Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
Did you know you can bake, broil, grill, roast, sauté, fry, stir fry and even pressure cook with the Power of the Sun – NO FUEL REQUIRED! It’s so easy and fun that solar cooking isn’t just for emergencies anymore.
Continue reading “Cooking with Sunlight – Solar Cooking Demo”
Utah is abundant with wild edible plants, often referred to as weeds in our yard or garden and also more nutritional than what we have in the grocery store. Many of the wild edibles available to us are not native but were brought here by pioneers from Europe and the mediterranean. Of course many of the wild edibles are native to the area as well. The Sego Lily was used by natives for centuries as a staple food and helped save the lives of the pioneers when they came to this state starving in 1848 and 1849. The bulbs they harvested were plentiful and generally larger than we see today. This is likely because the native peoples harvested the plants often and that action helped the plants continue to produce just are caring for our gardens helps our vegetables grow. Now that we leave the native plants alone and don’t know how to use them they often show very little fruit.
Proper foraging is something that we must understand in order to continue to use these plants wisely and for us and the plants to benefit. Learning about these wild edibles and how and when to harvest them will make us better stewards of the land around us and will also prepare us for tough times or simply allow us to live more healthy now. You would be surprised how many things are readily available to us in the wilderness of Utah, even in the desert. Some of the great spring edibles include, Mariposa lily, Yellow bells, Wild onion, Storksbill, Dune Evening primrose, Indian potato, Curly dock, Blue mustard and Wild spinach often known as Lamb’s quarter.
Come learn with Mike Wood from WildUtahEdibles.com and supplement your diet. Learn how to use the plants that grow easily around you and learn what weeds you can throw in your salad. You will be amazed and thrilled by the many edible and indeed delicious plants there are around you.
Our next wild edibles tour is April 26th at 12:00 noon. Exact location and details will be made available through our facebook page closer to the actual date but this tour will be in the Utah desert either in Saratoga Springs or in Eagle Mountain. Bring your friends and bring the family. This is an event you don’t want to miss.
Mike Wood
www.WildUtahEdibles.com
https://www.facebook.com/wildutahedibles
I’ve always been interested in Blacksmithing, both as a link to past skills and as a possibly useful prepping skill. Early in 2012 I began looking into how I might be able to start learning this craft.
I quickly found ABANA, the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America. As the organization’s name might imply, most people doing blacksmithing today are doing it as an art or for ornamentation purposes. Through ABANA, I was pointed to our local Utah ABANA chapter, the Bonnevile Forge Council.
This local chapter has meetings on odd numbered months for its members and those interested in learning about the club and blacksmithing. These meetings are often centered around demonstrations of hands on projects. The club members try to make it less intimidating for newcomers who have never heated metal to 2000 degrees before.
I was able to attend the March 2012 meeting and meet many of the club members. I haven’t missed a meeting since. The next meeting for the club will be this coming Saturday in Provo and focuses on teaching forge welding. I hope any of you who are interested will be able to make it out. Please see the meetings link above for details.
If you are not able to make it to the meeting this weekend, the club president is hosting a short class on making flint strikers which will teach several basic blacksmithing skills. This three hour class will take place the evening of Wednesday, May 15, 2013. More information is here.
We recently posted about an all day introductory blacksmithing class taught by the club President and Mark Henderson, both accomplished blacksmiths. I was informed that the class filled up quickly, mainly due to interest from those who heard about the class through this site. I’d like to hear any feedback any attendees have on the class as well as gauge interest in additional introductory classes and other courses of instruction.
Back in May, I pre-ordered the book “Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag: Your 72-Hour Disaster Survival Kit”. When it arrived a short time later I read through it and was immediately impressed with the job the author Creek Stewart had done. As I was reading it the thought kept emerging that this book was exactly the sort of detailed how-to that we like to do here at Utah Preppers, but on a larger scale. As it turns out, the book initially started out as a blog post on the art of manliness blog. After receiving a good response, Creek decided to work on expanding the concept into a comprehensive how to guide.
Continue reading “Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag – Book Give Away”
If you have seed saved from prior years, it is a good idea to test the germination rate before planting your whole garden with it. Depending on the rate of germination, you can decide if you want to plant normally, plant more thickly, plant single sprouts, or just toss the seed out and start with fresh seed.
