Three Mental Traits That Will Help You Survive

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Survival in extreme situations usually depends directly on a person’s degree of preparation. Typically we tend to think of preparation for disasters as involving mostly food and water storage. However, perhaps even more than physical preparation, survival in extreme situations can often be determined by how mentally prepared we are to handle stressful experiences. As you gather stores of emergency food, water, and survival supplies, don’t neglect to prepare yourself mentally as well. Today we’re going to examine four traits you can foster that are extremely useful—some might even say crucial—for getting through tough things.

1. Optimism

We’ve been taught the significance of a positive attitude since we were in Kindergarten, so it’s easy to quit listening when someone tells us we need to think positively. However, according to plenty of recent research, optimists are better off than pessimists when it comes to many aspects of life: Optimists have been shown to have better survival rates when diagnosed with life-threatening diseases or conditions, optimists have been shown to survive poverty better, and studies suggest that optimists tend to have better overall health. All of this evidence would suggest that optimism can be a very useful trait when it comes to surviving difficult situations.

TIME Magazine ran a story last year about a program under implementation by the U.S. military that is designed to turn its personnel into undeterred optimists. According to expert research behind the training, one of the most important factors in resilience is a person’s degree of optimism. Thus, training soldiers to practice positive thinking can help them to endure and thrive in challenging situations.

If you’re not naturally an optimist, training yourself to think like one can put you in a good place if you ever find yourself in a survival situation. Become aware of your thoughts about yourself, others, and life in general. If your thoughts are mostly negative, try to change them and notice more of the positive in every situation. Monitor the tone of your conversations with others. Make an effort to express more positive thoughts than negative ones.

2. Mental Toughness

Mental toughness, i.e. resilience, is the pull that gets early risers up at 5:00 in the morning to run laps around the track, the thing that helps military men and women endure tense experiences, and the trait that helps children who experience traumatic events grow up to be healthy, happy adults. Some people are naturally tough mentally, but there are also some practices that can help you develop mental toughness if you aren’t naturally that way.

One of these is to regularly get out of your comfort zone. This doesn’t necessarily mean forcing yourself to talk to strangers on the elevator (although this is probably a healthy thing to do as well). In a great article on mental toughness, Erich at tacticalintelligence.net recommends randomly doing things like fasting for 24 hours, taking ice-cold showers, going sky-diving, or making yourself wake up at 3:00 in the morning every now and then. When we regularly do things that are not just uncomfortable but hard for us—things we really, really, really don’t want to do—we toughen ourselves up. The idea is that if you practice hard things on a daily basis, you end up a much stronger and more resilient human being.

Another good way to develop mental toughness is to challenge yourself physically. Demanding workouts strengthen your mental ability to endure discomfort and pain, and they also give you more confidence in your physical and mental strength. Get in the best shape of your life. Push beyond your former limits. Set a fitness goal for yourself that you previously considered out of your league. It is nearly impossible to become physically strong without also strengthening your mental toughness.

3. Self-confidence

The more you believe in your ability to handle tough things, the more you will be able to handle them. So how can you develop confidence in your own survival abilities? The simple answer is to first get all your affairs in order.

First and foremost, make sure you have adequate food storage, drinking water, and emergency supplies stored away. If you have all the supplies you need to keep your family alive during an emergency situation, you will not have the added mental burden of worrying about where your next meal is going to come from, and you will also not carry the weight of guilt that can come from relying on others who have prepared and generously shared with you. Being prepared gives you the confidence you need to trust yourself and your own abilities in an emergency.

Another source of self-confidence in emergencies is having some survival skill know-how, which will help you trust your ability to take care of yourself and your own. Survival skills are not just for boy scouts and mountain men. Anyone can learn basic survival skills like first aid, fire-starting, edible plant identification, and anything else that would be vital knowledge in a survival situation. Anything you learn now will give you more self-confidence later.

Finally, remember that you are probably much stronger and more resilient than you think you are. If you are prepared both physically and mentally when a disaster situation occurs, chances are that you will be able to do what you need to do.

Eight Unusual Foods Worth Planting in Your Garden This Year

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Are you a predictable gardener and usually play it safe when it comes to deciding what to plant in your garden for the season? If you’re like me, your garden looks mostly the same every year with the old familiar tomatoes over here, zucchinis there, strawberries there, and maybe some onions or cucumbers just to vary things. This year, as garden season is upon us, why not walk on the wild side and plant something outside the norm? Your reward will be a refreshed summer menu, the curiosity and interest of your neighbors, and quite possibly a new garden favorite. For your gardening experimentation, here we’ve gathered a list of some unusual fruits and vegetables that can be grown in most climates. Take a look. My guess is that they’ll have you wanting to mix up your garden offerings this planting season.

1. Cucamelons (also called mouse melons). Cucamelons are fruits about the size of grapes that grow on a vine. They get their name because they look exactly like someone has taken a watermelon and shrunk it down to miniature proportions. According to gardeners who enjoy the cucamelon, these fruits taste like sour cucumbers and, some say, fava beans. (I’m not sure how something can taste like both cucumbers and fava beans, but maybe once I try it I will understand.) Like most cucumbers, cucamelons grow easily and abundantly and can be trained to grow up a trellis or simply allowed to spread out on the ground. When you are ready to eat your cucamelons, they can be prepared in much the same way cucumbers/squash can: pickled, stir-fried, or eaten raw. To read more about cucamelons, look here.

