Bug out/Camping/Utility Trailer

• 17 Aug 2010
• ekim
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I’ve been wanting to get out camping more often, but I suspect like many have had trouble convincing my wife to give camping a try. For some reason, sleeping on the hard, cold ground doesn’t appeal to her.

Buying a dedicated camper, pop-up tent, RV would be nice, but they are generally more than I want to spend, are single purpose and often require separate registration here in Utah. I often find a need for a small utility trailer for hauling mulch, compost, etc. and here in Utah, smaller trailers under a certain weight and size don’t need to be registered. When I obtained an old home built utility trailer recently, I decided to jump head first into a home built adventure trailer build.

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Got Chickens?

• 13 Jul 2010
• neybar
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According to a recent article on KSL.com many Utah cities and counties are considering or allowing residents have backyard chickens.  Most likely you’ll need to verify with your city hall.  Many places allow hens, but not roosters so make sure you check up on that.

If you have the space for chickens they provide a nice source of fresh eggs and meat (if you have a rooster).  How many of you have chickens or are considering it?  I really want to get some, but can’t in my current place.  For those that have them what has been your experience?

2 Food Storage Classes in Spanish Fork, April 15th

• 13 Apr 2010
• ekim
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There will be two classes on Food Storage taught in Spanish Fork on Thursday evening.

Debbie Kent lives in the Southern California. She has been married for 30 years. She and her husband are the proud parents of 6 beautiful children, and grandparents of 3. She has been an advocate of food storage and emergency preparedness since her early teen age years. She enjoys giving emergency preparedness lessons each month at her church. Much of the resources found on this website are the culmination of hours of preparation for these lessons. She sincerely hopes that in sharing this information, other’s may benefit from her efforts. http://peaceofpreparedness.com/

Spanish Fork, April 15th, 2 classes by Debbie Kent
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Got Old Oil in Your Food Storage in Utah or Southern Idaho?

• 22 Jan 2010
• angela
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Want to donate some to a study on food storage oils at BYU?  I love food storage experiments, so you know I’m letting them have some of my old stuff.  If you’d like to help out the oil study, see the details here.  They are looking for vegetable oils that have been in food storage 6 months to 5 years.  Right now my oldest oil in storage is only 2 1/2 years old.  Bummer.  I’ve had older stuff before I would have loved to donate.  Anyway, contact Ann Saunders at BYU if you’ve got some old oil they can experiment on. :)

Preparedness Christmas: 25% off on Sanitation Preps

• 10 Dec 2009
• phil801
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Coupon Code: prepxmas

How are your Sanitation Preps?  Do you have a bucket toilet lid sitting around?  Or one of those portable toilets?  That’s what I had until recently.  A few weeks ago I learned about a set of sanitation products that, when used together, provide preppers with a toilet solution that equals no mess, low smell and biodegrades all your waste for you!  Through a set of fortuitous events, I was in a position to arrange a group buy of 25% off all of their products and offer it to all preppers for Christmas.

Their system is called the GottaGo Toilet system.  It’s basically a cardboard disposable (after about 100 uses) emergency toilet that uses biodegradable bags and a microbial sand.  Once you’ve filled up a bag you can dig a hole and bury the bag – yes, bury it – within 30 – 90 days it will be completely broken down.  You can also burn your toilet once you’re done with it.  Basically you can go on a family campout and have everyone use this toilet system and not have to carry any of it home to dispose of it. (more…)

Preparedness Stocking Stuffer Swap

• 04 Dec 2009
• angela
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You all know Christmas is coming.  If your house is anything like mine, you’ve got stockings to fill, and usually Santa is a little more sparse on the grown-ups stockings.  Do you stuff your own? Use a sticky note to remind your Santa not to forget the stocking?  End up with stuff in there that you really don’t want or need?  Of course I’ve never had any of those happen, I’m just asking ;)

Anyway, this year, I thought I’d have a little stocking stuffer fun, so I am hosting a preparedness stocking stuffer swap over at my blog.  If you are interested in giving and receiving some fun preparedness/self reliance related stocking stuffers this year, please join in the fun.  Here’s the basics: I will assign each participant a new friend for whom they will prepare and ship a stocking full of prep related goodies. And another new friend will be shipping goodies to you.  How fun is that?  And if your Santa is really on the ball and already stuffs your stocking, you can just call it a preparedness gift exchange. :)

Financial Preparedness – MUST be built in GOOD times!

