Favorite Links

I have added a few new links on the side bar.  Pioneer Living is a great site and the Preppers Podcast has all kids of great guests and discussions on survival topics.  I ask for you to check them out and learn from some experts in the various fields.  The Milandred's are long time homesteaders and are very good at sharing their experiences with those that are interested in being self sufficient.  Check them out!

Somewhere in Time

We live in a time of wonders, we also live in a time of horrors.   I was born in a time of innocence and awe.  My birthday is on July 21st and on the eve of my 18th birthday I sat in my parents living room watching news coverage of the Moon landing and remembering when I was 10 and Alan Shepherd being the first American in Space.  Our country seemed so great, so together and in harmony on the day we first landed on the moon.  But I also remember being about 8 and my father looking at plans to build a fallout shelter because of the incident at the Bay of Pigs.  The nuclear standoff was terrifying and it made a deep impression on me.  My school never told us to drop and cover.  We understood that if there was a nuclear exchange that we would be incinerated.  Dad decided after studying the plans for that shelter and talking to Mom that it would be better to die quickly rather than to suffer slowly because of the fallout.  Dad was a civil engineer and he knew what it would take to become safe from the radioactive fallout and there was no way that we could build a shelter big enough to hold the 5 of us and the food and water necessary for several years.

In those days the fallout was very highly radioactive and long lived.  It would have taken years to be safe above ground again if we had gone to war.  My family was probably what was considered middle class or lower middle class but we never really felt too much of a problem with money but Mom and Dad had no savings and lived paycheck to paycheck.  We had a mortgage on our house which my Dad had built with only the help of my uncle once in awhile.  I grew up in that home until I was about 17 and my parents moved across town.  I remember not having a TV as a kid and we didn't even have a phone until I was about 4 and then it was a party line.  We owned one old car.  We had the basics but not much else.

We had homemade Christmas gifts because my parents never had enough to buy gifts.   My Mom made all of our clothes and we got one pair of shoes a year just before school started.  We, my brother, sister, and I went barefoot most of the time in the summer and might have had a pair of flip flops.  By summertime our shoes were quite worn out but we still wore them to church nicely cleaned and polished until we got our new shoes at the end of August for the new school year which was going to start. I remember putting on my shoes and walking around the house to break them in and feeling rich because they were brand new.  I loved the clothes Mom made and wore them with pride.  We never felt poor because we had much more than many people and we had the pride of a good and honest family that was well known and respected in our town of 20,000.  I don't remember a time that my parents went in to town that they weren't pulled aside and spoken to as Mr. or Mrs. and with respect.  Those were the days when you never locked a door to your house or car.  There weren't home invasions or murders.  There was very little theft and usually only by some kid who swiped a bike left by the roadside while you went into the woods to pick blackberries or you went to swing on a tire swing over the gully.  I loved my hometown and never wanted to leave it.  But things happen and you choose being with the person you love and you follow him from duty station to duty station because he was in the military. 

I have spent most of my life being a reader.  As a kid I read science fiction because of what was taking place with our Space Program, especially since we lived only one and a half hour drive from the space center in Florida.  But when I was 15 I had to have my tonsils out.  My Aunt gave me the book Swiss Family Robinson to read while I recuperated and to keep me quiet and I fell in love with the old days and survival and gave up my dream of being a colonist on the moon or Mars.  So I dreamed of living on a desert island or moving to where things were more simple and you were taking care of yourself and your family.  I read all of classics that I could find about that kind of adventure like Mysterious Island, Robinson Crusoe, Earth Abides, Darkness and Dawn trilogy, Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn Island.  I then found Little House on the Prairie series, and then started searching out books written about the Colonial days and the migration westward and the Oregon Trail.  I read about all of the people who helped found our country such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.  As an adult I got interested in Family History when I found out that my great great grandmother went to Utah in a wagon train with the Mormons in 1856.  My great grandmother was born on that journey 5 days after her father died from cholera.  That must have been pretty tough for her mother.  That ignited my interest and the same Aunt who gave me Swiss Family Robinson introduced me to Genealogy.  I was so interested that she gave me copies of all of her paperwork.  Back then it was much harder to get information.  That was prior to home computers.  So you did the old snail mail requests for information and visited libraries to get your facts.  Well, I found out a lot more about being a "Pioneer" studying my family history.  Two sides of my family came over in 1636 and of course my great great grandmother came over in 1856 from England to join the Mormons in Utah. 

What do kids today know of their families history?  Not much unless we share it with them.  My father's father came from England when he was 22 in 1884 to be a miner in Montana.  So my family depending on which part you want to talk about were pretty much all pioneers of some sort.  So maybe you could say that being a pioneer is in my blood. 

