January has been "Prep-uary" at our Place

We've been very busy this month with prepping-related projects.

• Hubby Dear and I cleaned and organized our storage room. It had collected a lot of odds and ends and, frankly, it was becoming a bit of a dump. I inventoried our long-term food storage and came up with a long list of items I need to buy. We've used some things that we need to replace. According to the food storage calculators, our family now consists of four adults and two children (children 7 and up are "adults" for food storage purposes), which means that I also need to increase the amount of food we store in general. 

Once we cleared out the clutter, it became apparent that we had used A LOT
of our food storage and never replaced it.

We also have a lot of canned goods that need to be eaten and restocked. Rotate, rotate, rotate! 

We still have some of the onions we grew last year left. They are stored in cheap pantyhose, which works
pretty well to keep them fresh and mold-free. You'll notice that a few of them have sprouted, though!

• Because of some health concerns that I have, I started following a Paleo diet back in December. I no longer eat grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, or refined fats. In other words, I can't eat most of our food storage! I hope that this way of eating will help resolve some of the problems I have as a result of chronic inflammation in my body, but it does provide a challenge to store food that meets the criteria of my diet. I'm brainstorming a list of Paleo-friendly foods to add to our storage and this is what I've come up with so far:  sprouting seeds, canned coconut milk, coconut oil, lard, nuts in the shell, and canned tuna and salmon. Anyone else out there who is both Paleo and a prepper? I'm curious to see how you handle this dilemma. 

• As I was organizing my storage room, I decided that my vintage, 1940s-era water bath canner had finally bit the dust. It is just too rusty and decrepit to use any more. Identical products on Amazon.com had very poor reviews - I guess they don't make granite ware like they used to - so I invested in a Victorio Stainless Steel Multi Use Canner.  This product can be used as either a water bath canner or steam canner and seems really sturdy. I've never steam canned before - have any of you? 

RIP, vintage water bath canner. You gave me (and others) years of good service.

• Hubby Dear and I ordered our seeds for the spring and bought the components of our DIY seed starting set-up. I am excited to share with you our plans for the year in an upcoming post. It won't be long before we'll be sowing broccoli, cauliflower, and kale indoors. 

Seeds, glorious seeds! So much promise is inside these packets. 

• I bought an assortment of homesteading books. Let's see if you can guess what kinds of things I am researching by a few of the titles: Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening, Keeping A Family Cow, and The Backyard Goat: An Introductory Guide to Keeping and Enjoying Pet Goats.

• Some friends of ours are downsizing due to job loss and health challenges. We bought a generator and some other homesteading paraphernalia from them, which served to help both of our families out. 

Our "new" 5500 W generator.

I did the math, and this generator will run one of our refrigerators and the furnace fan and that's it. It is definitely not a total solution to a long-term power outage, but it is a start. Now I need to stockpile some gas tanks, gasoline, and Sta-Bil.

Have you been celebrating "Prep-uary" at your house? Tell me what you've accomplished so far in 2013. :) 

January 2012 in Review and February Preps

January was a quiet month for me on the blog, but not so much at home. I have been so busy. Between my kids' homeschooling, extra-curriculars, and the normal insanity of having two toddlers (including one who is doing her best to give up her afternoon nap), life has been pretty nutty. Hubby Dear and I have also been going full-throttle with diet and and exercise, which has eaten up time I normally spent on the computer. My derriere is thankful for the change, however, and I've managed to lose 10 pounds in the last month!

Even though I didn't get time to blog, I most certainly worked on preps during the month of January.

1. Sales!

I hope many of you were able to take advantage of the sales at markdown.com and Honeyville Grains. I am very happy that I was able to stock up on both Tattler canning lids and freeze dried foods.

2. Reading, reading, and more reading

I read quickly through The Small-Scale Poultry Flock and have been mulling over all the interesting ideas it gave me for the role poultry can play on our homestead. Next, I bought a copy of The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way. Talk about wow. If you are interested in growing fruit organically, you've got to get your hands on this book! The focus of the book is building plant health, starting at the soil level and working up. It has me re-imagining the layout of our orchard and has piqued my interest in permaculture. I really can't recommend this book enough.

3. Miscellany

I socked away items like work gloves, bandannas, and safety pins.  These are all cheap, readily-available preps that could be important to have on hand in an emergency. Bandannas alone have countless uses.