2. Strawberry spinach plants (also known as strawberry blite or beetberry). Strawberry spinach plants are an ideal food to grow if it’s important to you to avoid waste. This is because you can eat every part of this little-known plant. Its edible leaves can be eaten raw or steamed and are high in Vitamins A and C. Its juicy red berries taste similar to mulberries and can be eaten straight off the plant. Strawberry spinach plants are reportedly very easy to grow and can withstand both the cold and the heat. For more information about strawberry spinach, check out this article.

3. Issai hardy kiwi. These delicious fruits grow on a vine and are like the kiwis you buy at the supermarket without all the fuzz. You can eat hardy kiwis whole and raw, and they are reportedly very sweet, like grapes, and a great source of Vitamin C. Because they are fairly heavy and abundant when grown, they usually require some kind of support to grow on, like a trellis or T-shaped structure. If you are interested in growing Issai hardy kiwi, you might find this article helpful.

4. Lemon Cucumber. The name of this delicious food describes it well: a cucumber that is colored and shaped like a lemon. These miniature cucumbers have a slightly sweeter flavor than regular old cukes, and their skin is a bit thinner too. When you plant lemon cucumbers, they stretch and spread around the ground quickly, so don’t plant too many unless you have plenty of space you want to fill. Like most cucumber varieties, lemon cucumbers are easy to grow and thrive in various climates.

5. Black sea man tomato. Nearly all gardeners I know grow some kind of tomato every year. The black sea man tomato is appealing to many adventurous gardeners largely because of its unusual appearance: dark purple, almost black, skins and usually a pinkish center. Slicing them results in a rainbow of interesting colors and is sure to add impressive visual impact to your meals. Not only do these tomatoes look cool, most gardeners who have grown them say their taste is among the best of tomato varieties, very rich and tangy.

6. Porcelain doll pink pumpkins. Pumpkins are among my favorite things to grow. Not only are they fun for Halloween decorations and delicious fall desserts, their vines stretching magically across a garden add a very Cinderella-esque charm. Porcelain doll pink pumpkins are light orangeish/pinkish in color. What could be more magical and Cinderella-esque than a pink pumpkin? To top it all off, when you buy pink pumpkins, a portion of your purchase goes toward breast cancer research.

7. Asparagus pea (also called the winged pea). Asparagus peas historically like to grow in equatorial climates, but some varieties can be grown in more extreme areas. The asparagus pea is another vegetable whose parts can all be eaten. You can eat the peas, which reportedly taste something like asparagus (hence the name), enjoy the pods when they are still very small and tender, boil the roots for a protein-rich potato-like food, and prepare the leaves like you would spinach. Asparagus pea plants are also very beautiful and exotic-looking when growing and can make a great addition to your decorative garden.

8. Pineberries (pineapple strawberries). Pineberries are white strawberries with red seeds. They are a bit smaller than common strawberries and supposedly have a light pineapple flavor. They do not have a very high yield and thus add to their desirability by being limited, if that’s your thing.

If you are interested in trying out any of these varieties this year, a quick search online will lead you to plenty of online seed retailers who offer exotic and unusual seeds. You can also check your local garden center, which might surprise you with the variety of seeds it carries. If you do decide to try something new, let us know how it goes. Also, if there is any other unusual plant you have grown in the past and enjoyed, leave a note in the comments below. And as you’re kneeling in the dirt with the sunshine on your back, remember the words of ancient Roman philosopher Cicero: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

Preparing Pets for Emergencies

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If you have a pet who holds a special place in your heart, you probably take pretty good care of that pet—feed him, groom him, take him for walks, maybe even buy him fancy clothes or gourmet treats from a pet bakery. Today I’m here to remind you of one aspect of pet care that otherwise good pet owners too often forget: preparing your pet for emergency situations.

In the world of emergency preparedness, we are constantly making lists of supplies we need to gather in order to be prepared for every eventuality of a disaster. If you are a pet owner, as you make your list of supplies to store away, don’t forget to equip your pet along the way as well. Usually, in an emergency situation, pets will need most of the same things humans do: food, water, shelter, and plenty of reassurance. And just like people, animals will benefit from having a few comfort items stored away too. Here, for your convenience, is a list we’ve put together of pet survival supplies that will make your life and your pet’s life a lot easier in the event of a disaster.

What to Include in Your Pet’s Emergency Preparedness Kit

1. Water. As you store water for your family for survival situations, don’t forget to calculate the amount of water your pet will need and add it into the mix. Be sure to store enough to allow your pet to stay well hydrated, and if you care about cleanliness in emergencies, store enough for pet hygiene too!

2. Food. Stock up on as much pet food as you can afford to store. Start with enough to feed your pet for a month, then three months, then six, and so on. Through Legacy Premium, PrepareWise now offers the first pet food that’s made for long-term storage. It boasts a 10-year shelf life and comes in the dog variety and the cat variety. If you are looking for serious pet food storage, this is an excellent option for you.

3. Portable food containers. Many emergency situations involve evacuation of your home. If this happens to be your case, you will want to have a way to carry your pet’s food and water on the go.

4. Manual can opener if your pet eats canned food.

4. Medications if necessary.

5. First aid supplies. Pet first aid supplies and people first aid supplies are mostly the same, but you might also consider having some extra large bandages, gauze, and medical tape along with everything else.

6. Hygiene Supplies. Remember things like a pet brush, shampoo, blanket or towel, kitty litter if applicable, and whatever else your pet needs to be well-cared for and clean.

