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Barter items for survival – What would you have to trade in a survival situation?

Any conversation about prepping first starts with the “the best survival gun” followed by “bugging out vs hunkering down” and then on to “the best retreat location” and then to “what to have on hand for barter… well today, I’m going to answer that question.

The first thing to consider is what items do people need and use every day, followed by will they need these items after a long-term disaster and if so will those items be readily available when the resupply lines are cut. If not, then would those items be easy to make from other common items?

These are the questions I asked when putting away my barter items – those are included in the list below in no order.

1. Ammunition

While I don’t advocate bartering most ammo after a collapse simply because that ammo could be used against you. Stop and think about it, if a person needs to barter for ammo in the first weeks and months after a collapse then it’s evident that person has not prepped and will need other stuff, stuff they figure that you now have and there is no guarantee that they won’t use the ammo that you traded them at a later date to kill you and take your preps for their own use.

The exception that I make with ammo for barter purposes is for shotgun ammo. I’ve stocked up a large amount (500 rounds) of 12 gauge birdshot in #6 and smaller shot sizes for barter purposes. Sure birdshot can kill someone, however, it’s low penetration and short-range make it one of the least threatening ammo types that can be stocked up and used for barter purposes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sustainable Vegetable Gardening Tips For Homesteaders and Preppers

September 1, 2017

Sustainable Vegetable Gardening Tips For Homesteaders and Preppers

Here’s the deal…

Everyone knows that you need to practice your sustainable gardening skills now before the world as we know it ends. However, how are you implementing that practice? Did you purchase your seedlings from a store? If you have bugs in your garden, do you reach for the Seven? If a plant dies, do you run to the store to get another one? Did you purchase commercial manure or garden soil to ‘plus up’ your soil this year?

As we all know, this isn’t sustainable. My idea of survival gardening is to take all necessary actions needed to overcome the need/desire to run to the store when I have a gardening problem. Running to the store won’t be possible when the world as we know it ends. Survival or sustainable gardening takes work (and planning), a bit of knowledge you may not currently have, and a different mindset. I propose a four prong approach for you to consider implementing.

I have been a Master Gardener for 26 years and I still have failures. It is natural. For example, my tarragon seedlings all died this year. My answer to that is to start them again or live without tarragon until next year.

So, the first thing I would like to suggest is to garden like your life depends on it. Someday it will! If you change your mindset and act like your life depends on your actions – NOW, you will have the experience to do what is necessary to make your garden at least moderately successful when you are depending on it to produce.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Items That You Can Barter When SHTF

August 18, 2017

Items That You Can Barter When SHTF

Barter items for survival – What would you have to trade in a survival situation?

These are the questions I asked when putting away my own barter items – those are included in the list below in no order.

1. Ammunition

While I don’t advocate bartering most ammo after a collapse simply because that ammo could be used against you. Stop and think about it, if a person needs to barter for ammo in the first weeks and months after a collapse then it’s evident that that person has not prepped and will need other stuff, stuff they figure that you now have and there is no guarantee that they won’t use the ammo that you traded them at a later date to kill you and take your preps for their own use.

The exception that I make with ammo for barter purposes is for shotgun ammo. I’ve stocked up a large amount (500 rounds) of 12 gauge bird shot in #6 and smaller shot sizes for barter purposes. Sure birdshot can kill someone, however, it’s low penetration and short range make it one of the least threatening ammo types that can be stocked up and used for barter purposes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why buy new when you can shop used: Reviewing second hand approaches to first world problems

April 18, 2017

Why buy new when you can shop used: Reviewing second hand approaches to first world problems

“Measurement owes its existence to Earth; Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to Estimation of quantity; Balancing of chances to Calculation; and Victory to Balancing of chances.” Sun Tsu

For all of us there is the justified issue of money, we may not like it but money makes the world go around, at least at this time. We can all remember times in our lives where a solid barter or trade superseded any hint of monetary distribution. When all we had to offer for a tool or even food was a trade of our services and or objects we held. Of course if there are those of you who have never seen these times, horse trading or bartering is absolutely one of the greatest skill sets we can absorb and use.

