So one of the things we really want to do is to have a decent sized garden and grow some of our own food. This will help us preserve some food and also allow us to have fresh produce that we have grown ourselves. We have been prepping the soil in our backyard for a couple of years with compost and it is now very healthy. The problem is the sun exposure is blocked by trees and we do not own the land we live on so we have to get permission to make any changes.
There are two huge trees we figured they would never let us cut down, but I discovered today that is actually a possibility. Then we simply need to put in to practice a lot of the gardening tips for small areas we have been reading about this winter.
I did buy some seeds when we were out at Home Depot and a few little seed starter kits, I am going to get those going this week so I can have some plants for our soon to be revamped garden. This year we will need to buy plants to get a harvest on time, but for next year we might be able to make a temporary greenhouse in back and row all of our own seedlings.
Some of the books we are reading on gardening:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1882424581/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1602399840/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i02
We are going to look into heirloom seeds, because another thing we want is to use the seeds from year to year and save even more money. For now we bought mostly organic seeds since they don't seem to sell heirloom seeds at any stores around here, so we will probably have to order them online.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Feeling very underprepared today...
Well it took me almost 4 days but I finally got all my photos synced to the web, I also backed up my eBook collection and put it on my survivor thumb drive and put it in my purse. Then I read a bunch of the entries on the preparedness pro contest, hoping for some more tidbits. The problem is, I feel like we are barely crawling along in our efforts, finding time, energy and money is not easy. I guess every little bit helps and I need to go in and look at my stockpile more often to feel a little better about our progress. I must remind myself that 2 months ago we did not even have a stockpile! Not to mention this is a way of life we are learning, and something we have to learn to improve daily.
My son got into making survival bracelets, which are pretty cool, they are made with paracord and its basically 8-10 feet of paracord you can wear as jewelry and take apart and use if you ever need some emergency rope. They actually look pretty cool too!
I am helping him out and I find they are fun to make. I prefer mine on my ankle though because I am not a big fan of thick bracelets or watches. Not to mention it clashes with my Pandora! Hee hee. Nice to have rope on hand for when it is needed in an emergency though. He also wants to make belts and necklaces which would give even more feet of rope. Its a good project for the kids and I to do together while we talk.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
On the home front of prepping
So this week I am taking the time to upload all of my digital pictures to Picasa, and I even spent the 5 bucks a year to get extra storage space. I figure this way is something happens to my house and computer I have a way to get my pictures back... assuming of course the Picasa servers aren't in my area hehe.
The upside of this is I can now share my pictures with my mom and anyone else I want to give access. And I can post to my Google+ account as well. For me this is a better solution than backing up to DVDs and hoping my fireproof mini-safe really is fire and water and whatever else proof. It's also easier than backing up my pictures to a flash drive, especially since I seem to need bigger and bigger flash drives all the time. My books I still back up to a flash drive but that takes a lot less space than pictures. I keep the flash drive in my purse too so hopefully I will always have time to grab it!
This may not be something that people see as prepping, but having had a house fire once, I tend to obsess over the irreplaceable things I lost the first time. My cat, my books and my pictures. I found there was nothing else that really made a big difference in the long run. So I want to be able to get my photos and have all my books and my pets safe and sound. Granted if technology fails all together my pictures are gone forever and my books will be useless once the batteries die on my laptop and reader - but I am betting in that scenario I will be too busy just surviving to worry about anything else!
The upside of this is I can now share my pictures with my mom and anyone else I want to give access. And I can post to my Google+ account as well. For me this is a better solution than backing up to DVDs and hoping my fireproof mini-safe really is fire and water and whatever else proof. It's also easier than backing up my pictures to a flash drive, especially since I seem to need bigger and bigger flash drives all the time. My books I still back up to a flash drive but that takes a lot less space than pictures. I keep the flash drive in my purse too so hopefully I will always have time to grab it!
This may not be something that people see as prepping, but having had a house fire once, I tend to obsess over the irreplaceable things I lost the first time. My cat, my books and my pictures. I found there was nothing else that really made a big difference in the long run. So I want to be able to get my photos and have all my books and my pets safe and sound. Granted if technology fails all together my pictures are gone forever and my books will be useless once the batteries die on my laptop and reader - but I am betting in that scenario I will be too busy just surviving to worry about anything else!
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Prepping on a budget
Probably the hardest part of prepping for us has been find the cash to get extra stuff to store and have for emergencies. Also some emergency preparedness stuff can be expensive. In fact a LOT of it has been going up in price as more people worry about the economy, natural disasters and weather changes and want to be prepared for the worst. So for those of us whose income has gone down and not up with the economic problems being prepared can be a real challenge.
On the the things we have done is to switch out the kids of things we buy for birthdays/Christmas etc. We ask for preparedness gear, or weapons, or _fill in the blank_. We then are able to make double use of the money we would spend on birthday gifts anyway. Sales and coupons are a big deal as well. I regularly check for sales on things we use a lot, for us it is some weird stuff like coconut flour and oil, but also regular things like beef for jerky, Ziploc baggies, and even a real steal we found at target on hand towels and wash cloths.