7. Pet carrier or leash. It’s vital to have a way to keep pets contained during emergency situations as even the most docile and sweet animals can become anxious and combative in tense situations. Having a leash or carrier handy will help you keep your pet close and calm until situations settle.

8. Proper identification and records. If you and your pet get separated during an emergency or if your pet needs to have medical attention, it will be vital that his records and IDs are handy. Make sure you have a copy of your pet’s medical records and a collar with an ID tag, a license tag, and a vaccination tag.

9. Picture of you and your pet together. If you and your pet get separated during an emergency, a picture of your pet will allow others to help you locate him. If that picture also includes you in it, it will be a good proof of your ownership of your pet.

10. Emergency contact list. Make a list now of all the numbers you might need for your pet in an emergency situation. Possible numbers include the local animal shelter, an emergency medical center for pets, the local kennel, and your pet’s veterinarian.

11. Items purely for comfort. It’s important to have some treats stored for your pet along with his typical pet food. Treats make tense, abnormal situations seem more normal and controlled and help pets to relax. In addition to treats, make sure to have any of your pet’s favorite toys or sleeping pillows on hand. Comfort items will go a long way in easing the stress of an emergency situation for your pet.

In addition to putting together a survival kit for your pet, there are a few other considerations you may want to make before a disaster happens. One of these is to make a plan for what you will do with your pet if you have to evacuate your home. If your plan is to go to an out-of-town family member’s house, make sure that person is willing to house your pet too. If not, you will need to make arrangements beforehand either with a local animal shelter or kennel. Some shelters and kennels do not house animals in emergencies, so call now to find out which ones will and make a plan to take your pet there.

If you absolutely have no other options and have to leave your pet behind (not recommended), leave him in the house with plenty of food and water available to him. Also leave a note on the outside of the house that tells rescuers there is a pet inside, what kind, his name, and a contact number you can be reached at. Leaving pets at home gives them much lower chances for survival, so avoid this option if at all possible.

In emergency situations, pets will probably be feeling many of the same emotions you are. They will be tired and fretful and anxious and will need all the love and patience you can give them. Expect them to be more needy and less obedient than they usually are. If you keep them close to you and attend to their needs, they will make it through the emergency situation as well as you. Being prepared with a good pet survival kit and making emergency plans in advance can go a long way in making the situation bearable for everyone.

Your Single Most Important Emergency Item

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If you are like me, at any given time, we can flip on a knob and have clean, fresh water flowing into our homes seemingly without limit. As a result, we typically don’t stop to consider how reliant we are on water for every aspect of our day-to-day lives. Did you know that the average human being can survive without food for a month or more depending on the circumstances, but we cannot survive without water for more than three to seven days? Water is essential for nearly every function our bodies perform, including digestion, nutrient absorption, detoxification, and temperature moderation, among others. Without water, we simply cannot survive. Water is not only essential for hydration; it is also vital for cooking, showering, brushing teeth, doing laundry, washing dishes, cleaning house, watering crops, feeding pets, and more.

In a variety of natural disaster situations, public water lines often crack, allowing dangerous pollutants into the water that feeds directly into our homes. Alternately, water can be shut off altogether for an indefinite amount of time. If a natural disaster occurs in your area, chances are good that you will have to rely on your own water reserves to keep your family from dehydration and to perform daily household activities. If you don’t have a sufficient amount of safe, clean water stored away, you will put your family in an unnecessarily unpleasant and dangerous situation.

How much water should you store?

Most preparedness organizations recommend storing one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days. This is a conservative amount and should be increased in the hottest parts of the year. Consider your personal needs and store accordingly. If you drink a lot of water regularly, store more. If you have pets, store more. If you take medications, store more. Keep in mind that it’s unlikely you will ever have too much water, so the more you have, the better off you will be.

How can you safely store water?

The most obvious option for storing water is to buy bottled water that is all ready for storage. This is a good, though expensive, choice. When you buy water that is already bottled, it should last for about a year and then be rotated out. Another option is to bottle your own water. This is an excellent option as long as you take the right precautions to ensure your water does not become contaminated. Following are some guidelines to adhere to when bottling your own:

1. Always use food-grade containers. Whether you are bottling your water in glass, plastic, or stainless steel (you should not use metal as it can corrode and leak harmful substances), make sure your containers are food-grade. If you do not have food-grade containers, chances are good you will have dangerous substances leaking into your water.

2. Don’t use milk jugs or juice containers. If you choose to use plastic bottles, avoid bottles that have previously held sweet or sugary substances like fruit juice or milk. The sugar in these substances will stay in the plastic no matter what you do to clean it, and during storage, the sugar will instigate bacteria growth.

3. Sanitize containers well. Wash them with hot water and dish soap, then rinse them out with 1 quart of water with 1 tsp. bleach mixed in. Rinse everything thoroughly and let them dry completely. Wash your hands before you fill them with water and avoid touching the lip of the bottle with your fingers.

4. Store water out of light and away from heat.

5. Rotate your self-bottled water every six months.

What is the best way to purify water?

Even if you have plenty of water stored up for an extended emergency situation, it’s possible that you could eventually run out. In the event of a survival situation, you will want to be prepared with water purification gear and/or some basic knowledge of how to purify water.

It’s a great idea to add a water purification device or water purification tablets to your emergency supplies. There are a variety of small, long-lasting water filtration systems available: everything from straws that filter water as you drink through them, pitchers with built-in filters, and personal-size water filtration bottles. Having one of these stored can save you a lot of hassle in emergency and survival situations.

