Month Eleven in Review and Month Twelve Prepping Plan

April was nuts around here. I fell a bit behind on the prepping front because I was so busy with the odds and ends of ordinary life. Let's see what I may or may not have gotten accomplished:

1.Add more cash to our BOBs/at home emergency stash.  Nope, didn't do this. No excuses, really. I just forgot about it.

2.Craft our own water filter using food safe buckets and ceramic filter elements. Didn't do this either. I ordered parts from an online seller, but they haven't shipped yet. It looks like there's a bit of a wait for Berkeys and Berkey elements since the disaster in Japan. This will hopefully get done next month.

3. Stock-up on some more can openers. This I did. Thanks to all the readers who chimed in on my post about can openers. I went ahead and bought a Swing-A-Way Can Opener

This is the kind we had when I was a kid. I was disappointed to see that it is made in China nowadays, but it worked well. It's basically identical to my Oxo Good Grips Can Opener, but the handle you turn to open the cans is metal, not plastic. I also took Bitsy's advice and bought some P-38 can openers.

Using the P-38 can opener

I was concerned that my legendary lack of mechanical prowess would prevent me from figuring out how to use it, but it's pretty intuitive. Quick(ish), easy, portable, and cheap - I'd definitely recommend stocking up on these. I also bought an additional lid lifter/bung wrench. (I always giggle when I say "bung wrench". Am I the only one with a juvenile sense of humor?)

4. Buy some garden seeds for long term storage. Yup, did this. My can of survival seeds is safely stored in the back of my extra refrigerator. In a couple of years, I'll probably buy another can for back-up purposes and store it elsewhere.

5. Continue building our food and oh-so-important toilet paper supplies. Not so much. I have restocked what we've used up and bought some freebies with coupons, but haven't bought anything significant. I'll just roll that over to next month as well.

6. Gardening. Hubby Dear's War on Rodents (WoR) has been extremely successful. The death toll stands at 11 mice and 1 vole. Inspired by reading Patriots, my suggestion was to display the corpses around the edge of the garden and post a sign reading "Garden Looters and Thugs". Hubby Dear somehow didn't think that was a good idea.

We've had a few radishes and lettuce to eat from our garden. Everything we've planted since the WoR is doing great. It won't be long before we'll be planting tomatoes and peppers. I'm excited - summer is going to be huge.

7. I picked your brains for ideas on preparedness on a road trip. I'll be implementing your suggestions soon.

8. I have used my new NutriMill several times to grind flour for bread and pancakes. I certainly enjoy the convenience of an electric grain mill. It is totally worth the noise and sore ear drums.

9. Speaking of birthday presents, my brother got me a gift card to Barnes and Noble and I used it to buy three books for our library: Patriotsby James Wesley Rawles of Survival Blog fame, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, and Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. I've really only delved into Patriots thus far, but I'll review them all on the blog at some point.

For Month Twelve - my one year anniversary of prepping:

1. I'd like to get more $ for our BOBs/in-home emergency fund.

2. I'm going to buy some additional preparedness and food storage-related books for our library.

3. We'll continue to build our food storage. I'd like to get some more legumes and dried fruits and vegetables, as well as miscellaneous grocery items. I also sat down and calculated the exact amount of ingredients it would take to make bread for our family for a year. We already have enough for a plain, basic type of bread, but need to buy more vital wheat gluten, potato flakes, and honey for our favorite recipe.

4. Finish up the "leftovers" from Month Eleven.

5. Continue to keep our garden growing and garden looters and thugs firmly repelled.

6. Enjoy a safe vacation with my family.

Month Ten in Review and Month Eleven Prepping Plan

I feel so accomplished. Hubby Dear and I really got a lot done around the homestead this month.

1. I upgraded my EDC. BTW, thanks for all the great comments and ideas. The stuff some of you all carry around is quite impressive. 
2. Our Food Storage Blitz Month was quite successful. It's such a nice feeling to know that we wouldn't have to go hungry during an emergency or job loss.  
3. We did a ton of work in the yard. Literally, we moved a ton of materials into our garden, a few bags at a time. First, Hubby Dear finished filling all 19 of our garden boxes with Mel's Mix. This was a major undertaking, especially since we had to drive 50 miles each way to get the materials and could only fit a certain amount in the ol' mini-van. I think we exceeding the load limit a few times.
   
   

   

   The boxes - filled with Mel's Mix and grids in place

We're also nearly done putting down pea gravel to cover the pathways between the boxes.
   
 



The grids are optional, but handy. The larger areas are where we're planting
 pumpkins. Radishes, lettuce, and peas are in the smaller boxes.


We planted radishes, peas (sugar snap and shelling), lettuce (both a romaine and leaf lettuce mix), cabbage, strawberries, and onions.



The Thinker's radish seedlings.

We also added a few more raspberry canes, doubling our raspberry patch in size.  We're still waiting on the organic seed potatoes we ordered to arrive. The delay is irksome enough that I think next year we'll buy our seed potatoes closer to home, even though they may not be organic.                                 
4. You might be asking what happened to the cloth pad project? Well, I got sidetracked with all the gardening work. And I got a huge stack of uber interesting books at the library. Then the NCAA basketball tournament started. (We are giant college basketball fans.) The result? I still have only two (partially completed, at that) cloth pads. I will get back and finish the project, eventually.   

What's in store for Month 11 of my Prepping Plan?

1. I want to add more cash to our BOBs/at home emergency stash.
2. We're going to craft our own water filter using food safe buckets and ceramic filter elements.
3. Using some of the suggestions from my Ask the Readers post, I'm going to stock-up on some more can openers.
4. I'm going to buy some garden seeds for long term storage.
5. We're going to continue building our food and oh-so-important toilet paper supplies.
6. We'll be very busy in the garden. Hopefully we'll have some lettuce to harvest.  
7. I have some preps of a unique nature that I'll discuss with y'all in an upcoming post. I've got to pick your brain again!