12 Surprising Items You‘ll Need When the SHTF

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12 Surprising Items You‘ll Need When the SHTF

How do we define SHTF anymore? What are the key metrics? At the very least we can say that our society is currently in a strong decline. The things that are increasing are crime, drug use, suicide, and the total cost of living.

Hopefully, these conditions have inspired you to at least gather up your bullets, beans, and bandages. As you know, there is much more to prepping than just those three things.

We have put together a list of 12 surprising items you will need when SHTF.  These are all items I store for myself and hope that you will begin storing them, too.

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1. Pest Control Measures

MOUSE TRAP

In our society pest control is a phone call. Pest control is a young man with a hat on and a smile who shows up to spray or trap whatever your problem is. In SHTF and you see a roach or a mouse in your food storage pantry then it is going to be on you to deal with that.

Once mice move in, they will gnaw through everything to get to the food you have painstakingly stored over the years.

Storing pest control measures like sticky boards, mouse traps, live traps, and rodenticide are all essential. Snake repellant can be another great one if you have poisonous snakes around your property.

2. Coffee Filters

COFFEE FILTER

In all honesty, coffee is enough of a reason to have coffee filters. Still, there are many ways of brewing coffee without filters. Coffee filters can also be an incredible layer to add to homemade water filters. They are also great for straining other liquids. This could include curds to make simple cheese.

If you have coffee and the ability to brew it, you will be a king within your group or community. There is a company that sells green coffee beans in 5lb bags called Disaster Coffee. These green coffee beans can be stored like long term food storage and roasted when you are ready.

Bunker Beans Raw Green Coffee Beans 5lbs – Disaster Coffee

3. Dental Floss

DENTAL FLOSS

We all hate the dentist. Imagine the dentist without any Novocain. Dental hygiene is very important, right now. It will be even more important when there is no dentist. Having dental floss is an important part of that.

Dental floss can also help with a variety of other things like creating traps, having a fine cordage for sewing, and even starting a fire. When lit with a match, dental floss can burn slowly if you wrap it around a stick. Rolls are cheap and easy to store.

4. Super Glue

SUPER GLUE

You do not…

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How Long of an Emergency Should I Prepare For?

For a question that is so fundamental to emergency preparedness, this question is not easy to answer.

First, the question is very general. Do you mean how long should you be able to live out of your go bag, your bugout bag, your vehicle, or a fixed site like your home or a lifeboat property such as a retreat or bugout location?

Second, we cannot foretell the future. Emergency planners look to records of past emergencies and then try to predict exposure to future volatility and emergencies.

This methodology is deeply flawed because the little snippet of the past that emergency managers have data for is never long enough, so the number of hours or days FEMA has told Americans to prepare for ballooned longer as the nation experienced higher order Black Swans or events that planners failed to predict, that harmed us.

Managing Risk

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this his books: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Taleb, 2010), and Antifragile, Things that Gain from Disorder (Taleb, 2012), two great books for anyone serious about risk. Both books are just as applicable to emergency managers, survivalists, and healthcare professionals as it is to actuaries and risk managers, maybe more so.

The Great Turkey Problem

Taleb uses a section of Antifragile called “The Great Turkey Problem” (an adaptation of a metaphor from Bertrand Russell) to show how trying to predict future risk based on past performance can cause one to fall victim to a Black Swan. Here is a short excerpt:

“A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys ‘with increased statistical confidence.’ The butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then comes that day when it is really not a very good idea to be a turkey.“ (Taleb, 2012)

So, where did the turkeys go wrong? Had their data window covered a full year, they would have understood what the butcher was up to, had they survived the event, but it was too short. An economist or risk manager from FEMA would read that and say, “Well their window was simply too short.” But the real problem is that mankind sucks at predicting the future. The only way you can avoid this pitfall is to stop trying to predict the future and become antifragile and generally well prepared. I have watched “Chicken Little” survivalists fail badly at attempted predictions for 45 years or so now and it’s painful to watch. Don’t fall for it.