Now consider what today's world is like.   I feel we may be going back to the lifestyle of the pioneer days in the not too distant future.  Our world today is full of religious wars and political strife and severe economic problems.  We are being told that we don't know what is good for us and they are taking  away our constitutional rights, and now we are faced with a National Debt that is going to put us in Bankruptcy as a nation and I can see this country going through a worse depression than in the 20's and 30's.  That is if Iran doesn't send a nuclear missile up over our country to cause an EMP.  They have already tested missiles for doing just that and now they are loading up ships with these missiles.  I won't be surprised to have an EMP event sometime in the next couple of months.  This will mean that we will be back to 1800's again as far as the way we live and I heard someone say that they estimate millions will die in the aftermath.  Our country is spoiled and most people living here today don't even know how to garden.  Large quantities of people live in huge cities such as New York or Chicago.  They won't have water because the pumps won't work to pump the water up to the multi-story apartment buildings. They won't have electricity or electronics or city sewerage.  Everyone who is stuck in the cities will be up the creek without a paddle.  If I lived in a major city I would be moving right now before anything could happen.  I would rather be homeless in the woods than have a nice apartment in New York.  It gives me the creeps to think about those people who will be trapped after an EMP event.  I pray that we can stop any missiles that may be shot at us.

I have been doing research into what life was like before electricity and electronics.  I found a plethora of video series on YouTube.   I will talk about them briefly and give you links to these.  I will give you links to the part one of each series and then you can continue on through the rest of the videos which will be in side bars.  I would suggest you watch all of them and maybe take notes on helpful things that you see on them.  These videos show how people survived with very basic essentials and worked together and worked hard to survive.  They were still vulnerable to diseases and injuries without good medical care and many people died from these but most of these won't dwell on that aspect of the time periods.

The oldest time periods I found were the 1620's and this series is called "Tales of the Green Valley". The link to this is;      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CapsH0RQgE8                   

This series shows a farm on the Welch Border and 5 people live a year farming this farm and living the life that people of the time would have lived.

"The Edwardian Farm" took place in the 1700's in England and again it is a look at 3 people living on the farm only using the implements and foods and recipes of the time for a full year. There is a whole series.  This link is for the first show of the series. You will find the other parts in the side bars.  Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFjdpu4QoLo

Next is "The Victorian Farm" - A series produced for BBC2 that has 3 people living the life and work of the Victorian Era.  Portraying 1880's in Shropshire, England

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA1269IgGY0

"The Victorian Pharmacy"   A look at people running a pharmacy and showing how they operated during the Victorian Era.  A series of how they treated common ailments in the Victorian times. A few good hints on herbal medications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRCJ3WRjSqA

"Victorian Kitchen" is a look at how a Victorian Kitchen was run on an estate.  They show how foods were cooked and what they grew and ate from their Kitchen Garden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cfU2k5VsZY

"1900 House"  - Takes a modern family and has them living in the 1900 House only using or having anything that would be appropriate for that era.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdhqGUWGzjc

"1940's House"  This series shows what it was like for families who lived in the London area just before and during WWll. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4x5drU9mAk&feature=related

There is a series of Videos about  - "The Wartime Kitchen and Garden".   Wonderful ideas on how to stretch the foods and be sparing with the fuel also how important the gardens were to the people during WWII.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EeIQcWex5w&feature=related

There are 2 other series which were made in the U.S. which I will also give links for.  They don't have the same flavor as the British videos which were produced by BBC and were wildly popular in Britain.

"Colonial House" was a series done about the new colonists in America and how they fared.  But it shows mostly how Americans are too spoiled to live that way even for a short time. I was not impressed by this show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=ESnLoASYvOU

"Frontier Life" was a series about 3 families trying to live like the pioneers going westward to homestead.  It was interesting but not my favorite series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfUgTWJ4ngE&feature=related

I hope you will check some of these out and put yourself in their place in your mind and see if you have what it takes to live in a post collapse society where you have to survive with no help.  It will make you think and should show you what you might need to prepare for and the skills you need to learn.

God Bless -  God really does help those that help themselves and then depends on Him for what you can't do for yourself.  Start your journey by taking the first step......

Want to be taught the BASICS?

If you want the basics of how to do almost anything for Prepping you have a huge amount of informative videos to choose from on youtube.  I have my absolute favorites and have most of them in my links on the right hand side of this blog.  I have Everyday Food Storage for lots of basic information on long term foods for storage. There is also a series on Dehydrate2Store videos which teach all the ins and outs of using the Excalibur for drying fruits, vegetables, herbs, etc. You may want to have the basics on general food storage plans and equipment which is under Wendy DeWitt's series of videos.
One of my favorite series because I love this man's creativity and the British perspective is Rickvanman's series of videos.  He also has a series on turning a van into a camper van and has an allotment vegetable garden.  He is a professional in video and audio productions and has other interesting videos.  Some of my favorite Survival preppers are Dave Canterbury from Dual Survival who has a pathfinder series.  I also like Southernprepper1 who has lots of scenarios portrayed and keeps you hanging on.  All of these people are creative and very informative.  There are many more that I keep up with for other subjects such as medical "Patriot Nurse" who gives lots of suggestions on medical supplies and basic treatments as well as lots of common sense health protection.  I will be adding many more links as I come across them. 
Knowledge is the most important tool you can have so please watch the youtube links I have placed in the links section and then research the subjects download and print out any written information they offer or buy the books they suggest.  You will be much better off during a severe collapse or even better off during a mild economic problem such as a job loss. 

I only want to help others with the research that I have done and share so we do not have to reinvent the wheel as we go along on our journey of becoming prepared and more self reliant.

Remember, "God Helps Those That Help Themselves"........"Every Journey begin with the First Step".

Safety is an illusion!

Preparing for a disaster, catastrophe, or economic collapse,  whether personal, citywide, statewide, countrywide or worldwide is only common sense but many people just aren't noticing or taking seriously what has happened in our country and other countries when a natural disaster happens or a terrorist attack takes place. 

