New Author: Angela

• 25 Apr 2009
• angela
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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!

New Author: Connor

• 21 Jan 2009
• Connor
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Hi everybody, I’m Connor. I’ve been participating in the comments here for a while, and was finally convinced to dedicate some more time to this blog during last night’s meetup.  I’m a big fan of all things preparedness, and while I’m not the stereotypical rugged outdoor type, I try to dabble in enough things to diversify my talents and be adequately prepared for any potential TEOTWAWKI scenario.

I’m a web developer by day, news junkie and political economist by night (and those valuable lunch breaks!), and fill in the cracks with all sorts of other fun things.

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Get Home Bag

• 30 Dec 2008
• Jayce
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Recently I took some time to rotate a few items in my ‘Get Home Bag’ that I keep in my car.  The seasons were changing here, and they require different items to fill the bags purpose.  As I was changing, I realized I should take a few pictures to post on here (and satisfy the requests of a few friends wanting to know what I have).  With that in mind here’s a basic breakdown of my winter Get Home Bag.

Purpose:

I live a fair distance from my work now (oh how I long to telecommute again!).  Around 25 miles one way, around a lake, across a river, through several places that have limited road options.  How do I know this?  Well, I would say everybody should be very familiar with every alternate route between their home and most common destinations, because you never know when you will need them.  I have needed mine.  Beyond a natural curiosity and desire to optimize my commute, my neighborhood often requires it because it has a population that overwhelms the local road infrastructure on a good day.  Add in an accident, or bad weather and it becomes horrid.  Get worse weather, and you can actually shut down access to our town.  It’s happened before, it will happen again.  Throw in an earthquake, and there will be *no* cars heading home.  Whatever your locally preferred disaster, would you be able to get home to your wonderful food storage?

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The British called, they want their guns back.

• 10 Dec 2008
• ekim
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Real world modern and historic data have shown that government efforts to suppress gun ownership negatively affects law abiding citizens while having little to no affect on criminals or the criminal use of firearms.  Citizens of England and Australia have come to that realization, perhaps too late.

Listening to these people talk about the incremental way that their rights were first infringed upon, then completely taken away reminds me of a famous quote by Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.”

As liberty loving Americans we need to stand up for not only our Rights but the Rights of others.

Make some noise

• 03 Dec 2008
• Jayce
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Average Pea whistle

An important piece of any Bug out Kit is a way to make a whole lot of noise. You need some way to create some attention-getting noise that can really travel the distance. This tool is a way to get the attention of a search party if you are lost or injured, as well as a way of helping find somebody who is lost. But all whistles are not created equal. Some are bulky, some are tiny, some have Pea’s, some don’t. How do you know which you should get? Well, I was recently pointed to a site via edcforums to an excellent PSK whistle review (PSK). Go check it out before you buy your whistle, it’ll help in selecting.

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Why we prep.

• 17 Nov 2008
• ekim
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This Reuters article on steep food price increases is very interesting. This seems like a good enough reason for most people to begin prepping. Anything you buy now may become a 7-9% return on investment if food prices increase as much as they are projecting.

What are some other reasons that people prep?  TEOTWAWKI, TSHTF, peace of mind?  Speak up and let us know some of the reasons why you prep.

Out of Jars?

• 20 Oct 2008
• Jayce
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People are not letting their jars go for anything

Nice article in the Daily Herald on Sunday about the rise in home canning, largely due to economic reasons.  They attribute it mostly to economic reasons, and list out how people are having trouble finding canning jars and equipment in stores now.  Freecycle and garage sales are largely wiped out now.

In an interview on Friday, Stephanie Shih, national spokeswoman for Ball Jars, said the Utah Valley spike is not isolated. Nationally, demand for Ball food preserving products has spiked 30 percent this year, and customers as far as New York have had trouble finding jars as demand grows. Sales of large Ball jars have jumped nearly 40 percent, and sales of Ball plastic freezer containers have doubled.

A recent survey of 1,800 people by the company found “that more than 70 percent of respondents intend to preserve more foods this year in an effort to save money on weekly groceries,” she said.

Hope you’ve been canning too.  I know I just had to pick up two more cases of quart jars, Wal-Mart had just received a load and was getting lower on quarts, still had pint sized though, at the time.