I am not advising you to prepare for known vulnerabilities, but fortunately, for the most part, you need more or less the same knowledge, skills, things and network to grow stronger in response to most volatility, disorder and disasters instead of being destroyed by them.

Economists

“Well, if you just put your money in the S&P 500, you can’t go wrong!” The…

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7 Herbs To Help Chickens Through Molting Season

You’ve walked out to the coop and suddenly halt in your tracks. Feathers are everywhere, and it looks like your entire flock has been wiped out by a roving band of vicious minks. A few of your chickens round the corner, looking as if they went head-to-head with the local coyote pack.

Thankfully, your chickens are fine. You’re not the first chicken keeper to be caught off-guard by the feather explosion that signals the start of molting season. 

Every year, starting in mid to late summer, adult chickens go through an annual molt. This natural process allows chickens to shed their old, broken, dirty feathers, and regrow fresh new feathers before the chill of winter sets in. These brand-new feathers help chickens stay warmer throughout the winter and survive until spring.

The molting process is a stressful experience for chickens. And the process is painful, for the chickens as well as the chicken keeper. During molt, many birds look like they were on the losing end of a nasty bar fight. They often lose feathers in large patches, act lethargic and depressed, and skulk around the yard like they’re trying to avoid being seen by anyone they know.

Thankfully, we can do a lot to help ease our chickens through molting and support their bodies while they’re hard at work regrowing their feathers, and using medicinal herbs is a great way to start. 

Chickweed

chickens molting herbschickens molting herbsHeather Levin

Chickweed is an unassuming spring weed that you’ve likely walked past a hundred times without giving it a second glance. However, this innocuous “weed” can be a marvelous snack to your chickens while they’re molting.

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Chickens love the flavor (hence the name, “chickweed”), and the plant is high in vitamins A and C, as well as B vitamins, calcium, magnesium and zinc. It’s also a powerful anti-inflammatory and helps the body feel refreshed and rejuvenated, particularly after a long, cold winter. 

The challenge with feeding your chickens chickweed during molt is that this is an herb that typically only grows in the cool days of early spring. Once the hot summer sun blazes, it disappears. And your chickens will be molting in fall. So, what can you do?

The answer lies with your freezer. Chick-weed freezes well, so harvest chickweed in spring, freeze it and then dole it out to your chickens once they start to molt. I do this every year, as we have an abundance of chickweed that grows on our property, and it’s always a special treat for the chickens.

Basil

In addition to tasting divine, basil is a good source of protein and vitamin K, a mild sedative, and is helpful in treating stress, nervousness and irritability. Sounds like the perfect herb for a molting chicken to me!

Basil is best used fresh, as it loses much of its flavor and medicinal properties upon drying. One of the best…

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37 Pioneer Skills Your Ancestors Took for Granted

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Estimated reading time: 22 minutes

37 Pioneer Skills Your Ancestors Took for Granted

We are embarking on a new world that is heavily reliant on technology and convenience and forgetting about basic skills our ancestors relied upon. We are weaker because of it.

Our grandparents and their grandparents knew how to get things done without technology. They didn’t even think twice about whipping up some butter for dinner or baking a loaf of bread from scratch. For them, it was the only option. They knew nothing else.

You could say they took the skills their parents taught them for granted. Progress has made many of the skills our ancestors relied upon obsolete. They are no longer being passed down to future generations, which is a tragedy.

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1. Gardening

GARDENING

Gardening was the way things were done a hundred plus years ago. If you wanted to eat, you grew a garden. Pioneers that were settling new, unsettled areas didn’t have access to grocery stores. They couldn’t count on deliveries either. They had to grow as much of their own food as possible. They had to grow enough food to sustain their families all year long, even through the winter months.

