Skills as a prep

A few weeks ago a guest author on a popular preparation blog discussed the value of gardening as a resource. He put forth the opinion that while he enjoys gardening as a pastime, the decision as to whether to engage in it should be based solely around time and cost. Citing the inability to move a garden in an emergency and the amount of labor required to get to harvest, he concluded that it is better to save your seeds for a bug-out and expend today’s efforts and money on a trip to the grocery store. “It’s all about time,” he says, “not a skill or desire.” Continue reading “Skills as a prep”

Gardening In Utah

Recently I had a small message in my inbox that came in via the contact form here on the blog.  It was somebody named Alex mentioning that he had a blog we might be interested in.  A quick check showed that he was right, VegeNag is a blog about vegetable gardening in Utah.  I know I’m always looking for all the help I can get, so it’s nice to have somebody that can give advice that is local and knowledgeable about our specific soil conditions and other factors.

He is adding on quite a few useful articles on things he is doing to help plants grow around here, and has many useful links directly to useful locations such as the Utah State Extensions which provide very useful on agriculture, horticulture, insects, in short everything you might need to know about growing anything in your own county.

It looks like in the future he is planning on expanding his blog to also give alerts for when you need to take certain actions in your garden according to our climate.  And if we’ve learned anything this spring, it’s that a little help in knowing the real planting/safe dates can really help (I still can’t believe I got snow again today!)

Pandemic Preparedness – DIY Sanitization

san-prodsPandemic Preparedness is one of the simpler types of prepping – mostly because it relies heavily on you already being prepped with other things like food storage, water storage, etc.  A major component of Pandemic Prepping is preparation for quarantine.  Sanitation is a major part of Pandemic and quarantine preparedness.  While sanitzation is always important, during quarantine, sanitization will be extremely important in order to keep everyone healthy.  In this post we’re going to talk about killing germs and how to do it safely with household products.

Continue reading “Pandemic Preparedness – DIY Sanitization”

The Boy Who Cried Wolf: Procrastinating Our Preparedness


photo credit: BuddyBradley

“This has happened before, and it resolved itself just fine. There’s no reason to worry about this time, either.”

In the past couple days, I’ve seen this argument made in all sorts of variations, with people asserting that there have been other non-threatening flu virus strains in the past, as well as other pandemic threats. Despite the media hype, these non-events have faded into history with only a minuscule amount of death and injury. While I agree in part, I believe that there is a “boy who cried wolf” danger to simply ignoring current and future threats, all on the assumption that since previous ones did not escalate, that other ones will not as well.

Continue reading “The Boy Who Cried Wolf: Procrastinating Our Preparedness”

More Swine flu / Pandemic Preparedness Info

viramask_n99esc3501Since my post from yesterday regarding Pandemic Preparedness in light of the current Swine Flu outbreak, I’ve talked to several other preppers and want to provide our readers with more information.  Specifically I want to share some other/better mask information, some great links for info on the virus spreading and to discuss sheltering in/quarantine a bit more.

Continue reading “More Swine flu / Pandemic Preparedness Info”

Pandemic Preparedness – Swine Flu Outbreak

pandemic-troops

See all of our Pandemic Preparedness / Swine Flu posts here.

With the current Swine Flu scare coming out of Mexico and popping up here and there in the United States, it is prudent to become familiar with the situation and especially prudent to review your Pandemic Preparedness Level.  I should also stress that this is a “DON’T PANIC, Just Prepare!” post.  Continue reading “Pandemic Preparedness – Swine Flu Outbreak”

New Author: Angela

Hi all!  I’m Angela from Adventures in Self Reliance.  I’m so excited, honored, and admittedly a bit nervous to have been given the opportunity to be an author for Utah Preppers.  A little about me–I live in fabulous Emery County with my sweet husband and three children, a dog, a cat, a horse, some fish, and some chicks.  I am a preparedness junkie and love camping, hiking, archery, fishing, shooting stuff, sewing, chocolate, and historical reenactments among other things ;-)

I love a good adventure and learning new things.  As far as prepping is concerned, we’ve been actively at it for a few years, so have had time to make lots of mistakes and learn from them!  I believe in having supplies on hand and knowing how to use what I have, so it seems there is always something to learn, try, or work on where our preps are concerned.

I’m excited to start posting here, and hope to be able to encourage and help others in their preparations and ability to be self reliant.  I’ve found the more I share, the more I learn, so hopefully we can all help each other out!  In the meantime, you can visit a few of my favorite posts from my blog to kind of get a feel for what I’m about:

Why I do this Crazy Stuff
Sprouted Wheat Experiment
Deer or Elk Jerky

Looking forward to learning and sharing with you all!

Family Dynamics and Perpetual Preparedness


photo credit: m o d e

Any minute now, I might become a father. My wife is (very) pregnant with our first child, and the seconds are ticking until our lives change significantly (for the better!). As the months have gone by, we have dedicated a great deal of time to readying, studying, and researching how best to do everything we’re soon going to need to do.

Preparedness has played a large role—indeed, a central role, since what we’ve been doing up until now is preparing for our son’s birth. Having an end result in mind forces us to think in the long term, and purchase things, learn skills, and become well versed in all that will be necessary. Too often we get wrapped up in the here and now, and let our long-term preps take a backseat.

Continue reading “Family Dynamics and Perpetual Preparedness”

Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC

Tomorrow night, April 7th TLC will be showing a new episode of 18 Kids and Counting.

In case you aren’t familiar with the show, here is a brief description of this reality show. Michele and Jim Bob Duggar are the parents of a traditional Christian family. After 20 years of marriage, they have had 18 children with only one set of twins. They manage to afford this large family by being frugal, wisely investing the money they do have in money making properties and businesses and always paying cash for all their purchases. If they don’t have enough money to buy something, they save and buy it later or do without. All of their children are also home schooled.

What does this have to do with prepping? Continue reading “Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC”

Prepping for Spring

war-pointingI just finished a lunch meeting with Jayce discussing upcoming posts, some potential new authors, work (real job kinda work) and several other things.  One of the topics we discussed is that most of us (your authors) have posted few to no posts in the last month or two.  I told him I would write a quick post explaining that :)

Continue reading “Prepping for Spring”

Shelf Reliance event at Utah Costco locations

Starting yesterday, April 2nd, the Orem Costco and the Sandy Costco are again hosting their Food Rotation System special event. They are offering the Shelf Reliance can rotating shelves for $269 which is a great price. If you have been planning on purchasing one of these systems, now is a great time to get your Food Storage organized with these great products and save some money at the same time.

Based on the Costco Special Events file, the Orem and Sandy Costcos will be hosting this event from April second to April eleventh.

The West Valley Costco location will be hosting the same event April sixteenth to twenty-fifth.