Rain Barrels: Free Water For Your Lawn and Garden

Save money and water this year by installing a rain barrel. A rain barrel collects storm water from your roof, and stores it for later use on your lawn or garden. This is a great way to reduce storm water run-off from your property, while at the same time providing you with a free source of water for your lawn or garden without burdening your well, or increasing your water bill.

During the summer, watering your lawn and garden can account for nearly half of your household water usage. During dry spells this can place a great burden on your well. If you are on public water, the thought of reducing your water bill in half can certainly be very appealing. On an environmental level, it makes much more sense to water your lawn and garden with rain water, rather than using expensive highly treated water intended for drinking. You would never think of watering your lawn with bottled water! Using public drinking water for this purpose really doesn't make much more sense.

A rain barrel in its simplest form is a plastic 55-gallon drum connected to your gutter downspout, with an attachment for a garden hose at its base. Rain barrels can be constructed fairly simply and inexpensively using common items found at a hardware store. A search of the internet will reveal a variety of plans that you can follow.

Many companies and hardware stores now offer readymade rain barrels in a variety of designs. While these readymade designs will be more expensive than building your own, you will have the advantage of choosing a design that fits with your property, and that is appealing to the eye in addition to providing functional value. Also, check with your local town hall for a less expensive alternative. Many towns and civic groups offer programs that enable you to purchase a readymade rain barrel at a reduced price, while also supporting this organization.

Save money and save water this year by taking advantage of rain barrels to collect a free source of water for your lawn and garden. It makes sense for you, and it makes sense for the environment.

Survival Family Basics - The Hunkering Down Guide to Protect and Defend Your Home When Disaster Strikes

Survival Family Basics - The Hunkering Down Guide to Protect and Defend Your Home When Disaster Strikes (Prepper Survival Guide Books) was a free book for the kindle when this post was written.


No one likes to think about living in a world where we need to be worried about desperate people, including possibly neighbors, turning against us and trying to take what we have.

But the truth is, we don’t have the luxury of thinking any other way. It is an unfortunate fact that we face potential danger every day of the week and it only increases when disaster strikes.

“Survival Family Basics – The Hunkering Down Guide to Protect and Defend Your Home When Disaster Strikes” is here to help you be prepared as best you can.

The need to defend your home and your family can come in many forms. It can range from a home invasion to an armed encounter with marauders. In times like these making sure everyone in your family is ready to deal with the range of possible scenarios is the only way to put the odds of surviving on your side.

Here are some of the things you will learn…

• How to provide a safe, defensible location for your family to live during and after a disaster or crisis.
• How to fortify that location so that it can provide protection against the new threats brought on by disaster or crisis.
• How to equip that location with the necessary items to enable you to defend it with the members of your family or group.
• How to stockpile the supplies you will need to survive a siege in that location.
• How to develop the skills you and your family will need to defend your home.
• How to provide an escape plan in the event your defenses fall or are overrun.

From doing an assessment of your home to identify weaknesses others can exploit to deciding what kind of supplies you need to stockpile in case of siege, this book contains the information and insight you need to be ready to protect your home and your family in almost any situation.

By taking the steps outlined here to develop your home defense strategy and plan, fortify your structure, stockpile supplies, and increase your skills you are doing everything you can to provide a safety net for your family when disaster strikes. 

5 Reasons to Try Square Foot Gardening For Growing Vegetables

The basic idea is to build a box of manageable size, like around 3 x 4, add soil, section off areas of 1 square foot each and plant one type of vegetable within each square. There are so many great reasons this type of vegetable gardening is so great that it's no wonder even beginning gardeners are having great success.

So if you're still on the fence about whether square foot gardening is for you, keep reading!

Reason #1 - Grow Vegetables Anywhere!

Look, with square foot gardening, you no longer are limited to having a great yard with plenty of space. This method will work on a sunny balcony, an urban rooftop, a backyard deck or even a tabletop in your small yard. As long as the area gets lots of sun, you can place your vegetable garden there. Just build the size of the box or boxes to fit your particular location.  But make sure it's not too wide that you can't easily get to the center squares.

Reason #2 - Much Less Work!