Prepping  is the answer to common sense preparedness for possible loss of a job or another hurricane Katrina.  The government even asks people to have 2 weeks supply of water, food, candles etc. on hand to get through a natural disaster.  The problem I see with their advice comes when you think about how long the people of New Orleans were without the necessities.  Or when the earthquakes hit Oakland, CA or when Mt. St. Helens erupted.  We cannot count on everything being back up and running with restocked grocery shelves in 2 weeks.  None of those situations were corrected in 2 weeks.  My belief is that we should live the way the Amish do and keep your pantries full and able to carry you through until the next harvest.  I also feel that we need to be ready to live without modern conveniences of any kind in case of a possible CME or EMP which is a very likely scenario into todays world.

CME, which is a Coronal Mass Ejection,  is more likely now than it every has been in modern society.

Our sun is in its most active stage than it has been in since the 1859 Carrington event.  This event burned up many telegraph wires, which were the only modern items of the period.  If that exact same event happened today I wonder how many electric plants would be burned out or put out of commission.  What about all the electronics of today.  Our internet, cell phones, computers, communication satellites, televisions, transportation system etc. would be inoperable until the new parts were manufactured and then replaced in the systems affected.  I can see our country being back to the 1900's way of life, except for the fact that we don't have the equipment and access to the wood cook stoves, coal heating, and horse and buggies that they had at that time.  When the telegraph wires were burned up in 1859 it didn't affect the average person because they could live temporarily without the Telegraph system.  It didn't affect their heating, lighting, or transportation.  Most foods were grown and sold locally and you rarely traveled more than 20 miles from your home.  Their businesses didn't depend on electronics or even electricity.  They had wells to get their water, they had a horse or horse and buggy or wagon for transportation and to get their crops to the local markets or train station.  The trains were coal or wood fired steam engine driven and ran on schedules to avoid accidents.  Let's look at today.

Today I have in my home 4 laptop computers and one desktop computer, I have 3 cell phones, satellite TV, city water, city sewerage, modern cars that have computers and electronic ignitions in them.  We have electric plants that produce electricity by burning coal that is mined hundreds of miles from the plants.  The hospitals, doctors offices, bank, fire departments, police departments and food delivery transportation are all dependent on communications and/or transportation that are electronic, electric and/or satellite dependent. 

I don't know about you but I get up in the morning and start my electric coffeemaker, use my electric/electronic microwave, I cook my eggs on my electric range and use my electric lights to see what I am doing.  My bathrooms have no windows so I need light in them to see to even brush my teeth.  If the water plant is down because they can't treat and pump the water then I have no water coming from the taps.  I have no water even if I have a well because the well pump is electric.  I may have sewerage until the lines back up and then there will be a huge mess in our house because they can't pump the sewerage to the treatment plant.  I can't get to work because my car won't start.


I can't even find out what happened because the communications systems are all electric/electronic and satellite dependent.  The grocery stores even if I live near one is closed because they have no lights or refrigeration.  If they do open the food will be gone from the shelves completely in hours not days.  They will only except cash because the banks systems are all down and their registers are electronic as well.  I can't call my children to see if they are okay because we have no way to do it any longer.  If you are caught away from home you will have to walk home.  If you are more than 10 miles from home it may be a major undertaking to get back home and if you don't have water, good shoes and some food and appropriate clothing etc. with you then you will be in serious trouble.  Your refrigerator and freezer no longer work and everything is on a fast track to spoilage.  What can you do?  Wait for FEMA or the Government to come help you?  Do you know how many millions of people are in the U.S.?  You will be waiting years for their help and believe me you won't survive that long..........


I for one believe we need to be prepared to help ourselves.  Have a plan and then work your plan!  Let's look at what you can do now to prepare for a failure of our systems for what ever reason they happen....

1.  Have a month's worth of water for your family if at all possible. Also a way of treating water and filtering it.

2.  Have a minimum of 3 months worth of food. (It would be much better to have 1 years worth of    food though).


3.  Have a method and equipment and fuel to cook and to heat your home.


4.  Have medical supplies because hospitals and transportation to them will be shut down.


5.  Have a way to secure your home and provide security for your family.


6.  Have warm clothing and good shoes for walking and working in a garden.


7.  Know your neighbors and try to organize a way to help one another.


8.  Have garden seeds and equipment to garden and then know how to do it.


9.  Have equipment and tools to provide for your family without the use of electricity. (Such as hand operated can openers and ways to light candles or fires.)


10.  Have your spiritual life in order to help get you through the trying and difficult times.

There could be plenty of other things that would cause you to need and use most of the above list.  Loss of a job, a terrorist attack, a nuclear accident (look at what happened in Japan), a category 5 hurricane (Katrina), or a severe rash of tornadoes (Joplin, MO), or a war.  Look what happened even to the U.S.  during WWII with rationing and severe lack of many items.  We only had Hawaii attacked but it affected the whole country because we had to provide for our troops.  Lastly look at what happened in the 30's with the Great Depression and the collapse of our economy. 

