PREPPER: 3 Places Preppers Would Never Think to Scrounge For Survival Supplies

PREPPER:  3 Places Preppers Would Never Think to Scrounge For Survival Supplies

LATEST FROM THE PREPPER WORLD

This is a segment that you can take for ideas and build off of for yourself.  Survival is all about improvisation, and adaptability: those who adapt to the situation have a better chance at making it through the tough times.  This is a different kind of segment, though.  The information here is how to make it on what you can scrounge in the wintertime. Sounds simple, right? It isn’t.

We Live in an Imperfect World That is Not Prepper-Friendly

The reason is the “perfect” world we live in does not present you with many opportunities to train. For that matter, there isn’t a lot of encouragement either. Certainly, no one will encourage you: not your family members, your neighbors, or community in general, let alone the government…local, state, or federal.  That’s not “life.”
No, most of these guys just mentioned are only concerned with you playing to the system by getting up in the morning, going off to your work (to earn taxable income) so that you can pay your taxes, consuming foods, materials, and other necessities (with taxes), driving (using fuel that’s taxed) home…the one with your mortgage and property taxes, that have, well…a nice, “established” way for you to keep your lawn, grounds…you know…how to live, right?  In an acceptable manner, right?  A small cog in a giant machine, working and consuming until it’s time to call your number in.  Then your money and property… what you have left, that you paid taxes on all the way?  Time to tax it again until the government (kicking and screaming) magnanimously gives what’s left to your heirs.

The Only One Who Will Help You Succeed and Excel is You

As a general reminder, you never know when the next emergency will happen, so make sure you have the basic necessities to get through the most unpredictable situation.

• Lighter (I prefer Zippos, as they can take white gas or gasoline),
• Multitool
• Lock-blade knife
• Flashlight (I prefer the mini-mag, the little pocket one)
• Watch

3 Places That Preppers Would Never Think to Scrounge For Survival Supplies

Remember: these suggestions are SHTF/emergency suggestions…as most of this stuff is illegal, and if it’s not?  You’ll be “marginalized” until they come to remove you from Fisher Price-ville.

1. Auto Wrecking Yard/Junkyard: It’s amazing the number of supplies you can come up with here. Seatbelts can be pulled out to their length and cut to use as straps.  Upholstery sometimes has fabric that can be cut or fashioned for makeshift shoes or clothing.  The number of field-expedient weapons you can find or fashion is limited only by your imagination.  Mirrors and glass are found here in abundance…glass for lenses to concentrate light and make fire…mirrors for signaling or channeling light.  Copper wire can be pulled out of the insides.  Metal antennas can make useful tools or weapons.
2. Construction Sites: You can find lots of preparedness supplies here. For instance, wood for shelters, for lean-to’s, and to fashion snowshoes or fuel for fires. Insulation can be wrapped up in plastic bags and used.  Hardware and other construction materials, such as rebar can be used to make field-expedient tools and weapons.  In addition, construction sites are sometimes tapped into a water supply.  Don’t sleep in the building!  Everyone and their brother will be “grasping” such an idea!
3. Dumpsters/Trash Sites: often the source of fuel for burning, scrap/discarded clothing, cheap items to harden your home, and cardboard…plenty of cardboard…plenty of plastic. The cardboard can be “sheathed” in the plastic, and stacked to make a ground cover (preventing conduction of heat), and cardboard also burns.  Do not discount the use of paper to insulate your body…newspaper crumpled up tightly gives loft to what you wear…more airspace.

The way to do it is to perpetually scrounge, and utilize things for purposes that they can fill, but were not originally designed.  This takes some practice.  You have to blend what you can pick up that is used or cast away by a man with what you can forage from the woods.  We did some pieces on how to find food during the wintertime, and how to make shelters for yourselves.  I give you this one extra caveat before closing the topic:
If it looks as if it can be lived in and is unoccupied, you may have it…but you’ll have a “visitor” eventually.
It is better to take materials and supplies (either man-made or natural) and establish a camp and shelter for yourself away from the haunts of people, out of sight…thence, out of mind.  This for safety and security, your first and foremost concerns.  Camouflage and conceal your shelter, and keep your supplies out of view, whatever you have with you and what you scrounge.  Perhaps you’re “gaming” this in your mind and thinking about challenging yourself with a training exercise.  Excellent thought!  Plan it out in advance and run with the ball.  Remember: Millions will tell you “you can’t,” and millions will not adapt and make it in the long run.  Step up to the line of scrimmage, and make the pass. 

