Beginning Bee Kepping Class in Utah County April 17th

• 29 Mar 2010
• ekim
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Beginning Beekeeper’s Class

Bee Keeping is fun and relatively inexpensive.

I took this class last year and obtained my equipment through Maple Mountain bees. It has proven to be a fun and rewarding experience for my family and I. The 60lbs. of honey we got our first year wasn’t bad either!

Bryan Esquivel of Maple Mountain Bees authored a guest post for us in May of last year about how he got started in bee keeping. You can find the article here.

When:

April 17th (2pm-4pm).

Where:

1475 North 900 West Mapleton, Utah.
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SureWater high-capacity water tank review

• 07 Nov 2009
• wade
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With the high-capacity water tanks from our group buy delivered and installed, it’s time to publish a review. I am excited about the number of individuals that are now substantially more prepared with water for their families. Water storage is a difficult part of the preparedness puzzle. Water takes up a lot of space and most of us don’t have much. Considering shelf-life, convenience for access and use, ease of rotation, and best utilization of space, I know of no better solution for water storage however, and would strongly recommend the SureWater tanks as a foundation to your efforts.

This review will cover receiving, unpacking, assembling, and filling the tanks during which I will summarize the features and mention pros and cons. While some individuals ordered the 525 gallon tank, my review will only cover the 275 gallon.

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Protection Planning for Family and Property class

• 03 Oct 2009
• ekim
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The city of Salem, Utah has begun offering Emergency Preparedness classes on various topics. October’s Emergency Preparedness Class is on Protection Planning for Family and Property. It will be held on Saturday, October 10th, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon at the Salem Community Center, 151 West 300 South in Salem Utah. We are fortunate to have Dave Acosta come and teach this class.
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Survival Food: How to Make Parched Corn

• 02 Oct 2009
• phil801
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Dried corn ready to be parched

Corn – You can boil it, toast it, roast it, parch it, eat it raw, grill it, steam it, stew it, cream it, grind it, feed humans or animals with it.  You can eat it fresh, freeze it, can it,  dry it, drink it or burn it in your vehicle.  It’s a diverse food that can serve a prepper well if they know what to do with it.

Parched corn was eaten regularly by American Indians warriors and hunters as an extremely lightweight, high energy trail food long before European explorers showed up and was a typical food or treat for the pioneers as well.  It is the original “trail snack” and can also be ground up for stews or soups.

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DIY: Horizontal Storage of 55 gal. Water Barrels

• 19 Jul 2009
• royal
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FAILURE WARNING: After two weeks two barrels started to collapse due to insufficient support. I plan to add a 2×6 or 2×8 across the middle to increase the surface area supporting the barrels. I was anxious to share this project and should have waited longer to see if my concerns about too little support were legitimate. I will re-post this article once I have a proven design.

I will  I stumbled across this DIY project recently for storing 55 gal. water barrels horizontally. The biggest drawback of standard upright water barrels is getting the water out when needed. This generally involves either a siphon or a hand pump. Storing the barrels horizontally and adding a spigot to one of the caps makes using the barrels much more convenient. You’ll also be more likely to exchange the water every six months since it will be easier to do.

Here’s the website I found this project on and here are the instructions you’ll need (same pdf as you’ll find on the other website).

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Lightning Safety and Preparedness

• 24 Jun 2009
• phil801
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“When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!”

National Lightning Safety Awareness Week 21-27 June 2009

This week is National Lightning Safety week so let’s take a few minutes to talk about lightning and how it affects preppers.  There isn’t much you can do to prep for lightning to hit you, if that happens you better be right with God.  But what about lightning hitting near you – your home, your neighborhood, etc. The biggest impact of a lightning strike for us is usually the power being out.  It turns out that there are plenty of things you can do to try to encourage lightning to not hit you.

There are an estimated 25 million cloud-to-ground lightning flashes each year in the U.S.   So far in 2009, there have been 15 fatalities due to lightning. On average, there are 400 people hit by lightning each year, resulting in about 80 deaths.

