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(Psst: The FTC wants me to remind you that this website contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from a link you click on, I might receive a small commission. This does not increase the price you’ll pay for that item nor does it decrease the awesomeness of the item. ~ Daisy)

Dear Diary,

It is me, Jessica.

Joanne got sick.  Some kind of respiratory infection.  Had it been me, I might have been down for a few days and then bounced back.  But at Joanne’s age, this is something different.  

HAM Guy went on the local nets at the five in the afternoon ‘group’ meeting, asking if anyone had antibiotics.  A guy in the city HAM Guy knew came back and said he might be able to arrange a trade with one of the local gangs.  Our HAM Guy said he would talk to Jack and get back to the city guy tomorrow at the seven in the morning HAM group meeting.

Jack put out the word to the neighborhood that he would take one of the remaining gang trucks and go to the city to see what he could find or trade for antibiotics.  He asked for volunteers.  I should not be surprised, but nearly all the men and a few women, including Rae, volunteered.  There were so many that Jack decided to take two of the trucks, fill them up from the other trucks’ tanks, and use the rest of the fuel for trade with some other things.

Jack picked combat vets who were most physically capable.  If they had to ‘hump’ it back from the city, it would be a three-day ‘hump’ assuming a hard ten miles a day with their packs, water, food, ammo, and weapons.  Diary, it is funny to think about that.  Dad used to drop me off at school and then drive to the factory in the city another twenty-five minutes down the road.  Now by foot, it is a three-day ‘hard hump.’

Entry 2

Dear Diary,

It has been four days since Jack and his team of nine men left.  

HAM Guy reported he heard from the city guy, and they had gotten to the city three days ago.  

Nothing since.

Joanne has gone from bad to worse.  She is coughing a lot.  So hard that her face sometimes turns red.  She has a fever.  The chills.  Sometimes, she seems delusional.  We are doing everything we can to keep her comfortable, but it does not seem to be working.  

Kathy, one of the women Jack and his assault team freed, was a pharmacist before the power went out.  Kathy made up some herbal tea that seemed to help some.  I am afraid it is not enough.  We need Jack and his team to return with the antibiotics and soon.

Dad and I were at the Miller’s, mucking out one of the barns with…

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Herdwick sheep are domestic sheep from the mountainous Lake District of England, raised for carpet wool and meat. Lambs are born all black and then mature into their distinctive white face and legs. Their name comes from Old Norse “herdvyck” which means “sheep pasture.” Here’s a close-up look at a flock of Herdwicks and their owner…

Moving to the Countryside

Nestled in the Dutch countryside, Dagmar tends to a flock of Herdwick sheep on the hobby farm she oversees alongside her husband. “My dream of having my own small farm has always been significant,” Dagmar says. “After living in Hong Kong for five-and-a-half years, me and my husband were fortunate to fulfill our dream and buy a house with a little land in The Netherlands.”

Having secured the land, Dagmar has been building up the farm to branch out from Herdwick sheep to include chickens, ducks, rabbits and a couple of miniature donkeys.

Taking a moment from caring for her flock, we spoke to Dagmar about researching breeds of sheep and her early farming influences. We also got to know an adorable sheep called Sear.

Sewing The Seeds For A Farming Life

Growing up, Dagmar’s parents didn’t live on a farm, but they did find a way to keep some cows and sheep.

“We had land near our house where the animals grazed in the summer,” she says. “In winter, they were kept in stables. As a young girl, I loved accompanying my father, especially during lambing season.”

Furthermore, when lambs were rejected by their mother, Dagmar would help to bring them into the homestead. “I enjoyed taking care of them and walking them on the street,” she says.

Focusing On Herdwick Sheep

When Dagmar and her husband began to plan their hobby farm, they started out searching for miniature donkeys alongside a “robust and strong” breed of sheep that also “looked sweet and cute.”

While browsing Pinterest one day, Dagmar came across Herdwick sheep in the Lake District of the United Kingdom. She instantly fell in love.

