SurvivalBlog.com

The following is an overview of our farm progress at the end of 2021. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a widow and grandmother of retirement age. Eight years ago I bought a country property in the mid-south 300 miles from a large metropolitan area and two-hours away from a large city and one hour away from a small city with a hospital and medical specialists. The closest town has two gas stations, a pharmacy, a medical family practice, and two grocery stores, some fast food places, and a few other family-owned businesses.

The property had a very old barn which was used as storage, a water well, electric power, and lots of acreage, but no septic system. The sellers used the old pipe to the woods system but they put in a new septic system as a condition of sale. The house was old and needed a new kitchen and another bathroom before we could move in and I splurged on a whole house backup generator. The other updates are done as we can afford them and they are still ongoing. My oldest son, a truck driver, moved closer so he could help me when he was not on the road. Eventually, he moved on to the property permanently.

My goals in moving out to the country were to: (1) be more secure; (2) become less dependent on buying from stores, (3) have room for my kids and other family members to come to if and when things fall apart for them, (4) learn skills to develop cottage/home business(es), and finally (5) learn to be more self-reliant so I could live in freedom and independence. It has been lots of hard work, with some failures. But over the years, we have gained confidence in our abilities and acquired new skills. Everything we have done has been on a very tight budget and everything is paid for in cash; I have no debt. This is a summary on how we have developed the farm over the years and where we are at the end of 2021.

Year 1: After the house was made livable, the first thing to be done was to fence a half-acre of the back yard for the dogs; at that time I had 5 small dogs, a stray red tick coon hound and one feral kitten which came out of the woods. The coon hound had 6 surprise puppies. She was so emaciated even the vet didn’t realize she was pregnant! That brought us up to 12 dogs; we eventually gave most of the puppies away, but kept two.

Next came a chicken coop and fence around the chicken yard. A neighbor down the road gave me a bunch of hens, a rooster, and a couple of ducks. I had never lived in the country nor had I raised chickens before; thus I lost 5 hens the first six months due to inexperience and predators; a fox, raccoon, owls, and hawks. Since I’m usually a quick learner, I put up two hot wire lines around the chicken fence; one 12” above the ground for the fox, raccoons, etc., and a top hot wire above the fencing for the winged predators. Within two weeks the wire shocked several 4-legged critters (we heard them cry in pain) and fried two owls when they landed on the wire. Digging through the boneyard near the barn we found a couple of old junk file cabinets to put in the chicken yard and also piled old tree limbs around the chicken yard for the birds to hide under when the winged predators came hunting.

Year 2, we fenced almost an acre of the front yard and added a farm gate with an alarm system to the driveway, and started the garden. Toward the end of year 2, I had a second well drilled and a simple pump (manual hand pump) added as a redundant backup. My son built a pump house around the well and made it large enough for some storage. Also, when all the trees, bushes went on sale at the warehouse store in the city, I bought some evergreen trees and holly bushes to provide privacy along the county road. They were about 12” tall when my son dug the holes; now the trees are over 6′ and the bushes about 5′ high. When you live way out in the country, people abandon their unwanted dogs and cats when they think they can get away with it; by the end of the second year we had three more dogs.

Year 3, I got one male and two female New Zealand rabbits to breed. I had never done this either, but some good books and you-tube helped a lot. Son built the cages when he was not on the road. I let nature take its course and soon we had a dozen big rabbits. I learned to identify problems, medical issues and treat them; but I still lost two rabbits. One baby rabbit’s teeth grew fast and curved, I had to cut them with a toenail clipper, but the condition eventually caused the rabbit’s death. One of my favorite does became paralyzed and had to be put down. Also, that year, my son built another chicken coop for the 12 ornamental silkies, he wanted to raise.Continue reading“Progress on My Farm – Part 1, by Animal House”

Like many of you, I’ve read many articles on what to do when the SHTF or TEOTWAWKI. With the fear being put out by the media and politicians regarding Covid, many people who had never heard of prepping, survivalists, or even the acronym SHTF, are now getting quickly up to date.

