Category Archives: Emergency Preparedness

A Beginner’s Guide to Composting

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Expert gardeners know that gardening is more than simply planting seeds in dirt and providing water and sunshine. A crucial part of getting food to grow abundantly is to nourish your soil so that it is healthy and fertile. One of the best ways to get better soil is to add compost to it. Compost is a rich, dark material that you can make for free using kitchen and yard scraps and regularly maintaining it.

Of course, many of you know what composting is but have yet to try it because it sounds like a big undertaking or you think you probably don’t have the time for the upkeep. Maybe you just don’t aspire to be an expert gardener but simply a pretty good one. Composting doesn’t have to be time-consuming or lifestyle-altering, and the benefits you will reap from it in your gardening will make you wonder what’s taken you so long to get started.

Why Compost?

If you have time for a garden, you probably have time for a compost pile. Here is why every gardener needs to compost:

1. Adding compost to dirt creates nutrient-rich soil, which in turn grows more produce.

2. Compost added to soil increases water retention. This means you don’t have to water as frequently or as much, which makes gardening more efficient.

3. Adding compost increases beneficial microorganisms in your soil, resulting in healthier plants because more good bugs means fewer bad ones.

4. Compost in soil improves soil structure. Soil is softer and more workable, making it easier for plants to root deeply.

5. Composting keeps unnecessary waste out of landfills.

For further convincing, here’s my personal testimonial. When in full bloom, our garden looks like one you might find in Wonderland or Willy Wonka’s back yard. Everything is oversized, richly colored, and pulsing with life. It astonishes me every single year how quickly and effortlessly things seem to grow there. Here’s why: My husband makes it an art form to cultivate soil that is as healthy and fertile as the Garden of Eden by maintaining our compost pile and adding it to our dirt regularly.

How to Get Started

You don’t have to make it a big project to start a compost pile. Simply follow these steps and  reap the rewards.

1. Designate a place for your compost pile. Most experts say to start with a 4 by 4 by 4 space so that it is big enough to generate some heat and keep vital processes working. Your compost pile doesn’t have to be enclosed, but it can be, especially if you plan to compost through the winter.

2. Begin saving kitchen scraps, yard waste, newspapers, etc. We keep an old cookie tin outside our door so that whenever we have vegetable scraps to get rid of, we can just toss them in there. When it gets full, we add it to the compost pile. When you add your scraps to the pile, you can mix them in or layer them. Experiment a little and see what works best for you.

The basic mix of an ideal compost pile is about a 30:1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen. This is achieved by adding both what we call “brown” materials and “green” materials to the pile. Brown materials are materials that contain a lot of carbon. These include dried leaves, dead plants, straw, hay, egg shells, shredded paper, cardboard, small twigs, pine needles, peat moss, and sawdust. Green materials contain more nitrogen and include grass and other green plants, hair, manure, and fruit and vegetable scraps. Many beginning composters worry about having exact amounts of carbon and nitrogen, but it’s not necessary to get hung up on the proportions. Just be sure you are adding both green and brown materials, and you should have what you need.

One word of caution: Make sure any wood added to the pile has not been treated chemically, grass has not been sprayed, and food scraps do not have oil on them. All of these things will be detrimental to a healthy compost pile.

3. Maintain your pile. Your goal with your compost pile is to enable the aerobic decomposition processes to work without stopping, allowing the microorganisms to break down your materials and turn them into compost. You do this by keeping the pile moist, aerated, and full of a good mixture of carbon and nitrogen.

Keep your pile moist but not soggy. Loosely cover it with a tarp or other covering if you live in a very rainy area or if you live in a very hot, dry area. You may need to water it regularly to keep it moist. You want its moisture level to resemble a wrung-out sponge.

Give your pile plenty of air circulation. You can do this by laying down a few layers of bulky materials like wood chips to create air pockets, poking holes in the pile, and turning it regularly, which will all ensure that oxygen reaches the center of the pile. When a compost pile is getting enough oxygen, it is able to decompose efficiently. A few signs that decomposition is happening as it should are that your pile has an earthy, not a stinky, smell and that it is warm to the touch. If your pile feels cold or starts to have a foul smell, the aerobic processes are not happening as they should. You may just need to turn it more frequently, dry it out, or add some more green materials.  Usually the more frequently you turn your pile, the quicker it will be ready for use. Some experts will tell you to turn it as much as every few days, and some will say as rarely as once a month. Again, do your own experimenting and see what gives you the most success.