4. Chicken business

Our chicks are due to arrive in early March. I spent a good portion of my prepping budget this month on various chicken paraphernalia.

Feed storage

I bought a couple of galvanized steel trash cans to store feed in and a couple of bales of pine shavings. Since I intend to use the deep litter method of manure management, I need mucho mas pine shavings.

Random chick stuff 

I also picked up the supplies I'll need for our chick brooder. Hubby Dear and I weighed out a variety of options (including crafting our own brooder out of a plastic storage bin), but for reasons of ease, the number of chicks we'll be brooding, and because I'm a total sucker for a so-called complete kit, we bought the Deluxe Brooder Starter Package from Randall Burkey.

The Deluxe Brooder Package from randallburkey.com 

You're supposed to have at least 1/2 a square foot per chick in your brooder. This set up will give me just about the right amount of space for the 17 chicks I'm expecting.

I also bought chick-sized grit, a bag of starter feed, and forage cakes. I'm glad that February always flies by so quickly because I am more than ready for my chicks to arrive!

Oh, and there's this little something that arrived via tractor trailer.

After some trial and error (including a dead lawn mower battery and creative use of a tire iron),
Hubby  Dear got the coop hitched up and moved it around to the back yard

This is an 8x8' chicken coop built by Horizon Structures. The delivery driver arrived after sunset one evening and decided that he couldn't make the turn into our driveway with his 75' long trailer. That meant he had to put the wheels on our coop and unload it directly on the country road we live on. Then he and I wrestled this nearly 1700 lb coop off the road and up enough of our hilly, rutted driveway to finally make it onto our yard. Hubby Dear, of course, was at work and missed all the fun. ;) The next day, he hitched up the coop to the lawn mower and moved it around back to take its place of honor in the chicken moat.

It was tricky business to get the coop positioned in the moat. It took many tries to get it right.

Horizon Structures is located in Pennsylvania and I... am not. Take a look at the amount of road dust that collected on the outside of the coop during the long journey to our home! It would have been better to buy locally, but I didn't have any luck finding something with the size and features I wanted.

In place and ready for action! Now we just need to finish the chicken moat.

This coop has a lot of upgrades, including an easy-clean glassboard floor, electrical package, and automatic chicken door. I'm pleased with the overall quality of construction, but was disappointed that the roof and paint got damaged during transport. Thankfully, Horizon Structures is not only sending me touch-up paint and extra shingles but also hiring a handyman to make it right. That's a business that knows how to treat its customers.

What's up for next month?

February Preps:

1. Books - You know I had to have more books on my list! Continuing the theme of permaculture, I plan to get (the unfortunately named, but useful) Gaia's Garden. I also find the concept behind Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day to be very intriguing. I make all of our bread, but the recipe I use for homemade pizza recipe takes long enough that I don't make it very often.

2. Chickens - I still need to get a few odds and ends for the chickens, namely a long, high-quality extension cord so that my coop can have power. We need to finish constructing the north wall of the chicken moat as well.

3. Orchard planning - Our apple trees and blueberry bushes will arrive in March. Ahead of that, I need to work on our plan and get some of the supplies that I can't find locally.

4. Garden - We are expanding our square foot garden next year and so we need to build a few more boxes and make more Mel's Mix.  

5. First aid preps - I have a huge list of items that I have yet to buy. I hope to make inroads on this.

6. Feminine products - After my ill-fated cloth pad experiment, I kind of abandoned this area of preparedness. Time to get back to it.


So that's me. Any big plans for February or accomplishments from January you'd like to share? 

What This Closet Prepper Got for Christmas

I am still "in the closet" about my prepping to my family and friends. I prefer it that way due to OPSEC concerns and to avoid the inevitable taunting. My dad and brother were discussing rifles at our family Christmas gathering. When I declared my interest in getting a rifle for shooting varmints, everyone got a look on their face like I had begun singing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" and performing the Can-Can right there in the living room. I hadn't even mentioned anything about zombies! Yes, indeed, it is much easier for me just to stay under the radar.

