Category: Self-Sufficiency

Saving Your Marriage for the End of the World – Part 2, by Cottage Mom

Today, we continue the second portion of this three part article. Yesterday, we read that the purpose of prepping is to take care of your closest loved ones with wisdom and protection, not to hurt them and drive them away. Prepping should make your life better in the long run, not worse. If you are hitched to a spouse, here are my continued suggestions for embarking on your prepping journey: Don’t Play Tug-of-War Over Prepping or Anything Else; Instead, Negotiate This is human nature at its most counter-productive, but it is hard to identify when the tug-of-war begins to happen. …


Letter Re: Disinfecting Your Drinking Water

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Hugh, I have noticed over the years that when I read about water purification during bad times that Calcium Hypochlorite is mentioned as the way to go for storage and use. Typically, it is suggested to buy an abundance of the material so one can be charitable and pass out small plastic bags of the chemical with instructions for its use to purify water. I’ve never before seen simple and concise instructions that ANYONE could understand for treating drinking water with Calcium Hypochlorite. Using what I’ve gleaned from the Internet, with numerous revisions, I believe I have the information that …


Preserving and Storing Food Safely – An Overview – Part II, by N.M.

Types of Preserving Now that you understand, from Part 1 of this article, some of the reasons to preserve and priorities in preserving correctly, let’s consider which preserving methods you may want to use. Preserving methods include multi-step processes, like soaking, skimming, rinsing, hanging to dry, freezing, canning (in mason jars), smoking, and sucking air out of bags, containers, and buckets. Your choice of which method to use is governed by the food. For example, you would usually freeze berries but dehydrate and vacuum seal tomatoes and strips of meat (jerky). You could can (in glass jars) green beans, though …


Preserving and Storing Food Safely – An Overview – Part I, by N.M.

Preserving food has become an important focus of many families. After reading this article, you will understand what is involved in preserving and be able to decide if it’s for you. Food prices are soaring, and food quality and quantities are decreasing. You can save lots of money by buying things on sale or take advantage of bulk purchases, because you can preserve the food and use it later. You will be protecting yourself and your family by having safely stored nutritious food in the event of an emergency, and you can help your neighbors. With all these pluses, it’s …


Why Trying To Start A Garden Now May Be A Little Too Late For TEOTWAWKI, by BPW

Here’s a little about myself. I work in law enforcement. I grew up in suburbia, was a Marine and outdoorsy person, yet I have never really, truly gardened. I can’t. I work full time and own a home (in a development). I have two children, who run me all over the place, and I have never had a green thumb. I do hunt, and I do that well. So, I figured how hard is planting some seeds in the ground and growing some vegetables. Well, my experience woke me up and am I glad that it did, because had I …


Letter Re: Cottage/Local Manufacturing After SHTF

I am a former dressmaker, with considerable experience in making clothing, and I appreciated the article on doing this for barter. However, there are problems. The first is fabric. Presumably the sensuously idyllic pleasures of going to the fabric shops in the garment district of New York City will no longer be an option. Too charred. Apart from that, while there are a few scattered fabric stores here and there, they are steadily going out of business, as fewer and fewer people sew. For the most part, assuming you can get there and assuming they are intact, they carry mostly …


Cottage/Local Manufacturing After SHTF, by S.T.

Post-SHTF America will see the end of the current modern centralized-style of mass manufacturing and all of the poor-quality foreign imports. However, it will also see the rise of the new, local, home-based and small-scale manufacturing of local, functional, non-electric, and reusable items that will replace all of the electric, disposable, and toxic items that are purchased and used now. Unless you have a group that includes two doctors (a doctor cannot operate on himself), two dentists (a dentist can’t fill his own teeth), a nurse, a pharmacist, and a herbalist, as well as the teens to act as apprentices, …


Letter Re: So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After TEOTWAWKI

I have been meaning to post this information online and have not found a good venue for it, but reading the responses to the article So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After TEOTWAWKI inspired me to contact you for your consideration of adding this little tidbit for your blog followers. The second letter response to the article stated that “We put dehydrated tomatoes and peppers in pint canning jars, put a tiny hole in the center of the lid, put on a Pump ‘N Seal seal, pump out the air, and place in our cool, dark, root …


Our Struggle With Survivalism, by R.B.

This is an honest attempt to put into writing the struggle my family and I have with the issues surrounding our involvement in survivalism and the potential of a societal collapse that may or may not occur within our lifetime. I am doing this because I tend to think more clearly if I put my thoughts into writing, and that forces me to be a bit more precise in my thinking. Additionally, perhaps others like me are struggling with the same life-changing decisions and may find my thoughts helpful. Obviously, the first issue to deal with is whether or not …


LED Grow Lights for Indoor Food Production, by J.H.

Lighting products based on Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology continues to improve. Not only are lights getting cheaper, but the individual LED components are getting more higher powered and both efficiency and lifetimes/longevity are improving. Over time, LED technology is poised to replace the problematic and often loathed Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) as the preferred alternative to traditional incandescent light bulbs. However, this article is not about ordinary lighting applications but rather LED lighting specifically used for indoor growing applications. The benefits of LED lighting for plant growth, particularly as the technology advances, are truly revolutionary and will change the …


Preparedness and Practice… RV Style, by A.S.

A few years ago two different activities came into the life of my family. First, we started prepping. We began the process of preparing ourselves, physically and mentally, for whatever potential disaster we might face in the future. Second, we purchased a camper and started taking regular weekend camping trips during the summer. Sometimes these trips were three-day weekends, and a couple times per year these trips are extended to four-day weekends or an entire week vacation. The topic of “practicing your plan” and being familiar with your supplies and equipment has been covered many times. It occurred to me …


Letter Re: Storage Without a Basement

Hi, Mr. Hugh! I live in the hot, HUMID, deep South and have a couple of things to add to the conversation. 1) If you have a spring, dig it out and box it in with cypress wood or some other wood that should last in water. We did that back in ’75, and added shelving on the inside of the box, at just under water level. Our spring water is very cold and should keep milk and milk products nice and cool. I have to admit that we’ve never had to use it for that; we just pump the …


Letter Re: Storage Without a Basement

I’m writing in response to the discussion about how to keep food in the Southeastern United States in the heat of the summer. My mother-in-law is in her 80s. I asked her how her parents and grandparents kept their food. For things like apples, potatoes, tomatoes, they would just store it above ground, sometimes packed in sawdust, usually in open air. For canned food, her mother had a little room off the house with shelves in it. It didn’t have a window, but it also got just as hot as the house. They would keep the canned food in jars …


Scot’s Product Review: SimGar The Simple Garden

I have wanted to review a self-watering/fertilizing container gardening system ever since I started writing for SurvivalBlog. I was thrilled when SimGar contacted me and offered to let me borrow one of their SimGar Plus kits. It goes for about $150.00. SimGar stands for The Simple Garden, and it has only been on the market for about a month. I’ve gardened off and on for thirty plus years and have had both great and rotten results. While I’m lucky enough to have some decent space for a garden where we live now, my soil isn’t very good for vegetables without …


Two Letters Re: So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After TEOTWAWKI

Onions are a winter crop, which speaks to planting for three seasons or even four. I am working on soil quality, as that would be hard for a looter to carry off, and I am working on it in more than one place with double digging and nitrogen-fixing cover crops like clover, black-eyed peas, buckwheat, and vetch. He mentioned 100 jars of food. I figured out that I need 400 jars (pint) for my family of six (grandma, husband, wife, and three children). I am using pints, because you can always open two; keeping half of a larger jar is …