Creating a Self-Reliance Homeschooling Curriculum

Creating a homeschool curriculum that suits both the academic and self-reliance goals of a prepping family is an exciting endeavor. If you thought setting up the homeschool classroom was fun, the thrill of designing the curriculum is going to knock your socks off! Finally, you have control over not just what your child is being taught, but HOW they are going to learn the material.

If you do not have a background in education, setting up a curriculum and making lesson plans understandably may feel like an overwhelming and daunting task.
There are a plethora of great free or inexpensive ready make curriculum packages available online from homeschool associations and groups. You can download or purchase any one or combination of the learning kits, based either upon a single unit, subject in weekly, monthly, and year-long increments. Once you have the material that covers all the state required and necessary objectives, you can tinker around with it, infusing it with out-of-the seat and hands-on training to make it your own.
Think of the ready-made curriculum packets and lesson plans as a springboard to guide your efforts and not an end point.
For the basis of this article, we are going to focus solely on how to infuse self-reliance training and skills into your curriculum and homeschool year. You just can’t find that type of material compiled by subject of grade level anywhere – at least not until I finish my Homeschool Curriculum Adventures for Survival and Homesteading Families book!

Self-Reliance Learning Adventures

Always try to incorporate multiple subjects into each learning activity. Taking advantage of this manner of teaching will reinforce and hone all of the child’s basic skills in a meaningful way.

Gardening

• Teach children how to start their own seeds, grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs, create a compost pile, cultivate good soil, how to make their own natural pesticides and herbicides, and how to test its content, all reach not only nature science objectives while engaging in hands-on learning to keep them on the road to self-reliance.
• The gardening lessons also require the children to comprehend and build upon their knowledge, read and follow instructions, and further their math skills all at the same time.
• Have the children help make the pots for starting seeds by making their own out of newspaper and toilet paper rolls.
• With your assistance, depending upon the child’s age and skills, make raised wood beds, and cold frames for starting seeds and plants. Learning the basics of carpentry will add to your child’s skill set while again, teaching them how to follow directions, measure, work with angles, and understand the importance of having wood on the survival retreat and saving old materials from past projects because they could come in handy of future jobs.
• Make learning the names and parts of plants the art project for the day or week. Let the children draw the plants on paper, scrap wood, or an indoor or outdoor chalkboard to learn the parts and how to spell each item you are growing in the garden.
• To infuse more language, arts and science objectives into the project, have the child make a classification graph of the crops, keep a record graph of their growth, and write a daily journal entry noting what they learned that day about gardening, including hand drawn images of the plants, carpentry plans, etc.
• Tying history to gardening is a little difficult, but not impossible. Use the time spent working the land together to talk about the history of American farms, Johnny Appleseed, and the progression of manual agriculture tools and equipment to modern machinery. Discuss how the modern tools and methods used to tend to the family’s food supply would change during a disaster and how the task could be accomplished without the aide of fuel or electricity.
• During story time with younger children, choose books about gardening, growing plants, and farm life. Give older children a related book, preferably a non-fiction novel about a notable off grid family that has a successful garden, people who preserve and cultivate heirloom seeds, biographies of homesteading experts, etc. Have some fun with their book reports.
Sure, the kids do need to write reports during the school year, but have them showcase their comprehension of the material by doing a book report in a bag, giving a 5-minute demonstration on something they learned from the book, making up a song or poem to describe the book, creating posters to relay the progression of the storyline in the book, or making a storybook for little siblings based upon the book they read, complete with illustrations made by hand or on the computer.