However, that doesn't mean I can't receive prepping-related presents from my relatives for Christmas! I have two Amazon.com wish lists. One is public and has items that even a supposedly wimpy, squeamish person like myself would want. My other wishlist is set up to be private. I use it to keep track of more "hardcore" prepping items that I want to remember to add to our gear but do not want to let the whole world know about.  I was fortunate enough to receive a selection of items from my public wishlist and I thought I'd briefly review each. You may want to add these to your own wish lists!


1. A Coffee/Spice Grinder





Neither Hubby Dear nor I are coffee drinkers, so I didn't get this for the first function. Once you grind spices in a coffee grinder, you wouldn't want to use the grinder for coffee, anyway, unless you like your coffee to have a kick! Whole spices last longer than ground ones do, so they are better for long term storage. This little gizmo will quickly grind whole spices into a fine powder. I got this primarily to turn our homegrown cayenne peppers into ground red pepper. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on that process.


2. A Galvanized Chicken Fount

Both of my in-laws grew up on farms that raised chickens for eggs. They don't have the fondest memories of chicken keeping and I think they are privately expecting our chicken experiment to crash and burn. Nevertheless they bought me this chicken waterer. That's what you call love.

And now for the books....

3. The Heirloom Life Gardener by Jere and Emilee Gettle

Many of you are familiar with Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. If you aren't, you should be! I truly admire the founder, Jere Gettle; how can you have anything but respect for someone who starts a groundbreaking seed company at the age of 17? When I found out that he had put out his own gardening book, I knew I had to have it.

Once I read it, however, I was a bit disappointed. Don't get me wrong. It is full of gorgeous pictures and it is an unintimidating introduction to gardening. I was sad for two reasons. First, it was written with such a bland voice. I am sure that anyone who wears the colorful duds that Jere Gettle favors is much more entertaining than this book lets on. (Do a Google search for him and look at the photos and see what I'm talking about!) Second, and most importantly, it just didn't have that much new information for me. It would look cute on my coffee table, but not get much use.

Here's my advice: just get the free Baker Creek catalog. Many of the photos and some of the text are reprinted there! If you are interested in more in-depth information, I prefer Seed to Seed for information on seed saving and All New Square Foot Gardening, Four-Season Harvest, Mini Farming, and The Resilient Gardener for general gardening info.

4. Chicken and Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 Recipes by Janice Cole

When my old college roommate read on Facebook that I was getting chickens, she recommended that I get this book. Since I love "city girl goes country" type memoirs, I thought this would be perfect for me and added it to my wish list. Chicken and Egg is a nice book, but I would classify it as mostly a cookbook with a bit of the author's life thrown in. The recipes look delicious and I'm sure to turn to this book once my 16 (!) prospective hens start laying. If you're looking for a true memoir, try The Dirty Life,which is one of the best books I read in 2011.

5. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch by Jennifer Reese

This book is based on a fun concept. What commonly store-bought foods are worth making yourself? Which should you have no guilt about purchasing? Jennifer Reese spent years perfecting recipes for items like Worcestershire sauce, Camembert, and tahini. This book reminds me of "Julie and Julia" - the movie, that is, not the book. (The movie was cute, but I do NOT recommend the book for those who are offended by foul language and loose morals. It made me feel dirty when I attempted to read it.)  I'm looking forward to trying some of the more obscure recipes in this book. I've made my own laundry detergent and grind my own wheat, so I guess this is the next logical step!

6. The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips

I'll admit that I was first attracted to this book because of the photo on the front cover. The author looks like my brother, a Deadhead and youthful-troublemaker turned responsible husband and father. That has nothing to do with apples or this book, but I thought I'd throw that in there! ;)

I had the chance to borrow the first edition of this book from our local library and I was immediately impressed. If you want to grow apples organically, this is a fabulous resource. The book I bought is the revised and expanded edition. It has color pictures and even more useful information. Hubby Dear and I will spend a lot of time pouring over this book and putting the information into practice.



7. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery

I saved the best for last. I love, love, love this book. It is certainly the most helpful chicken book I have read, and believe me, I've read them A LOT of them. It has color pictures and is full of very down-to-earth, detailed advice. It is the perfect book for those of us who are interested in self-sufficiency since it gives instruction on how to grow your own feed and breed your own chicks. This book and Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens are destined to be my go-to guides on chickens.


Did you get or give any prepping-related gifts this Christmas? 

