Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
The seasons are changing (again). Now is a good time to take a look at your 72 hour kits. Do you have good warm clothing? Is your food fresh?
What about your water supplies?
It is also a good time to take a look at your smoke alarms and fire extinguishers. Change the batteries and make sure the levels are up on your extinguishers.
One of my favorite prepper toys over the last couple of years has been my Firebox. A small folding stove made here in Utah by a local businessman. It’s been a wonderfully useful little folding stove, although sadly one of my scouts just lost the two pegs (hey guys, do you sell those individually?).
Now even better news. While small and somewhat light, it hasn’t fit the “ultralight” category that can be really nice. But now there is a new product coming out. Check it, and jump over to kickstarter and pre-order this thing.
Right now my decision is just what level I want to kick it at. If you look they have upgraded packages that include carriers, stable fuel, combos with the 5″ classic version and more. Don’t miss this discounted chance to get an excellent stove.
For those looking for a deal, food for health is having an amazing sale today only. They are located at 800 east and 800 North in Orem, and have quite a lot of supplies at a great discount.
I stopped by and went through their stuff. They are doing some inventory switching, and most of the food is manufactured between end of 2011 and 2012, so it’s recent enough to be worth getting.
The foods are your common freeze dried, and dried soup type foods. They seem to have put good thought into staying vegetarian, with smart oils so they have a long shelf life.
They have the nice smaller Mylar bagged items in 6 packs, or in the large bulk sealed buckets at pretty amazing prices. Worth checking out.
Our regular readers will remember that last year we reviewed Creek Stuart’s Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag. Today Creek’s latest book, The Unoffical Hunger Games Wilderness Survival Guide is being released and we were lucky enough to receive a review copy just in time for this review. Like Creek’s other book, this one is also full of useful information (see the page sample to the right). Let’s dive in and see what we have in store this time.
Creek uses details from the Hunger Game book series to illustrate specific preparedness concepts, such as specific situations with individual characters like Katniss or Peeta to relate the skills represented in that fictional scenario with a real world survival or wood craft example. I found this to be a fun and engaging approach for someone who is familiar with the books. This approach may have limited impact for someone who has no knowledge of the characters and why that skill was critical to their survival, or even for someone who only watched the first movie. However, given the title and the suspected audience, I think this has the chance to pull non-preppers in and give them their first exposure to these concepts.
Continue reading “Book Review: The Unoffical Hunger Games Wilderness Survival Guide”
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.
If you enjoy listening to preparedness podcasts, be sure to check out the brand new Survival Mom Radio Network. This network features a dozen women hosts covering a variety of topics including family preparedness, essential oils, homesteading, and canning. And I’m one of the hosts! You can listen right on your computer or download the shows to any mp3 player. The shows are available by browsing the Survival Mom Radio site or on iTunes. Go check it out–there is a ton of great information being shared!
The Bonneville Forge Council (Utah’s Artist Blacksmith Association of North America group) Is hosting an introductory Blacksmithing course on April 20th. Mark your calendars. More information is below and at BFCSmiths
Continue reading “Introductory Blacksmithing course this month!”
It’s that time of year again. And just saying ‘Conference Time’ in Utah doesn’t count, because there is more that one event matching that description next month. The one in question for this post is this years “Utah Prepare Conference & Expo“.
Last year this event was a great success, an informative chance to meet with many of the best preparedness resources in Utah in one place, with a wide selection of classes to attend. This year the event will be held at the South Towne Expo center making it a bit easier for everybody from the southern area to attend.
This event is put on by the USU Extension office and will be on Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Hope to see folks there (look for the people wearing Utah Preppers shirts!)
As an added bonus, use the promo code “prepper” when registering for $2 off each ticket!
Here’s an easy homemade cough remedy that you probably already have the ingredients for. It’s a honey onion syrup–before you get grossed out, it doesn’t taste like onions when it’s done. Really. We’ve been having some coughing and sore throats among the little people lately, and my husband remembered his dad making this for him so we thought we’d give it a try.
What you’ll need:
Raw honey (regular honey would work okay, but the raw honey has enzymes in it that have been cooked out of the processed honey you get at the store)
Onion
Garlic (optional)
Ginger root (optional)
It’s the absolute truth that most people who favor tighter gun laws are completely clueless when it comes to guns. When you hear statist politicians and people in the media talking about “assault ammunition,” when they describe an AR-15 as a “high-powered rifle” and can’t tell you what a “barrel shroud” is, they demonstrate their profound ignorance about a subject that matters very much to many Americans.
Many people, both those who support the Second Amendment and those who want to subvert it, are also highly uninformed when it comes to gun laws in the United States. Part of the reason is that, when it comes down to it, the Second Amendment is gun law in this country: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This basic statement has been shaped and chipped away by laws passed on the local, state and federal level. The ability of various jurisdictions to put limits on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms has been guided by some very important case law—cases that should be familiar to all Americans who care about the right to self-protection.
If you know these cases, you can easily counter the arguments of those who want to disarm you. “The right to have a gun is not a civil right.” Wrong: Johnson v. Eisentrager, 1950. “The Second Amendment doesn’t mean you can have a military weapon.” Wrong: U.S. v. Miller, 1939, and D.C. v. Heller, 2008. “The police are supposed to protect us.” Wrong: Warren v. District of Columbia, 1981.
Supporters of the right to keep and bear arms should be armed with the information needed to counter the ignorance of those who would take away their rights and make this a much more dangerous country. Learn the names and dates, study the cases, and be ready with the facts when you need them.
Please note: unlike our president, I am not a formal constitutional scholar. (I’m also not a smoker or a socialist.) But I’m a firm believer in the Constitution and the right to keep and bear arms, and I think I have my facts straight here. Please let me know in the comments if you think I got anything wrong (or missed any crucial points) in my summaries. Continue reading “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Critical Court Cases”
In the wake of a brutal winter storm that hit New England, this World Magazine article by Marvin Olasky suggests “Mormons are way ahead of us” on the issue of emergency preparedness and then he explains why.
Elk is very lean meat. If you grind it straight into burger it tends to be very chewy and needs water added when you cook it since there is so little fat in it. In order to make it cook and taste better, we like to add some beef fat to our elk burger. There are a couple of different ways you can get fat added to your elk. The first is to add straight beef fat, and the second is to add fatty ground beef. We’ll cover both methods and the math involved with them in this post.
What’s that you say? Math? Yep. You know in algebra class when your teacher said you’d use this someday in your real life? Well, here’s your chance! (I know some of you are secretly rejoicing.)
Method #1: Elk burger with added beef fat.
You will need: Elk meat, meat grinder, and chunks of beef fat. We get ours from the local grocery meat department. We just asked the guy if he could save us some beef fat and we got it for no cost. You might have to pay a little something, but it shouldn’t be too much. Continue reading “Making Elk Hamburger With Added Beef Fat”
