Category: Self-Sufficiency

Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer – Part 1, by HJL

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I have to admit, I was excited when I was first contacted by Harvest Right. A freeze dryer in my own home? What a thought! This has been a dream of my family for a number of years. I have even played around with the idea of creating my own freeze dryer several times, but in the end, the work involved and the daily grind always won out. The Dream Our food preps have always had issues, with the solutions seeming just out of reach. When we first started, the preps simply meant two things– remodeling the pantry to hold …


Letter: Mastitis

HJL, Mastitis nearly killed me. In a more primitive country, I could have been another maternal death statistic. Mastitis is just one path of infection and death for new mothers. Mastitis cannot be downplayed. Nor can the value of breast feeding “support” be over estimated. While my response to the excellent and informative article by Dr. Goscienski is intensely personal and private, perhaps in the future it may save a baby or mother’s life. I come from a comfortable family, in the socio-economic sense. It would not be correct to just say we are advocates of breast feeding. Simply, everyone …


Letter Re: Multi-Purpose Power Solution

HJL, Liquid fuels are expensive, heavy, dangerous to transport, and a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Even if you have enough stored for a year, what then? Direct conversion of biomass to fuel for gensets has been proven successful for thirty plus years now. I have operated a design for powering small gensets that works as well today as it did in the early 80’s. It’s also driven a few thousand miles on a truck that runs on nature’s finest. Due to space and weight limitations not present in stationary applications, refining wood into gas on board a vehicle …


Trades for Surviving After the Collapse, by A.W.

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You have been preparing for the unknown– economic collapse, social unrest, nuclear war, or even just a downsize at work– for quite awhile now. Perhaps you are feeling confident in your ability to survive a catastrophic event by putting to use your survival know-how and stores of food. You even learned valuable gardening skills that will ensure your long-term survival. Now, imagine what life will be like after the collapse for which you have diligently prepared. You will be surviving, but will you be thriving? You will be eating, but will you be contributing to the rebuilding of your region …


Guest Article: A Recent Experience On An Ultra-Low Calorie Diet, by BadIdeaGuy

Caloric intake, in a post-SHTF, has been mentioned before, but I wanted to share a recent experience with a low-calorie disaster and what its implications are for challenging times that lie ahead. After some health concerns, my doctor asked if I’d like to try their physician-overseen weight loss program. I’m a 38 year old man, who is busy raising a family and performing in a career. I eat what I can when I can. The long workdays following by parental responsibilities have cut into my workout time, which results in my being fatigued, and have resulted in some poor dietary …


Another Option for Emergency Power, by Freedom Loving Texan

I’m a long-time reader of SurvivalBlog, and like so many others I am deeply concerned about the choices our country has made in the last twenty years and the as yet unfelt repercussions. We seem to be living in a season of grace, but the day of reckoning will come, sooner or later. With this thought in mind, my family has been steadily pursuing the ability to care for ourselves (and perhaps some of our neighbors as well). Like many others have done, I have read and researched many methods of generating enough power to live on. Today, most Americans …


The “Smart” Prepper: Purchasing With A Purpose, by L.D.M.

I was turned onto the idea of prepping about two years ago, and thankfully, shortly thereafter, found SurvivalBlog.com. This website has been one of many important and cherished resources to a “rookie prepper,” and I count it a true blessing to have so much shared knowledge at our fingertips. One of the many important resources that I have found in SurvivalBlog.com are the advertisers on the site. In a digital world full of endless choices when it comes to preparedness supplies, it can be very daunting to not only decide WHAT you need and in what quantity you need it …


Guest Article: How to Set Up a Solar Electric Survival System, by LaMar

The majority of the U.S. population lives in a city or suburbs connected to a city and is completely reliant on grid power from coal, hydro, or natural gas power plants. In the event of a national or local disaster, regardless of the cause, the electricity system is the weakest link. Without power almost nothing else in a city or town will work. These disasters may be of short- or long-term duration, but depending on the weather and medical needs of your family going without power for even a short time could cause great hardship and even death. In this …


Amazon’s Mechanical Turk– A Real, Honest, Stay-at-home Job, by LAT

This article is not about practical survival skills; it’s quite the opposite. It is a pre-collapse idea only and will disappear post-SHTF. Why this is useful information is that it’s an idea that may let you make the leap to living at your retreat full-time sooner and help you make ends meet while other income sources are developed. It is a plan for your home-based business, requiring no start up capital, and it’s a job for which you are already hired. You won’t have to leave the house to work or to get paid. There is actually no selling either. …


Tornado Survival and Recovery, by J.M.

You’d think an old lady would learn. Going through old papers and files the other day in my attempt to clear out clutter and be organized, I came across the file containing receipts and all sorts of paperwork that reflected our experience with the May 3rd, 1999 tornado that went through southwest Oklahoma City and Moore, Oklahoma. I shook my head thinking, “What did I learn from this?” Allow me to provide some detail of that experience. First of all, I was home alone with four dogs….big dogs. These were dogs that didn’t get along well with each other. Two …


Learning to Adjust Your Preps for the Small Ones in Your Life, by SCP

I am probably your less than common prepper. I’m a working mom who lives in the suburbs of a mid-sized city and has a husband who just barely tolerates my prepping. Luckily for me, a lot of the prepping skills and lifestyle choices just come naturally for him; we just don’t call it prepping! I don’t know where exactly my prepping started, but I remember at nine years of age packing a bag with clothes and food for both my brother and me “just in case” Mom decided to finally take off from the abusive boyfriend. At the age of …


Barter Goods, by C.Y.

If and when the end of civilized life as we know it arrives, there will be a period lasting from months to years before your community stops collapsing and develops a stable local economy. During this time, the agreed exchange of goods and services between residents is clearly preferable to looting and theft, but successful transactions will not be easy without a widely accepted replacement for money. People may still have cash, credit cards, and checks, but without a central government these are unlikely to be seen as a good exchange for essentials like food, clothes, fuel, or services. A …


Letter Re: The Ice Hits the Fan in South Carolina

This piece is a much needed wake up for prepper families that think it is okay for Dad, Mom, Son, Daughter or someone else to do everything…alone. This warning goes both ways, as I know plenty of men who “go it alone” because that is the way they want it. They haven’t figured out that young man/lady in the house, watching TV or hanging out with his friends, is capable of much more and needs to earn the confidence that practice gives. If your older children or parents, or your neighbor down the road is counting on you to help …


Surviving Through Winter and Into Spring With Free Wild Food, by Linda Runyon

The intensity and length of this winter’s coldness reminds me of a survival disaster that happened to me during one particularly frigid and frightening winter in the Adirondacks at our wilderness homestead. Back in the 1970s, I had moved my family away from hectic, urban living to the peaceful and beautiful Adirondack area of upstate New York. One summer I happily foraged and harvested many wild edibles I found all around me. I gathered enough nutritious bounty that summer to prepare and can 420 mason and atlas jars of food in the form of pickles, wild berry jams and jellies, …


Three Letters Re: Lessons Learned the Hard Way About Food Prep

The author has certainly learned good lessons from his storage experiences, but there are lots more lessons to be learned, like how to put to new use items that can no longer be used/eaten. Specifically, the big jug of soya oil. In itself, soya oil, is no longer a healthy alternative, but it does make excellent lamp oil, whether rancid or fresh. Label it for oil lamp use only, and you’ve saved the cost of some commercial lamp oil. Another lesson is that any sort of plastic container will never store for any length of time. Air leaks through the …