The Money Saving Mom's Budget: A Review

I was really excited to be given an advance copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budgetby Crystal Paine, the author of MoneySavingMom.com. Crystal's blog is one of my favorites. I have saved a ton of money over the past few months by following tips I've found on her website, so I knew that her book would have to be dynamite. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint.

This book isn't another collection of money saving strategies, though you will certainly find plenty of those here. Crystal has seven rules to financial success and only two of those directly relate to couponing and cost cutting. The rest of the book will help you set goals, create a written budget, and live well on a small income. If this sounds a little bit like something my hero, Dave Ramsey, would espouse, you are correct. The section on couponing is extremely easy to understand, even for the mathematically challenged. And even though the topic of finances can be dull, this book was fun to read and full of great examples from everyday life.

Let's face it: everyone can stand to save a little money. This book can definitely help you make the right choices for your family's budget and help free up some cash to devote to preparedness. Remember, if you don't have your finances in order, you're not truly prepared. (I did a series of posts on this subject, in case you missed it. ;)

The Money Saving Mom's Budget is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and will be on sale everywhere on January 10. Crystal is giving all her proceeds from this book to Compassion International, an outstanding charity that our family also supports. Check them out!

October in Review and November 2011 Preps

Is it just me or did October go by in the blink of an eye? I can hardly believe it is November and that Christmas is just around the corner. 

I don't feel like I did very much to prep this month. I bought a few new books to add to our survival library and added some odds and ends to our food storage (another gallon of oil and a few canned goods) but that's it. Hmm... I'll have to do better in November! 

I did have my first successful culinary experience with a Sun Oven.It makes me feel a lot more secure to know that I can bake bread without electricity - assuming that the sun is shining!

We also harvested the last tomatoes and peppers of the year. Both of the methods we are using to ripen green tomatoes are working well. It feels luxurious to have so many delicious tomatoes on hand when it is so cold outside.

Last, but certainly not least, we completed our chicken moat. I've wanted chickens for at least five years and I'm so excited that I finally get to buy chicks this spring! 

For November:

• We still need to plant the seed garlic we bought last month. Gotta get that in the ground soon.
• Our three pecan trees are due to be shipped soon so we'll be planting them as well.  
• I plan to process my pie pumpkins and freeze the pulp. The last of our cayenne peppers should finish drying this month and I'm planning on grinding them up for ground red pepper. We shall see if I can accomplish both of those objectives without chopping off any body parts or suffering wicked chile burns. 
• I've been using a borrowed Sun Oven for my solar oven experiments. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy one of my own. It is definitely an investment, but I think it is worth it. Yes, I've had some less than successful experiments, but I'm finally figuring out how to make the Sun Oven work for me. 
• I plan on taking advantage of the holiday sales to stock up on food storage items. I'm going to focus on chocolate chips, brownie mixes, sugar, flour, and other baking items. 
• Speaking of baking, I have a problem that I need your help with. It's time for another "Ask the Readers" post. Stay tuned for that later this week.

How did you prepare in October? What are your plans for this month? 

Adding to My Survival Library

I've been actively preparing for well over a year now and my list of things to get and to do never seems to get shorter. It gets overwhelming when you realize just how much stuff it would take to survive a major societal collapse - or even a minor one, for that matter. I recently finished reading James Wesley Rawles' Patriotsand the protagonists in that book have an insanely tricked out survival retreat. It makes me feel more than a little inadequate!

The best I can do is set purchasing priorities and see them through. Number one on my list is food storage. We should have our year's supply by the end of 2011. Number two is information - books, resources printed off the Internet, etc. on all sorts of survival topics. The books are helping me plan my future purchases and they would be an invaluable asset in any sort of long term disaster. I think of them as a kind of Noah's Ark of information.

Part of our survival library

I prefer actual, physical books. You'll never see me breaking out a Nook or Kindle. It's not my style and in a grid down situation, you may lose access to the precious knowledge contained in an e-book. I suppose the best case scenario would be to buy both a physical copy/copies of an essential book and to also have an electronic version.

I'm collecting books in a variety of categories:

Gardening
Canning/Preserving
Food Storage Cookbooks
Animal Husbandry
Defense
"Hardcore" Survival Topics (ie. Foraging, Trapping, etc.)
Traditional Skills
Medicine

At this point, I've pretty well gotten the first three categories taken care of. Since Hubby Dear is a medical professional, I'm not too worried about the last category, either.