Millions of people are affected and a large proportion of them are in danger of dying or being killed.  Our country and its people are spoiled rotten and will be at a total loss of what to do.  We need to prepare ourselves, our families, and spread the information to our neighbors and friends.  That doesn't mean we will have to help everyone but it does mean we have the responsibility to inform those we know of what could happen and how important it is for them to take responsibility for their own safety and sustenance.  Many articles on my blog and many others as well as youtube are great for information and instruction on what to do and how to do it.  Please take this seriously and do whatever you can afford to do to protect your family with preparedness food, water and supplies.


I pray none of the above ever happens and that we will dodge the bullet so to speak, but with our society so vulnerable to so many things that could happen, I for one want to do all I can to prepare for my family's survival.    God helps those that help themselves.....

Stretching the foods we have......

I just finished watching a youtube video by SurvivalEngineering,  he made some simple but great points about stretching foods to make your more expensive foods like meats, canned meals, soups etc stretch at least twice as far.  He is so right and it is something I have done many times and I would like to give some examples here for those that read my blog. 

Start off by making a big pot of dried kidney beans or black beans or pinto beans and serve over rice which you should make extra of as well.  Season your beans the way you like them and add some fat like salt pork, bacon or canned ham to them if possible.  Then for your second main meal you make a fried rice with some of the beans and the meat picked out of the beans and rice.  Third meal will be Spaghetti marinara and the fourth meal will be chili with the left over spaghetti sauce and beans serve this with a big pan of corn bread.  The fifth meal will be minestrone or fagioli soup made with most of the leftovers of the week.  Serve cornbread croutons with this soup.  Any leftover cornbread can be dried and put with bread ends to make stuffing for the following week. 
The next week you will make a stuffing and canned chicken casserole and with any leftovers from this you can add cream of mushroom soup and make a creamy casserole instead of the dry one and add rice to the meal and it will be filling and delicious.  Try taking a head of cabbage, shred half of the head up and make a coleslaw with half of the shredded cabbage to serve with red beans and rice.  Second night you make a stir fry with the other half of the shredded cabbage and the beans and some canned chicken, or eggs, or nuts.  Carrots are always great added to stir fry's if you have them fresh or dried.  Third night stew the other half of the head of cabbage  up with onion and carrots and potatoes serve like a New England boiled dinner add meat if you have any to it.
Fourth night you make a big pot of soup with the leftovers and serve with Cornbread or just bread and peanut butter. Fifth night make a rice casserole with any leftovers of soup or cabbage and of course with a pot of rice, you can add soup mixes or canned soup to the casserole to make it more hearty if you are low on leftovers.

Potatoes are also a filling starch that can stretch a meal.  Instant dry potatoes can be made into potato pancakes to be served with applesauce and some scrambled eggs. Potato salad can be the main course of a meal with boiled eggs in it or with some canned shrimp added to it.  Save the juice from the canned seafoods and meat that you open to add to casseroles and soups for later in the week.
A big mound of mashed potatoes can carry a gravy made from a little bit of meat served with a can of vegetables will make a satisfying meal.  A 1/4 lb. of ground beef or sausage or chopped pork can stretch to feed four people in a white gravy. 

One 5 ounce can of tuna can be added to a can of cream of mushroom soup and thinned with reconstituted milk to be an ala king dish to serve over biscuits or bread or toast. This can feed up to four as well. Make sure there is enough biscuits or bread this is really good with the addition of a can of peas.

If you want to make breakfasts with food storage don't forget pancakes are a great source that is filling and satisfying.  You don't even have to have syrup.  You can use the juice from a can of fruit to make a delicious syrup by adding some sugar and boiling it until it is dissolved and thicken with a little cornstarch slurry.  Then the fruit can be used for dessert that night or with yogurt or cottage cheese made from your dry milk for lunch. Another hearty breakfast is oatmeal which you can add fruit, dried fruit or just brown sugar and instant dry milk.  A favorite breakfast of mine since I lived in Scotland for 2 years was  to heat a can of pork and beans and serve over toast. This is tasty and can be made with leftover white beans from bean soup by just adding tomato sauce or ketchup and a little sugar.

There are a thousand ideas that could be used to stretch food but the most important ideas are those that use your foods to make different things in creative ways and never to waste food.  If you have no power then use a rocket stove or a solar oven to cook your foods and then when you have finished eating cool the foods to room temperature and keep in a cooler outside in the winter or in an unheated space.  A solar oven can be used as a cooler in the summer if you point it toward the darkest part of the sky with no trees over it.  Also you can use an evaporation cooler which is a clay pot inside of a clay pot with wet sand in between the pots and keep them in the coolest place you can find with a wet cloth over the top.

Don't forget that appetite fatigue can become a real problem.  You don't want to become totally disinterested in food after a short time because you are having nothing but plain rice and cooked dried beans.  There are many ways to fix these things that will make them seem like they are not the ordinary beans over rice.  There are also many different kinds of beans that will be a different look and flavor that will help.  I have black eyed peas, lentils of various colors, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, split peas of yellow and green varieties, kidney beans, lima or butter beans and garbanzo beans.  There are other types but they are a little harder to find and more expensive.   Rice can be made into casseroles, fried chinese style, flavored with soups or gravies, put into soups, mixed with TVP or lentils to make burgers, or made into a hot cereal which you would serve with milk and sugar.  You can add seasonings and make it yellow rice or spanish rice.  You can serve it under soups or creole, you can add seafood and make a gumbo.  Look in your various cookbooks for rice recipes, I think you will be surprised.  There is also rice pudding you can make with food storage. 