Survival gardening is a skill every single person should know how to do. It’s all about making the most of space, big or small. Understanding crop rotation and how to enhance soil to get the best harvest possible. It’s about growing plants that will produce seeds that can be harvested for the next crop.

You will need to know pest control and the best way to fertilize your garden when Miracle-Gro isn’t available. Harvesting seeds and storing them for the following year ensured they would always have food to put on the table.

2. Animal Husbandry

PIGS AND CHICKENS

Raising animals for eggs, meat and milk was just part of life back in the old days. Dairy never came from the store. It was either traded amongst the pioneers or they raised their own. Chickens, goats, cows and pigs were all very common animals on the homestead.

Pioneers knew how to raise the animals as well as how to keep them healthy. They built pens and knew how to feed them and make sure they produced offspring. It’s a skill most people in the modern world don’t even think about.

3. Making Butter

BUTTER

Can you imagine life without butter? Neither could the pioneers. It was a normal chore to churn butter every week. The butter was stored in a jar and usually kept at room temperature—remember, they didn’t have refrigeration. Fresh, homemade butter is a real treat. It’s very easy to make as well.

4. Making Cheese

CHEESE

Cheese was another staple in the pioneer pantry. The cheese the pioneers made wasn’t the perfect…

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Recipe: Spicy Green Tomato Pickles

Whether we want to accept it or not, the growing season is coming to an end for many of us. I’ll be pulling out half of my gardens this weekend and putting them to bed. The possibility of frost is highly likely within the next few weeks. In our household, this means we harvest all of our green tomatoes.

I love fermented green tomato salsa, as well as the water bath canned version (both of which are in my cookbook Can It & Ferment It). We are also huge fans of fried green tomatoes and make several batches throughout the month of October.  But one recipe that my grandpa made long before I was even a thought, is spicy green tomato pickles. This is a refrigerator pickle, so it doesn’t require any boiling water bath canning or fermenting.  

We snack on these spicy tomatoes straight from the jar but as all my pickle recipes, they also make a great Bloody Mary garnish or unique pickle for an appetizer platter.  

Yield: 1 quart jar 

Ingredients 

Main
  • 3.5 cups green tomatoes, cut into bite-sized chunks 
  • 4 cloves garlic, halved 
  • 2 jalapeño peppers, halved (or spicier peppers if you prefer) 
Brine 
  • 1.5 cups water 
  • 1.5 cups 5% white distilled vinegar 
  • 2 tsp. canning salt 

Directions 

Wash tomatoes, remove any flawed or bruised areas and stems.  

Prepare tomatoes, garlic and hot peppers, and transfer them to a quart jar, until there is 1 inch of headspace (room from the tomatoes to the rim of the jar). 

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Heat the brine ingredients to a simmer and stir until the salt is dissolved. Remove from heat. 

Carefully ladle the warm brine over the tomatoes until they are submerged completely. 

Wipe the rim of the jar clean with a dampened cloth to remove any spillage. Place the canning jar lid on the jar and tightly screw on the ring. Allow the jar to cool to room temperature and transfer to the refrigerator.  

Allow the tomatoes to pickle for at least one week before tasting. The longer the tomatoes pickle, the more flavor they will have. 

Notes 

Be sure to thoroughly clean your space and supplies before pickling (as when doing any food preservation). Wash jars and lids with hot, soapy water.  

My grandpa traditionally made these tomatoes really spicy and that’s how I tend to enjoy them to this day. Add any type and as many spicy peppers as you’d like. 

If using cherry tomatoes, I recommend slicing them in half before pickling. 

Add in whole peppercorns, dill, mustard seeds or other spices to change the flavor of your green tomato pickles. 

 This recipe has been shared from Stephanie Thurow’s, WECK Small-Batch Preserving cookbook, with permission from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.  

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Season Extension Keeps Your Garden Growing Into Fall

Harvesting late-season, frost-sweetened crops is such a benefit to growing into the fall in cold climates. It also makes the most of the same garden space as it allows a grower to add another succession of crops to the garden. Season extension increases total harvests from the same square footage. 