For all the articles out there, once you sort the wheat from the chaff, there are usually some great pieces of advice regarding what to do when the SHTF, what to include in prepping, building a bugout plan, etc. But, what about the here and now? The time before everything goes south. What can you do? As it turns out, there is a lot of things that you can do, but will you choose to do them? Remember that at the end of the day, your life is in your hands.

Where Am I?

Let me be perfectly clear. Where you live is as important as breathing. Don’t think so? Let’s review history. During the end of World War 2, when the United States, Canada, Britain, and the Soviet Union invaded Germany, the country was divided between them. Yes, it’s a very generalization of a complex subject, but the end result was West Germany, East Germany, and a wall between them. While those in West Germany found economic freedom, those in East Germany found suppression and communism. While no one in Germany at the time could have predicted those outcomes, it is an excellent historical example of the importance of choosing where one lives.

Looking at the years 2019, 2020, and 2021, we find current times not only showing but upholding this idea. Democrat-controlled cities were allowed to riot, burn, loot, and pillage. Police departments in Democrat cities were defunded and crime spiked. Rioters were allowed to take over portions of cities and businesses were either shut down or severely interrupted. If you were that business owner, then that was your livelihood. If you lived there, you found yourself wondering if you would survive. In 2020, a retired St. Louis police captain was shot and killed by looters.

The response to Covid has also been an extreme example of why where one lives is as important as oxygen. If you had loved ones in nursing homes in the New York City area, they were given far different treatment than those in Florida. Even now, the treatments remain different.

You have to treat where you live as important as Oxygen. It matters greatly. No Oxygen, no life. The here and now is the time to start taking stock of where you are living and determining if it’s somewhere that will remain free.

How do you start making that decision? Start taking things in stages and break them down. Are you in a city controlled by Democrats? This is not a political article. It’s reality. Every major city controlled by Democrats is not a place of freedom. Is it a city controlled by a Globalist Republican? If so, then they’re going to be just as bad. Failed policies from both sides of the political spectrum can be found in many places. If you’re in one of these cities, are you truly going to remain free? How many died in the NYC area from failed Covid policies? How many in East Germany died from or were opressed by communism? Start making the changes to allow a move to a place that is free.Continue reading“The Here and Now, by Mark M.”

Introduction

I have lived in Southwest Florida for my entire life. My dad is a Florida-raised, University of Florida graduate. My mother spent half her childhood in Indiana and the other half in Naples, Florida.

Before my siblings and I were born, my parents started a semi-successful beekeeping business that has been going strong for thirty years. Now, I say “semi-successful” because when you’re running a beekeeping business you rely mostly on nature; and nature is something that is depleting with every passing year. However, they built this business well enough that they were able to homeschool and raise seven children off the profits. Their three oldest sons have even come to profit from their own beekeeping businesses.

I will go a little further into the beekeeping aspect of our life later into the article, but for now let’s start with farming. The four younger children (including myself) stick with cows, poultry, and gardening. We primarily raise is cattle. This includes beef cows, dairy cows, and beef/dairy crosses. We have had many of our animals fall ill, but none like the cows.

Sometimes after recently giving birth, the dairy cows got milk fever. Milk fever is caused by a blood calcium deficiency in which the cow will be unable to stand up. She may also have diarrhea, become dehydrated, and can even die. This is something that happened to us once). For this, we gave electrolytes and calcium supplements. We even found that Tums heartburn tablets would work, in an emergency situation.

To get the cows off the ground, we’d push a heavy linen sheet or a tarp underneath them and then get as many people as possible to lift them up. More often than not, the sheet or tarp would rip.

Scours was when one calf would get severe diarrhea; and then the rest of the herd would get it. In fact, just earlier this year a young calf got it. We ended up giving it electrolytes and barley water. This is fairly easy to make and works wonders. Of course, the only way to get it into the calf was feeding it with a large, needleless syringe.Continue reading“Hands-On Self-Sufficient Living in Florida, by Bonnie R.”