Probably before anyone begins to attempt the construction of a backyard water-wheel, which apparently takes FOREVER to construct, you might want to look into keeping yourself fed while you build the thing in a quixotic attempt to Build Back Better civilization.
One word:
Pemmican. This stuff is great, doesn't require refrigeration and lasts forever. The bare-bones, basic recipe is:
Desiccated Lean (NO FAT) Meat
Rendered Animal Fat
And I believe it is a 1:1 ratio of meat to fat. I always understood this to mean BY WEIGHT, so by volume you will be using a 1:2 ratio as FAT is less dense than PROTEIN (which is what Desiccated Lean Meat essentially is).
Recipes abound for this stuff on the IntarTubes, but I will briefly describe the process:
You have to trim ALL the fat off of the meat before you dry it, save that shit by throwing it into the FAT rendering pot. Take this trimmed lean meat (leave the sinews and silverskin in there, they actually have lots of protein) and dry the hell out of it as quickly as you can, don't cook it mind you, just dry the shit out of it. If you do it right it will be a nice deep red, almost maroon. You will want to slice it pretty thin to speed up this process or it will rot from the inside while you wait for it to dry. Keep the damn flies off of it, close to a smoky campfire is good or inside an oven or food dehydrator if you still have that level of technology available for use.
The Finnish product should be useful as an improvised "
Single Use Dagger" if your Pemmican Camp becomes the target of a Zombie Attack: as these thin slices of meat should be rock hard, sharp and easily breakable.
Anyhow, while you are drying that meat, you should be rendering your fat. The easiest way to do this is to put a bunch of fat into a pot with some water and bring bring it to a boil (adding more water until the fat melts). You don't want to use too much water as you will have to boil ALL of the water out before you can use it. Once this FAT is all melted, pick out bits of whatever are in there and skim off the top any frothy shit: You want to end up with a CLEAR final fat product. You can pour it through a strainer into another container, although I do not suggest using a filter, unless you have access to a "Fryer Filter" as the fat will just congeal in the filter element and not strain out the crap you do not want.
Once you have that Rendered Fat all nice and clean, put it to the side to cool or better yet into a refrigerator or cooler (if you have access to that level of technology) to harden. If your FAT does not harden or become solid at room/ambient temperature DO NOT use it to make Pemmican, find some other FAT.
Next you have to Pulverize your Desiccated Lean Meat into a powder, as fine as you can get it.
If you are really worried about the 1:1 ratio, you now need to construct a primitive Balance Scale with which to make sure you are using equal amounts of Rendered Fat and Desiccated Meat Powder.
Mix together the Rendered Fat and Desiccated Meat Powder and either form into chunks, or press it into a pan or something to cut up into chunks. If you have some sort of plastic wrap, wrap the small chunks up, get it as water-proof as you can because excessive moisture can make it spoil at room temperature.
So much for the brevity of the explanation.
That is the basic recipe. You can add other shit to it to make it even more tasty than it already is. Dried Fruit, Dried Nuts, Dried Medicinal Herbs whatever: Just make sure that everything is DRY (except for the Rendered Fat) and you don't add too much of it.
Adding other shit to the base will decrease the room/ambient temperature stability of the Pemmican. So when you make it take that into account and maybe only make PART of your batch with the Extra Stuff. Eat those Extra Stuff (dried fruit etc) Pemmican chunks first and save the basic Pemmican for emergency type use.
For those of you who have LOW Reading Comprehension hear is a Vidya:
...that I haven't watched, I am sure it is great.
Here is one of those abundant recipes on the IntarTubes that I spoke of earlier:
How to Make Pemmican [Recipe] – Longest Lasting Food for Preppers ...Whatever fat you use must be one that is solid at room temperature. Suet is the traditional option. Alternates to animal fat include peanut butter, shortening, or maybe coconut oil if you're a hippie...
...Hah! I love the Coconut Oil/Hippie comment. Hilarious.
I wish all of you luck in the Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Whirled: especially any 'tards reading this. You 'tards are going to need luck to survive, or at minimum someone who gives a shit about you.