The other thing we do is to try and buy stuff with our regular grocery budget money and stretch it to include extra food for storage. Kroger has a really nice system of sending you coupons for things you buy regularly and I make sure to use these before they expire. Granted most coupons are useless to us for food anyway - with a gluten free household you find that almost everything they give coupons for contain gluten still I do check for the occasional sale and coupons for things like nuts and coffee, cheese and organic produce that we try and eat.
I also do a lot of research and we watch TV shows to find ways to be more self sufficient and prepared - all of which is free. Most importantly we are learning to be better stewards of our money which to me is probably the most important "prepping" for our family.
On the the things we have done is to switch out the kids of things we buy for birthdays/Christmas etc. We ask for preparedness gear, or weapons, or _fill in the blank_. We then are able to make double use of the money we would spend on birthday gifts anyway. Sales and coupons are a big deal as well. I regularly check for sales on things we use a lot, for us it is some weird stuff like coconut flour and oil, but also regular things like beef for jerky, Ziploc baggies, and even a real steal we found at target on hand towels and wash cloths.
The other thing we do is to try and buy stuff with our regular grocery budget money and stretch it to include extra food for storage. Kroger has a really nice system of sending you coupons for things you buy regularly and I make sure to use these before they expire. Granted most coupons are useless to us for food anyway - with a gluten free household you find that almost everything they give coupons for contain gluten still I do check for the occasional sale and coupons for things like nuts and coffee, cheese and organic produce that we try and eat.
I also do a lot of research and we watch TV shows to find ways to be more self sufficient and prepared - all of which is free. Most importantly we are learning to be better stewards of our money which to me is probably the most important "prepping" for our family.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Watching Doomsday Preppers with Brad today...
We even watch the ones that seem ridiculous or over the top. As Brad likes to say we can learn something from each of them. One recurring theme seems to be that these people have a ton of money to spend on prepping and lots of places to store it. Both of those are things we are unavailable to us right now but we are taking notes on the things we want to do now and in the future.
Our favorite from the show we watched today (on TiVo so its an older show LOL) is making bricks to burn from shredded paper and dead leaves. We have a fireplace, so it would be cool to have stuff like that to use in the winter and much easier to store than the wood outside. So our question is - if we burn them in an open fireplace will our house smells like burning leaves? Going to be something we have to try.
TV really tries their best to make preppers look a bit looney, and they seem to pick the ones who focus on highly unlikely scenarios. My question to the ones prepping for the extreme things is this... why not just prep for the things that we see happening all over the world regularly? Hurricanes, Tsunami's, earthquakes, and yes economic problems, because we would be fools to think that our economy and food supplies are stable at this point in our nation. We don't need the threat of all these weird scenarios when we have all kinds of stuff happening regularly all over the world.
Realistically we have no way to produce our own food in my house right now, we do not have any seeds stored up and our yard is so small and shaded we really can't grow much either. We have no basement, no garage, no root cellar. So I think our biggest prep at this time isto find a way to move to a real house, so that is our biggest goal and the reason we are not spending all kinds of money on prepping supplies.
Our focus at this time is to be able to get the heck out and to that end we need to be able to put everything in one vehicle. Some things we are going to invest in are seeds, guns, ammo, keeping the vehicles in good bug out shape and the gas tanks always half full or above, survival supplies, small amounts of food and reusable household items we would hate to live without. Once we are out of here and in our dream house we will take on the heavy duty prepping that we really want to do.
Our favorite from the show we watched today (on TiVo so its an older show LOL) is making bricks to burn from shredded paper and dead leaves. We have a fireplace, so it would be cool to have stuff like that to use in the winter and much easier to store than the wood outside. So our question is - if we burn them in an open fireplace will our house smells like burning leaves? Going to be something we have to try.
TV really tries their best to make preppers look a bit looney, and they seem to pick the ones who focus on highly unlikely scenarios. My question to the ones prepping for the extreme things is this... why not just prep for the things that we see happening all over the world regularly? Hurricanes, Tsunami's, earthquakes, and yes economic problems, because we would be fools to think that our economy and food supplies are stable at this point in our nation. We don't need the threat of all these weird scenarios when we have all kinds of stuff happening regularly all over the world.
Realistically we have no way to produce our own food in my house right now, we do not have any seeds stored up and our yard is so small and shaded we really can't grow much either. We have no basement, no garage, no root cellar. So I think our biggest prep at this time isto find a way to move to a real house, so that is our biggest goal and the reason we are not spending all kinds of money on prepping supplies.
Our focus at this time is to be able to get the heck out and to that end we need to be able to put everything in one vehicle. Some things we are going to invest in are seeds, guns, ammo, keeping the vehicles in good bug out shape and the gas tanks always half full or above, survival supplies, small amounts of food and reusable household items we would hate to live without. Once we are out of here and in our dream house we will take on the heavy duty prepping that we really want to do.
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