Testing seed germination also just happens to be a requirement for the Boy Scouts’ Gardening merit badge, so my son got to do this project for us this year while I took pictures. Here’s how we do it.
1. Gather the seed you want to test. Just for fun, I gave him some cucumber seed I had left from the survival seed can packed for planting in 2000. That’s 12 year old cucumber seed.
Continue reading “Testing Seed Germination Rates”
This is a follow up to my previous post on Suturing a Scalp. At the Self Reliance Expo today, I spent the day with Dr. Bones of the Doom and Bloom Show and he just happened to be selling suture kits for a great price! I showed him my post on suturing a scalp and he loved it, then he agreed to let us offer all of you his suture kits for his show price of $20.00! Click the image on the right to see a much larger picture of it.
The kits come with a Needle Driver, forceps and a pair of scissors along with a sterile field, gloves and 2 sutures. They also come with the step by step pictorial guide that you can see in the picture. These are very nice kits and the price is fantastic! If you would like to order them, send an email to [email protected] and let them know what you would like to order. There will be shipping on top of the cost, of course.
Continue reading “Suture Follow Up – Suture Kits and Instructions!”
Continue reading “Quick Skinning, Cleaning and Butchering a Deer”
I was recently perusing Utah Valley University’s web site and found an interesting course on Gold Prospecting offered through the Community Continuing Education program. Given the current high price of gold and the fact that here in Utah we really don’t need to travel far to try finding it, this seems like a great course for a Utah Prepper.
Only 5 percent of the world’s gold has been discovered. With gold currently trading at over $1500 an ounce, panning for gold has made a real comeback. Learn new methods of panning gold that you can use 12 months of the year. Fee includes prospecting equipment you take home with you. No early registration discount. CEUs: 0.15 Hours: 1.50
At $39 this seems like a bargain for an evening of instruction on what could be a fun and profitable hobby. Here is a Link to the course. I hope to see you there!
Yesterday I was driving in my truck to pick up my son from school. I heard a strange noise outside the truck and rolled down the window to investigate. I could hear a hissing that rhythmically got quiet as I drove – then I realized, my left rear tire was punctured and deflating FAST! I pulled over to the shoulder as far as I could and got out to investigate. Sure enough, there was what looked like a nail hole right through my nice new tire.
That’s when my car Preps came to the rescue!
Gun ownership is a long-term investment which requires proper maintenance and cleaning in order to keep your guns working at their peak performance. A primary concern with long term storage of any gun — especially those stored in humid climates — is corrosion. Preventing corrosion is a multi-step process, starting with proper care of your firearm in the field, and followed with proper storage. However, even if you take all the necessary precautions and care possible with your firearm, and even in the best of situations, if you use it corrosion or wearing will probably happen. How you deal with the results of such wear is the purpose of this article. Continue reading “Getting the Blues – Dealing with Corrosion”
Can a two hour DVD turn you into a self sufficient farmer, providing all the food for your family on your postage stamp sized yard? Of course not. (If you think this is possible, let me know. I have a unique business opportunity to discuss with you :D ) However, the Food Production Systems For a Backyard or Small Farm DVD Is a wealth of information on how one family managed to do just that (on a bit of acreage) through trial and error over a decade. A full review of the DVD after the jump.
Continue reading “Food Production Systems DVD Review and Giveaway”
When I moved to college in Idaho as a teenager, I had a really quick introduction into a new world of snow and ice. While the snow I grew up with was wet and heavy, and usually melted away pretty quick in the moderate temperature. Idaho however introduced me to the bitter hard-freeze that left our campus with an amazing array of forms of ice that were completely new to me. I, as with many of my fellow students, became intimately familiar with this ice while performing the splits, or landing on my back when trying to hurry between classes.
In that time, I saw a few people that had some nifty attachments for their shoes allowing them to get traction on the ice. Along the lines of higher end crampons used in ice-climbing, they strapped on over any shoes and allowed the user to dig into the ice a bit more. Over on one of my favorite sites (Instructables) there are some instructions for creating a simple version of these yourself.
