Category: Self-Sufficiency

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 …


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

Dear Editor, I just wanted to add some thoughts regarding your recent article on starting a garden now. I grew up in the Midwest, and our family had one and sometimes two gardens. We grew a variety of vegetables, and we canned and froze whatever we didn’t eat. After I moved away and eventually moved into a city, I got out of the habit of having a garden. My travels took me from Iowa to Minnesota, back again, and eventually to Texas. This year my wife and I decided to grow a small garden. We have a home in the …


Preparing to Prevent and Treat Parasitic Infections, by G.L.

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(Disclaimer: non-medical, non-expert author) I spent nearly eight months in Mexico as a graduate student. One weekend a group of us took a trip to Guanajuato to visit the historic city, enjoy some good food, and see the silver mines and natural mummies. I was not exactly a veteran international traveler, but I was not a rookie either, having traveled several times to my wife’s home country of Venezuela, including trips to areas well outside of the larger cities. I was aware of the hazards of international travel, from petty crime to yellow fever to unsanitary water and food. I …


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

Hugh, Finally someone has addressed something that has been on my mind for quite some time. Thanks Dr. Prepper for pointing out that gardening alone will be an insufficient means to provide adequate food when the SHTF! Your 2000 cal/day figure easily shows the shortfalls of relying solely on a vegetable diet, but under the high stress and increased activity levels that will be required when the SHTF a 3000cal/day requirement often is used as a more realistic figure. This would increase the required amount of the harvest by 33%! I wonder what the net caloric gain is with the …


Apiculture, by Z.T.

I want you to think about the most expensive liquid per unit volume that you can. What different liquids came to mind? Gasoline or other petroleum based products? Sure. I am sure many of you thought of bottled water; as crazy it sounds, it is up there. Still, no, that’s not the liquid I am thinking of, though all of those are certainly expensive. This liquid is sweet. It’s extremely useful.  It’s fairly hard to come by. It is commonly referred to as “liquid gold”. Have you figured it out? It’s honey. Many of you are raising your eyebrows at …


Negotiating, by KMD

Negotiating is a useful skill in all aspects of life. Negotiating effectively in a SHTF scenario may be the difference between life and death. Whether haggling over the price of your next vehicle, home-repair service, that last box of shells, or something even more important, you want to make sure you walk away from the exchange, and walk away satisfied with the outcome. Below I present some tips to help in this regard. General Discussion As with all serious endeavours, careful planning and preparation prior to the affair, can pay healthy dividends. Actively negotiating is typically an exciting, stressful experience. …


Letter Re: Starting a Garden After TEOTWAWKI

Hugh and Jim, Thanks for posting this article. In my experience you can add to the rule of three here: Plant threeof everything that you want to eat– one that won’t grow, one for the critters to steal, and the last one for you to eat. – K.B. o o o HJL, I enjoyed reading the series on starting a garden post event. I’d like to point out that it’s not just a garden post collapse but any agricultural effort. I’ve raised chickens off and on for my entire life. When I was three years old we lived in the …


So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After TEOTWAWKI, by Dr. Prepper – Part 1

It amazes me when I see one of those “Survival Garden in a Can” products that supposedly sells you the peace of mind that if you purchase these heirloom seed kits, you will be able to strew these seeds around your yard and your entire year’s food supply will be ready and waiting at your fingertips, easy-peasy. They makes it seem that I can simply check that box off my list, since my future gardening needs have now been taken care of. Every time the topic comes up about potential upcoming food shortages and the possible inability to reliably get …


Letter: Justifying Preparation

I am relatively new to prepping, and while I understand that some level of preparedness is prudent (i.e. three day’s worth of food and water on hand, hand tools, more than a 1/2 tank of fuel in vehicles), I sometimes wonder about the “bigger” preps. I read SurvivalBlog fairly regularly (3-4 times per week) and the links to current events and trends seem to point to an inevitable breakdown of the economy, banking system, and society as a whole. However, when I talk to other people that are a number of years my senior, they point out that there have …


Prepare Without Looking Prepared, by Farm Operator

“Have you watched Doomsday Preppers? Man, those people are crazy!” “We’ve got this neighbor down the street who’s prepping for the end of the world. What a weirdo!” We’ve all heard these comments (or similar ones). As for the wife and me, when friends, delivery men, in-laws, out-laws, offspring, or third cousins (who only show when they need something) come by the house, we don’t want them thinking we’re crazier than we are. Most importantly, we don’t want them knowing we’re prepping. For obvious security reasons, we don’t want those cousins to be the first at our doorstep when SHTF. …


Three Letters Re: Family Disaster Planning

Hugh, While this was a very detailed and informative article, as a parent, grandparent, and educator, I was wondering if I missed reading anything about the education of our finest and most important resources…our children. Reading to children for pleasure and to convey the history of what has happened and why, as well as the beginnings of each person’s nation, seems to me to be something worthwhile. While I don’t expect every group to have material for every age, having at least a few resources would be invaluable. It is possible to teach without “curriculum” and expensive technology. My sister …


Letter Re: Gravity Fed Water Systems

Editor, A good and useful post by J.S. I always appreciate articles by those who have lived and used what they are proposing. As an irrigation contractor I built and used a homemade water system for a couple of decades in the Colorado mountains and can offer a few further ideas. For an infiltration gallery, I dug a small trench under the spring/small stream I had on the property and placed in the bottom 10′ of 4″ perforated flexible plastic drain pipe that came with a mesh “sock” around it. This pipe is used in French darins and the like. …


Gravity Fed Water Systems, by J.S.

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Gravity systems are simple but very complex at the same time. Having lived on spring water that was fed by gravity for over 50 years, I have some experience in making these systems work and easy to maintain. I hope that my simple overview will help you design, build, and enjoy a gravity-fed system, too. There are four basic elements to a gravity water system: source, intake, sediment removal, and storage. Of course, you may have to deal with some troubleshooting down the road as well. Source The source can be any supply of free water. Spring, creeks, lakes, rivers …


Becoming The Bank In TEOTWAWKI, by J.M.

It has happened. The event that we have all talked about for so many years has come to fruition. The banking and monetary system, after many years of bail-outs and market manipulations, has finally collapsed. Many have plans to “bug out” to the safety of their isolated retreat where they plan to hunker down and weather the financial tempest that surrounds them. I have to admit that this is probably the best short-term plan to survive, but what do you do when your supplies run out? What will the long-term solution be, until a new monetary system is established? How …