For myself personally, I have worked for multi-billion dollar corporations when a billion dollars meant something. I was middle management by the time I was 21, and making high 5 figures when gold was under $100 an ounce. Not at any point did I consider my future, sure I had a couple months of savings, and old habits instilled in me by my parents die hard so I have always had a decent stock of dry, canned and other food as well as water. However, did I really think the world could end, or that the things that have happened would.

– Honestly –

Yes, I did, see I have the benefit of something others may have never had. At a very young age I was taught there is no shame in asking someone with plenty if my labor or services were of sufficient value to trade for some of what they have. I was also taught to share what we had, even if it was little or barely sufficient for ourselves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dealing With Medical Emergencies Solo: When It’s Necessary To Stitch Up Your Own Wound, Pull Out Your Own Tooth, Apply Your Own Tourniquet

September 24, 2016

Dealing With Medical Emergencies Solo: When It’s Necessary To Stitch Up Your Own Wound, Pull Out Your Own Tooth, Apply Your Own Tourniquet

About two months ago, I sliced my leg open with a beer bottle. I work in a bar, so that was extraordinary in itself, but the depth was. Bone wasn’t visible, but everything else was. Luckily, it didn’t bleed too badly. My coworkers insisted that I needed stitches, but I just butterflied the bitch. Maybe I should’ve gone to the hospital, seeing as it took over a month to heal, and I’ve got a nasty scar out of it. Still, four weeks and no infection later, I recognize that I scraped by on the bare minimum. But, sometimes, that’s all that’s going to be available to you.

I had the luxury of being able to go to the hospital if my pride would’ve just let me. But that’s not always a reality. Whether because you are too far away from medical personnel or because there are none available, you’ve got to be prepared to deal with your own medical emergencies. Now there are some things that just aren’t possible (performing your own open-heart surgery, for example), but you’d be surprised what you’re capable of doing yourself if necessary. Below are some tips with dealing with three medical emergencies by yourself.

Mandatory disclaimer: I am not a medically trained professional. This guide is for informational purposes only, based on my experiences and best research. This knowledge is only to be referred to as a last resort- if you do have access to a medical professional that should be your first go-to, no matter what complex you have about receiving help. For the purposes of this guide, you are days or more away from real medical help.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Possible “EMP” Hit On A Solar Power System — And How To Reduce The Risk

June 23, 2016

A Possible “EMP” Hit On A Solar Power System — And How To Reduce The Risk

EMP is just a super-duper version of regular old radio frequency interference. With enough signal strength to blast past the reverse voltage limits of most semiconductors, an EMP attack is expected to destroy many solid-state radios, computers, controllers, etc. I *may* have had my own small “EMP” caused by my own ham radio station, and this article explains what I learned.

My solar power system is based on Outback inverters & charge controllers, so I had their computerized Mate3 monitor installed. This is a very compact little special-purpose computer that displays current and daily total power at multiple points throughout the entire solar power system, including panels, chargers, batteries, inverts, circuits and power being sent back to the utility. In my case, I had it connected via cat5 cable to a nearby private WIFI router so I could read the results from my easy chair. (NOT connected to the Internet!)

I subsequently put up a new random-length dipole antenna, fed with an antenna tuner, and got a linear amplifier working, and was finally able to get a fairly powerful signal out. The antenna end was just about exactly over the Mate 3 controller, about 20 feet above it. Do you see where this is going?

I can’t be sure that these are related, but my previously reliable Mate3 suddenly died, acting as if its startup-circuitry was either fried or reprogrammed: it would perform initial self checks, but then would go in circles, refusing to go on to the actual monitoring task. No amount of resetting made any difference.

Of course, it could have been a lighting-related event, or just a component failure, but the recent antenna and ham shack work made me wonder if the high voltage field at the end of the dipole on some frequencies might have been related?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Preserving And Creating ‘Wealth’

May 18, 2016

Preserving And Creating ‘Wealth’

Avoiding loss of one’s ‘wealth’ from whatever crises may befall you and/or your family seems paramount to helping avoid or at least mitigate the negative consequences that accompany emergencies and disasters, or even the general decline of civilisation. With currency devaluation, government overreach, civil unrest, bank bail-in legislation, labour strife, market corrections, negative interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty, economic decline (perhaps even collapse), it seems almost impossible to protect one’s wealth completely without even worrying about everyday calamities that can place financial stress upon an individual and/or family. The following suggestions seem the most likely way to prepare for an uncertain world, and avoid some of the more dire consequences of increasing volatility and possible confiscation by the-powers-that-be (a concern that must be considered as governments become increasingly insolvent).