It’s also a good idea to learn some basic water purification techniques. If you don’t have a water filter or purification tablets handy, remember that for most types of water, you can boil vigorously for 1 to 2 minutes to kill harmful pathogens and make it safe for drinking. You can also follow FEMA’s recommendations and add 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach to one gallon of water. Both of these methods should make most water safe.

It’s easy to see why having safe water stored is a vital part of emergency preparedness, but it’s a part we sometimes overlook as we gather food storage and survival gear. In your quest for emergency preparation, don’t neglect your most important survival item. Stock up on fresh, clean water and save yourself and your family from unnecessary circumstances in the event of an emergency.

Fruit Tree Pruning Basics

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If you take a walk in my neck of the woods today, you’ll see that spring has finally arrived. No more false spring tease that brings in a blizzard the next morning. Every spring, as soon as these long-awaited warm days arrive, I start to feel the itch to get out in the garden and working in the sunshine. Right now is a perfect time to plant spring seeds like lettuces and peas and onions. Perhaps you’ve already done this. But did you know that right now is also the perfect time to trim back those fruit trees that you hope will offer you their sweets when summer comes around? If you’ve never pruned your fruit trees before, here we offer a brief discussion of the basics: why it’s good, when to do it, and a few tricks of the trade.

 

First things first: Let’s talk terminology. Any time you start to read about tree pruning, you’re bound to encounter some terms you might not be familiar with. Here are a few important ones to know.

Basic Tree Terms

SCAFFOLD: All the limbs directly connected to the tree’s trunk form the scaffold.

LEADER: The main branch that runs up the middle of the tree is called a leader. Most trees should only have one leader, and part of your goal in pruning is to eliminate strong second leaders.

WATERSPROUTS: Watersprouts are completely vertical shoots that grow quickly on a scaffolding limb or on a lateral branch. Watersprouts are weak and should be eliminated when pruning.

SUCKERS: Suckers are the shoots that grow up out of the ground along the base of the tree. These are also to be eliminated by pruning.

BRANCH COLLAR: The branch collar is the thick ring around a limb where the limb meets the branch/trunk it is attached to. Some trees have very visible branch collars, and some you cannot see at all.

Why Prune Your Trees

Some people avoid pruning like they avoid extended family reunions. There might be a lot of reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that pruning can seem like an overwhelming task, and it can be difficult to know where to start. However, fruit tree pruning is important for many reasons. Pruning helps to give a fruit tree just the right structure to be able to hold its own weight when fruit-bearing season comes. As a result, pruning can also help a tree to become more fruitful. Trees that are not pruned are more likely to produce small fruit that is often ruined by disease. A tree only has so much energy to go around. If it’s not pruned, it will likely put most of its energy into growing new limbs and shoots rather than producing fruit. In addition, trees will typically live longer and have a longer fruit-bearing period if pruned well. This is because they are healthier and stronger and less susceptible to disease and breakage. Finally, well-pruned trees simply look better.

The good news is, pruning is not as hard as it might initially seem.

When to Prune: A Few Words About Timing

For most fruit trees, dormant periods (when the tree is without leaves) are the best time to do formative pruning, especially late winter and very early spring. This is especially true for establishing the basic structure of a young tree.  For northern hemispheres, this means  no later than late March, early April (i.e. right now). Much of the important pruning in a tree’s life should come within the first ten years after planting. These will be the formative structuring years. After that, mature tree pruning will be a lot lighter and focus on eliminating problem limbs.

How to Prune a Fruit Tree: The Basics

What to Remove

The first time I even considered pruning a tree, I walked outside, looked up into the tree’s branches, and gave up. I simply had no idea what was supposed to stay and what was supposed to go. Here are a few tips for what should be removed from a tree when it’s young and when it’s mature:

1. In the pruning of young trees (especially during the first ten years), work on spacing the scaffolding branches well. You want them to have some room to breathe and grow and get plenty of sunlight. Your goal is to leave the tree open and airy. Aim for somewhere around 6 to 12 inches apart on scaffolding limbs. You can simply eyeball this; just aim for having your scaffold branches nicely spaced.

2. When pruning more mature trees and trying to make the tree more open, do most of your thinning work in the upper branches of the tree. This will allow more light down into the bottom.

3. When pruning young trees, one of your goals is to eliminate any contending leaders. Most trees should only have one dominant leader. Otherwise, they can eventually crack and break in two. If your tree seems to have a second leader that is threatening the dominance of the main leader, the threatening one should be removed.

4. Remove any limbs that are rubbing against or crossing other branches.

5. Remove any branches that are growing downward.

6. Remove any decayed or damaged limbs.

7. Remove watershoots and suckers.

How to Remove Offenders

When you cut limbs off, it’s important that you don’t just get the pruning scissors and lop them off. Knowing the right cut to make will help you avoid inviting disease to your tree.

1. Remove branches at their points of origin. It’s important not to cut too much or too little off: You don’t want to leave a stump when you cut and conversely you don’t want to cut into the trunk. Either of these can result in decay of the tree. One way to know where to cut is to find the branch collar and cut just outside of it so that the branch collar remains intact. If you aren’t sure whether you are cutting correctly or not, you can check your cuts the following year. If a donut shape has grown up around the wound, your cut was neither too deep nor too shallow.

2. Never top trees off. This can be very damaging to the tree and results in disease and decay. Topping trees off is never a good way to reduce the height of a tree. Follow the pruning basics.