Barnyard

• The educational opportunities stemming from the barnyard are nearly endless! You can do an entire learning unit on each animal that your have, or plan to have, over the course of a month – depending upon your survival homesteading plans. Many of these activities could, and should, be going on during the same day. Learning about animal care is of course, a science lesson, but there are many, many way to infuse all four remaining primary subject areas, language arts, math, and social studies, into the same lessons as well.
• Design an animal husbandry research and writing project to the age of your children. This type of learning activity is great if you work with children of multiple ages at the same time. The basis of the lesson plans and activities are the same, they are just tweaked a bit to suit each child’s age and abilities.
• Instruct the children to research the key aspects of husbandry for each animal in books and online. If working with younger children, download some free farm animal worksheets, you will be able to find many art, math, reading, and science sheets and mini-books to download – more than what you could go through if you spend a whole month on an entire animal breed.
• Have the children interview someone outside the family who has raised or bred the animals for a long time to give them the chance to conduct an interview with an “expert” as part of their writing lesson. Let the children take photos and videos during their interview. Discuss what types of questions the person should be asked beforehand based upon their animal husbandry research.
• Have the children keep a journal about their interaction and the behavior and health of the animal each day after doing their chores to help care for the animal.
• Instruct the children to make graphs depicting how much food the animal eats, water it drinks, milks it gives, or eggs it lays each day. This will require the child measuring out the food and water beforehand – a math skill. If the children are younger, create story problems. Based upon the animal they are learning about that week or month.
• This is a great middle and high school barnyard unit activity. Spend some time learning about what makes quality hay and straw, how much the animal eats in the different seasons and why, how to cultivate pasture to create quality hay and straw and devote a space in the homesteading survival retreat pasture to put the newly acquired knowledge to work.
To infuse some math into the lesson, give the child a budget to work from based upon a fictitious job that takes up X amount of hours. Next, task the child with buying seed and other supplies to put in X amount of acres of hay or straw. Factor in equipment rental for baling or fuel and baling supply costs for equipment you already have. Now, the child must factor in the time it will take to plant, harvest, and bale and the available non-work hours to get this done.
Teach the child how to use the farmer’s almanac to see long-range weather predictions to schedule the dry days needed to cut, rake, bale, and store the hay or straw. The project should be compiled as a report that shows the math work in story problem format, possibly graphs and charts, and essay question style answers to explain each step of the planting, cultivation, and harvesting process.
• Food preservation, cooking, and baking with the food grown and raised on the homesteading survival retreat should be included in this unit. The lessons offer the opportunity to teach about nutrition, math through measuring and yield activities, science via the cooking, baking, and food preservation activities, how to follow directions, and writing exercises stemming from a recipe book the children create while working on their edible projects.
The children should learn how to milk the animals on the homestead, make their own cheese and butter, as well. Put the children in charge of making a meal for the entire family out of only food grown or raised on the survival homestead.
• Allow the children to work along or together to make an ad campaign promoting their barnyard “business.” They should write their own newspaper and television commercial advertisements. Older children could even create (not necessarily publish) a blog for their business, and also create a video from their commercial advertisement writing project – complete with music or costumes they make to act out their words.
• Older children should be tasked with researching and writing a report about agriculture laws in the state so they can learn how the food grown and raised on the survival homestead could legally be sold for profit.
• Butchering should be introduced at the youngest age you are comfortable with and the skills expanded upon over time. An entire educational unit could be built around humanely slaughtering the animals, skinning them, butchering the meat, disposing of the unused portions, tanning hides, etc.
• Repeat the storybook and non-fiction reading and book report activities for the barnyard unit in the same manner as noted in the gardening lesson plans section.
• Help the children make simple stuffed animals depicting the animals they are learning about out of felt by using simple hand sewing stitches. Making a diorama of the barnyard area they are learning about can be part of a larger display that grows as they learn about more animals throughout the year. A plethora of meaningful art extension opportunities for barnyard units exist. Pinterest is a great place to look for inspiration and free pattern downloads and art project printables.

