Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Letter Re: Land of Plenty–Establishing or Reclaiming an Orchard

Mr. Rawles,  I very much enjoyed the recent article on orchards. Fruit and nut bearing trees are definitely low maintenance. I am now benefiting from my forebearers’ efforts to establish fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes. One thing that they always did if they could: They would always plant a few trees every year. It’s a habit. It doesn’t cost a lot at a time to plant one or two trees a year, and it’s a lot less work to maintain. If one dies, at whatever growing stage, you replant it. It’s always good to have a great variety …


Letter Re: Avoiding Vitamin Deficiency Illnesses in Societal Collapse

Dear James Wesley, In regard to intake of Vitamin C, many people overlook sweet and hot peppers [as natural sources]. Red sweet peppers have the highest amount of C that is found in vegetable versus citrus fruit. Red peppers have more than green peppers. It seems that freeze drying or dehydrating does not substantially degrade the level of C in the vegetables.  Other good sources in vegetables are broccoli, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, dark leafy greens and cabbage and sauerkraut. The last two vegetables were very important to Northern European people who had no easy access to citrus fruits. I’m talking …


Baby Steps to Preparedness, by Holli S.

While TEOTWAWKI may or may not happen soon, one can never be too prepared. Loss of job or illness can happen any time. Being prepared can lessen the stress in your life and also lead to strengthening your family bonds. Not everyone has the financial or physical means to opt out or bug out at a moments notice. What we can do is start with Baby Steps and work our way up to where we want to be. • Research • Plan • Schedule • Execute • Learn to be thick-skinned • Follow up and be flexible.  Change can sometimes lead to opportunity. • Try new things …


Letter Re: Avoiding Vitamin Deficiency Illnesses in Societal Collapse

Dear Jim: Recently, while doing some genealogy research, I discovered that my great aunt died at age 22 in Sunderland, England.  She had married in 1906 and died in 1907.  We all assumed it was childbirth related.  Not so.  The death certificate says:  “Scurvy septicaemia”.  This is certainly not anything I have heard of before.  I did some reading and found that Scurvy is is a lack of Vitamin C with symptoms of weakness, spongy and bleeding gums, and hemorrhages under the skin.  As scurvy advances, there can be open wounds filled with pus, loss of teeth, jaundice, fever, neuropathy …


Review of Self-Reliance Expo, Denver, Colorado by L.K.O.

I recently spent a day at at the Denver Self-Reliance Expo. It was held September 16-17, 2011. The expo showcased a variety of friendly and enthusiastic survival, self-reliance and preparedness vendors and presenters. Several of the companies there are loyal SurvivalBlog advertisers. It was great meeting many of them in person for the first time. Just one example was meeting Dave Duffy of Backwoods Home Magazine. I had been reading his columns for many years, so it was about time! In the arena of weapons and security, vendors included 5280 Armory, Hilltop Safes, Smart Product Technology (underground security pods), On Sight …


Next Steps: Prepping for the Middle Expertise, Middle Life, Middle Philosophy Preppers, by A.L.G.

Salutations! And for those of spiritual and religious bent, Blessings, from my wife and I in these troubled time. A few weeks back, after my assistant’s grandson returned to his school year, he brought home a “bug” as the kiddies often do. My assistant naturally fell ill, and a week later, sure enough I found myself on my couch with my wife good-naturedly giving me some grief (and chicken soup…) With some time on my hands, and not much energy to actually do anything, my mind started turning as I laid there and watched an earthquake hit D.C. and a …


Odds And Ends That You Won’t Want To Be Without, by Sonny Jim

I believe in having all the “big” things, to prepare for the possible breakdown of civil society.   I have a large home outside of a small mid-west town, and expect 12 people to arrive to hunker down, if things do fall apart.  I need to be able to feed and supply of them, perhaps for years. So I have 1,200 gallons of Kerosene.  This is intended for heating the home for 3 winters, and I have 3 Kerosene heaters to do the job.  The Kerosene is stored in in 3 large 330 gallon plastic totes, half buried in my back …