Here's what I added to the library this month:

1. Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle This book contains bits and pieces of all the "Storey's Guide to Raising..." books about these particular animals. I wasn't very impressed. I have and love the Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens because it is very, very thorough. Barnyard in Your Backyard? Not so much. I should have just bought the complete Storey's Guides for each of the animal species. 
2. The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It A beautiful book. Inspiring and packed with lovely illustrations. 
3. The Chicken Health Handbook If my hypothetical chickens get sick, I will be prepared. More than you ever wanted to know about chicken ailments. 
4. SurvivorsThis is John Wesley Rawles' sequel to Patriots. I liked Patriots OK. I am about 80 pages into Survivors and it is driving me crazy! Ever seen a kid with ADHD hopped up on too much sugar?This book reminds me of that; it flits between so many different people that there is no narrative "flow". Please tell me it gets better!

What are your "Must Haves" for your library? Are you buying e-books or paper copies?  

"Where There Is No Doctor": A Review

Over the past few months I've used my prepping budget to build up our survival library. As promised, here's the first of many book reviews I'll be sharing.
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Have you seen the show on the Discovery Channel called "Dual Survival"? It pairs Cody Lundin, a barefoot, New Age hippy, with Dave Canterbury, a no-nonsense army vet. The most interesting part of the show is the dynamic between two extremely different people as they work together to survive in extreme scenarios.

Hubby Dear and I are a bit like that, I guess. He's extremely no-nonsense. I'm full of nonsense, which in this analogy makes me the hippy of the relationship. Hey, I do like granola.

One of the "dual"aspects of our relationship is that Hubby Dear is a physician and I... am not. We both took a look at the Hesperian Foundation's Where There Is No Doctor and we'll give you our separate perspectives on it.

Where There is No Doctor is often recommended. But is it really worth
adding to your survival library?

The Harried Homemaker's Take:

If you're looking for a book to learn about first aid or some at-home remedies for common medical ailments, this is probably not what you're looking for. This book was written as a handbook for aid workers and/or villagers in third world countries. I'd like to hope that the USA's medical infrastructure will always be around, but if it isn't, this book would become useful.

It covers basics like hygiene and nutrition - things we all learn in grade school here in the USA. It also gives basic instructions for childbirth, treating dehydration, setting broken bones, etc. Nothing is covered in depth, but it would be a useful starting point if you are truly without access to medical care. It is written in very simple language so that anyone should be able to understand it.

In short: this book isn't a substitute for routine care by a medical professional, but it could be useful in extreme, SHTF scenarios.

Hubby Dear's Take:

This book has an excellent breadth of topics, and it goes into a good amount of detail on a number of them. It covers things as basic as first aid, to ailments of specific organs/organ systems (e.g., the eye, the skin), to delivering children. Although as a family physician I do these things on a regular basis, I always have my trusty medical supplies with me in a controlled environment. This book gives ideas on how to handle these problems with common objects and under less than ideal conditions.

The authors of this book definitely have their own viewpoints on medicine, with some of which I agree, while with others I do not. For example, they are very much against the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in our culture. As a daily combatant in the war against the overuse of these medications, I appreciated their emphasis and explanations on this subject. However, they also are very much in favor of easy access for abortions, which I very much oppose. This really did not detract from the useful information in the book, though.

One somewhat minor point that I would like the authors to correct in any future editions would be in relation to the dosing of medications for pediatric patients. In general, we use weight to dose children, not age. All of the dosing in the book is by age. I think both should be there, with weight as the default if the child's weight is available. It's just more accurate and significantly decreases the possibility of overdosing or underdosing.

Overall, this book would be very useful to have in a situation where professional medical care is not easily available, whether that be in a far away village or during a TEOTWAWKI situation.

----------
Another dual aspect to this book is that you can buy it... or not.

The Hesperian Foundation makes this book available for free download on its website. Click here if you are interested in doing that.

We chose to buy a copy from Amazon.com because:
A) I don't feel comfortable keeping important survival literature only in a digital format 

and

B) It is easier and almost as cheap (by the time you add up printer ink and paper) to go ahead and buy the book rather than print it out on my own.


Didn't Hubby Dear do a good job with his inaugural post on the blog? Maybe if I'm really nice he'll agree to do a guest post or two.  :) Do you have any topics related to medicine that you'd be interested in seeing on the blog?