So many of our favorite fall crops (kale, cabbages, Brussel sprouts, Swiss chard, parsnips, beets, turnips, carrots, celeriac, rutabagas and radishes) taste sweeter after a frost. This is because these veggies are able to turn starches in their cells into a botanical “anti-freeze” to keep themselves from dying when temps dip. This chemical change, their “anti-freeze,” turns into sucrose—aka sugar.    

To keep harvesting deeper into fall and possibly even winter—plus benefit from the frost-induced increase in natural sugars—try covering these crops with a low tunnel. Or if you plan far enough ahead you can even grow them in a cold frame.  

Choose Your Cover 

The basic idea is that, by covering a plant, you keep the soil’s warmth intact and let that radiate up into the air around the plants. The sun also warms the air trapped inside the tunnel. You can gain critical degrees under cover depending on sunlight, soil and height of the tunnel. 

The thickness of the covering also makes a difference in heat retention. Anything less than 2-millimeter-thick plastic isn’t worth the bother as it just won’t hold in the heat and tends to tear easily.

I suggest 4- to 6-millimeter plastic for covering low tunnels.  

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Low Tunnels 

Low tunnels are so easy to pop up and move around to follow your crop rotations. Basically, you just pound in 18- to 24-inch lengths of rebar at the corners (and along the edges if the span is longer than 4 inches). Then simply slide some 1/2-inch PVC over the rebar. Repeat this on the other side to make an arch over the bed you want to cover.

Next, add a stick of PVC the length of the bed (perpendicular to the arches) to add strength to the structure. Securing with zip ties makes this step super easy. Cover in plastic, ensuring you have enough to make contact with the soil all the way around. You can use a longer piece of rebar (or rocks, lumber, etc.) to weigh down the edges.

Secure the plastic to the PVC with clips or clamps.  

You’ll want to monitor the temperatures inside low tunnels often, especially on sunny days when air temperatures can rise quickly (even when outside temperatures stay in the 30s). 

Cloches 

If you want to protect an individual plant, consider a simple “cloche.” This is a fancy word that describes anything that will hold in the heat.

I’ve used 5-gallon buckets and clear plastic bins to protect salad greens and cabbages when we got a quick dip into the low 20s. Being able to cover…

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Go squirrel hunting to learn wilderness survival skills – Survival Common Sense Blog

How do you learn the basic survival skills of marksmanship, stalking, concealment and skinning and processing game animals?

Take up squirrel hunting.

by Leon Pantenburg

Many people don’t know how to get started hunting. But they may be thinking it’s time to learn.

There could be a variety of reasons – to supplement your diet, to harvest clean, organic, non-GMO meat, to practice wilderness survival skills to get outdoors more etc. The reasons are as varied as the participants. (A good point-of-view comes from Lily Raff McCaulou, a city woman who took up hunting when she moved to rural Oregon. Her book “Call of the Mild” is a reasoned look at hunting.)

This .40 caliber flintlock rifle is similar to those made about 1800 in Pennsylvania.

This .40 caliber flintlock rifle is my favorite squirrel gun

But there are added benefits. You can learn survival skills that might come in really handy if  The Shinola Hits the Fan.

Start by taking a hunter safety class, and learning firearms safety.

Then take up squirrel hunting.

Squirrels are the second-most harvested small game in the US, after rabbits. They are in virtually every state, and most places have liberal limits.

A 10-year-old kid with a .410, an old guy with his equally ancient Winchester 97 or the modern longhunter with a flintlock can all be successful and get a lot of enjoyment out of the same activity.

Here are some of the survival skills that go along with squirrel hunting.

Marksmanship: The average adult tree squirrel will weight about one pound. The target size is small. They move quickly, and are masters of concealment. If one spots you, you probably won’t get a shot.

Using a shotgun doesn’t guarantee success. A squirrel running through the trees tops, offering only fleeting glimpses of its bushy tail is a challenging target.