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Freezing broccoli and cauliflower

• 19 Jun 2009
• wade
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One of the most significant weaknesses in my gardening has been storing my harvest. Gardens aren’t just about fresh produce. People used to live off them year round. With so many people struggling to make ends meet or struggling to establish adequate food storage, I am surprised there are so few gardens. This year I have committed to educating myself on effective storage techniques and significantly adding to the variety and quality of my food storage with the fruits of my garden.

There are many ways to preserve and store food including canning, smoking, bottling, drying, and freezing. Each has it’s own advantages and weaknesses and varies in effectiveness depending on the food. For example, I could eat canned green beans with meatloaf every night of the week but would rather eat dirt than canned peas. Of course, if it really came down to it, I would likely choose to supplement the dirt with the canned peas to avoid death. Thus, I would recommend having a variety of food stored in several different methods.

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An attempt to build a rotating compost bin

• 10 Jun 2009
• wade
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I’m fascinated by compost. Watching kitchen scraps turn into dirt in just a few weeks time is exciting and anything I can do to improve my soil is worth the effort. I want the ComposTumbler, but finding $429 in the family budget (the price after you give them an email address) for a barrel that holds dirt is proving difficult. So, this past weekend I decided to build my own.

The project was not a success in my mind but I thought I would post this how-to article anyway describing what I tried and the lessons learned in the hope that it will save others of you time and money should you embark on such a project yourself. The unit is complete and in my garden cooking up a batch of compost at this very moment, but it is difficult to use, I have concerns about how long it will last, and the door doesn’t stay closed.
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Evacuation Preparedness List Review part 2

• 05 Jun 2009
• phil801
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This is the fourth installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series.  The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here.  The third post, and the first post on the list review is here.  This post will pick up where we previously left off in reviewing the categories on the Master List. (more…)

Evacuation Preparedness List Review part 1

• 04 Jun 2009
• phil801
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This is the third installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series. The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here.

In this post we’ll be discussing the items in the different categories on the Master List. If you haven’t seen the list yet, you can access it here.

As we go through these categories, keep in mind that your 72 hour kit will be more like packing for an extended hiking trip whereas your Evacuation Kit will be more like packing for an extended camping trip. Also keep in mind that redundancy and the ability to shed your larger kits and still be able to survive with your smaller kits is critically important. You may find yourself in a scenario where you have bugged out with your Evacuation Kit, but for whatever reason you have to ditch most of it and go on foot. Your G.O.O.D bag had better be able to support you while your on foot. Potentially, you could have to drop supplies all the way down to your EDC and be able to survive off the items in your pockets. Redundancy across your kits is paramount. (more…)

The Master Evacuation Kit List

• 03 Jun 2009
• phil801
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This is the second post in a series, the first post covers Evacuation Preparedness basics and can be read here.

Previously, I briefly introduced the Mother of all Evacuation Lists.  This list is the result of reviewing well over 100 Bug Out Bag, 72 Hour Kit and G.O.O.D. bag lists and building a master list from them.  The new master list can be found here. The link will take you to a Google Spreadsheet which is what we’ll be using for now.  I’m hoping to get feedback from readers on other items that should be included which I’ll add to the list.  By the end of the series I’ll post an excel file that you can download and store or share.  In the meantime, feel free to share the link to the spreadsheet.  In this post we’ll start going over the list and get familiar with it.

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Ready for Anything

• 02 Jun 2009
• phil801
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“Ready for Anything”

That’s our Motto, this series will focus on how to live it.

Or at least, it will focus on some ideas on how to live ‘Ready for Anything’.  Specifically we’ll be looking at Evacuation Kits – commonly known as 72 Hour Kits, BOBs (Bug Out Bags), G.O.O.D. (Get Out Of Dodge) Bags among other names, all of which are similar but have distinctive differences.  This series will explore all over the Preparedness Rabbit Hole as we discuss multiple methods for Evacuation Preparedness and/or Shelter In Preparedness – which are similar yet critically different.

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