Reaction to Doomsday Preppers, Month Thirteen in Review and July Preps

I hope you all got a chance to watch "Doomsday Preppers" on Monday night. I enjoyed the show a lot and was pleasantly surprised it didn't have more of a "preppers are crazy" slant. Not that it was perfectly balanced and truthful, mind you. Read the Survival Mom's take on her appearance on the show if you haven't already. Some things (such as the night delivery of food storage) were staged by the production company and/or edited for dramatic effect. If you wanted to watch the show but don't have the National Geographic Channel, here ya go. (If you're reading my blog in a feed reader, you may have to come to my actual blog site to get the YouTube box to show up.)







What I accomplished in June:

1. A whole lot of gardening. Gardening may be work, but it is so rewarding to reap the rewards from your efforts. We ate all of our radishes. Our lettuce and salad mix keeps producing and has yet to turn bitter. We've also been eating regular English peas and pod peas all month, though they are pretty much done. I made a few pickled beets from The Thinker's crop and they were d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s! The Thinker also provided us with cabbage that I made into bierocks. Who knew homegrown cabbage was that much better than store-bought? It had such a delicate flavor and super-crisp texture.

Time to make hay while the sun shines!

2. Got a dehydrator and experimenting with drying garden produce and herbs. We bought an Excalibur 9 Tray Dehydrator and a ParaFlexx Non-Stick Drying Sheet (Yes, only one for now. I want to try it out on some fruit leather before I buy enough sheets for all my trays.) The only thing I have dried thus far is oregano, but I know I'll be giving it quite the workout over the next few months. I'll post more reviews as I try other applications.

3. Stocked up on canning supplies. I did go ahead and buy 6 dozen Tattler Reusable Canning Lids. I haven't needed to use them, so I can't really give an opinion about them yet. I did happen to buy some for my mom for Mother's Day (We're a practical family, can you tell?) and she seems to like them. I really need more jars, but they weren't in the budget this month.

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

4. A bit more food storage, of course. I got some bottled lemon juice for canning purposes, a case of dry milk, and some spices.

5. First Aid. I picked up another box of nitrile gloves. I really was intending to buy more in this category, too, but you'll see that I spend the remainder of my budget on #6.

6. Added to our Survival Library.  I love books, real books. You won't find me anywhere near a kook Nook or Kindle. I selected these titles to add to our Survival Library:

• The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times
• Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: 3rd Edition (Storey's Guide to Raising Series)
• Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
  

Reviews are forthcoming. I have a review of Where There Is No Doctor that I'll post as soon as Hubby Dear finishes his contribution. Yes, Hubby Dear will finally get his say on my blog. :)

Oh, and the book about chickens? Let's just say there's something called a chicken moat in our future...

7. Hubby Dear and I also did a massive de-cluttering and reorganization of our storage room. We dropped off the kids for a weekend of candy-fueled hyperactivity with Grandma and completely filled our van with items to donate.

After: Glorious Floor Space!

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but it was bad. The middle of the room was pretty much covered with stacks of buckets and pieces of disused furniture.

Buckets tucked out of the way

Now the buckets are tucked underneath the stairs with my water storage. The process of taking everything out of the storage room helped me to update our inventory spreadsheets. Now we have a very good idea just what we have and what we need to purchase.

8. I also learned how to make yogurt from dry milk and had waaaaaay too much fun doing it. I've become such a food storage dork! Click here to read how to do it. It's easy and it really works.


JULY PREPS:

I have changed my prepping plan for July about five or six times already. Originally, I had intended to split my budget between several categories (defense, first aid, food storage, and miscellaneous). Then I started watching the Sun Oven videos posted by Crystal from EverydayFood Storage.Net and so I wanted to buy one of those. I still do want to buy a Sun Oven and everything else on my list, but I feel Spirit's whispering to me to finish our food storage. It's never a good idea to ignore the Holy Spirit (remember what happened to Jonah?), so I think July will be one of those mega-food storage months.

1. Add to our long term food storage. We're getting much closer to having a year's supply!
2. Try to find an aloe plant. Not really food storage (though some people drink aloe juice), but something good to have on hand.
3. Keep up in the garden.
4. Eat, can, freeze, or dehydrate our garden produce. Stock up on canning supplies.