It also seems prudent to reduce dependency on complex systems that are prone to disruptions over which you have no control, such as distant supply chains or infrastructure frailties–that is why I believe at the base of your thinking should be a desire for yourself/family/community to become more resilient and self-sufficient. (Note: I have included links to articles found on The Survivalist Blog only to keep the discussion ‘in-house’; and, the information that follows is not meant to be investment ‘advice’ but one person’s thoughts on how to prioritise ‘investments’.)

A common question that arises when contemplating emergency/disaster planning is where to start?

First, focus on yourself and basic survival gear.

Skills and knowledge you acquire are the most difficult to be taken from you. First Aid courses. Fitness/healthcare-oriented activities. Hunting courses. Archery/gun use. Gardening/food production knowledge. Survival training. ‘Handyman’ skills. Building a ‘survival’ library. Activities, training, and literature that can help you and your family cope with unexpected crises are perhaps the wisest ‘investment’ and can’t be confiscated by the-powers-that-be. These should likely be a priority.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Surviving In Suburbia: How One Family Turned Their Suburban Lot Into A Productive Mini-Farm

April 11, 2016

Surviving In Suburbia: How One Family Turned Their Suburban Lot Into A Productive Mini-Farm

Gather together a group of preparedness minded folks and the conversation invariably turns to pulling up stakes and moving to the country to create a self-reliant home and life. But, for many, moving is not an option. Work, family, kids, health, personal responsibilities are all valid reasons keeping people in their present location. It may not be what we want, but it is where we are right now. We don’t have to postpone our path to self-reliance or preparing for a crisis, though, we can start where we are, with what we have.

Even though a vast country property might be ideal, a large suburban lot can be just as productive. It can be a place to learn and practice, make mistakes; a place to build skills and confidence and learn how to live a life not reliant on a consumeristic society.

When I moved to my property 15 years ago I did so with the idea that I would make it a productive mini farm, with all the pieces of a traditional farm, only smaller. Through the years we have worked and built, reevaluated and rethought what this farm can produce. It’s a creative process that relies on calculated rotation of livestock and produce for maximum production.

This is what I’d like to share, in hopes of inspiring other city dwelling pack mates to put their property to maximum use while life’s circumstances keeps them in town.

A Note to Clarify: This article is primarily about how I survive in suburbia managing my property to produce food for a two person household. I won’t be talking about alternative energy, heat, water, OPSEC, guns, ammo, or security, although those are all important topics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Do You Handle Emergency Food Storage?

April 10, 2016

How Do You Handle Emergency Food Storage?

As I write this, we are in the middle of Winter Storm Jonas. There is 13″ of snow in the yard and the closest paved road is five miles away. I haven’t been off the property in five days and did not make a trip to the store to stock up for this storm. Doom and gloom time? Not really. The power was out for about 12 hours this morning. We had coffee, bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast courtesy of the propane camp stove. If necessary, we could wait here happily for the next week or two eating a variety of foods with or without electricity. I always wonder how it would be if we ever had to put our preps to actual use. So far I’m pretty pleased with how we have handled the little mini-crises we have had.

What is the best way to handle emergency food storage? The answer is different based on your situation. Your budget, your family size, your storage area, your special dietary needs, and your location all affect how you handle emergency food storage. But there are some common ideas that everyone can use.