A rifleman has  more challenge. If you restrict yourself to heads shots only, your target is the size of a walnut. If you can consistently make a head shot, at a range of between 10 to 30 yards, you’ll have no problem taking a deer at similar ranges.

If you want to get really good with your centerfire rifle, work up some reduced loads and hunt small game with it. (Just about every reloading manual has some suggested low velocity loadings. DO NOT make up your own!)

Up the ante and go hunting with a blackpowder rifle. The epitome of squirrel hunting challenge, to me, is using a flintlock rifle, like the colonial frontiersmen.

Talk about trophy hunting –  your success rate will probably go down. But when you do drop one, there is a real feeling of accomplishment.

I gave up bowhunting squirrels after a couple of unsuccessful tries. Not only could I not hit one, but I also usually lost the arrow. If you’re a hardcore bowhunter, though, use small game blunts…

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Chickens “Better Than A Soap Opera” At Cats & Cluckers

“Spending time with my chickens is not only the highlight of my day but one of the best ways to relax,” says Sarah Hock, who broadcasts her chicken-centric adventures through the Cats And Cluckers Instagram account. “I love coming home from work to spend the evening sipping some wine and watching the flock.”

Based in Thurston County in the state of Washington, Hock’s interest in raising birds was partly sparked when she was 10 years old and her family welcomed a pair of African geese into the household. That formative experience has now bloomed into a homestead that features an array of chickens flanked by a clowder of kitties.

Taking a moment away from tending to her chicks, we spoke to Hock about training chickens and how to socialize kittens to be friendly to chicks. We also got to know a Crested Cream Legbar named Celeste.

Becoming Fascinated by Animals

“Since I was a child, I have been fascinated by all animals,” recalls Hock. “I grew up in a rural community, and farm animals—including chickens—were a common part of life.”

Having always vowed to “bring in some poultry” as soon as she had a large enough living space of her own, Hock plumped for chickens as they seemed like a promising starter choice. “After that, I was hooked,” she says. “It took me back to how attached I became to my little flock and their daily antics. It’s better than a soap opera and my favorite part of the day.”

When You Call My Name

Running through some of the most fascinating examples of chicken behavior that she’s discovered, Hock says her flock have proved able to “learn their names and come when called.”

So when Hock can’t find a particular chicken, she says, “All I have to do is call their name a few times and the next thing I know they come running from whatever mischief they were in to come see if I have treats.”

A Food-Motivated Type of Bird

Hock adds that she’s found chickens to be highly trainable because they are food-motivated: “I hardly ever have any issues getting them locked in the coop in the evenings—I just have to shake the treat bag and they go running in knowing they won’t get their grubs until they are inside.”

Hock says that she also managed to train a batch of pullets to “walk right into a large pet carrier so I could transport them wherever I needed to with little effort on my part.”

Superstar Celeste

When it comes to the star of the flock, Hock anoints Celeste, a Crested Cream Legbar. “She loves to follow me around or sit on my shoulder while I’m doing chores out in the run,” explains Hock. “She’s always up for a good snuggle once I’m done.”

“That chicken gives me a heart attack on a regular basis because she likes to lie down in random places with her face down in the dirt to nap or sunbathe,” she continues. “There’s…

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My Generator: Hard Lessons Learned

I consider a home generator to be one of the more important preparedness items for coping with the very steep learning curve we’d all go through while adjusting to a TEOTWAWKI situation. While finite fuel supplies will limit its usability for most of us to just a few months at best, with our own generator the immediate aftermath of a permanent grid-down world would be much more tolerable during the first few days and months of adjusting to the “new normal”.

Based on my own preps test a year ago (My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), if the SHTF we’ll discover we’re not quite as prepared as we had hoped to be. There are too many variables, some of which we couldn’t possibly have thought of and prepared for as I’ll soon demonstrate. The last thing to be worried about while making the transition is the availability of electricity. Based on our current lifestyles, it’ll be very difficult adjustment when it’s gone.