3. Make a clean cut; don’t let a limb tear or come off roughly.

Try to think of your pruning as being as much an art as a science. Know the general principles and then do what you think will be best for your tree. Every tree is unique and will require different cuts. Pruning doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task; if you go into it with some basic knowledge, you’ll have a much happier and fruitful tree when late summer rolls around.

For Further Reading:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pdf/pnw/pnw400.pdf

http://www.avtreefarm.com/pdf/Fruit%20Tree%20Pruning%20Basics.pdf (This site has helpful images and diagrams.)

http://sdda.sd.gov/legacydocs/Forestry/publications/PDF/The-Basics-of-Tree-Pruning.pdf

http://www.wildernesscollege.com/fruit-tree-pruning-instructions.html

Boil the Perfect Egg with a Sunshade: A Solar Cooking Experiment

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A few months ago, I posted about solar ovens as a useful survival cooking method. You can read that post here. At the time, I wanted to try to make my own solar oven and cook with it, but I didn’t because it was the middle of January in a cold Utah winter,not really the ideal time or place to harness the power of the sun. Now that it is nearly spring and we’ve had a few nice sunny days, I decided it was time to give it a try. Here is a chronicle of my first ever solar cooking attempt.

My biggest resource in this endeavor was solarcooking.org. This site has a variety of different plans for making your own solar oven for less than $5. It also has recipes and expert tips. Reading through all the suggestions before starting was very helpful in choosing the right time of day and the best place to get cooking.

After browsing different solar oven plans, I decided that I would go with what looked like the easiest: a solar cooker made out of a car sunshade. Pretty awesome, right? Here is how to do it if you’d like to try (and I think you should).

Gather Supplies

Pictured here is everything you need to try out this simple and awesome solar oven: a reflective accordion-folding car sunshade, a black pot, a bucket or box, an oven cooking bag, a cooking rack, and some Velcro (or duct tape, as I ended up using). I was able to find most of these items at the dollar store.

Find a Sunny Spot and Choose Your Menu

After gathering my supplies, I had to decide what to cook and figure out the sunniest place near my house. I found that the parking lot in back of my building was especially lit up from about 10 to 2. Solarcooking.org recommends trying something simple for your first time, like solar tea or rice or beans. I decided to start with boiled eggs. According to the site, boiled eggs should take about 3 to 4 hours in a solar cooker.

Construct Your Oven

The tutorial I followed used strips of Velcro along the two bottom edges of the sunshade and then wrapped it up and attached the sides together to form a funnel shape. I realized that I had gotten sew-on Velcro, so I ended up just duct taping the sides together. Here you can see the sunshade held together with duct tape. Notice the back view and how it looks like a cone.

 

Next, I filled my black pot with water and the eggs and put an oven bag around it.  I placed my sunshade on top of a tupperware container (you could use a box or bucket too), put the rack inside, and put my pan in the oven. When I first put mine together, I was a little worried because of how flimsy it looked. Here’s a photo:

Regardless, I took it to a sunny spot and left it there to do its magic.It was a sunny day but only about 10 in the morning and March, so it was still a chilly 45 degrees outside.

 

By 11:00, after one hour, condensation began building up on the inside of the bag.



By 12:00, it had warmed up to 50 degrees outside. The pot felt so hot that I had a difficult time moving it. I moved the oven to face the sun a little bit more. There was no boiling yet, and this made me worry a little.

At 1:30, after 3 ½ hours, I went out to check on the eggs. The water had still not appeared to boil that I could see, but I decided to open up the bag and get an egg out. It was very hot in the bag, so hot, actually, that I burned my fingers a little. I took an egg out and cracked it open and was pleasantly surprised to find it not only done, but perfectly cooked.

These eggs were delicious. They were completely done inside, as you can see, but every part of the egg was tender in just the right way. The slow cooking must have something to do with this.

These eggs may have tasted so great because I knew I had cooked them without any heat source except what’s free and outside all the time. Seriously, that is really awesome, isn’t it? Also, the whole process was very easy and made me excited about experimenting with more difficult foods.

What I take away from this experience is that if you have a five-dollar sunshade lying around and plenty of sunny weather outside, you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to cook your food in a survival situation. Add in some delicious food storage, and you’re set. If you haven’t experimented with solar cooking yet, I strongly suggest you give it a try. Let me know how it goes!

Why Beekeeping Should Be Your Next Hobby

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Have you ever considered becoming a beekeeper? If not, maybe you should. Having a hive of productive honeybees is an excellent asset in a survival situation. With free honey being produced at regular intervals, you can sweeten and vary your survival food, use honey for medicinal purposes, and always have a great bartering item on hand.

Beyond the survival reasons, unless you are allergic to bee stings or have a phobia of buzzing insects, raising bees can simply be a delicious and fascinating pastime. Bees create tasty, healthful, and extremely useful substances (i.e. honey and wax), and keeping bees also increases pollination of other food you have growing. Following is an exploration of the benefits of beekeeping and some basic information on how to get started.

Why keep bees, Reason #1: HONEY

The most obvious reason to keep bees is to have free access to fresh honey, which is not only supremely tasty but also tops the charts of many health experts’ recommended food lists. Read recent health articles and you’ll see that raw local honey has health benefits worth buzzing about. Raw honey is full of good bacteria (probiotics), which can promote healthy digestion and support the immune system. It’s also an excellent natural energy booster—both short-term energy (thanks to glucose) and more sustained long-term energy (thanks to fructose). In addition, honey is proven in laboratory studies to have antioxidant and antibacterial properties. Honey is also good for smaller health complaints, like soothing cuts and burns and easing sore throats, and it is a fantastic skin and hair conditioner.

