Category: Contest

Combating Sheep Flock Parasites – Part 2, by Mike V.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) The test is performed with the freshest stool you can get. You can corral the animal, get your gloves on and get in the rectum to get some pellets out, or any number of less stressful ways to get your sample. I just walk into the field and walk behind the sheep or lamb I want a sample from. They routinely walk away and I follow them until they get a little antsy and they will give you what you need in short order. You are not trying to spook them, just …


Combating Sheep Flock Parasites – Part 1, by Mike V.

My mother went back to school to be a social worker, and she did a project which was quite interesting. She taped (remember cassette tapes?) one of our dinner conversations and then played it back to us when her project was over. I do not remember what her point was but I do remember that three planes flew over the house and two trains went by and none of us skipped a beat with the conversation. We lived in the flight path of one of the largest airports in the world and the train tracks were right next door. I …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 3, by Remington Smith

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Early in the season, in this same spot, I learned that I was truly a hunter. It was not when I took my deer because I took him from another place on our land. Instead, it was when I passed up an immature buck. That spike I mentioned earlier gave me multiple opportunities to shoot. I never did. Knowing that I had the discipline to stick with what I had deemed a mature animal gave me the confidence to continue hunting the big bucks. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 2, by Remington Smith

(Continued from Part 1.) Becoming a true marksman does not come overnight. It comes over many trips to the range. I was blessed to be going into my first season of hunting already knowing of what I was capable. I had nothing to prove regarding my shooting. I have been involved in one of the Olympic pistol disciplines for seven years. Through competitive shooting I have learned many, many valuable lessons. Some of these regard shooting under stress. Others involve simply the basics of shooting taken to a competitive level. Aside from competition, my dad and I regularly shoot a …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 1, by Remington Smith

The mention of hunting will most likely bring two responses. The first of the non-hunter, sometimes anti-hunter, and that is of disgust. The other is of the hunter himself. It is one who smiles widely and tells a couple of hunting stories, however true they may be. When I was young and growing up my response would have been the first. That is not entirely my fault because most of the so-called hunters in my area think nothing of killing an immature animal, or worse yet, not being a marksman and wounding the animal. For me, wounding an animal and …


Bitcoin for Preppers, by S.C.

“Oh no, not someone else talking about Bitcoin!” That is what you’re probably thinking right now. I know Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been a hot topic of late. And there are more than enough “wanna-be” experts out there. When looking through SurvivalBlog.com, I realized that it’s been quite a while since there was a dedicated piece on cryptocurrencies. Since the technology (and the economy) is changing so rapidly, I wanted to do a primer on Bitcoin for Preppers. I’ll include Use Cases and some How-To. In this article, I’m going to make the case for Bitcoin, not as an …


Winning The War On Weeds – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Most of your weeds will be annuals which must grow from seed each year and tend to be easy to deal with. My handful of “good weeds” grow large, are easy to pull up even when mature, and remain supple without getting too fibrous or woody making them excellent composting plants. An example is the perilla seen in Photo 5. This is my best composting weed so I let them get large (36”) as long as they’re not obstructing any crop plants. Others in this same category are most of the tender …


Winning The War On Weeds – Part 1, by St. Funogas

We see it all the time: photos of blue-ribbon gardens with beautiful flowers and mouth-watering tomatoes, beans and squash. Everything is neat and tidy, well groomed, and not a weed in sight. People get all excited, visions of seed-catalog covers dancing in their heads, and decide they just have to start a garden so they too can have some of that fresh produce and flowers. A month later their garden more closely resembles an advertisement for Round-Up than anything they may have seen on the cover of Organic Gardening. How, oh how, do we make our gardens look like the …


My Many Fast Failures – Part 2, by M.P.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) A couple of months ago another hen went broody, and I decided to take advantage of this to have her hatch a clutch of eggs all from these hens and rooster. Her first clutch was eight eggs. I moved her and the eggs into a temporary nest, made from a cardboard box, in the cage I had used before to separate her from the flock a bit and protect her eggs from the other hens who might try to lay in that box. She was not happy about the move and repeatedly …


My Many Fast Failures – Part 1, by M.P.

I just learned the hard way the truth about not counting your chickens before they are hatched. This is but one of the many failures I have experienced over the past several years as I have been trying to climb the learning curve of several different self-sufficiency skills. I wanted to share my experiences with the other readers of SurvivalBlog in hopes—not so much that you can learn from my mistakes though if that happens, wonderful!—but as much as anything to encourage you to start now making your own mistakes and learning from them if you haven’t already. “Fail fast” …


Money, Finances and Preparedness, by Mr. Zipph

As an executive with a multi-billion financial institution, I am a financial insider (boo, hiss). I also believe in preparedness. I believe that I have some insights into the money side of preparedness that you might want to consider. I will not delve too deeply into the fragile nature of the global financial system, but I will share my biggest concerns without going into detail: • The fractional reserve banking system allows your bank to create money out of thin air • The central banks of the world are creating unprecedented amounts of money out of thin air • Fiat …


The Blind Squirrel Report, by The Novice

It is said that even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. I have some nutty discoveries to pass along. These discoveries do not merit 1,500 words individually. Collectively, they may deserve some attention. I have compiled them into a single article for your edification and entertainment. Fire Starting Cadillac Mink Oil Mink oil is a byproduct of the fur industry, obtained by rendering the insulating fatty layer found under the skin of minks. It is more resistant to rancidity than most other animal and vegetable oils. It is used as a skin moisturizer and in other …


Live Not by Lies – Part 2, by Born Free

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Please forgive me for quoting Solzhenitsyn extensively. But I have not found more clarity anywhere, which really means I haven’t done enough research to seek out other dissidents in history. This man did nothing more, as a Russian soldier, than correspond with a friend who happened to be a soldier for “the other side”. That was it. That was his great sin that landed him in a prison camp! His private correspondence (think e-mail, text, Internet posts) was nothing more than criticism of how “the state” was handling things – and the …


Live Not by Lies – Part 1, by Born Free

In the past few years, we have all witnessed Internet censorship, up to and including the censorship of the President of the United States. My initial reaction was, “Who cares? We don’t need the media in order to live our lives! Turn it all off. Ignore them!” Then, the stories started trickling out, mostly on alternative media platforms and via individual blogger websites. It wasn’t just the popular media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WordPress, Reddit, etc.), the mainstream media organizations (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), major payment processors (PayPal, for one), e-mail providers (Mailchimp, for one), web hosting …


Hands-On Healing – Part 4, by Dr. Derek King, DC

(Continued from Part 3. This concludes the article.) For those of you who have made it this far, I would love to give you two more Bonuses: the first is considered the “bible” of energy medicine. I first read it back in 1989 and it was way ahead of its time, the book is called Vibrational Medicine by Dr. Richard Gerber, MD. It covers the science of everything…crystals, meridians, homeopathy, lasers, holograms, prayer, and quantum physics (in a non New-Agey way). It was updated in 2000 and I’m sure that a lot more could be added considering today’s technology, but …