Archery

• Set up some targets and get ready to teach the children how to do a lot more than shoot! Shooting a bow and arrow will teach the children about velocity, gravity, measuring distance, angles through and aiming, just to name a few.
• Help the children make a bow out of PVC pipe to use during their archery unit. The project will cost about $10 or less and requires only the use of simple tools. The meaningful art project will require the child to follow instructions, read, and do a decent amount of math via measurement.
• Make arrows with the children out of natural materials or other inexpensive items after the children research primitive arrow making and write a report about their findings.
• Using construction paper, have the child draw or glue printed images, of arrows used from primitive times through today on one side and write an essay style description about each particular arrow on the other side. Repeat this exercise when working on the PVC bow to show the different types of bows that existed both long ago and now.
This will work some history into your project. A research project about the types of bows used by Native Americans and early pioneers in your area would be a great addition to this project – visit the local historical society or similar attraction while studying about early peoples and archery.
• Make targets with the children out of cardboard for their archery practice. The children should be measuring the cardboard or similar material to you exact specifications and then.
• Next, have them draw or trace an animal onto each target that is a natural predator in your area. The child should write a short report about each animal or complete learning worksheets about the wild animal – or both. This will work some more science into the archery unit.
• Have the child write and then give a how-to speech about how they made the bow and another about how the made the arrows and cite at least two science and historical facts during their speech – language arts, science, history, and a whole lot of fun while learning an important self-reliance skill that can help put food on the table one day.
• Once the targets are drawn and painted and mounted to straw bales, the children can put their actively engage in velocity, gravity, distance, and aiming lessons and extension activities.

Top 20 Survival Handicraft Learning Activities

These activities can also be turned into homeschool educational units to help teach self-reliance to children of prepping parents using the same format as the examples presented above.
1. Leathercrafting
2. Making simple machines
3. Basket weaving
4. Forge building
5. Knife making
6. Knitting and crochet
7. Sewing and pattern making
8. Growing your own pharmacy to make natural remedies
9. Ammunition reloading
10. Foraging wild edibles
11. Map making
12. Tree and plant identification
13. Water purification
14. Alternative energy
15. Mechanics
16. Fire starting and open flame cooking
17. Making your own charcoal
18. Making a rainwater collection system
19. Making portable and household water purification systems
20. Outhouse building
These are just a sampling of a few of the many ways you can use self-reliance skill building activities and common homesteading chores to teach valuable life and academic lesson in your prepper retreat homeschool classroom.
The ultimate beauty of creating a homeschool curriculum is that you can adapt it to meet the goals, beliefs, and lifestyle of the family while still maintaining a quality learning experience in core subjects for your children.

 

7 Ways to Beat the Flu with Holistic Remedies

There is still concern to be had as medicine shortages continue to some parts of the country. Now, what can you do about it in the home? Let’s go over a basic list of some foods and herbs that can help you safeguard from illness.
Firstly, keep in mind: each strain of influenza varies. Secondly, there are articles I’ve written in the past pertaining to HFV’s (Hemorrhagic Flu Viruses) that it would benefit you to read or refresh upon. There are two factors: TNF-a, and IL-6, that are Tumor Necrosis Factors and Interleukin factors, respectively. These are cytokines that are crucial in white blood cell production to fight illness. The problem with HFV’s (to recap) is that they stimulate these two factors to overproduce: the body literally fights “itself” in what is termed a cytokine storm.

Beat the Flu with These Holistic Remedies

The Ebola Virus and the Avian Flu virus (commonly known as “bird flu”) are examples of HFV’s. I also did an article on what foods and herbs not to take. So, what’s a body to do? There are holistic boosters that you can take that will not raise the levels of these two cytokines during this flu season. Let’s list them here:

