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After a few days of mentioning emergencies or disasters, you are probably now thinking of or have even bought some water and non perishable food to keep tucked away in your kit. If you’re a step beyond that then you have already gotten a crank powered flashlight or radio, or combo unit. Now, is there…

A big part of being prepared is knowing what to be prepared for. Let’s face it, there’s little use preparing for a tornado when you live in earthquake territory. Knowing the risks local to your area is the number one step to being ready to “weather the storm”, bad pun intended. Of course, job loss,…

So, as you have seen so far, getting yourself and your family ready to be self reliant for the first 3 days after an emergency really isn’t that difficult, but it does take some thought. For today’s tip, I would suggest planning an escape route from our neighborhood. Keep in mind that several factors could…

One handy invention I have found to be extremely helpful for emergency situations is the crank powered flashlight/radio combination. These can be found for under $20.00 at your local hardware store and eliminate the worry about dead or leaking batteries. They usually come with LED bulbs that last a lifetime and use little power. The…

Welcome to Canada’s Emergency Preparedness Week. This week the federal government in collaboration with the provincial governments promote emergency preparedness. This program will not be the survivalist/self reliant type of thing many of us work towards, but it’s a great starting point for beginners. The government itself advocates being self sufficient for 3 days after…

We have probably all heard about the recent destruction by tornadoes in the US, but how many of us consider this danger at home? One may think that worrying about tornadoes here in Canada is absurd, but let’s check some data on the issue. Accuweather.com shows tornado activity from BC in the west all the…

I like the layered approach to prepping – some people call this the one-is-none/two-is-one/three-is-two principle.  If you’ve never heard the saying before it means that having a backup to the backup is a good way to go because sometimes your first and most obvious choice gets broken, doesn’t work out, runs out of gas or…

Are you putting your food storage and your skills to work?  Most people have dried beans stored because IT-WAS-ON-A-LIST and NEVER eat them.  Here’s what to do with those beans. We love beans in our home but they are not exactly “fast food”.  Canning solves that problem and makes a bean taco night or bean…

A friend of mine in Ohio got me interested in trying sauerkraut when we visited their family last month. She had a simpler (read: less scary )method than a huge crock with somewhat smelly contents so I thought I would give it a try. I’ll save mass production for another time! The first step is to…

Well – the inevitable happened. I worried about this many times over the years perhaps more than most “normal” people – and last night was THE night. The trouble begins when Levi the Dog had to do his business at 3am. We trade off on night duty because no one likes to get out of…