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Book Review: All New Square Foot Gardening

I first heard about square foot gardening a few years ago from a friend who swore by it. Looking at his garden, I could see why: he had a bounty of chiles and tomatoes to make any salsa enthusiast drool. At the time, I was unaware that there was a book involved; I thought that it was only a fad. Turns out there’s a little more to it than that.

I picked up All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew last year towards the end of the growing season. After careful consideration, I have broken the emphasis of this book into four main points: Continue reading “Book Review: All New Square Foot Gardening”

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Humor: Mormon Hoarder Friends

Ok, Here in Utah we like to poke fun at our own dominant religion (of which I am a member).  One blogger had a great post today that I had to share with the Prepper community.  For those who are LDS, it’s great to laugh at ourselves a little.  For those not LDS but preppers too, well you’ll realize that your ‘oddities’ fit in pretty well with us.  Head on over and read ‘The Jet Set’ take on Why You Should Have a Mormon Friend: Hoarder Edition

For anybody who does have questions, come on back and read more.  And yes, the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) does actually teach to have at least a 3 month storage of regular use items, and has consistently taught that you should have 1-2 years of more long-term storage.

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Online Urban Survival Training

This post is an advertisement for a new business that I am building.   If you’re interested in Survival Training, especially Urban Survival, please read through this and see if you’re interested.  The goal of my new company is to work with Survival Schools and Survival Experts to provide new ways for top-notch expert training to get to those of us who can’t quite afford the premium prices.  I welcome any feedback on this idea/business plan as well.

As a bonus to our Prepper Network readers and friends, use the code “prepper” to get 10% off the class!

_______________________________

18 FEB 2010
INFORMATION MEMORANDUM
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION – TIME SENSITIVE
SPECIAL NOTICE FROM THE SURVIVAL TRAINING CENTER (WWW.SURVIVALTRAININGCENTER.COM)
DISTRIBUTION LIMITED TO STUDS, SPECIALISTS AND A SELECT FEW INSANE DUDES
CLASS DATES: 25 FEB 2010 – 27 FEB 2010

Continue reading “Online Urban Survival Training”

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Do We Learn from Others’ Mistakes?

History and hindsight allow us the opportunity of learning and improving. But we must decide whether or not we will learn from the past — from our mistakes and those of others — to plan for a better future.

We saw disaster strike in Katrina, and saw the hordes of people suffering, starving, and sleeping in the stadium. Looters went after such unsustainable items as beer and potato chips, rushing in a frenzy to find whatever they could to “survive” until things blew over.

As one example of many, consider the following news report of the massive looting that took place after the hurricane had hit:

Continue reading “Do We Learn from Others’ Mistakes?”

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Losing your storage to disaster

Haitians Retrieve Deceased from Collapsed Building by United Nations Photo.
Photo Via Flickr User un_photo

Recently we had a reader ‘Lonnie’ write in with the following excellent question, that I’ve heard asked in other forms too;

Was thinking about the earthquake in Haiti, and if that happened along the wasatch front. I live in Utah county in a 2 story home with a basement. My food storage is in my basement. What if the earthquake totally destroys my house and my food storage is buried under the rubble of what was my house? It won’t do me any good when I can’t GET TO IT! Any suggestions on mitigating that problem?

Well Lonnie, it looks like I’m finally going to get around to addressing your question, and hopefully in a helpful manner. Continue reading “Losing your storage to disaster”

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Got Old Oil in Your Food Storage in Utah or Southern Idaho?

Want to donate some to a study on food storage oils at BYU?  I love food storage experiments, so you know I’m letting them have some of my old stuff.  If you’d like to help out the oil study, see the details here.  They are looking for vegetable oils that have been in food storage 6 months to 5 years.  Right now my oldest oil in storage is only 2 1/2 years old.  Bummer.  I’ve had older stuff before I would have loved to donate.  Anyway, contact Ann Saunders at BYU if you’ve got some old oil they can experiment on. :)

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Social Preppers

Interested in a little more discussion with the preppers here, and elsewhere?  In our association with the American Preppers Network, you now have several ways to interact with other people that like to talk preparedness.