This is a great reason to me. With this gardening method there are no heavy gardening tools to wield, no hard soil to dig through and no tough weeds with which to contend. You'll be working with soft, weed-free soil that makes growing your own vegetables a pleasure, not a punishment.

Reason #3 - Utterly Accessible

If you want your garden on the ground, you can put it there. But, if you're one of the millions of people who have mobility issues, you can place your square foot garden up on a table top for easy accessibility!  Don't go to the plants...bring the plants to you. Simply measure the surface of the table you're planning on using and build the box accordingly. Just be sure to add a plywood bottom to keep the soil in.

Reason #4 - Little or No Pesticides (Organic Friendly)

First of all, depending on where your garden is located, you'll drastically reduce the amount of pests that can get to your plants. It's a simple factor of location. And second, when you have a close grouping of different types of plants, it's easier to keep fungus from spreading from plant to plant. A regular spraying of compost tea usually does the trick.

Reason #5 - It's Just Plain Fun

Square foot gardening has brought the fun back into this wonderful hobby. It gives more people in more locations a chance to grow their own vegetables, it provides those with mobility issues a way to stay in the garden and it takes away a lot of the guess work that's usually present with traditional gardens. Plus, it's an easy way to get the kids involved in growing vegetables for the family.
Now that you know more about square foot gardening, hopefully you'll decide it's for you and you'll take a stab at it. It's really a wonderful way to jump into gardening for beginners and experienced gardeners will enjoy the break from all the typical work a vegetable garden takes.
So get out there and start gardening!
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Radioactive: A Dirty Bomb Prepper Survival Story

Radioactive: A Dirty Bomb Prepper Survival Story was a free book for the kindle when this post was written.

A devastating attack on the San Diego Naval Base leads to a chain of mysterious bombings across the country. One man, Jim, a contractor and former Navy analyst, finds himself in the middle of the chaos with his friend, Coyle, a fellow mechanic. Together, with Jim's cat, Tigs, they must find a way out of the city to relative safety, amidst the chaos of mass pandemonium, traffic jams, military checkpoints, and immediate danger around every corner. Everything is up for grabs and nothing is as it seems in this must-have installment of prepper fiction. This real-world nightmare scenario provides instructional skills and tips on how to plan for and survive a deadly attack. Download this exciting, edge-of-your-seat thriller today and get the vital information you need involving the very prepper survival tactics that could someday mean the difference between life and death for you or your family.

Cool Dollar Tree Find

 

 

Just another cool Dollar Tree find that could come in handy during a emergency andif you have no lights.

 

Cute little 5 LED desk top lights. They use 3 AA batteries that I also buy at the Dollar Tree and as you can tell from the picture they are very bright.

 

You might check to see if you Dollar Tree has them. I just found these by accident. They were on the bottom of a shelf in a box with other little trinkets, like sticker collector albums and other small things. Totally hidden. I grabbed one of each color just to see how they work. Might get a couple more just to put back. I always have a stockpile of AA batteries. Everything in our house seems to use them.  

Surviving Doomsday: Techniques to Help You Survive After a Bio Attack

Surviving Doomsday: Techniques to Help You Survive After a Bio Attack was a free much needed book for the kindle when this post was written.

You wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s no electricity. Thunderous crashes sound from outside. Screams echo from down the street. There has been a biological attack in your town. The worst has actually happened. What should you have done to prepare? What do you do now?

Surviving Doomsday provides tips and techniques to help keep you and your family alive in the event of mass warfare.

This guide covers the following and more:

Biological & Chemical Attacks - How to survive in the event of a biological or chemical attack
Fallout Preparation - What to do before and after you become contaminated
Quarantine Rooms - How to set one up and how to use it
Food Storage - What to stockpile in the event of an attack
Bugging Out - What you need to know if you must leave your home
Weather - How to forecast the weather using only your senses
Home Defense - Weapons and tools needed to keep you and your loved ones safe

*** Also included is a special bonus section about using herbs as highly-effective survival medicine.

This guide is a must-read for any family that wants to be prepared for a potential biological or chemical attack.