Don't get discouraged about not having a huge amount of money to buy the expensive freeze dried or dehydrated foods in the number 10 cans.  You can do much with rice, beans, corn I have popcorn in 50 lb. bags, flour and/or wheat and the staples like canned meats (such as ham, tuna, chicken, spam, treet, roast beef, shrimp, clams, etc.)  canned vegetables and fruits and dried milk, oats, powdered eggs, sugar, salt, herbs and spices. You will need oils and fats in your diet so stock up on olive oil or vegetable oil and shortening.  The only other thing it will take to complete your diet will be leavenings such as Baking Soda, Baking Powder, and yeast.  Try to make sure you have vinegar and or lemon juice in your pantry as well.  You can make your own breads (corn bread, yeast breads, biscuits, pie crusts and pancakes with flour, cornmeal and leavenings).

The thing you will need is a grain mill if you have wheat and corn stored for making breads.  I have a Country Living Grain Mill but there are other brands but make sure you get a corn and bean auger with your mill or buy a seperate one to mill the corn into meal or flour and you can stretch your wheat by grinding beans and rice as well to add to your flour.

The only things I suggest you get for your food storage from the internet or a LDS cannery is the wheat, powdered eggs, oatmeal, and dry milk.  Most everything else you can get from your local stores, watch for the sales and markdowns, and from the warehouse stores for the flour, rice, sugar, salt and seasonings.  They also have decent prices on canned chicken, noodles, and grits. I am from the south so we like grits which is really cheap and filling to serve for breakfast or with dinner.  They are good with butter buds, cheese powder, gravy or with sugar and milk.  You can also slice up the grits after they get cold and fry them after dipping them in beaten eggs to serve as a main course of breakfast. 

I hope I have given you some ideas and some hope for stretching your food storage as far as you can and with creativity and love your family will adapt easily as long as you don't serve the same thing made the same way over and over again.  I pray we will all survive with as little strain and hassle as possible.  God Bless.

Knowledge is priceless!

Saving information from the internet that we will need after a collapse or catastrophe seems like a huge and unending job.  There is a wealth of information that will be invaluable to those who will be true survivors after we lose our internet abilities or power in the future.  I have always felt that when I found good and sound directions, plans, lists, how to's in general or specific for special projects that I should print them out and put them into loose leaf notebooks. I also have lots of recipes and how to's for food production, harvesting, preservation and cooking in loose leaf notebooks,  Since I have never made cheese I felt I should have directions for it, but most importantly how to make certain cheeses from dry milk or instant non-fat dry milk.  Books in today's world are numerous and accessible locally and from Amazon and many other sources. The internet is full of books online or e-books.  I believe after losing several books I had purchased and downloaded to my computer and then having my computer crash and losing the hard drive that e-books may be fine for fiction but when you want information that you can keep to help you after an apocalypse your best bet is to have the books in hard copy version. That means you will need to order a book or print the book out and put it in a loose leaf binder. 

Knowledge will be one of the most important skills when things are really bad.  Libraries are great resources but when cities go broke they will be closing the Libraries and many cities already have. Few people have books that tell them how to plant a garden or how to take care of it.  What grows in your area?  What can you do to keep the soil healthy?  Do you have all the knowledge you need to build a solar food dehydrator?  Do you know how to safely can/bottle your harvest or the meats you grow or can trap or hunt?  Do you even know how to butcher that deer that you may get?  What organs should you keep to eat?  What organs would you keep for the domestic animals/pets to eat?  Do you know how to build a rocket stove? Or a haybox retained heat cooker?  Can you build a solar oven?  Do you know how to place an outhouse on your property to keep your well safe for drinking?  Do you know how to build an aluminum can heater for the house you live in?  Most of us have seen some of these things on the net or on youtube but will we remember how to do all these things when it comes time to do or die?

My reference library is not as organized as I would like but I know what information I have and can look through my binders and find the article fairly quickly.  If I could encourage you to do anything constructive it would be to build your survival library in book or binder formats.  Do not keep your information on CD's and on your hard drive and expect to be able to access it when you want it. We don't know when we will lose power due to not having money or having the powers that be shutting down coal fired power plants we will be without the computers that we are so dependent on.  So let's make sure that our most valuable information is not only on the internet or a hard drive, and NO the backup services that you can buy will not be of any help. 

I have listed many sites, articles and blogs on my site here that could be a start for you to go to and print the info for your own binders.  By the way I buy all my binders at thrift stores for approximately 50 cents a piece.  The toner for my printer is the most expensive part of the process.  Paper does go on sale as well as the toner.  You can get your toner cartridges from services that take your old ones and sell you rebuilt and filled with new toner for discount prices. 

