I had occasion the other evening to witness a lovely and delightful couple whom I call friends demonstrate bottling grape juice and peaches.  These good neighbors have given me some of their grape juice, and boy is it tasty!  This is a perfect activity for couples to do together.  These folks in the video have been married over 40 years, and they rock out to ABBA while preparing food and juices for their food storage!  Dee and Mary Ann Hardman have a modest home and property in Orem, Utah, but they take advantage of every square inch of their yard, having planted apples, apricots, peaches, pears, grapes, and a garden with everything else.  Dee spends most of his time in his partial retirement serving other people.  Mary Ann also serves others by working in the field of health care.

Dee and I get pretty jazzed about razzing each other.  I tell him he is too slow when he is driving us to our favorite fishing holes up at Strawberry Reservoir, so he pretends he has Alzheimer’s Disease and drives around the block 3 times before he gets on the road heading in the direction to take us fishing.  When he wants to take the scenic route home, I call him on being lost, but he just squawks, “I’m just turned around!”  He gets pretty particular about his verbiage sometimes.

Back to food storage.  At one point in the video (which I edited to keep it under 10 minutes for YouTube standards, Mary Ann talks about when they first started bottling tomatoes, pears, peaches, and all else how beautiful it was in their storage room, and how they would invite the neighbors over to show off their artwork.  Well, it really is an art to know how to do this kind of thing, and too bad it is a dying art unless we keep it alive.  So here’s to keeping it alive by posting it on YouTube and here on my food storage site so all the youngsters can learn how to do it if their parents won’t or can’t show them how.

Oh, one more thing.  I edited this out too because sometimes Dee can be long-winded (still love ya, man):  Dee and Maryann were moving cross country and Dee was going a bit too fast around a corner in a U-haul (yeah, that was a long time ago in his younger days).  He rolled the thing down a hill.  Much of their furniture and other belongings were destroyed, but not their food storage; none of it, not even the bottles!

P.S. You can actually watch Dee in one of my other YouTube videos teaching you a thing or two about outdoor survival.  Fathom this– one of the skills Dee teaches herein is how not to “get turned around.”  Only he comes right out in the video and uses the word “lost.”  But you would never hear him use ”I” or “I’m” and “lost” in the same sentence!

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Food Storage: Wild Game Meat
Food Storage: Mystery Shopping Your Way to a Full Year’s Food Storage Supply
The Water Storage Part of an Effective Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness Program
Self Reliance and Food Storage: Gardening

We join Papa Bear on his journey out of the cave today.  He and his cub and grandcub follow him out to his territory where he has a grand spread of land that he uses for self reliance gardening purposes.  You have probably heard how much bears like berries.  Watch to see how Papa Bear trains his berries.  In the past Papa has also kept bees on his territory like any smart bear would.  Much of his produce goes into jars for food storage back in the cave.  It’s one big Circle of Life.  Out in the territory to nurture what the land offers and back to the cave to store for future use.  The process repeats itself indefinitely.  In the video you also see how Papa Bear takes care of his young, giving a generous offering of corn to the cubs.  Papa is very much self reliant, and explains how he beautifies his surroundings to attract more serenity and tranquility into his life.  Papa has always done a wonderful job in securing beautiful living arrangements.  The Qi (pronounced Chi) flows through his creations bringing forth good feelings.  His daughter-in-cub calls it good Feng Shui.

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Food Storage: Wild Game Meat
It’s a Fact: Everybody Eats!
What Are Your Survival Priorities?
A Simple Sample of an Emergency Food Storage Solution

Yesterday I had an opportunity to interview a real-live “King of Fun.” Although this king is a modest one, he has the Midas touch; almost everything he touches turns to gold. Just ask his grandchildren! And take a view of the video below. He rather prefers to be called “Papa Bear.” By whatever name, he’s still the same– the fun he provides will rock your world! His grandchildren and children can tell you story after story of the fun and memories they’ve created with him. Like the Berenstein Bears Papa Bear story, “The Bike Ride,” he sometimes (but hardly ever) teaches you how not to do things, but by design. Almost always his lessons about life and living are carefully built and constructed for better peace and true joy. He is an icon in the do-it-yourself and self reliance world. Look for more do-it-yourself and self reliance videos to come from Papa Fun, I mean King Bear, oh,… I get so confused. Right… it’s Papa Bear.

Thank you, Papa Bear, we all love you! Your hands are special to us.

Related Posts:

Self Reliance- Frog Heaven
Self Reliance: Increase Hose Pressure
DIY and Self Reliance: Killing the Voles!

Stir crazy. Yes we are! Heidi shows us how to take that bull by the horns and get it done by going into the mountains for a frog hunt. Heidi and crew (all ten of them) demonstrate self reliance and creating our own fun by catching small hopping creatures that we can help our children learn to feed, nourish, and protect.

Related Posts:

Fishing Trip- Combining Our Efforts
Self Reliance: Do-It-Yourself Projects

Related Posts:

Self Reliance: Do-It-Yourself-Projects
Self Reliance and Food Storage: Gardening
Self Reliance: Beekeeping for Food Storage Honey
DIY and Self Reliance: Killing the Voles!