Practical Prepping Protocol even if Poor

They make me fart, but I'd rather eat and fart then starve to death...great for diabetics.
[link to www.askaprepper.com (secure)]

Easy to grow- a lifetime of this once they are established.

I highly recommend this video. It's almost an hour, but what great information! We will need to do as they did, praying for accommodating weather. Please watch and see what they learned about gardening after the economy collapsed and no food could be shipped to Cuba nor around Cuba!! Edit:It's in English or where necessary, translated



Last Edited by Pooka on 01/05/2020 07:18 PM

Thread: How to grow a forest in two years

Where is everyone? No posts from anyone in ages - c'mon, people!

this thread fell off my radar for a while.

Great to see you again! Gonna have to tweak that radar!

watch a few videos from Iceage farmer, and you might want to look at the dates on those cans.

my son works at a local cannery, last month they started lay-offs because they couldn't keep the lines supplied. The people they kept are re-canning old stock.

growing a food forest is a better idea

here's a link, there are many others and many vids if you search

[link to permacultureapprentice.com (secure)]

Not bullshitting, usda is inspecting testing and then sending it on down the line, it's a sweet potato canning Co., and they are rebranding them as sweet potato patties filling them with dye and other chems then boxing them up and sending them out.

All of the old stuff is past it's expiration, but technically still good.

Maybe you missed where I said that they didn't have enough fresh sweet potatoes to keep the lines supplied, they've never used out-of-date stock before this is a first.

Old school type of prepper I have been following for awhile.
Good info on the bean shortage.

This is incredible! Important information. Dare you tell us the brand name? Area of the US in which it sells? None of us need the chemicals and dyes.

Last Edited by Pooka on 01/11/2020 01:15 AM

Hi Pooka, thought I would pass on what I have learned recently about prepping:

Choose livestock wisely. I had chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, and guinea hens. The guineas started eating other birds' eggs, so I put them out in the pasture with the horse and goats. Bobcat jumped the electric fence and ate them all.

Guineas may be a good idea, but you need to keep them separated from the other birds. I hear they are good for eating ticks and garden insects, but mine did not last long enough to try out that idea.

The turkeys were given to us by a neighbor. I paid them back with hundreds of eggs over the past year. However, the turkeys were so much bigger and were bullying the chickens and ducks. The turkeys hogged the food.

After we ate the turkeys egg production went UP! I concluded that the chickens were finally getting enough to eat.

So, in all, the turkeys were not such a great idea. They cost too much in feed and lost egg production.

The ducks are fine. Love their eggs although they don't produce like chickens. They love eating mud, so I suspect they make my food bill lower.

However, drakes are evil. They gang up and abuse the duck hens. I will eat all the drakes next.

Geese make wonderful fertilizer. They have a kiddie wading pool which I empty and refill with fresh water every week. It has about 2 inches of rich goo in the bottom every week that I am sure will help my garden next Spring. Also, I separated them in a yard with grass and don't feed them so much.

They are getting most of their nutrition from eating grass. Bonus: they are clearing a garden area for next Spring.

Once again, mixing species meant the bigger ones hogged the food.

Also, I would rather eat goose than turkey. I think that is their purpose outside of providing fertilizer.

The goats were a disaster. Coyotes jumped the fence as well as bobcats. Finally, my Siberian Huskies, aka, Killer Wolves, jumped the fence and killed the remainder of the herd.

You may ask why I keep the Huskies. Well, we were raising Maltie-Poos to sell, but they are so small that coons attacked them. We will now be selling Huskie pups for about $1500 each which beats the heck out of selling other livestock.

I have kept predators out of the chicken yard with a six food fence, concrete footing, and electric wire on top. Not 100% effective, but we have only lost a few to raccoons and possums who figure out a way to enter.

The pasture is harder to defend because there are trees along the fences. Apparently, the bobcats climb a tree, jump over the electric wire, eat a goat, and escape the same way. Smart cats.

I gave away the lone survivor goat to a friend who has goats. I could not bear to eat that nanny goat because she was so friendly and sweet.

That's a hazard of keeping livestock that are too nice!

BTW, I found out the hard way that .22 Short is inadequate for killing goats. I tried that on a young billy that I was preparing for BBQ, and he woke up after I shot him in the head 4 times. I was using .22 Short in order to not alarm the neighbors.

I ended up having to cut his head off with the machete to put him down. Traumatic for me and the goat.

That was not the case with some of our chickens. Our Hispanic immigrant friends gave us chickens which turned out to be related to a fighting breed. After being attacked by roosters and ending up in the ER with a bad infection in my leg (3/4" spurs), I ate the roosters.

I actually was enthusiastic about eating those aggressive roosters until...DOH...accidentally chopped my finger in half with a razor sharp machete. 5 days as an inpatient and the finger has a steel rod in it now.