“I searched for a breeder in The Netherlands,” she says, “and in September 2018, I got my first three Herdwick lambs: Saar, Julie and Noor. Sheep are just fantastic animals; they are really important to me and I enjoy spending time with them every day!”

Spotlight On Sear

Sear is one of the stars at Dagmar’s hobby farm. “She’s a very sweet, calm and amusing little sheep,” she explains. “When I have a treat for my sheep, she’s always the last to arrive. She also has this way of looking around as if she’s seeing something extraordinary; she’s just a very relaxed sheep. It’s just hard not to fall in love with Saar’s adorable little face.”

Gaining The Trust Of Herdwick Sheep

Looking back at 2023, Dagmar says that she noticed many of her sheep seemed to be shy. “They wouldn’t let themselves be petted or even let me come close to them,” she says.

However, by investing a lot…

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Under the blazing summer sun, I squatted in our family’s garden amidst the swaying wheat. As I harvested, the steady snipping of my shears mixed with the soft, almost musical sound of wheat straw. The airy touch of the awns brushed against my face, bringing to mind Ruth gathering barley in Israel ages ago.

On that summer day, I was in a wheat patch in our large garden—a plot measuring 100 feet long and 4 feet wide, or 400 square feet, about a hundredth of an acre.

You might be wondering about the practicality of growing such a small amount of wheat. “Why not just buy flour from the store? Why bother with this tiny wheat patch?” you might ask. This is what you could call a small-scale wheat production, and it’s not just a theoretical thing for me.

In our family, we regularly grind and bake with whole wheat. Having my own wheat in the garden, where I can see each growth stage, participate in the harvest, and process it myself, adds something extra to the experience of eating bread.

From childhood memories to daily reality

From childhood recollections to everyday life, the idea of making bread from scratch has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Ever come across the tale of the Little Red Hen?

In this story, she diligently sets out to grow wheat for her own bread, persistently seeking help from farm mates at each stage of the process. However, no one shows interest in lending a hand until the aroma of the freshly baked loaf fills the air. Suddenly, everyone wants a slice. Yet, at this point, the Little Red Hen decides that since she did all the work solo, she’ll savor her bread solo too.

This children’s story vividly illustrates the value of hard work, and in my youth, I relished reading our version. The vibrant illustrations traced the journey of wheat, from seed to golden crop, and through the processes of harvesting, milling, and baking into a mouthwatering loaf. I could almost taste it myself!

Now, as an experienced farmer managing my own projects, possessing the Little Red Hen’s knack for cultivating wheat for my family with minimal equipment has become a valuable skill. Wheat serves as an excellent cover crop in an established garden, even if you have no plans to harvest the grain.

In our region, winter wheat forms a robust green cover during the colder months. Come spring, we either plow it into the soil or mow it down, readying the ground for planting. Wheat naturally suppresses weeds, and its roots enhance soil structure, creating an ideal environment for beneficial soil-dwelling creatures.

Wheat cultivation

Experimenting with wheat cultivation began in my family’s garden several years ago. Curiosity led me to grab some wheat from our storage buckets, sow it onto the ground with anticipation, and lightly cover the area with…

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The following simple recipe for Chicken & Rice with Golden Sauce is from Good HouseKeeping’s Book of Menus, Recipes, and Household Discoveries (253 pages, copyright 1925, now in public domain). That is one of the 11 new bonus books included in the new 2005-2023 edition of the SurvivalBlog Archive USB stick.

Ingredients

• 1 fowl
• 1 cupful milk
• 1 cupful chicken broth
• 2 tablespoonfuls butter
• 2 tablespoonfuls flour
• Salt
• 1/4 teaspoonful pepper
• 1 egg-yolk
• 1 teaspoooful lemon-juice
• 1 cupful rice
• Minced parsley

Directions

Cook the fowl until very tender aud. cut into neat attractive servings, rather small, using only the white meat for this dish if you wish it particularly delicate in appearance.

