Maple Mountain Bee Company is hosting another round of bee keeping classes over the next couple months. As you may recall, Bryan Esquivel of Maple Mountain Bees authored a guest post for us in the past about how he got started in bee keeping. You can find the article here.
These are free classes, held in Bryan’s home. If you have any questions on the schedule, please contact Bryan using the contact information below.
One of the things that frustrates me in Preparedness is that many of the texts and resources out there don’t adequately cover “Pioneer Skills”. That is to say, they present material lists and instructions that include things that are only available via modern-day manufacturing methods. Often times what I’m looking for is how do I make something out of nothing – nothing being the great abundance that nature provides us with! This is very true when it comes to activities like candle, cheese and soap making. I want to know how to do it in a true collapse or long term survival scenario. (more…)
Tags: candles, Howto, light, Old World Skills, Pioneer Skills, Pioneers, Survival
Our currant bushes finally put on enough currants this year that the kids couldn’t keep up with eating them all, so we had currants left to make some currant jelly.
This is super easy jelly to make and one of my favorite flavors because it’s a nice combination of tart and sweet.  Here’s what you’ll need:

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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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Tags: Education, Event, Food Storage, Howto, meetup
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.
April 17th (2pm-4pm).
1475 North 900 West Mapleton, Utah.
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Tags: Education, Event, Food Storage, Gardening, Group Buy, Howto, Sales
One of our favorite DIY sites, Instructables.com is hosting a Paracord Contest. The grand prize is a Leatherman with a custom laser etched message of your choice. Paracord is one of the best gotta-have-some-with-you preparedness items. The inner strands can be used for fishing line while the outer shell on its own provides a strong shell for wrapping or weaving other objects. Really, the possibilities are endless.
Have a look at the Instructables Paracord Contest here.
Interested in a little more discussion with the preppers here, and elsewhere? In our association with the American Preppers Network, you now have several ways to interact with other people that like to talk preparedness.
For people interested in forum discussions, we have two available places to talk.  The APN forums will allow you communicate with the other utahpreppers, as well as other state prepper groups.  Also available is the new LDS Preppers, a similar concept but geared for the LDS readers. By keeping with the rest of the groups, you can participate not only in the Utah discussions, but also any other regions, or specialty topics you wish.  It’s a great resource to communicate with other preppers, without having having to come out of your well-stocked mountain retreat (ok, a little humor there).  If you need to understand a little bit more about what a forum is, check out the wikipedia description.
If you like real time discussions, you can now join us in our chat rooms. These chats are accessible to computer novice, as well as the geeks among us. For the novice, you can easily go HERE and join the chat rooms in your browser (no software to install).  Just click the link, and you will be prompted for a nickname to use, then it’ll log you in and you will have a page to  There are several rooms available, the most important ones being the #preppers, and the #utahpreppers rooms.  Chat rooms are an ‘always-open’ type of room where you can go in and interact in real-time.  Just clicking that link will open a page with a small bar on the top that lists which rooms you can listen in (just click on one to see the activity in that room).  On the right hand side will be a list of people currently in the room, and at the bottom, you can type in a message, and just hit enter for everyone to get it.
For the Geeks, we’re all using the rizon IRC network, and you may use any IRC client (such as XChat, WeeChat, or others) to connect.
When I started storing food, I thought it would be a good idea to store forms of canned milk like evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk. I bought quite a few cans and have used most of them over the years. However, I only have two recipes I regularly make that call for evaporated milk, and one that calls for sweetened condensed milk, so I did not use every can I purchased before they expired. (more…)
Tags: Food, Food Storage, Howto, Recipe
Magazine Review: Big Buy
I’m going to be honest with you: this isn’t what you’d call a glowing review. Think of it as more of a warning, not just against this magazine, but other books and magazines like it.
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Tags: Food, Food Storage, Howto, Recipe, Reviews

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. Â You can eat it fresh, freeze it, can it, Â dry it, drink it or burn it in your vehicle. Â 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. Â It is the original “trail snack” and can also be ground up for stews or soups.
Tags: 72 Hour Kits, BOB, Food, Howto, preps, Survival Food
This year has been a big experiment in new canning recipes, and foods. In doing that, my wife especially has been learning a lot as she has stretched beyond some of the basic recipes we’ve used in previous years.
Well, over on her own blog, my wife made a comment about something she’s learned this year. Go check out what she’s learned on the difference between liquid and powdered pectin.
And boy has she been using that a lot this year. I’ve been grabbing pictures to post up here, hopefully I can get to it soon.
Tags: Canning, Food, Food Storage, Gardening, Howto

Peppers courtesy of the garden
Harvest season is upon us here in Utah, so I’ve been pretty busy preserving the harvest. This year I grew pepper plants from seed and have LOTS of peppers in my garden. Some are hot and some are mild. This is a good thing if you like peppers a lot, but I do not. Thankfully my husband does, but even a pepper lover like him can only eat so many peppers. So what do we do with all those peppers? We eat a few, put a few in salsa, and save the rest for later by dehydrating them.
Tags: Dehydration, Food, Food Storage, Gardening, Howto