1. Garlic (Allium sativa) – simply put, the #1 herbal “broad-spectrum” holistic antibiotic. We’ve put together plenty of articles on it, and 2-3 cloves per meal will help strengthen your immune system and fight viruses, bacteria, parasites, and Dracula. As mentioned before, garlic tends to thin the blood and lessen clotting factors, so don’t use it just before or just after a surgery, or if you regularly have complications with clotting.
2. Vitamin C and Vitamin E: These two are mentioned together because they are complimentary…they each potentiate (or increase) the actions of the other. Preventatively, you can take 500 mg of Vitamin C per day…and (according to such notables as Dr. Linus Pauling) 4-5,000 mg during a time of illness. Vitamin C is water soluble: what you don’t use, you’ll excrete through the urine. Vitamin E you can take 400 IU per day, and it is good for tissue repair and potentiates the effectiveness of Vitamin C. As well, the elderly may benefit greatly from Vitamin E and it helps to protect their age group from pneumonia. It is a fat-soluble vitamin and will stay in your tissues longer than C. Both in tandem are excellent when a person is sick.
3. Fluid Intake: water is key. A person should take in anywhere from a ½ gallon to 1 gallon per day to maintain good hydration. Along with this, I did an article that mentions electrolyte packets you can take orally, available over-the-counter that replace Sodium, Potassium, and others…also containing Vitamin C.
4. Ginger Root: slice it up or dice it up, and throw about a teaspoon to a ½ tablespoon in a salad. It is very good for the stomach, and also aids against the flu.
5. Protein: Everyone who has been reading my articles know how much I emphasize the importance of protein in your diet. The building-block of muscle and of tissue repair, your protein levels become debilitated when you have the flu. Use high-protein sources, such as chicken breast, salmon, or lean beef or steak. You can combine any of these protein-laden foods with the next flu-fighter, that is………
6. Salads: Yes, green, leafy vegetables, such as spinach, kale, and herbs such as cilantro. The latter removes heavy metals from the system, such as lead and mercury. The former two are packed with iron, potassium, and other vital minerals that you need to maintain fluid balance and to heal up.
7. Citrus Fruits: granted, we already mentioned Vitamin C, but the citrus fruits have more than just C. The principle of Herbalism is that the whole herb or food is always more effective than any of its individual parts. The whole fruit also contains other vitamins and minerals, as well as fiber, an important part of your digestion (that normally slows down considerably during the duration of an illness such as the flu).

Best Foods to Grow for Survival

Knowing the best foods to grow for survival is important when it comes to preparedness.  If there is ever a collapse scenario food won’t be readily available on store shelves.  You will be forced to rely on the emergency food stockpile that you have built.
If that collapse scenario is a long-term recovery event then you will eventually run out of that food in your stockpile.  That is unless you have a huge room to store many years’ worth of food supply.  In most cases, you are not able to afford that type of supply.

So that will leave you with two options.  You can either scavenge food or grow your own.  If you are Billy Badass you may be able to bully others of their food and supplies.  However, many of us don’t have that type of heart.  I typically prefer to avoid conflict at all costs.
With that being said, the best option at that point is to grow your own food.  Fortunately, I was raised with the responsibility to tend to our family garden.  But many people do not have the experience or know how to grow a garden.

Learning How to Garden Now is Important

If you attempt to learn in a collapse scenario it can cost your life.  That is why it is important to know the best foods to grow for survival.  From there you will want to practice growing a garden so when the time comes you can easily grow one.
While you are eating your stockpile is when you should begin growing your survival garden.  That way by the time you run out of the food you will already have a supply that you can eat.  On top of that, if you grow enough you can use what you don’t eat as bartering items.
Having a survival garden is not only important for collapse scenarios but also economic and personal financial crisis.  During the Great Depression, many people were dependent upon their gardens to survive.  That was also a different time.  Many people in those days knew how to grow a garden.

Learn What to Grow

What you can grow is dependent upon where you live, the amount of sun you receive and your soil type.  You should be aware of what foods can be grown during certain seasons.  For example, a lot of foods cannot be grown during the harsh winter months.  That is why it would be important to grow food that can be stored during those months.
Having a survival garden is uniquely different from a regular garden. Simply put, a survival garden is designed to produce enough crops to permit you and your family to live on the harvest alone.  Regular gardens these days are grown sometimes to be sold or paired with foods that can be bought at stores.  When deciding the best foods to grow for survival you will want to consider in some important aspects.

4 Important Aspects of Best Foods to Grow for Survival

1. Big yield crops

If you have a family then there will be many mouths to feed.  You also may be limited to the amount of land that you have for growing food.  Therefore, you will want to grow foods that produce big yields with a small area.  Another bonus of having foods that produce big yields is that the leftovers can be used for bartering.

