Milk Without A Cow After SHTF?

My youngest woke me up the night before last (he's 3) because he wanted a drink, he hasn't woke up at night in a long time. I got up and got him a water bottle, only to have him start crying because he wanted a drink of milk. After I got his drink of milk, waited for him to finish it, and got him settled back in bed, my mind started worrying a bit... it wasn't a bit, it was more like a lot. I started thinking more about how he really only likes to drink white milk. I'm not sure if this was bothering me so much because I was exhausted from having been sick the past few days, or if it was just a motherly love thing and I was worrying about honestly being able to provide everything for my children when it came down to it, or if it was a mix of both. It was probably a mix of both. Either way, I couldn't go back to sleep thinking about what I was going to do for milk if we don't have such easy access to a store like we do now. I turned to a group of women that I chat with on Facebook to see what suggestions any of them may have, and then decided to go and see what kind of answers I could find to this problem on my own. Before I go into the solution I found, let me explain this in better detail. I have a hard time getting my son to drink anything else, he just seems to like milk. Plain white milk. He couldn't care less if it's whole milk, 2%, skim milk, or anything like that, as long as it's plain white milk. Do any of you have a child like this?

After all the foods, waters, juices, and drink boxes and mixes I store back for the future 'just in case,' I really didn't know what to do about regular white milk. I've bought the dehydrated milk, made some up and gave it to him to see if he'd drink it before and he definitely doesn't like it. I keep it in stock for cooking with, but as far as him drinking it goes, it's a no go. As soon as it even touched his lips the first time I tried to give him some, he dropped the cup and gave me a look of panic like I was trying to poison him. I've bought the little boxes of milk that can be stored on the shelf, the other kids like them, and he'll drink those if they're cold, but if they aren't cold he won't even put the straw in. Occasionally he'll somewhat drink a juice box, but only if he sees all the other kids drinking one, and even then he just takes a sip or 2 from it and lets the rest just sit on the table until someone picks it up. If I'm drinking a bottled water or a glass of sweet tea, he sometimes wants a drink out of it, but never wants his own and he never drinks more than a sip or 2 of mine. He doesn't like Kool-Aid, and he doesn't like pop. He won't drink chocolate milk out of a cup or little drink box, and will even cry if I hand it to him by mistake. My youngest daughter always drinks it and I sometimes get their cups mixed up if I'm in the middle of doing something else. I've seen my son go from a happy kid to one that is crying like his whole world has came crashing down over an accidental switch up of white and chocolate milk. I used to laugh about having the only kid in the world that won't drink junk, but now I think some sort of fear has set in.

He's not just a spoiled kid either, overall my kids are fairly well disciplined. They don't have a lot of luxury things that most other kids have, and they do chores and everything on a regular basis, even this little 3 year old helps do stuff. He isn't picky at all as far as eating goes, he'll even eat some plain pinto beans with no salt (I throw mini-meals like that on my children sometimes to see how they'll act since you never know how bad things may get one day)... it's just this milk issue. My original plan has always been to go with stocking up those little milk boxes, but I know if we lose power for a length of time in the future, there's not really a way to get them very cold except in one of those zeer pots that I mentioned in a past post. Even then though, how would I come across more milk boxes once they run out or just expire if things haven't straightened back out? A milk cow or goat may be a good idea, but I know fresh milk has a different texture than gallons of milk and I'm pretty sure that goat milk tastes different than cow milk. I have no experience with these animals either, nor do I really have the land to put one on. The other thing is, if things came down to having to be on the move, if we had a cow or goat, I sure wouldn't want to try to lug it around with us if we were on foot. Nor would I want to have to share any water source we found with an animal that would clearly need more than we would.