This article relates two major problems I experienced with my portable 5000-watt generator in the past year, one during the aforementioned 10-day preps test, the other this past summer during my monthly generator test. This article also explains how the problems were solved, how to avoid them, and how many people could fix these problems today even without much mechanical aptitude. The end of the article has a list of suggestions for generator owners and how to prepare ourselves for a continuation of electricity if the SHTF while we’re struggling to adjust to our new grid-down life.

The Background

During my preps test which started around 8 PM, all went well the first night but trouble began the next morning when I tried to fire up the generator. It was soon obvious it wasn’t going to run. I was so swamped with other things I wasn’t even able to look at the generator for a few days. Later in the week while investigating the carburetor I discovered that due to my negligence in maintaining the engine and doing monthly tests, the needle valve which controls fuel flow was gummed in place. Worse yet, I managed to ruin it while disassembling the carburetor for cleaning, rendering the generator useless. Since I was simulating a TEOTWAWKI event, there was no way to replace the needle valve or buy a new carburetor. I spent the entire ten days without my generator which proved to be the single biggest wrench in the works. Fortunately, my 500-gallon water tank held 400 gallons or I’d have been in some serious trouble with no way to pump water from the well.

The second problem occurred recently during the monthly test. After completing the test, the engine fell out as I was putting the generator back in storage. It’s not something I could have anticipated so it wasn’t something I had prepared for.

While the needle-valve issue was impossible to fix while simulating a SHTF situation,…

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Simplify Planting Heavy Trees With A Wooden Ramp

Potted trees can be purchased in many sizes. Tiny trees might come in a pot as small as 1 gallon in size. I commonly plant fruit trees from 7- and 10-gallon pots. Much larger sizes are also available, and the larger the tree, the closer you are to having a magnificent specimen in your yard or orchard.

But here’s the problem: While large pots support older and larger trees, they’re also heavy and can be difficult to move around. As pots increase in size, the volume of soil they hold follows suit, and soil can be very, very heavy. Planting trees from large pots can be difficult … but it need not be an insurmountable challenge. In fact, it can be surprisingly simple. And you don’t necessarily need much machinery to help.

Dealing with Large Fruit Trees

This spring, I was shopping at my favorite nursery when a couple of impressive apple trees caught my attention. They were every bit of 12 feet tall, and one was loaded with just-forming apples. They were gorgeous specimens at very reasonable prices given their size, and I decided they had to come home with me.

The problem was, the trees were growing in 25-gallon pots. The soil in a 25-gallon pot probably weighs close to 300 pounds, and when combined with the weight of a tree (with lush leaves and apples) … I knew moving and planting those potted trees wouldn’t be easy.

Shipping the trees home was the easy part. I paid for delivery, and the nursery kindly brought the trees to my front yard, where a strong deliveryman used a dolly to roll the heavy trees down a ramp and drop them off. The tricky part would be getting the trees from the yard to my orchard, about 800 feet away.

I thought about using the hydraulics on a tractor—either by crafting a means for a three-point hitch to lift the pots; by lifting the pots in the bucket of a front-end loader; or by wrestling the trees on to a pallet that could be lifted by a fork lift attachment. I also thought about enlisting the help of several strong people to simply lift the pots into a tractor-pulled trailer.

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But in the end, none of these approaches were necessary. Instead, I kept things simple with a garden tractor, a small utility trailer, a few blocks of wood, and a long wooden plank.

Wooden Ramp to the Rescue

It couldn’t have gone better. I used the garden tractor to back up the utility trailer to within about 12 feet of the first 25-gallon pot. Then I took a sturdy 12-foot wooden plank and laid it down so one end was in the utility trailer and the other end was right up at the base of the heavy pot, turning the plank into a ramp for the trees. Underneath the plank, I stacked a few blocks of wood to…

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