks i've probably used more TP getting bugs off the windows and floors than i have in the bathroom. the bugs get smushed in the TP and then i put them in the worm food bucket so they and the TP aren't wasted.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

When I was in Marketing Class at the university we learned the first makers of tp went out of business because country people would hoard the tp, wet it and press it into a parchment paper that was rare to own. Times changed but it was not that terribly long ago either. Another repurposing event that caused sales of "Maxipad" to skyrocket and required company investigating turned out to be county folk again though in South America. The farmers were in a droughty period so to speak and had discovered a practical and effective dust mask that even had a way to fasten to their ears with tabs evidently. Resourcefulness never ceases to amaze me.