I still have the machete, but NEVER AGAIN.

Now, I use that PVC pipe cutting tool that is like a pair of big shears. Hang your bird up by the feet, pull the head down, and snip off the head with the PVC cutting tool. Then, jump back as the thrashing and blood spurting commences.

I am fencing in a new chicken yard out in front of my house. We live in the country with no HOA or other silly rules. I will buy all new birds and eat the old ones. They are past their egg-laying prime.

Next time I will buy all of one breed that is known for egg production. That means I will only need about 12-18 birds instead of the 25 I am feeding now.

As for the predators, I have decided that I just need bigger livestock. I started with goats because I thought they would be easier to handle. Indeed, I can pick one up, but need someone else to hold the horns. Otherwise, the goat can cause some damage to you even if unintentional.

Neighbor Lady is from the Old Country and is a Country Girl. She has agreed to share milking duties with The Queen if I buy a milk cow. Neighbor Lady's hubby grew up on a farm and may be helpful as well.

We will share the milk as well as the milking duties with them.

Am really looking forward to drinking fresh milk. Have not had that since I lived in Germany.

I have to improve my fences and build a milking shed before I buy a cow, so this project goes on the To Do List at my homestead.

I picked up a cool attachment for my tractor pretty cheap. It is a hydraulic log splitter. Big ones go for about $2K, but since I have a tractor, I can use the hydraulic connections. The one I got was 30 years old, very cheap, but functional.

I will be able to split a LOT of firewood with that thing.

The Queen has an outdoor oven like you see in the Old Country for baking bread, dutch ovens of beans, pizza, etc. She wants a good wood supply.

Also, we have a wood stove that I need to install.

One big lesson I have learned is that my tractor is the coolest, most useful tool I have ever owned. Move a heavy generator from the barn to the deck? Use the backhoe and a chain. Need to plant a tree? Backhoe. Need to lift heavy fence sections like I did today? Front end loader. Pasture flooding? Dig a drainage ditch with backhoe.

It was not cheap, but it was a great investment.

We continue prepping as part of our daily lives. All of my relatives say, "Uncle Darth, if SHTF, we are coming to YOUR house". I tell them to come and bring whatever they can contribute. Will pack up some more beans and rice to share with them.

What are we prepping for if not the survival of the young people?

Cheers to all!

^^^^^Wow Darth, what a good and informative write up!

You all need to know current ebola news/plans. It's shocking. Please see Thread: Ebola warning US - Update: now believed to be airborne - heads up!!!!!

and this video:

Thread: 6700 Survival PDFs

I forget where I found the guy online, but there is a guy with a HUGE collection of prepper books in electronic form.

I don't like using paypal or whatever, so I bought a 256K flash drive and mailed it to him with a check. I think his service cost was $40. He downloaded the entire file and returned it to me.

Now, I have this huge library ready when I need it.

IIRC, the files just about maxed out the flash drive.

I really believe that we, as preppers, should hoard important books. Sitting here in my tiny home office, I am looking at walls of books on survival, prepping, gardening, cooking, medecine, chemistry, physics, math, history, philosophy, animal husbandry, and much more.

If SHTF a la Mad Max, I will go into the publishing biz and spread the knowledge necessary for rebuilding civilization around the world.

Oops, not a 256K flash drive; 256GB.

Ebola or some other pandemic is the MOST likely doom.

Pandemics have ended many previous civilizations.

Recent radar mapping shows huge earthworks and extensive ag existed in the Amazon Basin.

Estimates go as high as 50 million Indians once lived there.

However, plagues of European diseases wiped out most, and the area returned to jungle with isolated tribes.

Few know it, but the CDC quarantined many people back in 2014. At first, the Obie CDC was slow to act on the Ebola threat.

However, polling after the election of 2014 indicated that they were losing voters over the issue of poor performance.

I had a subcontractor who disappeared around Dec. 2014. Turns out he was quarantined by CDC after he visited a friend in Dallas, TX.

MSM never breathed a word of this.

If there is a severe threat, don't expect the MSM to warn you.

However, POOKA will give you the warning.

Thanks, Pooka.

Not a new video but definitely an interesting way to have hot water during a SHTF if no electricity is available:

Darth, so very good to have heard from you! You have certainly been both amazingly busy and remarkably productive! Well done, sir! Well done indeed!

Love all your preparing - and for so many. You are really working hard. Some people work very hard and yet have little to show for it. You obviously have matured well, to accomplish so much, of critical importance!

I would only say that the dam there is likely one of the first targets when the sleeper cells are activated. That one and I think Hoover was the other one. Not sure, but another that is in bad shape. I really don't want to think of this for you, yet it would be wrong if I didn't inform you so that you could make your own fully-informed decisions.