Meanwhile, prepare the Golden Sauee as follows: Melt the butter, add the flour and when bubbling, stir in milk and chicken broth gradually. Cook until smooth and thickened, stirring constantly. Add the pepper and salt as needed, this depending upon the seasoning in the stock. Just before removing from the fire, add the egg-yolk beaten and the lemon juice, stirring rapidly.

Reheat the chicken in a little of the sauce placed in a double-boiler. Arrange it on a hot deep platter
or chop plate, and surround it with a ring of the rice cooked until tender and flaky in plenty of boiling salted water.

SERVING

Pour more of the sauce over the chicken and serve with minced parsley sprinkled over the rice.

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Do you have a well-tested recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this weekly recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long-term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven recipes, slow cooker recipes, and any recipes that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

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I am constantly collecting data from the web and I save it to several USB memory sticks that I carry with me daily. If I’m in the office and happen to run across something of value I often pull the USB stick out of my pocket and save a copy. I have sub-directories organized on my stick such as “Food Storage”, “Water Supply”, “Topo Maps” or “Ham radio related” and then sub-category that into say “Antenna Builds”, “Local Repeaters” or “Radio Manuals”. I’m not advocating saving everything on a USB stick because nothing beats having the piece of paper in your hand explaining what to do. I still will hard copy print important papers like  radio manuals, the AmRRON SOP manual, recipes, engine manuals, and medical manuals.

I typically create USB archives of good books I have run across online such as one that I recently read about “The Great Taking”, or The Modern Survival Retreat by Ragnar Benson” (which both can be found for no cost on the web) or just any good prepper books. If you web search “Good Prepper Manuals PDF” the search results will give you a plethora of free manuals such as Nuclear survival, first aid, and military survival guides. Once you begin finding and saving PDF references and files you will be surprised all of the resources available on the web for your library.

I never store personal information or data records on this device, it’s an everyday carry USB stick to grab something that might be useful in the future. Every week or two I copy its contents up to a backup drive at home in case it gets lost and all of that hard work is gone. Believe me, I’ve done it as I had a small hole in my pocket and one slipped out of my pants to be lost forever. Luckily I had backed it up two months earlier. But since then back up more often. I now mini-carabiner clip it to my key chain so it’s no longer a small object in my pocket.

Once a month, I take my memory stick and download the data off of my storage drive and duplicate it to a second memory stick that is EMP-safe. These are sticks that are typically shielded in a metal case with a metal cap — like the ones sold by SurvivalBlog each year with a full archive of blog files and hundreds of books and manuals. These types of waterproof USB sticks are often hard to acquire or require ordering a large quantity of them, to purchase. An alternative to this type of USB storage is to use a couple of static type bags used for electronics, and store them in your Faraday container. Another method is wrap the memory stick in a nonconductive foam and place it in a small tin in essence creating a mini Faraday cage. Do a web search and study how to safely store electronics in an EMP / CME for…

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In a world intoxicated with convenience and technology, preppers are taking the reins in reviving forgotten survival skills nearly lost to time.

These 10 trends, once deeply rooted in our history, now bind together survival enthusiasts who aren’t just regaining lost arts but shaping a new narrative of resilience and self-sufficiency for the future.

1. Pickling Frenzy

When you’ve got a survival garden, you also need a way to preserve your bounty.  Enter the DIY pickling craze, which preppers are trailblazing. 

Whether it’s traditional lacto-fermentation or vinegar pickling, these avant-garde survivalists are preserving their edibles with probiotic flair, creating a gastronomic arsenal with a shelf life that rivals the ages.

2. Ancient Navigation Techniques

Bid farewell to GPS! Preppers are embracing the art of ancient navigation. Whether it’s making sure they always have a paper map in case their phone dies or knowing how to find north without a compass, preppers are making sure they know how to find their way regardless of the circumstances.

3. Primitive Shelter-Building

Making shelters is something that allowed our earliest ancestors to survive in an inhospitable, dangerous world. This essential knowledge was lost over time as people outsourced their habitats to suburban developers and city planners. Not for preppers, though! They consider shelter-making one of the most essential survival skills should they ever need to bug out.