4. Add the completed compost to your garden when it is ready. Work compost into the top six inches of your garden soil to give it the nourishment it needs. How will you know when your compost is ready to be added to the garden? When it looks pretty uniformly dark and crumbly and you can’t see the original ingredients you put into it, it’s a pretty safe bet your compost is ready. You can also seal some in a plastic bag for a day or two and then check to see if it is stinky after that time. If not, it’s ready.

If you are attempting to maintain a compost pile and are having trouble with any aspect of it, you may want to check out this excellent article for troubleshooting help.

Composting may initially seem like more work than you want to devote to your gardening, but once you get started, you will see that it doesn’t take much time, and any work you do will be worth it. With your freshly-made compost added in, your garden will go from a patch of dirt to a wildly productive gardening plot.

Stuff You Need When Disaster Strikes: A Complete Emergency Survival Kit Checklist

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A good emergency supply kit involves much more than matches and first aid supplies. For this reason, when you’re putting together your kit, it can be helpful to consult with emergency preparedness experts or those who have lived through emergency situations to find out the little things that make tough situations much easier to get through. In today’s post, we try to include an exhaustive list of items most people find helpful in disasters. Get out your pencil and start taking notes (or just fire up your printer) because this will be a list you’ll want to hang onto.

A pretty good place to start when gathering emergency supplies is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s emergency supply list. We have included it here, along with our own suggestions in parentheses. At the end of FEMA’s list, we’ve also added some things we would add to make our emergency supply kit the ultimate in survival readiness. If you have anything else you’d like to add, leave a comment and help make our list even more comprehensive.

Emergency Supplies That Will Prepare You for Almost Anything

1. A good first aid kit. (Check out some good ones here.)

2. A basic first aid manual. (Even better would be to take basic first aid classes before an emergency situation comes.)

3. A heavy blanket and a sleeping bag for each member of the family.

4. A mess kit with enough dishes to equip each member of the family.

5. At least one change of clothes for each person. (If you live in a varying climate, store a set of winter clothes and a set of summer clothes for each person.)

6. Utensils and napkins or paper towels.

7. A can opener.

8. Baby wipes. (Even if you don’t have a baby, baby wipes are useful for all kinds of clean up when you don’t have running water.)

9. Pure chlorine bleach along with a medicine dropper for purifying drinking water. (Or a water purifier, water purification tablets, etc.)

10. A flashlight. (The more you have stored, the better―especially if you have kids. I read once about a family who lived through an extended power outage, and the father of the family remarked that if he hadn’t had a flashlight for every child, he would have had a bunch of nervous wrecks on his hands when the sun went down. Giving every child a flashlight can help kids feel safe in unfamiliar circumstances.)

11. Batteries, batteries, batteries. (It would be difficult to store too many batteries. Rechargeable batteries and solar-powered chargers are other fantastic options.)

12. Important family documents in a portable waterproof container. (These documents could include birth certificates, social security cards, marriage certificates, insurance records, and other vital financial documents.)

13. Cash or traveler’s checks. (In disaster situations, electronic payment may not be possible. If all you have is a debit card, you will basically have nothing. Cash is vital.)

14. Pet food. (Don’t forget to have enough water stored for your pets as well.)

15. A fire extinguisher.

15. Pliers or a wrench to turn off the utilities.

16. Duct tape.

17. Plastic sheeting in case there is a need to shelter in place.

18. Matches stored in a waterproof container. (Matches are like batteries; the more you have, the better off you will be.)

19. Toilet paper.

20. Garbage bags.

21. Plastic ties.

22. A hand-crank or battery-powered radio.

23. An NOAA weather radio.

24. Dust masks.

25. Prescription medications, glasses, contact solution, etc.

26. Diapers and infant formula, if applicable.

27. Feminine supplies.

28. Paper and pencil.

29. Things to keep kids (and adults) entertained. (Don’t underestimate the importance of entertainment. Emergency situations can involve a lot of hurry-up-and-wait time.)

Our Additions:

30. Recipes for food storage meals. Also, spices to help vary your meals. If you’ve got plenty of flour and oil and honey but no idea of how to make it into a meal, you’ll be in a bit of a tight spot.

31. Comfort foods like coffee or chocolate or your kids’ favorite cereal. Comfort foods boost morale and normalize tense situations.

32. Kitty litter if you have cats. If you have guinea pigs, rabbits, snakes, or anything else, store the appropriate food, hygiene, and comfort items for your particular pet.