With all of these health benefits, you can see why honey is a good thing to have around, especially in a survival situation. Did you know that one bee can produce up to 1 ½ teaspoons of honey in its brief six-week life span? With tens of thousands of bees typically in one hive, raising a hive of bees can mean a whole lot of free, sweet honey for you.

Why keep bees, Reason #2: WAX

When bees fill honeycombs with honey, they top them off with a bit of wax that they secrete from glands on their abdomen. This beeswax is an extraordinarily versatile and useful substance—two qualities that make an item great to have in a survival situation. You can use beeswax to make homemade candles that burn longer and cleaner than other candles, lip balm, hand cream, soap, skin salve, and furniture polish. You can use it to strengthen bow strings, lubricate screws,  and waterproof almost anything. For a good read about beeswax product ideas along with detailed recipes and instructions, check out the following site: http://chickensintheroad.com/house/crafts/things-to-do-with-beeswax/

Why keep bees reason #3: POLLINATION OF YOUR CROPS

According to the USDA, “About one mouthful in three in our diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination.” Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries all need to be pollinated to be fruitful, and bees are the best pollinators around. Bee pollination makes the harvest of your gardening greater and the quality of your crops higher. When you have a beehive near your crops, the bees will pollinate them and make you a happier gardener.

With free supplies of honey and beeswax and free pollination of your crops, how could you not want to start this exciting hobby? Now that you know why beekeeping is a worthwhile endeavour, let’s talk about how you can get started.

First things first: gather supplies. Many beekeeping experts estimate that it takes anywhere from $400  to $1000 to supply yourself with everything you need to start a hive. The most basic supplies you will need are a jumpsuit or other full-body clothing to protect you from stings, a cap and veil to protect your face and neck, gloves that go up the forearm, a hive (you can buy one or make your own using an online tutorial), a smoker, and bees. It’s also frequently recommended that you have a bee brush, a tool to break up wax, a bee feeder, an extractor, and various supplies that simply make beekeeping more convenient. For an extensive list of beekeeping supplies, check out the beesource website.

Most expert beekeepers recommend taking a live beekeeping class to get some hands-on experience, taste what it’s like to work with bees, and meet local beekeepers. It’s also an excellent idea to join your local beekeeping association and find a mentor.

If you are interested in getting started on beekeeping, here are a few good resources to start your study and lead you in the right direction:

www.betterbee.com
http://www.sustainlife.org/blog/tag/beekeeping
www.beesource.com
www.beemaster.com
www.honeybeesonline.com

If you talk to someone who has been beekeeping for years, chances are they’ll talk about their hobby with a starry-eyed smile. For not only does beekeeping offer honey, beeswax, pollination of crops, and all the survival benefits that come with these, it also puts the diligent keeper of bees in close contact with nature’s processes. This all adds up to what might just be the perfect hobby.

How to Prepare Better: Five Pieces of Preparedness Advice from Disaster Survivors

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When preparing for a future event—whether it’s retirement, a trip to Disneyland, or a disaster situation—it helps to get advice from people who have already been there, done that. Specifically, it’s nice to know what those people wish they knew before they went through the situation and what they would do differently if they went through it again.

With this in mind, a few months ago, I began to keep track of advice in blogs, news articles, and discussion boards from people who had lived through Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters. Slowly, I made a list of lessons these survivors learned from their experiences and advice they would give to others preparing for a crisis. Interestingly, most of the advice falls under a handful of basic principles. Here you will find these principles and a few singularly helpful ideas related to each. If you think of any you’d like to add as you are reading through, share them with us in the comments box below.

 

1. Some disaster supplies never outlive their usefulness. In other words, you’ll never have too much. A few commonly mentioned items are water, food, batteries, matches, and wet wipes.

WATER: In many types of natural disasters, water lines can become contaminated and access to water can be shut off altogether. This is why it’s so important to to have water and emergency water supplies stored (think water purifiers and containers to hold water). But how much water? The best answer, according to disaster survivors, is as much as you can fathom storing in your home. It’s impossible to store too much water because you will use it for everything: drinking, cooking with, washing dishes, flushing the toilet, washing hands, bathing, and showering.

FOOD: Just as with water, you will never think to yourself that you have overdone it on the food storage. In times of high stress or absolute boredom (survival situations usually alternate between these two extremes), we tend to eat more than usual. If you have kids, this will be especially true. Just think of how much food you go through when your kids are on a vacation from school. The bottom line is to store more food than you think you need.

MATCHES AND BATTERIES: People who have survived emergency situations often express surprise at how quickly their supply of batteries and matches ran out. Matches are useful for everything from lighting candles and starting fires to igniting cooking stoves. Similarly, you’ll quickly realize how many of your survival supplies require batteries. Just like with food and water, store more batteries and matches than you can imagine ever using. Alternately, invest in rechargeable batteries with solar chargers.

WET WIPES: If you have ever had a child, you know the miracle that is baby wipes. Baby wipes are excellent in an emergency for washing hands, refreshing worn-out faces, and cleaning up messes. Basically, wet wipes help you function without using so much of your precious water resources. Again, it’s hard to have too many of this item stored for an emergency.