4. Ethnobotany Mastery

Forget traditional foraging; preppers are delving deep into ethnobotany. Whether it’s making glue from pine sap or painkillers out of garden weeds, they’ve unearthed the forgotten uses of indigenous plants.

5. Aquaponics Alchemy

Over 1,000 years ago, the ancient Aztecs mastered the art of aquaponics by cultivating symbiotic relationships between fish and plants.  Now preppers have brought this back so they can create self-sustaining ecosystems that yield nourishment.

6. Wild Yeast Crafting

In a time before commercial yeast packets, bakers harnessed the magic of wild yeast. Preppers are reviving this lost art, fermenting doughs and concocting sourdough starters with an alchemical touch that modern baking has almost forgotten.

7. Canning: A Lost Culinary Art

Our great-grandparents relied on canning to preserve the bounty of the harvest. Preppers are reviving this tradition, shunning store-bought convenience for the satisfaction of preserving their own fruits and vegetables in jars—a skill nearly lost to the aisles of the modern supermarket.

8. Handcrafted Survival Tools

In the age of mass production, the art of crafting one’s tools was nearly forgotten. Preppers are rediscovering the satisfaction of handcrafting survival tools, from knives and bows to traps and fishing gear.

Embracing the self-sufficiency of their forebearers, these enthusiasts are ensuring they…

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To boost your flower farm sales, you’ll need to come up with some business ideas beyond growing beautiful flowers. Once you have buckets and buckets of flowers, you need to figure out how on earth to sell them. You’ve been trying to put yourself out there, and get people interested, but you just can’t seem to sell all those flowers.

The truth is that it can be challenging. It’s a competitive market. It’s a fast-growing agricultural sector, and your little flower farm is competing with massive flower importers that have had decades to perfect the craft of growing cheap and beautiful flowers.

Don’t get discouraged. Plenty of opportunities exist to turn a profit on a flower farm; it just might require a bit of innovation, so I have compiled some tips and tricks that could help elevate your flower farm to the next level.

Leverage and Build Your Network

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it often seems to get overlooked. A critical part of any business venture is to leverage and build a network. Odds are that your network will be family and friends starting out, and those will make up your first few buyers. That’s great! You’re making a few sales now, but let’s take it a step further.

It’s way easier to meet 10 people that each have a network of 10 people than it is to develop a relationship of 100 people. Take free flowers to local businesses, just set them out, share with business owners what you’re doing, win them over. This way has no strings attached, but it begins building advocates with large networks in your community. Watch your orders start rolling in quickly!

Extend Your Growing Season

Perhaps one of the best ways to up your sales as a flower farmer is to simply beat the competition to market. During summer months you will notice market gardeners and vegetable farmers also typically have an influx of blooms at the farmers market. More flower farmers show up in summer when the easier varieties such as zinnias and sunflowers begin to bloom.

By planting heavily for spring flowers, using season extension methods, biennial flowers and even forcing tulip blooms, you’ll be able to beat a large number of flower farmers to market and capitalize on strong spring sales that can help carry you through a slower summer.

Start a Flower CSA or Subscription

Flower community-supported-agriculture programs, aka CSAs, and subscription models are great ways to help ensure your flowers aren’t going to waste. Begin selling them in winter. I like to offer them as holiday gifts available for purchase.

I find folks don’t hesitate to spend a little extra on bringing joy to a loved one, and these subscriptions do just that. Yes, you must manage the fund up front and fulfill each order, but if you do a good job, you’ll also likely begin earning more custom orders and opportunities.

Hotel Florist and Gift Shop Contracts

While not widely known, many hotels regularly have fresh flower installations…

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If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(Psst: The FTC wants me to remind you that this website contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from a link you click on, I might receive a small commission. This does not increase the price you’ll pay for that item nor does it decrease the awesomeness of the item. ~ Daisy)

Are you looking for a lighting solution that is easy to pack and easy to charge? I was, so I decided to check out the collapsible LuminAid Titan solar lantern. It’s only $34 at the time of this posting.