The first rule is that anything is better than nothing. If you don’t have any food in the house, you are completely unprepared for emergencies. While some people may not believe there are people with no food in the house, consider college students (especially in dorms with meal plans for the cafeteria) and singles living in large cities. Everyone needs to have at least a three-day supply of food for something as simple as a hurricane or blizzard. Even a case of the flu could keep you stranded at your house for a few days.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Solar Water Pumps

April 4, 2016

Solar Water Pumps

I recommend having a well or large cistern for backup water use when municipal water is unavailable in a prolonged crisis, but you still need a reliable way to get the water out of the ground if grid power is down. As usual, I recommend multiple options as backup—solar power or windmill pumps and a manual backup pump with spare parts for each system. You should also have spare pipe and fittings on hand for repairs and new configurations.

First consider adding solar to your grid power source. Most grid-powered well pumps have a high startup voltage draw and require a larger inverter and solar array. These AC well pumps are designed to provide high pressure and volume and typically have a long life but they use more power per gallon than 12V DC pumps. Because these pumps are usually already installed with a well, buying bigger solar equipment instead of new pumps often makes sense. The downside is this will draw heavily on your batteries at night unless you get enough pressure tank capacity so the pump doesn’t have to turn on as often.

The second option is a small 12V submersible pump to a holding tank. These DC pumps are very efficient at pumping small, constant volumes of water, slowly through a 1/2″ sized pipe, to fill a large holding tank or cistern. The size of the cistern will vary but you will need 10-20 gallons per day for livestock (depending on the weather), and 10-100 gallons per person (depending on washing needs) according to Wholesale Solar. If you can put your tank or cistern on a hill above your residence you can get gravity pressure (typically at least 20 feet above the faucet is required to get usable pressure. Use a size larger diameter pipe on the outlet side to help it flow freely).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ideas, Thoughts And Observations On Home Canning

March 23, 2016

Ideas, Thoughts And Observations On Home Canning

We’ve only two adults in the household these days (not counting pets of any age) and here’s a few ideas I use for ‘down sizing’ & trying to manage the food rotation. All just a few basic ideas, humble opinions, etc., that I’m happy to share with any & all that may be interested.

1. When I home can foods, I use MORE PINT JARS than quart jars simply because we are two and not four or more, right now. Exceptions most noteworthy being food products the two of us use a lot of, like tomatoes, tomato based sauces, salsa mixes, & quick pickled veggies, simply because our two, singular yet like-minded taste palates can eagerly consume a quart of any within a week or so. So, nothing goes to waste and most things that are well processed and if not used within a year can also remain ‘shelf safe’ for a much longer time.

For another food example, my husband & I could both eat green beans or green garden peas eight days a week (so I have canned both green beans and green peas in quart jars) but canned carrots, not so much. Not that there’s anything wrong with canned carrots, ha, ha, ha, – – – just not a ‘go to’ canned veggie for us! I mostly only need a smaller amount of carrots for certain soup, stew and casserole recipes. Therefore, carrots are assigned pint jars only, for now. Saves on food waste.

I’m also hoping to teach myself how to (properly & consistently) can preserves, jams & jellies – which I hear ??? isn’t as scary as I imagine – this summer. Since a) this will be an ‘experiment’ of sorts and b) we love such but don’t need or crave such every week, I’ll be starting out with even smaller, 1/2 pint (one cup), jars.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tips On Saving Seeds

March 18, 2016

Tips On Saving Seeds

There are no guarantees in this world we live in today. We can’t rest assured that the grocery store will always be there or that its shelves will always be stocked full of food. We can’t count on our local home supply store having rows and rows of different seed packets to choose from if we were to ever need to grow our own food. We need to face the reality that things may “go south”, and if they do, we’ll only be able to count on ourselves, and the skills and knowledge we have acquired, in order to survive.

In this, my first guest blog for TheSurvivalistBlog.net, I’d like to share with you a few tips on how to store your own seeds. These are tricks I’ve picked up from my mother and grandmother, other survivalist and organic gardeners I know or have known in my lifetime, or just simply by me learning the hard way and adapting my methods.