My feeling about this subject is that knowledge will be the most important tool you will be able to get now and it will be second only to water and food.  I believe that you will be able to trade things you can make for things you need.  For instance if you can build rocket stoves or solar ovens or solar dehydrators think of what trading advantage you will have with others needing these things or needing to know how to build them themselves.  I hope to be able to trade for seafood since we live within 3 miles of the James River and close to the Chesapeake Bay as well.   I think that by helping our neighbors to survive by having a rocket stove available for them to use will be a free item that could help and create good will.  Trapping squirrel, rabbit, and other small wild animals will be many peoples only meat.  Fish will be about the easiest protein to get in our area.  We have no deer nearby but since we can walk to areas to get fish and crab we will be able to trade for fish or fish ourselves.  Everyone needs to think of the available resources where they are located and then get the information you may need to attain the edible foods for yourself.  I plan to plant an edible landscape that most people won't know is food.  Every area has their own foods that can be planted.  If you don't spray your plants with pesticides and herbicides you can eat Pansies, roses, nasturtiums, cabbages, lettuces, etc.  Check out a few books from the library and then copy the pages you need for your plants and area to cultivate.  If you live near the woods or in the country you can plant nettles, wild blackberry vines, and wild roses to harvest when they are in season.  Read, read, read, and then copy or buy books that will help you to accomplish what you need to do when the time comes. 

Just remember knowledge is as much of a survival tool as a hoe, shovel or a weapon.  But without knowledge some things will be out of your reach to accomplish.  So build your library and think of it as an investment in your survival future.

A Look Back!

A look back at how I have prepared for C-Day! (Collapse Day)  I started back in 1999 and then when Y2K fizzled I slowed down to a crawl and even stopped a lot of my prepping.  Don't get me wrong I didn't get rid of anything that I had acquired I just started living off of it.  My husband lost his job and we had to give our house up and eventually had to go bankrupt.  We moved into a rental and lived off the food storage that I had worked so hard to can and dehydrate as well as the rice and beans and canned veggies.  My son also had a similar story and he and his family also ate from our food storage.  We ended up using most of the food and as we used it I didn't replace it.  

Then a few years ago when our house value started dropping severely I started realizing that we needed to start prepping again and I started getting back on the net and studying what I needed to do again.  I refreshed my skills of canning and started canning.  I canned pear sauce and pear butter from free pears I got from friends.  Then I started going to farm stands and picking up bushels of string beans and tomatoes.  I made salsa, and tomato juice and canned tomatoes.  Then I started thinking about meat and every time chicken breasts went on sale I canned between 10 and 20 pounds of it.  That got to be scary thinking we may be living off of chicken and tuna only so I started buying large fresh pork roasts and canning them.  Next came the beef roasts, mind you I got the cheapest cuts possible such as chuck or round roasts then they were cut up to fit into the jars and canned.   The last meat I canned has been ground beef.  I learned a nifty way to do it from the lady on Homestead Acres and I am still canning this ground beef as I can find it on sale.  I tried canning ham and corned beef as well but the ham turns really dark when it is canned and it doesn't look very appetizing .  So I have bought about 40 12 oz. and 1 lb. cans of ham from Walgreens  when it has gone on sale for $2 a can.  I also bought their canned crabmeat and clams when they were on sale as well.  Corned beef I bought in cans from the commissary and Sam's Club but their price went up and now neither of them seem to carry it anymore around here.

My canned vegetables I bought when they were on sale for between 25 cents and 39 cents at the grocery stores as loss leaders.  I would buy the limit and go back every day during the sale for the limit again.  I also went many times to multiple stores and took my husband and granddaughter with me to buy their limit as well so I now have about 400 cans of a variety of vegetables.  Most of them are corn, creamed corn, string beans, and peas.  But about 175 cans of them are beets, limas, kidney beans, pork and beans, sauerkraut, spinach, black eyed peas and garbanzo beans of which I bought at about 50 to 65 cents.  I also have quite a bit of refried beans and some canned potatoes as well as many cans of whole or diced tomatoes, tomato sauce and paste.  I found many of my large cans of tomatoes for 88 cents and the 15 oz. cans for 45 cents at places like Big Lots and Ollies.  You need to be careful of the dates when buying from places such as these because some of the exp. dates will be within 6 months and that is why they get them cheap and sell them cheap.  But I do buy the short exp. date cans if I can use them in my kitchen pantry and use them up before the exp. date.   

The next group of items I have stocked up on was rice which I purchased at Sam's Club.  I got enough to feed 15 people for a year or two and also enough to make rice milk for those members of my family who are allergic to dairy.  I purchase 24 boxes of various Betty Crocker potato products such as scalloped, and au gratin for 40 cents a box after sale and with coupons.  I purchased a rice a roni type mix at savalot grocery for 49 cents a box and keep about 30 boxes on hand.  I also bought two cases of macaroni and cheese like Kraft makes for 25 cents a box.  I bought instant mashed potatoes when on sale at the commissary and got probably 100 lbs. of a variety of dried beans and lentils and peas from the commissary which I accomplished by buying 4 packages every time I went shopping over a year or so.  

Now for condiments, that was fun, I tried buying them a couple at a time as I went to the grocery and then I got into extreme couponing and started watching for rock bottom prices in June and July and saved my coupons and ordered many from Coupon Masters on the net.  I ended up getting almost all of my mustards, barbeque sauces, salad dressings, and ketchups for less than 15 cents each and some were free.  Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip style salad dressing  I got for about half price.  I did the same thing with jellies, jams, and preserves.  I couldn't get very good deals on steak sauces and Worcestershire sauce so I went to Dollar Deals which is a Dollar Tree store.  The sauces were $1 each.  Not bad considering many of these are $4 or more such as Heinz 57 or A1 Steaks.  Of course they are a generic brand but they taste very similar to the name brands.