I went to the store yesterday morning to pick up a few things and to look around to see what kind of milk alternatives I could find. I don't want to take milk from my son right now while he can still drink it as often as he wants to, but I knew that if I didn't get something figured out now, we would have a real problem if things get bad before he (hopefully someday) grows out of this only drinking white milk stage. I passed through the Hispanic aisle and seen a fairly decent sized yellow can of this powdered whole milk that's made by Nestle. It's called NIDO. I read the can over and decided to go ahead and pick one up. I wasn't so sure that he'd want to drink any of it, nor would he like it if I could get him to try it, but I figured it was worth a shot. After I was home and put my groceries away, I decided to mix some up in a pitcher to see how he'd do if I gave him some to drink. I was going to be sneaky about it, but he stood right there watching me the whole time. When he seen me opening the can he stared for a second and asked me what it was. I tried to play it cool and just told him it was milk. He was definitely watching me like a hawk as I mixed it with some bottled water, and then he asked me again what it was, sounding a little confused (poor kid), and I told him again it was milk.

I didn't offer him any after it was mixed. I was sure that if it wasn't cold he wouldn't like it and that would throw away any chance of him ever trying it again in the future. When I went to put it in the fridge he wanted to drink some he said. I told him it wasn't cold yet and did he want to wait until it was cold, but he insisted that he wanted a drink of it. So I put some in the cup and just hoped for the best. He just took the cup, looked inside it, like he was trying to find something, and then took a little drink. He looked at me for a second, repeated back to me that it wasn't cold yet, stared at me for a couple seconds, and then just walked away with the cup in his hand. I watched him as he went around the corner and walked into the living room, thinking that he was going to just set it down somewhere. I watched him hold that little cup for a minute and look inside it a few times, and then he just took another drink. After the first couple drinks he took I noticed he looked inside it, but he ended up drinking it all.

I guess he either likes it, or it's something tolerable enough for his little taste buds. He ended up drinking more of it later, without doing the cup inspection between each sip like he did with the first cup. I guess I'll stock up on that stuff. I tasted it and it didn't seem too bad, it looks thicker than that regular boxed milk I was buying too. It has a 2 year expiration date on it, and each can makes about 53 servings. I guess that's the way I'm going to go, if I can get him into drinking water or something else too, then one can should last him about a month or so and at around $15 a can I don't think that's a bad price. I'll still buy him regular milk and stuff as long as it's available, but at least if worst comes to worst he will drink this NIDO even if it isn't cold. It can be mixed in small one cup portions too, so I don't have to worry about mixing up a whole pitcher just for it to go bad without refrigeration. I'm not sure if any of you are having, or have had, this same 'white milk only kid' experience, but if so I suggest trying this NIDO. I think it's a good alternative and it's whole milk that's fortified with vitamins A, C, and D, and has added calcium, iron, and zinc.





(This post is written on my own opinion, Nestle didn't contact me to write about one of their products for advertisement or anything, so please don't contact me asking for coupons, discounts, or ideas on how to make a profit for writing about a certain product for a company. I just wanted to let readers know before they waste their time asking.)

My Thoughts On Gardening - Do You Think You Should Get Started Now?

If you're reading this, it's probably because you realize the importance of preparing yourself and your family for some uncertain future disaster. While I love trying to provide you with the informative posts and videos that will help you do this, along with showing you ways to survive after things have already gone bad, sometimes I'd just like to talk about things that are running through my mind. I decided to start a new section on the blog labeled 'My Thoughts.' There's not really going to be any how-to or informative type of content in it, it's just going to be my thoughts on certain things as they pop into my head. So if you don't mind, I'd like to yank at your ear for a couple minutes.

Have you thought about what you're going to do when your stock of food and supplies start running low? What if things haven't straightened themselves back out to a world we're more familiar with and you notice that you're getting down to the last bag of beans and just a couple cans of vegetables or something? I don't even want to think about all the worrying I would do if I ever seen my food supply starting to get low, there's nothing that scares me more than thinking I can't provide the next meal for my kids. I do some small-scale gardening right now so I can supplement what we eat and what I can add to the foods that I save for the future's unknown, but I think you should be doing the same. Have you thought about doing any gardening, or are you currently doing any right now just to make your food ends meet? Gardening should be everyone's backup plan, but you can't wait until there's only a few days worth of food left in your pantry to start. I think it would be a great idea to learn the ropes of it now if you aren't already familiar with gardening. Not only can this provide food, but it plays a big role in being able to provide yourself with herbal remedies too.