Well, to start with, I just need to say it, don’t use genetically modified seeds in your garden; use heirloom seeds. Humans have survived and flourished for thousands of years planting heirloom seeds, and why we decided to start messing with seeds 40 or 50 years ago is beyond me. If we are ever thrown into a world where we need to grow our own food to survive, trust me, you want plants that are grown naturally and contain the most nutrients. Hybrid seeds, and the plants they produce, have been shown to contain much less nutrition than organically grown plants, and often, they require much more maintenance to grow successfully.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Installing An Off-Grid Water Well

March 16, 2016

Installing An Off-Grid Water Well

Getting out of the city and choosing to live “out in the country” is a goal of many preppers. “Homesteading” sounds so idealistic; getting back to the basics and living the dream! What most don’t realize is homesteading is hard physical work and has a lot of unknowns. It requires a lot of planning, prioritizing, setup money and manual labor. You need shelter, water and food and lots of common sense.

When I bought my homestead (see previous article on buying a country property), it had the basics: a house, a water well, septic tank, shed and barn; however, except for the brand new septic, everything was old and poorly maintained. I had to prioritized the repair/replace list and after refurbing the house, the water well was next in line.

I did my research on the internet about water wells, the various types of pumps, hand pumps, stand-alone mechanical pumps and solar pump options. I spoke with some of my neighbors about their wells, many who have had to recently replace pump motors and pipes. One neighbor tried to do his own replacement and it turned out to be trial and error because he did not know what type of pump or how far down it was placed so it was a guessing game and he ended up calling a company to come fix it after 3 days of failure. Another neighbor started doing it himself, found his pipe was broken and ended up getting a well company to replace the broken pipes and replace the pump. In both instances, it was 3 to 7 days to fix the problem, plus between $1500 and $2500.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

My Thoughts An Experiments With Various Means Of Off Grid Cooking

March 11, 2016

My Thoughts An Experiments With Various Means Of Off Grid Cooking

I’m a firm believer in redundancy or the old adage,” one is none and two is one”. Over the last few months, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into experimenting with different methods of boiling water and cooking off grid. While I haven’t tested them all by any means, I’ve tested several and I have come to some interesting conclusions. Who knows, maybe my experiments will save you some time or perhaps cause you to reconsider an option for cooking that you have put in your preps, that might not work as good as you thought.

To begin, I’ll break the methods down into what each type of cooking uses for fuel.

solar
fire
compressed gas

Solar is the easiest to address. I’ve built and cooked with a solar oven. They typically take several hours and some monitoring and repositioning, but they work well and are easy to build, and not terribly expensive to buy. I’ve even got water to boil in the one I made.Here is a picture of mine, before I made reflectors for it.

It worked fairly well like this, but when I made reflectors and found the optimal angle to attach them at, my internal temps went way past 300 degrees.

Fire is the next type of fuel I’d like to discuss. Of course, you can just light a fire and use that to cook over. It worked for our ancestors and still works today. However, the type of fire I’ve become confident in for its survival applications is fire that burns hot enough to both create woodgas, in a device designed to take advantage of that woodgas and burn it off before it exhausts from the device. Those are a rockets stoves and woodgas stoves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Advice For The Newly Awakened And Overwhelmed

March 9, 2016

Advice For The Newly Awakened And Overwhelmed

There are many aspects of personal preparedness that make sense, and I know firsthand that once you take a trip down the rabbit hole, the path to preparedness can be daunting at best, if not completely overwhelming. To this overwhelming state of mind, I wish to remind everyone that you must walk before you can run. I know it sounds obvious, but once you start “waking up” to the real world we find ourselves in many are drawn into panic because there is so much to do and seemingly so little time.

Where to start? What’s most important? Bug out bags? Food storage? Water purification? HAM radio? Alternative energy systems? Defense “tools”? The list of needs in a SHTF situation is staggering. However, I believe that while all those things (and more) are important, maybe even essential given the scenario, what I see most overlooked is just good ol’ common sense personal safety in the home.

For example, are you aware that in 2014 there were over 1.2 million fires reported in the U.S. alone? Those fires led to 3,275 civilian deaths and over 15,000 civilian injuries. In other words, the S hit the fan for close to 20,000 people that year, from house fires. Not financial collapse, CME/EMP or the New World Order, house fires. Just think about that for a minute and let it sink in…

When is the last time you checked your smoke detectors? Not only do they need to be checked routinely for battery replacement, but smoke detectors also have expiration dates. This is something most people aren’t aware of. If you haven’t checked yours in a while, do it today.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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