What did you do to prepare in June?

Month Twelve in Review and Month Thirteen Prepping Plan

I don't know about you, but the current events of the last month have really encouraged me to keep prepping. I've been only at this for a year and I feel even more fired up about preparedness than I did a year ago. I hope you all have made strides in your family's preparedness over the past month. Here's what I did:


Month Twelve in Review:

1. Added more $ to our BOBs/at-home emergency fund. It wasn't much, but I did put some of the cash left over from our vacation in our BOBs.  Even small amounts add up if you're a consistent saver!

2. Finished up the "leftovers" from Month Eleven.  I bought another case of toilet paper (I think we have about eight months worth at the moment) and got my improvised Bucket Berkey water filter.

3. Bought some additional preparedness and food storage-related books for our home library.

I bought Where There Is No Doctor, Where There Is No Dentist, Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, and the SAS Survival Handbook

Combined with the books I bought last month, I have a ton of great reference material. I'll be posting reviews of all the books over the next month.

4. We continued to build our food storage. We bought 15 more pounds of honey and some more evil (but occasionally useful) shortening at Sam's, but mostly I spent my budget at Honeyville Grain and Emergency Essentials. I added more vital wheat gluten, freeze-dried veggies, split peas, barley, lentils, black and kidney beans, and freeze-dried fruit. We finally have a year's worth of legumes for our family. Whew! At least there's one item I can check off the list.

5. We were very busy in the garden. We weeded and planted, but didn't need to water very much due to all the severe weather! We're enjoying the fruits of our labor and can't wait for that first ripe tomato!

6. Enjoyed a safe vacation with my family. Disney World was fun, but there is no place like home.
 
 
My goals for June include:
 
1. Getting a dehydrator and experimenting with drying garden produce and herbs.

2. I want to stock up on canning supplies. I need more jars and I want to try out those reuseable canning lids.

4. More food storage, of course. Also some first aid items, as my budget permits. 



What preparedness projects do you have planned for this summer?

My Review of "Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens"

Image from Amazon.com

I don't know how you made your entry into the realm of preparedness, but for me, it started with someone on a homeschooling forum sharing a link to Food Storage Made Easy. (BTW, did you see they posted my Baked Oatmeal recipe last week? I feel so famous, he he! ;) One thing led to another and over the course of five or six months, I morphed into a full-fledged prepper. I downloaded charts and copied lists of prepping essentials. I scanned articles on blogs, websites, and any other sources I could get my hands on. I became a woman possessed with prepping.

Did I learn a lot by doing my own research? Yes, indeed. I was one motivated momma and, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I really enjoy this whole prepping business.

But what if you're just beginning a journey toward preparedness and you don't know where to start? Or maybe you want to share your knowledge with a friend or family member in an easy, unintimidating package? Have I found the book for you!

I recently checked out a copy of Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison. How I wish I had gotten this book a year ago! It contains a wealth of information for beginning preppers.

The author describes her OAR System, which stands for Organize, Acquire, and Rotate. She gives some ideas on how to find space for food storage, deciding what you need to store, as well as ways to use your food storage. Although it isn't as extensive as Peggy Layton's Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook, there are some useful recipes as well as some handy fresh/dry food equivalency and substitution charts. The author even inspired me to try making cheese from some of our powdered milk. I'll let you know how that goes!

In this book you'll find easy-to-understand information on storing water, bugging out, car kits, and dealing with a power outage, to name just a few of the topics. There's also a section on preparing for emergencies like tornadoes, pandemics, tsunamis, etc.

The Pros and Cons of this Book:

Is Just in Case a preparedness encyclopedia? No. You won't find instructions on how to raise rabbits, grow wheat, or set up a solar panel array. That is part of the reason why this is such a good introductory book - it is completely non-intimidating for newbies.  It is not the only book you should have in your survival library, but it is a fabulous place to start.

The biggest peeve I have with this book is that it doesn't provide a list of resources for further reading. Just in Case will whet your appetite to learn more but it leaves you on your own to find resources that go in further depth. For that, I recommend How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It by James Wesley Rawles. That book covers some different topics than Just in Case and also provides an extensive list of recommended reading.

All in all, if you're a beginning prepper or have someone you'd like to "convert", I'd definitely recommend this book.