• 23 Nov 2009
• phil801
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Everyone knows times are not good and although we’re told they’re getting better – they clearly seem to be getting worse.  I’ve recently had an experience that has severely highlighted financial preparedness for me, I’d like to share the lessons I’ve learned in the hope that others can avoid my current situation – allow me to give you some background:

The company I’ve been working for was financially stable – strong even – several months ago.  We weren’t worried about the economic crunch and were certain we’d move through it.  My wife and I had a financial reserve that we were actively growing, but not aggressively.  Certainly not as aggressively as we could have been.  In fact, we had become fairly complacent in adding to it.  While our long term food storage was fully stocked, we live off our 3 month supply and rotate through it – replenishing monthly or so.

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Survival Movie Review: 2012

• 13 Nov 2009
• phil801
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Last night a few prepper friends and I went to the midnight opening show of the new survival/TEOTWAWKI movie 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had already heard that they had blown it or that it was really bad. But I figured even a bad movie can be enjoyed (through mocking) if you’ve got a group of friends with you!

2012 really has very little to do with survival. You won’t walk out of it with ideas or inspiration of things to add to your preps. In fact, the scenario that the movie presents is pretty much total un-survivable destruction regardless of who or where you are. It is however a bit about surviving based on your wits with 20 gallons of luck!

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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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Building an A.R.K.

• 29 Oct 2009
• LukeHopkin
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Probably the most well known TEOTWAWKI of all time is the story of Noah’s Ark. A devastating flood wiping out everything and everyone you know, and relocating you to some foreign land, is definitely the end of the world as you know it. When thinking about this story, we usually think about the 40 days and nights on the ark, and how Noah and his family had to survive that. But in reality that was not the real survival situation. The real survival situation started when the waters receded and Mr. and Mrs. Noah had to start over. Building, planting, raising animals – all had to be handled from square one. (more…)

Procrastinating the Day of Preparedness

• 20 Oct 2009
• Connor
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(Cross-posted from my blog; for anybody wondering who Alma is that I reference at the bottom, it’s from a book of scripture from my religion—FYI)

photo credit: Michelle Cordes

Fancy televisions. 4-wheelers. Boats. Video game systems. Fancy clothing and jewelry. These and a slew of other material objects are some of the distractions by which people refuse to prepare themselves and their families for the storms on the horizon. In our culture of consumerism, instant gratification is a given; rarely do people acquire an adequate supply of goods to see them through troubled times.

This perpetual mode of procrastination has ill effects felt not only by those making such choices, but by those around them as well. Of course, those in this narrow state of mind do not even consider the consequences of their choices, let alone how they might affect others. Their focus on the here and now blinds them of any need to reflect on the future. A constant stream of entertainment pacifies them into a brain-numbing trance where, like the drug addict looking for the next fix, their cares take no thought of distant events.

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Product First Look – PolyFarm MonoVault

• 15 Oct 2009
• ekim
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In a previous post we introduced the concept of burial or sinking to disguise or otherwise hide equipment, weapons or other preps. Today we will take a first look the MonoVault line of products by PolyFarm of Meridian Idaho.

Three MonoVaults, 107, 212 and 152

Recently, some of the Utah Preppers authors met at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Salt Lake City. This is where we first met PolyFarm. After some discussions to learn about their production, they were kind enough to provide us with sample of one of their smaller MonoVaults to review and to beat up with some tests. I really like the idea of the product so I purchased a couple larger sizes so that we will be able to review several different sizes.
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