Over the last few years I made several orders to Emergency Essentials and Honeyville for dehydrated foods and wheat berries when they were on sale.  I then kept reading that LDS Cannery was allowing non members to can foods and buy bulk grains and beans so I called and made an appointment and showed up.  They were very nice and helpful.  They taught me how to do it and even jumped in and helped.  Didn't take but about 2 hours for me to can 50 lbs of mashed potato flakes, 50 lbs. of oatmeal, 50 lbs. of non instant milk powder, 25 lbs. of Tang, 25 lbs of hot cocoa mix, and 50 lbs of onion flakes and 50 lbs of carrots.  I then bought bulk red and white hard winter wheat and bulk pinto beans.  I also bought a few cans of Navy Beans and Black Beans.  Of course all of their foods are dried and dehydrated and are not freeze dried but their prices were super reasonable compared to EE or Honeyville. 

As far as Coffee and Tea.  I have bought them both on sale 2 to 4 cans or boxes at a time when I find them on sale.  Sam's has large containers of Non Dairy Creamer which I buy 1 or 2 each time I go there.  The non Dairy Creamer will be used to make Dry milk creamier and a better consistency for drinking or cereal as well as for coffee.   I have bought Koolaid on sale for 10 cents a pack and stocked up on Lemonade or Pink Lemonade mostly but also got punch and grape and a few other flavors for a change of pace.  The Tang that has a 100% of Vit. C daily allowance will be kept for breakfast drink only to make the Tang last for as long as possible.  If someone catches a cold they will be allowed 3 or 4 glasses a day.

As far as treats are concerned I have bought hard candies when they are on sale after Halloween and Christmas.  I have lots of mints, red hots and a variety of other candies.  I bought brownie mixes when they were on sale and used coupons.  But I think my best buy was when I happened on Betty Crocker cake mixes at the commissary for 65 cents on sale and they had coupons and there were no limit on what you could buy.  It ended up costing me 32 cent a box and I bought 27 boxes of German chocolate, fudge and yellow cake mixes.  Now I have to find the recipes to turn these into cookies and snack cakes so that I don't have to make just cakes from them.  We are not really fond of eating cake with frosting but do enjoy a variety of desserts. I also have bought a large variety of jello and pudding mixes.  Puddings taste just fine with instant milk or non instant dried milk.  I was surprised at how good it tasted. 

I am now trying to buy jars of cheese whiz and nacho cheese.  I figure they will last longer than fresh cheese in my food storage.  I have some Cheddar Wheels that are waxed that should last for years in the refrigerator.  I guess it will just get sharper with age. 

I have many other foods such as condensed soups, home canned soups, chili, corned beef hash, sardines, and a good quantity of Salmon.  I have about 400 cans of chunk light tuna because it is a favorite of our and versatile.  Of course since they are 5 ozs. each they will go pretty quickly if our extended family is with us after the collapse.  I also have a few packages of dry soups and couscous.   I got a really good deal of canned spaghetti sauces in many different flavors.  I bought about 50 cans at about 69 cents a piece.  I also have lots of spaghetti, rotini, macaroni, penne, fettucini, etc.   and also egg noodles.

I have 45 lbs of grits which we like for breakfast and we use it with seafood and it is even good with cheese added to it to serve as a starch with a meal like chili or with ham.  I bought several cases of ravioli which I got for 59 cent a can.  I figured they would be good for times when we can't do more than heat food slightly.  In a pinch you can eat them cold and you don't need water to fix them.

My canned fruit is a variety from #10 cans of apple slices and banana slices to 1 pound cans of peaches, pears, pineapple, and  fruit cocktail.  I also have a good supply of raisins, cranberries, dates, and prunes in dried forms. 

I have not mentioned some other things in my storage.  200 lbs of bread and all purpose flour, 400 lbs. of sugar, 300 lbs. of salt and lots of very large plastic bottles of spices.  I have approximately 6 large bottles of cinnamon ( Hubby and I are diabetic) so we use a lot of cinnamon.  I have Curry powder, cumin, Italian seasoning, oregano, basil, bay leaves, lemon pepper, chili powder, turmeric, paprika,  Steak rubs, and chicken rubs, cayenne, garlic, and some others I can't think of right now.  I also have 2 gallon bottles of black pepper.   I have 6 lbs. of yeast and large bags of baking soda and a large jar of baking powder.  I have 6 pints of vanilla and many smaller jars and bottles of less used spices, herbs and flavorings.  Also I have about 5 lbs. of chicken bouillon cubes and 5 lbs of beef bouillon cubes.

I know this sounds like an awful lot of food but I have 13 people in my household and extended local family.  I am the one in the family doing the food storage.  If anyone does come to stay with us long term they will be required to bring with them all their food from their homes as well as all their clothes, bedding, weapons, ammo, portable lights and batteries as well as portable radios, walkies, etc.

