Category: Gardening

Letter Re: Terrain and Arboreal Camouflage for Retreats

Mr. Rawles, Well, we survived this latest storm but it gave me time to finish your novel “Patriots”. It was a very easy read and full of useful information. I know I have so much to learn. It really has helped me put things into perspective as far as priorities and what is or isn’t important in life. I can only think of two areas that were not covered well enough that I feel would help in this type of environment: The first area is the design and use of landscape and terrain to help conceal a retreat. The impression …


Letter Re: Some Practical Experience in Dehydrating Vegetables

Hi Jim, We have been dehydrating foods for a couple of years now and I thought you might like to hear how things went for us. Green beans are dried down south and are called leather breeches. You can do a Google for recipes. Traditionally you use a sewing needle and sew a string through the green bean and then hang them to dry. We blanched the beans prior to drying in our dehydrator. After the beans were dried we wrapped a handful of the beans in a paper towel and shrink wrapped the package. The paper towel protects the …


Finding Community, by Jim Fry

Here at the farm we had the first of a series of free and open classes on disaster preparedness on February 1st. One of the things I intend to talk about at the upcoming meetings are various options for joining a community. When discussing disaster preparations, the first thing to decide is what you think is most likely to happen. If you think the world is a friendly place where snow means skiing and flowers always bloom, then a disaster is the electricity going out for a couple days if a tree happens to fall. You’ll need a case of …


Preparing Your Church Congregation, by JSX in Virginia

My preparedness background started as a youth.  My father took us camping often and had an amazing gun collection; I’ve been able to teach my kids what he taught me – great memories both then and now!  In the 1970s, my mom and step-dad bought a little 2-acre farm in the middle of nowhere.  We kept a dozen or so chickens, had a few garden spots (that seemed to grow and multiply with each new season), homemade soap, homemade root beer (an acquired taste!) a “sewing room”, a small orchard, solar heating, our own 250-gallon fuel tank, and a year …


Barriers – Berries – and Bounty All Hidden in Plain Sight, by The Prudent Gardener

It seems a part of preparing for extremely hard times is acquiring knowledge and honing skills to maximize resources. SurvivalBlog has been tremendously helpful in developing exhaustive lists of needs, supplies, strategies and defenses. In addition, provision is made for faith, charity and quality of life to improve a healthy mental state. As a landscape contractor for 32 years, I am now seeing more potential for self-reliance that most property owners could develop with some planning and a better awareness of the resources they may already possess. This form of preparation could substantially improve our situation both short and long …


Beekeeping and Fur Trapping at Your Retreat, by Chris L.

I am a dentist with approximately 20 years experience.  My hobbies are eccentric by many modern people’s standards.  After reading many of the  articles on the survivor blog I thought that I might have a unique perspective to add to the wealth of undervalued information posted on the site.  While reading James Wesley Rawles book I was not surprised to find out that Honey maintains stability for years in storage. This did not surprise me as I am a hobby bee keeper myself.  This in and of itself makes long term storage of honey a wonderful glucose reserve.  Few people …


Letter Re: One Solution for Garden Moles

Hi Jim I’m currently listening to the audiobook of “How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It“, and I’m at the part about vermin control. I have used a very effective way to eradicate moles a number of times, as follows: 1) Locate the extremities of the mole run (i.e. mole hills furthest apart) and uncover both mole hills carefully to expose the burrows. 2) Make two buckets of moist “almost mud” soil to use as caps, place one bucket at each hole. 3) Reverse your vehicle to one of the holes and run a hosepipe …


Letter Re: Some Observations on Fortifications Versus Camouflaged Retreats

Last night I watched Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory” show which centered around the government’s cover up of the coming 2012 scenario. The show featured people converting missile silos to survival bunkers. Historical precedent will quickly point out a glaring problem with this approach. Consider that relative to the technological level of their day, European castles were more heavily fortified than any bunker being built today (by virtue of the fact that your average monarch of Medieval times had far more resources available than anybody seeking to build a shelter). Still, no castle ever withstood siege indefinitely. No matter how much …


COA Analysis of Common Survival Strategies, by JIR

Having spent a lot of years on military planning staffs, I can’t help war-gaming scenarios. In short (as you know well) Course of Action (COA) development is a big part of Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) and is a fairly reliable way of looking at possibilities and choosing likely sequels, given scenarios. In effect, a way of war-gaming out the future. There are a number of horror scenarios that seem to me to be fairly probable and they keep going around and around in my head as I try to sequence them and assign probabilities to each one. I …


Letter Re: The Bosnian Experience

Mr. Rawles, I want to thank you for having this site and presenting people with opportunity two obtain useful information that could save their lives one day. I have been dedicated reader of your blogs for some time and now think that is my time to contribute some information instead of just reading it. I have survived through collapse of former Yugoslavia and the years of war that followed after. I will try to cover as much of different topics that pertain to every day survival. No matter on how much the person is prepared, it might not be enough. …


Letter Re: The List of Lists

Jim: I’m writing this to thank you for your blog, novel and preparedness course. Reading those has revitalized my prepping efforts, which had gone dormant since Y2K fizzled. Since then, I had the nagging feeling that I should be preparing, but I wasn’t–until I stumbled across your novel in a local bookstore. Then I got back on track. (BTW, it was mis-shelved in with the “how-to” books! Or maybe it wasn’t mis-shelved, since its a novel that doesn’t fit any mold!) And it wasn’t until I read through your “Rawles Gets You Ready” course that I had any real sense …


Survival Preparation on Low or Fixed Incomes, by Shawna M.

So you’re convinced that the free ride is over, that things are getting worse, and when the worst happens, you want to be prepared. But you have a problem—you don’t have a lot of money for prepping and day to day living. Maybe you only make minimum wage. Maybe you make a little more than that, but you’ve got a lot of bills. Maybe you live on a fixed income, or have irregular self-employment. Regardless, don’t assume because you can’t afford expensive classes or pricey gear that WTSHTF, you’ll be unable to fend for yourself and your family. My husband …


How to Capitalize on Urine, Car Batteries, Wood Ashes, Bones and Bird Schumer, by Jeff M.

Throughout the last few centuries, mankind has been building and building up, combining raw materials and energy to create… stuff. This stuff is scattered all over urban population centers, and many of it can be used for basic life-sustaining purposes. I thought I’d write in and share some information I’ve gathered over the years in my work and in my hobbies, as it relates to sustaining life if you’re trapped in an urban area. I’m enumerating the primitive uses of some very basic components for those interested, this wasn’t meant as a guide for building any of this stuff, further …


Letter Re: Thoughts on Preparedness in a Diverse Community

I just met this past weekend with a group of ” preparedness folk.” They are on a farm about 30 miles from here. I have become interested in the subject after reading One Second After (a New York Times best seller, highly recommended!) and some writings by James Wesley, Rawles. I was surprised at who they were and the mindset I encountered. A few observations: 1) The root idea is that whether or not some disaster hits, we are far too dependent on a very fragile and tenuous energy and distribution grid. Raising your own chickens, goats, vegetables, rabbits, turkeys, …


Letter Re: Survival Notes from the Dominican Republic

Jim, I’ve recently read several of your books and found them both interesting and educational. I would like to offer some personal insights based on my experiences from living in a small rural town one of the larger Caribbean islands. Most of my notes are cheap solutions used by people in developing nations all over the world. There may be better ways, but these work and cost next to nothing. Water: There is something especially disturbing about opening the faucet and hearing a sucking air sound. Not being able to shower, flush, or wash dishes is the worst. One or …