First and foremost, I was not paid for this review.  I bought it thinking it would be a good piece of gear.  And it is.  

This is an LED collapsible lantern that can be charged with a small solar panel charger or by USB.  It has four different output levels in both red (tactical!) and white light.  The fifth output is a low-level random blinking-like light. (Which I guess is for maybe a romantic ambiance?)

I have no way to measure this, but their site says at max power, it puts out 150 Lumens with a run time of 8 hours.  On low power, 10 Lumens with a run time of 72 hours.  According to their site, it is bright enough to illuminate a family-sized tent.  I tried it in my medium-sized bathroom, and it did illuminate it enough to be able to do most normal activities, but it would have to be closer for fine or small detail activities, like removing an eyelash from your eye.  

It has a velcro handle with two holes if you want to hang it more securely, with 550 cord, for example.  

What is neat about it, it is collapsible into a slim form factor about an inch thick.  Expanded, it is about six inches tall.  There is a little plug on the bottom you have to open, then twist to expand it into lantern use or collapse it for storage.  When expanded, it fills with air to keep its shape (after you close the plug).  Also makes it floatable and it is waterproof.  When you collapse it, the air rushes out with a whoosh.

The LuminAid Titan solar lantern can charge small devices

According to their website, it can also charge some small devices like a phone, tablet, headlamp, or camera via a USB cable.

To test this, I drained my phone down to 8%.  With the Lantern at full power according to the battery status indicator, I plugged my phone in.  In two hours, it charged my phone to 58% before its battery was drained.  Not a full charge but I thought that was pretty good.  To recharge the LuminAid Titan solar lantern battery via USB took about two hours which made sense.  I have not had…

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The Consumer Electronic Show 2024 has wrapped up, and quite a few unique announcements occurred in the food and agricultural category. This category is always dominated by John Deere’s showcases, and in past years, they’ve won Innovation Awards for the John Deere autonomous tractor, a self-driving tractor with GPS, and the See & Spray, a crop sprayer. Both are arm implements with artificial intelligence built in.

This year John Deere theme was ‘From Dirt to Shirt,” and they showcased different business models including the possibility of pay as you go so all farmers can spread out payments and access John Deere smart technology for use on their farm. There are also solutions as service, a concept that lets farmers pay for only the tech they plan on using.

Beyond John Deere, the Consumer Electronic Show’s farm and agricultural category had a few smaller brands who also won Innovation Awards this year. Could they eventually be as dominant as John Deere in the category? You never know. Here’s a look at a few of the biggest announcements at the Consumer Electronic Show 2024.

AirFarm 

Some hobby farms are 10, 20 or more acres, so the idea of farming in a small, contained space might seem a bit odd. But there are a lot of uses for a small farm space in urban areas, and it’s even better if that farm is inflatable.

AirFarm, the world’s first inflatable farm, is made up of air-inflated seed beds, and it only takes half a day to set it up. One of the reasons the company won an innovation award is because of how the system can slash water use by 99% over traditional farm use. It uses a reciprocal system that converts moisture in the air into water and then recirculates that moisture back to the roots of the plants. The AirFarm is also a lightweight, easily movable system you can set up virtually anywhere.

Minefarm

Not everyone may want an AirFarm, but a MineFarm is something most hobby farmers could make use of. The MineFarm Showcase looks like a small refrigerator, but it’s an indoor growing system with artificial intelligence. It can manage water, light, and the growth cycle, and it will use the data it collects to learn how to best grow your specific plant. There are a lot of different seeds you can grow in Minefarm, and setting up your plants is as easy as scanning a QR code on one of Minefarm’s Seedkits.

Minefarm could be a helpful addition to a hobby farm because you could use it to start seedlings indoors. Not all seedlings thrive, and Minefarm may be able to analyze why some seeds do better than others on your farm.

Rise Roma

Most indoor hydroponic gardens grow small plants like microgreens. Rise Roma, a winner of the CES Innovation award, can think bigger. It’s able to grow large plants including tomatoes, egg plants, or small dwarf trees. It can grow plants or trees up to…

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