My Road to Preparing, by New-To-Me in Nevada

We don’t have a lot of money, however with everything that is happening in the world today and all of the signs yelling in my face that I better get ready or face not being able to feed my family of 6, I started prepping.  I have taken a class at our local community college on the subject and learned a lot of very useful information.  However I didn’t stop there.  I sought out and purchased numerous books that are on the book list here at Survival Blog and did some extensive research on the subject.  Just recently I decided …


Prepping: It’s Not Just for TEOTWAWKI, by Choctaw Prepper

In this day and age of being able to go to a store and get practically anything you would ever need or want, the concept of preparing for a disaster escapes some individuals.  The time of “Victory Gardens” and canning your surplus vegetables and fruits have fallen by the way side in our current culture.  Our society sees people storing vast amounts of food and supplies as paranoid because they are simply not accustomed with the practice, nor do they see the need.  Most people cannot conceive the idea that they can be left without food or water, or that …


An Early Baby Boomer’s Bug Out Bag, by Jen L.

I’d like to address the requirements for a Early Baby Boomer’s bug out bag.  The word “emergency” has a completely different meaning for those of us who are over 60 and can’t move fast, can’t climb stairs and can’t get up once we get down on the ground!  Needless to say, we can’t pack 100 pounds on our back, nor can we lift 50 pounds from the rear of the car.  But survival is still important.   My three sisters and I were born during the Korean War era, were raised on what I call a post-WWII and Great Depression farm …


The Little Things, by D.M.L.

So, you think you’re prepared? So did I. Until Hurricane Irene destroyed the infrastructure around here. The roads were blocked to all the local towns, all three routes out of here. If it wasn’t trees down, it was flooded, or power lines and poles leaned over the road in the ‘maybe’ zone (maybe you would hit them and maybe not, but why take a chance on thousands of volts? If not those, it was pieces of somebody’s house across the road. And this was only a Cat 1 storm? Sigh.   Before she hit, I, being confident that we were ‘prepped up’, …


Two Letters Re: Hurricane Irene Lessons Learned

Jim, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts and experience I’ve had with Hurricane [later Tropical Storm] Irene. I live in southwest Connecticut in a city slightly less than 100,000 population.  We are about 50-65 miles from New York City. As of this evening, I am still running my generator five days after being hit by Tropical Storm Irene on Saturday evening.  As of this evening, the power company said they will restore power “by middle of next week”.  If that ends up happening, we will be without power for around 10 days.  We shall see.  A few details …


Four Letters Re: Hurricane Irene Lessons Learned

Mr. Rawles, I am in northwest N.J. I wasn’t affected as badly by the hurricane as others were, but I did learn a few lessons about my preparedness. 1. Inspect your gear on a regular basis. I live on a dead-end street, and the road goes over a country stream, which flows underneath through a 2-foot culvert with a paved berm built over the top of it. Yesterday, that country stream became a 40-foot wide river about 10 inches deep and flowing rapidly over the road surface. To get across that, I got out my waders — and discovered that …


Letter Re: Do It Yourself Oil Extraction

Jim:  While researching briquette presses for fuel production, I stumbled on an article about using similar presses for extracting oils from seeds and nuts. In this case, the focus was on bio-diesel production, but I felt it was helpful for other uses as well. We preppers often hear of the importance of fats and oils in the diet, along with the difficulties in storing these items, so having the means to produce your own is a benefit.  For the Do-It-Yourselfers in the audience, you can check out a Journey To Forever article which details how to build the equipment needed to …


Application of Bodybuilding and Supplementation to the Crunch, by A.T.

I am just beginning my journey into the prepping world and it is amazing when I look back over the last year just how far I have come.  Being only 22 years old, and living on my own since 18 away at school and living in a large metropolitan area, it wasn’t my first priority when I first left home.  I went through my first few years living the typical college life.  However, two years in, traveled to China for a while and it really opened my eyes as to how messed up the government of that country is.  What …