Category: Self-Sufficiency

How To Find Food in Your Own Backyard, by Z.M.

If it ever really comes down to it, you can easily find food in your backyard. I remember reading a survival book when I was younger that mentioned how absolutely ludicrous it is to die of starvation in the wild. The book mentioned the sheer number of times that starved lost hikers’ bodies are found lying in a patch of edible plant life. After reading that, I agreed with the author and set out to educate myself on the edible plants I walk by every day. The end result is that I can now take a hike through the woods …


Live Your Survival and Gain Sufficiency-Part 2, by E.M.

Mental Health Physical health for the mind is equally as important as exercising it. Like our body, if we have an unhealthy mind there will not be much exercise. We must make sure that we are not taking with great excess or frequency those things that alter and damage our mind and cause us to lose focus. There are also foods we can eat daily and place in our preparedness food shelter which will aid the biological make up of our physical mind. This topic is a book in and of itself, and there is a very large selection of …


Live Your Survival and Gain Sufficiency-Part 1, by E.M.

Self-sufficiency – noun: the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective independence. Survival – [s?r?v?v?l] – noun: the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances.[1] In our day-to-day world, there are varied degrees of survival required of us. This is true simply because there are wide-ranging degrees of threat that we face. And in today’s economic death spiral of Keynesian Economics[2], politically corrupt leadership, and a war torn world, many are already beginning to experience …


Lay The Groundwork for the Future- Part 1, by Sarah Latimer

I really feel like a farmer’s wife this week. We’ve been busy up to our eyebrows harvesting, processing the harvest, canning, freeze drying, dehydrating, and even butchering as well as doing some welding and other structural homesteading chores. Whew! It’s been a hard but productive week. I am exhausted and thankful that Sabbath is almost here so we can rest, and even before it arrives I give God great thanks for His goodness and provision and for the knowledge to participate in the cycle of life! It’s Hard Work, But It’s For Their Future There are mornings when I wake …


Two Letters Re: Urban Trash

Hugh, This article is a good start to a problem solving dilemma. It definitely requires a mindset change, but that’s achievable for everyone. The best book I ever read, back in the late 80s, on this subject is Re/Uses: 2133 Ways to Recycle and Reuse the Things You Ordinarily Throw Away by Carolyn Jabs, published in 1985. – T.S. o o o Hugh, When I have plenty of scraps, I do just as the author suggests (and as Julia Child had suggested in her book!) and make soup stock with them, canning them for later use. It makes for wonderful, …


Reloading Ammunition For WTSHF- Part 2, by S.B.

Having removed the spent primer, you now need to insert a new one. There are specialty tools available for this, as well as attachments to do this on your press. How your particular setup will work depends entirely on what equipment you buy, but all methods insert a new primer into the primer pocket in the base of the brass case. Exactly which primer you need depends on your cases. For example, some 45 ACP cases use small pistol primers, and some use large pistol primers. Your specific round formula ca be found in your reloading manual (e.g. standard or …


Buying and Selling Rural Land: Considering The Basics

Much of my work as a consultant revolves around selecting retreat properties. For more than 15 years I have assisted my clients in their quest for the most suitable and practical properties available, to assure their families the best possible chance of surviving anything from a short-term localized disaster to a long-term societal collapse. Over the past 10 years of editing SurvivalBlog, I have included many insights about the retreat property selection process, interspersed in articles and replies to letters on related topics. But in this article, I’d like to distill a lot of that experience into just one concise …


Using Canning Jars For All Food Stores and More-Part 3, by Sarah Latimer

Managing Your Jarred Larder Moving a single jar at a time is cumbersome when managing so many. I have kept the original Ball cardboard boxes that the jars came in because they assist in moving multiple jars and placing them on shelves easily, but we are gentle with them to help them last. Occasionally they require some reinforcement with duct tape or replacement altogether; however, so far, most have held up well for a minimum of four years. Labels can easily be placed on the ends of the Ball boxes, identifying the contents and their dates, so that it is …


Letter: Starting a Manufacturing Business on a Tight Budget, by M.B.

In case you have not kept up with the Maker movement the last couple of years, great strides have happened in the average guys ability to build advanced micro-manufacturing facilities for very little money versus even a few years ago. I will note that this discussion is not all inclusive as this field changes on a sometimes weekly basis. The ability to do advanced manufacturing with relatively small amounts of money is the dirty secret of China’s present economic success.  I should know, since I have been there, I have friends in the industrial automation business who have been there, …


Using Canning Jars For All Food Stores and More – Part 2, by Sarah Latimer

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What We Store In Jars Dry, bulk goods. This category of items includes grains, dried pasta, dried potato flakes, dry beans, and rice for long-term storage. We buy these in 40- and 50-pound bags from the Mormon storehouse, Costco, and online vendors and then repackage them into the half gallon jars, which are then vacuum sealed, using our FoodSaver Jar Sealer connected to an electric vacuum pump system that Hugh installed into my kitchen. It takes less than a minute to put the lid on, vacuum seal a jar, and put the ring on. All I have to do at …


Tea for Two Hundred, This Year and Next- Part 3, by Sarah Latimer

Selecting Plants for Tea and Tea Flavoring Actual tea of the green and black variety is camellia sinensis. The tender new leaves of this plant are picked for tea. Drying and Storing Tea Ingredients Tea and tea flavorings require that we overcome the same obstacles faced in safely preserving nutrients, flavor, texture, and general health benefits of any food. The culprits are oxygen, sunlight, moisture, heat, and unwanted consumers, like insects and mice. Traditional tea, herbal tea, and flavorings must be dried, stored in containers (preferably air tight ones, under a vacuum), and in darkness (away from UV light) to …


Two Letters Re: Hunting for Self Sufficiency

Hugh, DK may want to investigate joining a private hunting club that leases or owns their own private land to allow hunting boar year round and of course other game in season. – Lone Prepper o o o Hugh, The statement “In spite of that, all Florida public lands only allow boar hunting for a few weeks of the year in special WMAs” is kind of misleading. In reading this, it sounds like a person is only allowed to hunt hogs at certain times in certain areas and with a permit; this is not true. This statement applies only to …


Letter Re: Hunting for Self Sufficiency

Hugh, I am not sure how far the writer is from the Georgia Border, but you can hunt feral hogs year round, 24/7, with night vision, flashlight; it doesn’t matter. Farmers in Georgia do have issues with these non-native animals that were introduced for sport hunting in the early days of this nation. If you can find a farmer that would allow you to hunt (and if Georgia is not that far from you), you should be able to take quite a harvest. You can even hunt over bait with these critters. I am amazed that Florida would only allow …


Letter Re: Hunting for Self Sufficiency

James, I’ve been a follower of your blog for many years and find it both a good resource and a great way to keep your ear to the ground among all the survival/prepper sites that trend to sensationalism and speculation. Patriots was my first real fiction and began a great love of survival fiction. Thirty or forty books later and daily searching for solid tips on the prepper blogs, I believe the time has been well spent. My wife and I live alone, and due to a degenerative neurological affliction neither one of us can work and I am her …


Letter Re: How To Trim Your Horse’s Feet

Hugh, There’s a lot of good information in the article on trimming horses’ feet. The old saw is “no hoof, no horse.” So you have to be able to provide good hoof care. I don’t have the education or breadth of experience that RB does, but I’ve been trimming my band of horses for more than 20 years. I’ve found some things over the years that make things easier that folks may want to consider. I prefer to trim sitting down. I’ve never developed the skill that lets me trim comfortably standing the way a farrier does. I bought a …