Forum

For people interested in forum discussions, we have two available places to talk.  The APN forums will allow you communicate with the other utahpreppers, as well as other state prepper groups.  Also available is the new LDS Preppers, a similar concept but geared for the LDS readers.  By keeping with the rest of the groups, you can participate not only in the Utah discussions, but also any other regions, or specialty topics you wish.  It’s a great resource to communicate with other preppers, without having having to come out of your well-stocked mountain retreat (ok, a little humor there).  If you need to understand a little bit more about what a forum is, check out the wikipedia description.

Chat

If you like real time discussions, you can now join us in our chat rooms.  These chats are accessible to computer novice, as well as the geeks among us.  For the novice, you can easily go HERE and join the chat rooms in your browser (no software to install).  Just click the link, and you will be prompted for a nickname to use, then it’ll log you in and you will have a page to  There are several rooms available, the most important ones being the #preppers, and the #utahpreppers rooms.  Chat rooms are an ‘always-open’ type of room where you can go in and interact in real-time.  Just clicking that link will open a page with a small bar on the top that lists which rooms you can listen in (just click on one to see the activity in that room).  On the right hand side will be a list of people currently in the room, and at the bottom, you can type in a message, and just hit enter for everyone to get it.

For the Geeks, we’re all using the rizon IRC network, and you may use any IRC client (such as XChat, WeeChat, or others) to connect.

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Crossroads Gun Show: January Meetup

Yes, it’s time again for a Crossroads of the West gun show (Saturday January 9, 2010), and I know several authors andCrossroads Logo readers here were planning on going.  With that in mind, I figured it’s a great time to have another meetup.  With this I think we should set two times, one earlier in the show to meet up inside, for those that want to discuss things in the show, and a second time, meeting for lunch. Continue reading “Crossroads Gun Show: January Meetup”

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Making Canned Milk Products from Powdered Milk

sweetened condensed milkWhen I started storing food, I thought it would be a good idea to store forms of canned milk like evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.  I bought quite a few cans and have used most of them over the years.  However, I only have two recipes I regularly make that call for evaporated milk, and one that calls for sweetened condensed milk, so I did not use every can I purchased before they expired.  Continue reading “Making Canned Milk Products from Powdered Milk”

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LDS Home Storage Center prices changing in January

The LDS Home Storage Centers will be changing their prices 16 January 2010. They will also be closed from noon on 19 December through 4 January. Prices will be going both up and down, depending on the product; so, depending on what you need, you might want to buy now, or wait until just after the new year.  Click through to see the summary, and to get a copy of the new pricing. Continue reading “LDS Home Storage Center prices changing in January”

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Preparedness Christmas: 25% off on Sanitation Preps

TioletBag 500x500

Coupon Code: prepxmas

How are your Sanitation Preps?  Do you have a bucket toilet lid sitting around?  Or one of those portable toilets?  That’s what I had until recently.  A few weeks ago I learned about a set of sanitation products that, when used together, provide preppers with a toilet solution that equals no mess, low smell and biodegrades all your waste for you!  Through a set of fortuitous events, I was in a position to arrange a group buy of 25% off all of their products and offer it to all preppers for Christmas.

Their system is called the GottaGo Toilet system.  It’s basically a cardboard disposable (after about 100 uses) emergency toilet that uses biodegradable bags and a microbial sand.  Once you’ve filled up a bag you can dig a hole and bury the bag – yes, bury it – within 30 – 90 days it will be completely broken down.  You can also burn your toilet once you’re done with it.  Basically you can go on a family campout and have everyone use this toilet system and not have to carry any of it home to dispose of it. Continue reading “Preparedness Christmas: 25% off on Sanitation Preps”

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Preparedness Stocking Stuffer Swap

You all know Christmas is coming.  If your house is anything like mine, you’ve got stockings to fill, and usually Santa is a little more sparse on the grown-ups stockings.  Do you stuff your own? Use a sticky note to remind your Santa not to forget the stocking?  End up with stuff in there that you really don’t want or need?  Of course I’ve never had any of those happen, I’m just asking ;)

Anyway, this year, I thought I’d have a little stocking stuffer fun, so I am hosting a preparedness stocking stuffer swap over at my blog.  If you are interested in giving and receiving some fun preparedness/self reliance related stocking stuffers this year, please join in the fun.  Here’s the basics: I will assign each participant a new friend for whom they will prepare and ship a stocking full of prep related goodies. And another new friend will be shipping goodies to you.  How fun is that?  And if your Santa is really on the ball and already stuffs your stocking, you can just call it a preparedness gift exchange. :)