2. If you haven’t thought about getting a generator, you probably should.  Power is precious, and most natural disaster situations involve the power going out at some point. Generators allow you to rely on yourself for power while you are waiting for the government to step in and repair things. People who have survived natural disasters (especially Hurricane Sandy) have a lot to say about generators. Here are a few good tips:

  • Some household appliances are power hogs, and if you are using a generator, you will want to be wise about your use of these items: microwaves, toasters, freezers, refrigerators, and hot plates.
  • Generators require a lot of fuel to operate. Read your owner’s manual to find out what kind and how much fuel your generator needs, then store accordingly. Also find out how often your generator requires a filter change.
  • To save fuel, turn your generator off every night and back on in the morning.
  • IMPORTANT: Store a carbon monoxide detector to use with your generator. Did you know that there were nine reported deaths during Hurricane Sandy just from carbon monoxide poisoning from improper generator use? Use your generator safely.

3. Don’t neglect to stock up on treats. What does a treat mean for you? For me, it’s dark chocolate after dinner or a bowl of buttery popcorn while watching a movie with my best friend. But it can also be listening to Iron and Wine tunes after a long day or lying on the couch and reading a book. Many people who have survived disaster situations say that having treats around was sanity-saving.

The term “treat” is misleading because it implies that these things are bonuses and not necessary for long-term survival. In fact, this is not the case. Treats are crucial for their morale-boosting power. Human beings are not machines, and we cannot flourish in any kind of extended survival situation without comfort items. Comfort items help us feel calm and semi-normal in very abnormal circumstances.

As you gather your food storage and emergency supplies, don’t forget about comfort items. Whether it’s coffee, a favorite cereal, art supplies, or games, make sure you have a way to wind down and maintain normalcy.

4. Be a team player. One of the pieces of advice that surprised me by its frequency in different discussion boards is to make sure you work together with your neighbors. Sometimes in emergency preparedness, we are very self-focused as we work toward becoming self-reliant and being able to support our families without needing anyone else. At some point in a disaster situation, you have to be able to make a shift and look at how you can work with the larger community to restore order. Everyone will have different skills and knowledge to offer the situation, and working together means more gets done. A few great ideas were having a neighborhood potluck to use up food that was near its expiration date, making trades with others for labor or supplies, and getting together as a community to play music, watch movies, or tell stories.

5. Sharpen your survival skills. Plenty of people who have survived extended natural disaster situations say that the person who knows how to make a delicious meal with a camp stove and food storage supplies or who knows how to wire a generator quickly becomes a huge asset when disaster strikes. If you don’t have very many survival skills, get educated. Learn how to build better fires, purify water in any situation, or use solar cooking. Anything you learn now will save you later.

Emergency Planning as a Family

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Contrary to popular belief, planning for emergencies doesn’t have to take much time. In fact, if you’re like me, you’ve probably spent more time procrastinating getting prepared than it takes to actually get prepared. If your family is a little behind in its emergency preparedness work, a good place to start is to hold a series of family meetings in which you learn together and decide on family protocols during emergencies. Specifically, take some time to learn how to shut off the utilities, make a plan for communication and reunification, and learn some basic emergency skills. Discussing even these few topics will save you hassle, worry, and heartache later.

Basic Emergency Training for Families

Know how to turn off utilities. If a disaster occurs and you are at home, it’s important that you immediately shut off your home’s utilities. Hold a family meeting in which you show members of appropriate age how to safely shut off the water at the main house valve and how to shut off individual electrical circuits and then the main electrical circuit. Call your natural gas company and ask them how to safely turn off your gas in case of an emergency. All three of these things should be done when a natural disaster occurs in order to avoid explosions and flooding in your home. Holding a family meeting in which you train members of your family to do this will save them from danger later.

Make a plan for communicating in an emergency. Most families spend a majority of the day apart from one another. This means that it’s very likely that if an emergency situation occurs, it will occur while family members are separated. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to have just survived a disaster and be left wondering about your family members’ safety and well-being but to have no way to contact them. When you plan ahead for communication in an emergency, you don’t have to go through this torturous waiting process. There are a few things you can do now to ensure you can get in touch with your dearest ones in an emergency.

First of all, consider giving everyone in the family either a cell phone, a prepaid phone for emergencies, or coins for a pay phone, and make sure they have these with them at all times. Talk to your family members about using social media like Twitter and Facebook to post status updates in case you are unable to contact one another by phone. You can also check out the Red Cross’s Safe and Well website, where you can go in an emergency and register yourself as safe and well. You can then search who has registered as safe and well to see if your family members have done so, and they can check on your status as well. Talk about this site with your family before an emergency occurs so that everyone knows to check in when they are able. This is an excellent backup plan to have in case telephone service is not available.

Another good option to ensure communication during a disaster is to designate a family member or friend who lives out of state that everyone will contact to let him/her know each family member’s whereabouts and safety. If the disaster has not affected that designated person’s area, you will likely be able to call him/her before you will be able to call people in your area.

Of course, in an emergency situation, it may be difficult to call anywhere or use the Internet. You will also want to have a backup plan for communication with one another in case phones and the Internet are not options. Something very low-tech my own family did when I was young was hung a tin can with a pen and paper in it from the tree in our front yard. Our plan was always that if an emergency occurred and there was no way to contact each other, we would leave a note in the can that said where we would be.

Make a plan for reuniting with one another after an emergency. In addition to planning for how you will communicate your safety and whereabouts to one another, you will also want to make a plan for how you will reunite after the disaster is over. Choose a place right outside your home, like the mailbox, to meet in case of a fire. Also choose a place that is close by and easy to get to, like the neighborhood grocery store parking lot; an out-of-the-neighborhood place; and an out-of-town place. Then be clear about the circumstances that would require meeting at each spot.