33. Vitamins to complement food storage. Any diet based on the same small group of foods for prolonged periods of time is bound to leave a person lacking in one nutritional area or another. Vitamin supplements can fill in the gaps.

34. A head lamp.

35. Some rope.

36. Candles or kerosene lamps for backup lighting.

37. Flint and steel in case your supply of matches runs out.

38. Hand warmers to keep toasty in the winter. Alternately, ways to keep cool in the summer: hand-held fans, spray bottles, etc.

39. Extra blankets to section off an area of your home and create a smaller area to heat if necessary.

40. A full tank of gas. Also, extra fuel. Also, containers to carry gas in.

41. A backup generator and a carbon monoxide detector to ensure your safety while using your generator.

42. A basic set of tools, including a hand saw to cut down trees if necessary.

43. Large containers for collecting rainwater.

44. A backup cooking method. Think camp stoves, solar ovens, dutch ovens, etc.

45. A mirror, which can be useful for signalling for help. Also, mirrors can be placed behind candles to increase their light projection.

46. Glowsticks. If you are told to evacuate and are one of those who is hesitant to do so because you are worried about looting, you can hang glowsticks near windows to make it look like someone is home while you are away. Glowsticks can also be handy for keeping kids entertained when the lights go down.

Why You Should Store (and Eat) More Beans

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Perhaps you’ve come across the idea that it doesn’t matter what emergency food you store, as long as you have something put away. The idea is something along the lines of You’ll eat anything if you’re hungry enough. The primary qualifications many require of their food storage are that it is cheap and that it has a long shelf life. While finding emergency food that fits within your budget and has a long shelf life are vital, don’t neglect to examine an equally vital quality of food storage food: nutrition.

Survival situations are tough times—tough on bodies and tough on minds. During these tough times, the source of all your nourishment and sustenance will be your food supply. Therefore, when you are preparing a survival food supply, it makes sense to gather foods that are nutrient-dense and able to nourish and sustain while also being long-lasting. One of these nutrient-rich foods that can be prepared to store for long periods of time is beans. Today we’ll look at why beans are a superfood, something you should consume on a regular basis, and, more specifically, why they are a super food storage food.

Beans: Food Storage Superfood

1. Beans are famously high in fiber. Just one half-cup serving of beans typically has about 10 grams, an excellent amount for a single food. This high fiber amount combined with the high water content found in beans helps fill you up faster and keeps you full longer, making beans an ideal survival food. What more could you want in an emergency situation than an ingredient that is going to stretch your meal longer through the day?

2. Beans are a good source of complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are digested more slowly by our bodies and are one of the best sources our bodies have of sustained energy. The complex carbohydrates found in beans can supply you with the vital energy you need to handle the assortment of challenges you might face in a survival situation.

3. Beans offer healthy protein. At around 7 to 10 grams of protein per half-cup serving, beans are an excellent source of this vital macro-nutrient. Protein is involved in many of the most essential functions of the body, from cell repair to bone health. When you combine beans with whole grains like brown rice, you get a complete protein just like you would get from any meat source. Best of all, this protein source does not also slip in sneaky unhealthy fats, like saturated fat found in most meat products.

4. Beans make for a healthy heart. In a study conducted at the University of Arizona, participants who ate ½ cup of beans daily lowered their cholesterol by 8%. In addition, because beans are a good source of potassium, they can lower sodium levels in the body, in turn lowering blood pressure.

5. Beans help fight cancer. Because beans are a good source of antioxidants, the magical phytochemicals that fight free radicals, if you make beans a part of your diet, you increase the antioxidants flowing through your system and curb the spread of cancer-linked free-radicals.

6. Beans are nutrient-dense. They are a good source of calcium, Vitamin D, iron, magnesium, folate, and Vitamin B6. With a fact sheet like that, it’s hard to leave them off a list of superfoods.

Knowing how fantastic beans are for so many aspects of health, here’s some good news. Five of Legacy Premium’s food storage entrees feature beans. These delicious entrees include enchilada beans and rice, chili mac, southwestern soup, classic chili, and white bean chili. We also offer a side dish of refried beans, which is simply pinto beans and salt—no lard or other unhealthy ingredients. Including beans in your emergency food menu is a great way to add calories and nutrients to your survival diet.

Today’s lesson: The ingredients that make up your emergency food are important. They will play an important role in your physical and mental state during survival situations. Store food that is full of nutrition and will give your body what it needs to last. In other words, don’t forget the beans.

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.

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!

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.