Really really good to have you back again - you had no break after summer and I hope you are now able to have a respite before planting season!!!!!

Sorry for having to add bad news to a post that is rejoicing at your explanation of activities, and your returning here.

There are no doubt a great many old videos that we need to see here. Even if ten people have already seen it, another ten have not. No worries at all about posting older videos. I, for one, have not seen this, so it is pretty exciting, and I thank you very much!

Down here in Brazoria County, TX, we don't worry much about dams.

Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes are the major threats.

However, I think that there are other dooms that we need to prep for:

1. Political turmoil. The next election may end in violence.

2. Pandemics. Most are less than 100% lethal, but we have evidence that some plagues wiped out entire species before.

3. Pole reversal. That one is a big unknown and I think we need to know a lot more about it.

4. Micro nova. I have a lot of respect for Ben Davidson and his interest in this phenomena made me wake up. If something of that sort looked imminent, I think we would have to go out to sea and take the risk.

5. Financial panics/banks collapsing. We are overdue.

I have been prepping since about 1972. My ideas have changed a lot over the years.

However, I never forget to enjoy life. One of my many children is getting married and I will acquire a whole new set of grandchildren. I will take time off to teach them to build a fire and hunt squirrels!

How do I get instant grandchildren? Its a buy-one-get-three sale.

I thought I would expand a bit on what I do to prepare and what I think the threats really are.

Ref Iranian sleeper cells, I can see them attacking the electric grid, putting bombs in crowded areas, or directly attacking military targets.

However, in my experience, they are not totally nuts. I don't think they will try chem or bio warfare.

However, the real danger is that it is so easy to cook up something incredibly deadly to all.

I have told the story about having a beer in the Officers Club in Germany in 1973. The major that I was having a few beers with was Ordnance Corps who had recently arrived from Ft. Detrick.

He told me he was in the room when our scientists were briefing Pres. Nixon about their new bio warfare advances.

They said they had developed a variant of rabies that was pneumonic (spreads through the air like the flu), was immune to all vaccines, and was 100% lethal.

Nixon asked, "What would happen if it escaped your lab?"

They assured him that it could not possibly escape the lab.

Nixon pressed them on what would happen, "Well, it would probably kill all the mammals on earth".

Nixon used some salty language to describe their intelligence and ancestry. He signed an Exec Order to destroy ALL offensive bio weapons.

That is the problem. Many other countries ARE developing bio weapons and one mistake can lead to ultimate doom.

A very good reason we need distant space colonies to assure the survival of our species.

Let us pray for that all leaders receive wisdom.

Someone in another forum emailed me this and I find it quite good. Basic is affordable.
[link to www.askaprepper.com (secure)]
H/T to RMN

I am in the electroplating biz, so I know a bit of chemistry.

The chemical in the MRE heaters is simply powdered iron. When you add a bit of water, it turns to iron oxide quickly and exothermically.

You can find the same stuff in chemical hand warmers. Note that these can become oxygen absorbers for buckets of rice, pasta, grain, etc.

A nifty, but somewhat dangerous chemical to have in your preps is sodium hydroxide (lye). It is quite caustic, so take care to NOT get any on your skin. It is also very hygrophillic (absorbs water from the atmosphere), so you need to store it in airtight jars (with WARNING labels!).

Sodium Hydroxide is also quite exothermic when mixed with water. However, it may be too dangerous to use heating up your MREs (according to my Jarhead Nephew, that means Meals Rejected by Ethiopians).

However, the best use for it is in making soap. All you need is any kind of fat. You make soap for clothing, dishes, and your skin.

Sodium hydroxide is very cheap. You may need a friend with a business who buys chemicals to purchase it for you since chemical suppliers don't do retail.

While you are at it, you can buy a 50 lb. bag of boric acid which is the same thing as Roach Pruf. That's a lifetime supply. I mix it with sugar and feed it to the ants attacking my fruit trees. It is also cheap.

If you are storing grain or beans, a good thing to have is a 50 lb. bag of food grade diatomaceous earth. Pretty cheap stuff. I add a cup to every plastic bucket for insurance that the bugs don't eat my preps.

I also put it in the bottom of feed storage bins for the same reason.

I have not done it, but I have considered buying a five gallon jug of acetic acid. That's vinegar, but much more concentrated. You could make a lot of pickles with that amount.

I store salt for the same reason which is food storage without refrigeration. Salt, sugar, vinegar for preservation. Alcohol/ethanol can be used to preserve fruit and provide an entertaining desert.

Vinegar also makes a good weed killer. Just dilute and spray.

BTW, I am sitting here eating my dose of GSR. That's Gin Soaked Raisins. Golden raisins soaked for weeks in Bombay Gin. Supposed to be good for my arthritis. A spoonful will not intoxicate you.

Hope some of this is helpful.

Cheers