2. Crops that can be easily stored

As I mentioned before, a lot of foods cannot survive harsh summer or winter climates.  Therefore, you will want to grow foods that can be stored during those months.  There are a few options when it comes to preservation.  You will want foods that can either be dehydrated, freeze-dried or canned.  You will also want to look for foods that have long shelf lives.

3. Crops that are perennials

A perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years.  Typically plants can only be grown annually.  Once they are harvested they die and need to be replanted.
With perennials, they can be picked off of the plant and it will regrow another one.  Some of the perennials mentioned below may not grow perennially in all locations.  If you live in extreme summer or winter climates then they may not be able to survive.  You will want to research your temperate zone to know for sure.

4. Cold weather crops

Having plants that can grow in colder temperatures will extend your survivability.  That is because you are not able to grow or harvest many foods during the winter.  The winter months can be deadly if you haven’t stored up enough food beforehand.  By being able to grow food during winter months ensures that you will have some sort of food that will keep you fed.
So the previous points are important aspects to look for when considering the best foods to grow for survival.  Now that we have discussed those I am going to provide my list of what I consider to be the best foods.  Not all the foods will meet every criterion.  However, I will mention the important aspects regarding survival under each.

Best Foods to Grow for Survival

Beans

• Beans are high in protein, vitamins, and minerals
• Packed with calories that will provide you with energy
• Perennials, so that can be eaten straight off of the plant
• Extremely long shelf life when dried
• Provide the soil with nitrogen that other plants need to grow
• High yield plants

Corn

• Long shelf life when dried
• Harvesting is easy and doesn’t need threshing
• Don’t need much room to grow

Squash

• Doesn’t need to be dried to have a long shelf life
• Can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to 6 months
• Having a cellar or basement would be a great place to store
• Big yield production
• The downside is that they need a reasonable amount of space to grow

Potatoes

• Easy to grow in a range of different climates and soil types
• High in carbohydrates that will provide you a lot of energy
• Rich in Vitamin C, calcium and minerals
• Immune to cold fronts
• Can be grown without a lot of irrigation
• Can be stored for several months without the need of processing or electricity
• Don’t need a lot of space to grow. A 10-foot row spaced 12-18 inches apart can yield up to 30 pounds of potatoes

Carrots

• Can be stored through the winter months
• Should be stored in cool places like a refrigerator or root cellar
• The downside is that you will need sandy, well-draining soil to grow them

Cabbage

• Easy to grow the plant
• High in nutrition
• Perennial

Kale

• Can be grown in late fall or early winter
• High Yield
• Can be dried and froze to store for longer amounts of time

Garlic

• It will leave your breath kicking but provides a delicious flavor to foods
• Highly nutritional and medicinal (works as antibiotic and antiviral)
• Boosts immune system works as an antioxidant and reduces high blood pressure along with cholesterol
• High Yield

Herbs

• Easy to grow indoors with small potters and placed on window seals
• Many different types including:
  • Rosemary
  • Thyme
  • Basil
  • Bay leaves
  • Parsley
  • Mint
  • Onion
  • Ginger
  • Chives
  • Oregano
• Big yield
• Shelf life can be extended by drying them out
• Perennials

Tomatoes

• Easy to grow
• Can be mixed with a lot of meals
• Big yield
• Easy to be canned for storage purposes
• The downside is that they do need a reasonable amount of space to grow

Before Getting Started

Now you should keep in mind that not all of these foods will be easy to grow in a lot of locations.  The is due to the climate and soil types.  A good resource to use to know what plants to grow is The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
There are many other foods that can be grown for survival.  However, these would be my recommendations for the best foods to grow for survival.  Finding good seeds to plant can be tricky.  I recommend picking up some survival seeds from Open Seed Vault.

Open Seed Vault provides variety packs with instructions for each vegetable.  They claim that they provide enough seeds to plant over an acre of food.  I don’t have an acre of land to test but they have the best reviews that I have found.

Conclusion

Altogether these would be my recommendations for the best foods to grow for survival.  There are many more people who are more knowledgeable and skilled in this area than me.  So if you have any feedback or suggestions then leave it below.  Your feedback helps the community prepare the smart way now so that we can thrive later.

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