If you have children in school, know that schools should have an emergency plan for how they will communicate with families during a crisis and whether they will shelter in place or move to another location to stay safe. Ask your children’s school what their planned method of contact is and where they will shelter.

Learn emergency skills as a family. Other possible family meeting topics could cover some of the following areas: basic first aid and CPR, the proper use a fire extinguisher, how to evacuate your home during a fire, and what to do in common natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes, or whatever else is likely to happen in your area. Regularly quiz your kids on what they have learned so that they retain important safety information and family protocols.

Planning ahead for emergencies and having discussions like the ones above can lessen the fear and anxiety that come with disaster situations. Having established protocols and emergency knowledge can also be life-saving in many cases. Take the time now to gather your family and discuss these important issues. You’ll be glad you did when your family is all together and safe as a result of your planning.

Survival Skills: Solar Cooking

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Have you ever cooked something with sunshine? If not, here’s your chance to learn a thing or two about it. If so, here’s your chance to share what you know.

Starting this month, we will be doing regular posts on different survival skills. Our reasoning is that even if you have every possible emergency item stored that you need to have stored, it will not make you totally ready for emergency situations. The final feat is to make sure you are also mentally ready for emergencies by being knowledgeable about different survival skills. It will be a learning process for me as well as for you, so feel free to add some comments at the end of these posts if you have experience with the particular skill discussed.

This month, our survival skill is learning how to build and use solar ovens. Solar ovens are a perfect survival item because all you need to cook food with them is sunshine and a solar cooker, which you can buy or make by yourself. In regular life, solar cooking is a good thing because you can use a solar oven to do your baking and you don’t have to heat up the kitchen, a big plus on hot summer days (I know, I miss those too). In addition, the moderate cooking temperatures of solar ovens preserve more nutrients than the higher temperatures of other cooking methods. In emergency situations, solar ovens can be used when you have no other cooking source to cook food, and they can even be used to purify water. Think of it as like cooking with a crock pot: slow, low-heat. With a solar cooker and the right conditions, you can put your food in in the morning and come back to it after a few hours or at the end of the day.

Make Your Own Solar Oven

Constructing your own solar oven is easy to do and doesn’t take much more than simple materials you probably already have lying around your house. Most kinds of solar ovens require less than five dollars to make. Making your own can be a fun project to do with kids, and it can also be a useful skill to know for emergencies.

There are basically three kinds of solar cookers: box cookers, panel or funnel cookers, and parabolic cookers. There are all kinds of how-tos online that will instruct you how to make these solar cookers. Solarcooking.org is an excellent site I found that has a variety of different oven plans and all the instructions on making them. My favorite one is constructed by taking a car windshield shade, attaching Velcro to the sides, folding it over into a funnel shape, and then placing it on a bucket. Other types of solar cookers require just a cardboard box, aluminum foil, and tape.

In a future post, I’ll document my own experience making different solar cookers (and later using them, when temperatures get out of the teens someday), so stay tuned for more tips.

How to Use Solar Ovens

Admittedly, solar ovens do need pretty particular conditions to work well, and there are definitely certain parts of the globe in which they work better than others. Solar ovens are most effective in warm, sunny weather, but they can work on mild and sunny winter days too. It is best to use them on days that are very sunny, not hazy—when the sky is a bright blue—and when it is not too windy. They also usually work best when the sun is high in the sky—between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. are the best times. If a few clouds go by while you are cooking in your solar cooker, it’s not a big deal. As long as you have at least 20 minutes of sunshine per hour, the food should be fine.

A few other tips for using your solar oven…Sometimes you have to turn the cooker to face the sun, especially if a panel on the cooker is beginning to cast a shadow over the cooking area. For this reason, you may have to keep an eye on things as you use it the first few times. Keep in mind also that solar cooking works best when you use a lightweight, dark-colored pot (You can paint the exterior black if you need to.) Cast iron pots will work only in the most ideal conditions because of their thickness.

If you live in the southern U.S. or in a tropical area, you are a prime candidate for solar cooking. You can probably use your cooker year round. If, like me, you live somewhere in the rest of the U.S., experts say you can cook in your cooker in all but the coldest three months of the year (i.e. right now). Also keep in mind that solar ovens tend to cook food faster at higher altitudes.

If You’d Rather Buy One

Of course, you can always buy your own oven too. Commercially made solar ovens are typically more durable and likely waterproof, which your homemade one will likely not be. Some you can buy commercially will be nicer versions of the ones you make at home, even made of the same materials, and will run you about $30. Some, upwards of hundreds of dollars, will be much more sophisticated, offering designs that allow higher temperatures and often more space to cook more things at once. If you are interested in browsing your options for commercial solar cookers, here are a few places to start:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/186-6133692-2920319?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=solar+oven

and

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Manufacturers_and_vendors

What Can You Cook in a Solar Oven?

Most things you could cook in a regular oven will also cook well in a solar oven. Temperatures will only get to about 200-300 degrees depending on conditions, so it will simply take longer to cook than conventional ovens do, usually about twice as long. Most solar cooking sites recommend starting with something simple, like rice or beans, and then experimenting more as you become more confident.

Cooking food with just the power of the sun has an appeal that’s hard to deny. It is also a handy trick to know should you ever find yourself without power and needing to cook a meal to feed your family. Do you have any experience cooking with solar ovens? What are your favorite things to bake with them? Any tips for the inexperienced solar baker? Remember to stop in next week to see how my solar oven constructing went.