There is no way we can support everyone so everyone has to contribute, cutting wood, helping with the garden and fruit trees, helping with the rabbits, trapping squirrels and wild rabbits, fishing, purifying water.  Canning and dehydrating foods, washing clothes and hanging on the lines, trapping wild geese, I would try to domesticate the wild geese by clipping their wings and feeding them well.  Their fresh eggs would be very welcome.  At that point I don't care what the city will allow.  Someone in the group will be in charge of sprouting seeds and beans probably one of the children or a couple of them.  Someone else  will be in charge of filtering water and boiling it or treating it. I will be in charge of menu planning and probably most of the cooking.  I want to stretch the food as far as I can and still keep everyone fed well enough to keep them healthy.  I am the only one who can make bread at the moment so I will be teaching that skill to one of the other women or a couple of them so that they can share that load. I believe it will be quite a bit of work to keep everyone in bread, rolls and buns.  All dishes of course will be washed by hand and every member of the family will wipe their own dishes off and then wash them in a tub of hot soapy water and rinse them and put them in a drainer. Different people will have to take their turn at scrubbing pots, pan, and bowls.  Foods will have to be cooled to room temperature and then packaged and put into cooling jars or put in a winter cooler on the porch.  All this is if we don't have power anymore.  We have 180 kilowatts of PV solar power which will be for recharging computer, and phones if they work and lights and fans.  I will probably use either the Kitchen Mixer or bread machine to knead the bread for me to lighten that load but will bake the bread in the solar oven or box oven on the wood stove or grill.  All cooking will be done by several different methods, solar oven, wood stove in winter, rocket stove, propane grill, open fire (campfire) cooking, or buddy burner and hobo stove cooking.  Clothing will be washed in a large tub or in my wonder washer.  I will reserve the wonder washer for underclothes and light weight clothes like blouses shorts and the like.  They are not that sturdy to hold up to much washing of bed linens or jeans.  Pillow cases would do well in the wonder washer though.  

We live on 1 1/8th acre of land.  The buildings take up about a quarter of it or so and we will try to dedicate as much as possible to gardening or raising rabbits or captured geese hopefully.  I  hope that the gardens will produce properly.   With reports of droughts and strange weather around the country I do worry about it.  I will ask that everyone in the family put at least 1 full hour a day into weeding and picking off bugs.  The food grown in that garden will be worth its weight in gold.  The food I have will not last forever especially if have all 13 and maybe more in our home. We have 2600 square feet in our house and a one car detached garage and 2 good size sheds and one small tool shed.  I have thought of cleaning out the garage and putting screen door and windows in it for air flow and then putting some of the party out there to sleep at night if it seems safe enough with one or two people on guard to watch the garden at night.  I would hate to be almost ready to harvest and then have it all stolen by the lazy neighbors who won't grow a garden. 

As far as the neighbors go, I was thinking about asking them to grow gardens in their backyards if we till them for them and give them seeds.  Then they will have food for themselves and their families.  One of the reasons I have so much rice is so we can give the neighbors something to help them survive.  If they grow a garden of their own and have some rice they have a chance at least.  Maybe we can teach them to trap squirrels and rabbits.  There is also a good size group of raccoons in my neighborhood as well.  We live within walking distance of the river and some creeks so there should be crabs and fish available with the right persistence.  I know many will leave their homes and will probably die the first winter.  We live in a neighborhood with many older retired folk.  I know we can't take care of everyone so we will be concerned with our immediate neighbors on all sides of us which will be about 10 houses.  I imagine some of those will be abandoned by those going to stay with their families. We have a house across the street from us that is a Veterans Home.  There is 4 to 5 people there and they mostly are in their late 60's and 70's.  They are men who can't really be alone for health reasons or are recuperating from surgeries but don't need nursing just some ordinary home care.  The lady who cooks and cleans is trained to give CPR, regular first aid and to give the men their medication.  There is a younger man who is about 35 who stay there all night every night to watch over them in case of emergencies.   I would suppose that some of these men might be able to stand a watch early in the mornings or later in the evenings to help with security if we give them walkie talkies to use to alert us.  They have a full view of our front area and we could also watch their front area when they are resting.  Turn about fair play? Hopefully the neighborhood will work together if it is needed. 

As far a weapons go, we have our hunting guns and self defense weapons which I hope never to have to use.  We have enough ammunition and cleaning equipment.  I don't like to talk about the security side of our preparations.  That is not my department and my husband does not feel we should let the world know what we can or can't do to defend ourselves.  That is a taboo subject.  Subject closed.

Well, I hope this gives you an idea of our preparations.  Of course I left lots out like the camping gear we have and the candle storage as well as wind up radios and wind up lanterns and the flashlights and batteries and all the medical supplies as well as the many books to help us with our survival and medical needs as well as all the board games and cards for entertainment.  The three little kids 6,8, and 11 will be doing chores to stay busy and home schooling and then will have time for games and puzzles as well as reading.  hopefully the electronic equipment will be able to be used for watching movies once in a while.  We have one laptop that is put in a faraday cage along with many movies that are put away for the pleasure of the kids especially.  The changes will be hardest on them I believe.  They will see a side of the world they have never been aware of and have to adapt quite suddenly.  I hope to have a Sunday School for them and the adults that wish to attend each Sunday.  I have one hymnal and  many Bibles so I guess we could muddle through.  Prayer is always a comfort and singing is uplifting even if it is the old time songs or the children's songs. 

I will end this tome with this thought, with God's help and our earnest preparation of all that we can accomplish no matter to what extent it ends up being  when the collapse arrives we will not go down without heartily trying to survive to the best of our ability.  God bless everyone who reads this and may God protect us all during the dire times ahead.

Gram of:

 Gram's Survival Kitchen