Although some plants (like radishes, green onions, and leafy greens) can start being picked from after about just a month of growing, most take a couple months or more to reach their peak. If you haven't tried growing any of your own produce, now is the best time to try your hand at it. Depending on where you live, it may be too late in the year to grow things outside from start to finish, but there are ways to work around this. You could always purchase a greenhouse, or make your own, to grow in all year long. Or if you have a sunny windowsill you can practice with some small indoor gardening. You may even be interested in setting up an area with growing lights and go that route, if my home was bigger I'd definitely designate a spare room to doing just that. I seen an article on an underground garden that you can grow in without any heating pads or anything too. You can check it out here if you'd like. If my yard were bigger I'd love to have one. However you choose to do it, just do it.

Growing food isn't a skill that everyone should automatically assume they have, it really does involve more than just throwing some seeds in dirt and hoping for the best. I found that out the hard way. The first year I tried gardening, I spent around $100 on seeds, potting soil, containers, and gardening tools just to reap nothing that I had sown. Not a single plant produced anything. In fact, not a single plant grew more than around three inches tall. I still to this day have no idea what I did wrong, but I assumed I just didn't have that green thumb that I noticed so many people in my area seem to have. I felt like adding gardening to my list of can't do's... I almost gave up. I tried a few different things after that, having some luck with some of them, none at all still with others. I do think that the place I moved into about a 16 months ago seems to be the place I was needing, because I have had the best luck here than anywhere else.

I continued reading lots of articles and watching video after video about everything regarding gardening after some of my failed attempts, and when I moved here I decided to give it a try again. I started with just some simple herbs. I don't really know how long herbal plants are supposed to grow before you need to replant, but I'm on well over a year with the same small window box that I regularly pick off for cooking and the thing just keeps growing and growing. This past fall I decided to try some potatoes in the front of my trailer, I was more than excited to see that they'd grown all through fall and winter. In March I dug up 39 potatoes that grew from just the five small potatoes I pulled out of a store bought bag that had sprouted some eyeballs. When I seen that they grew so well, I decided to try a small variety of other things to see what I could get to grow. I can proudly say I think I have the hang of it now, for the most part.

My yard isn't very big so I'm not growing huge amounts of crops or anything, but most of the seeds I did plant seem to be doing just fine. While I'm unsure about whether some of my current plants will grow to maturity so I can pick things from them, the potatoes, sugar snap peas, corn, lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes that we've been able to enjoy so far are rewarding enough. Not only did growing these from a low priced pack of seeds save me money, but it gives me a sense of security that if S ever does HTF, I'll be able to continue providing at least these things for my family. I encourage you to grasp onto a little piece of that security for yourself, start off small with just a few things like I did and see where it takes you. Even if nothing works the first crop around, don't give up. You'll figure it out soon enough and it'll pay off in the long run.

Now that I've shared a bit of my thoughts about gardening with you, please share some of your mind with me. What is your take on gardening? Do you think it's worth it? Have you done any gardening in the past, growing anything now, or are you planning on doing any in the future? If you do grow your own food or are thinking about it, what are your opinions on pesticides? Do you think they're a good thing, or are you against using them and would rather try an all natural alternative to keeping plants safe from all the crop terrorizing bugs? I know that some people would rather use them so they don't loose their crops, but others worry about the possibility of contaminating the food. I personally use the Sevin 5% dust because I lost over half of my first plants almost overnight to an army of squash bugs that appeared out of no where. I'd like to go the natural way, but that proved to not work for me. I'm personally stocking back on the stuff, if I may have to depend on only what I can get to grow in the future, I'm not taking any chances of loosing it all just because I'm worried about a little bit of pesticides on my plants. I'll just be sure and wash them well before eating them. What's your opinion on it? I'd love to know.

 

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