Convert A Hot Water Heater Into A Wood Stove

http://www.instructables.com/id/Convert-a-Hot-Water-Heater-Into-a-Wood-Stove/?ALLSTEPS

has all the pictures and info on actually turning an old hot water heater into a wood stove. This could really come in handy.

Hit the junk yard!!!

Survival Family Basics

Survival Family Basics - The Prepper Survival Guide to Bugging Out When it's Time to Get Out of Dodge (Prepper Survival Guide Books) was a free book for the kindle when this post was written.

The last thing any parent ever wants to have to do is drag their children from the safety and security of their home into a hostile environment. But when a disaster strikes, this is exactly what may be required in order to keep your family safe from harm. “Survival Family Basics - The Prepper Survival Guide to Bugging Out When it's Time to Get Out of Dodge” is here to help you do just that – keep your family safe on the move.

It is an unfortunate fact that no matter where you live, there is always the possibility that some kind of crisis will render your home or the area where you live unsafe. In these situations you may have no other alternative than to “get out of Dodge!”

The need to bug-out creates a greater logistical challenge than any other prepping scenario and for families, the stakes are even higher. While you might be able to go without food for a few days or be willing to risk drinking water that might make you sick, you probably aren’t willing to put your kids in the same situation.

Here are some of the things you will learn…

• How to pick a bug out location
• What kind of transportation options you need to consider when making your bug out plan
• Who in your family needs a bug out bag
• What to do when you are bugging out with small children
• The basic ingredients needed to build your bug-out bag
• Information on the special considerations you need to factor in when you are bugging out with your entire family

From deciding your bug-out destination to creating an inventory system for your bug-out bag, this book provides you with the information and insight you need to get your family and your gear out of the house and on the move as quickly as possible when disaster strikes!

Natural Disasters Home Safety Guide

Natural Disasters Home Safety Guide was shared with me the other day. I wanted to share it with my readers. It is really full of some great information about any kind of natural disaster and how to prepare for it. From Tornados to Wildfires. Share it with others.

Emergency Survival Tips - How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Intro on zombies
I always loved zombies, zombie movies, zombie games, zombie events, almost all zombie related things.
For each of the zombie things I like there is a simple explanation: zombies are just a representation of our fear of death and the way we embrace that fear. But wait, there's more than that.
Zombies represent way more than that.
Zombies are that kind of enemy that would force us to take action, to react but it would not be nearly impossible to kill, to overcome. A zombie outbreak is an extreme event but every time we imagine it... we survive.
Why do we watch zombie movies? Not only for the horror aspects, that's an entirely different story, but for the interest in seeing extreme solutions to extreme situations, to train our brain, to learn new tricks.
Why do we play zombie games? Well, we have to test our zombie strategies and skills somewhere.
Why thinking about a Zombie Apocalypse?
If we are prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse than we are prepared for almost any kind of extreme event.
A Zombie Apocalypse is such an improbable event so we will not cover it now, in this article.
Still, a Zombie Apocalypse can be considered the extreme event that has things in common with a lot of the other possible scenarios of extreme events.
Let's see some aspects of a Zombie Apocalypse that can be found in many disaster scenarios:

• the event comes unexpectedly
• all or most of the rules we live by no longer apply
• extreme measures need to be taken, at state level and even at personal level
• you become responsible for the well-being of the ones near you (family or close friends)
• you need to react fast and come up with a good plan
• you need to be able to adapt to new situations at every step
• ... and the list can go on

As you see, thinking on how to react on a zombie outbreak actually prepares you for many types of disasters.
What's the plan?
To plan for a world-changing disaster means to think about three aspects:

1. Disaster preparedness: how to prepare for such an event
2. Initial reaction: what to do when it happens
3. Disaster recovery: what to do after the event in order to restore the society to a normal state

Now let's see what each step means.
Step 1: Disaster preparedness
This is, probably, the most important step.
There are many ways in which you can prepare. You can start with a study on the area you live in, see what natural disasters can happen; also, you have to be connected to the news flow.
Let's make a small list on how you can prepare:

• know your surroundings, think about escape routes in every direction
• stay connected to the news flow, stay informed
• think about means of transportation in case of emergency; think about speed / distance / load capacity
• I know that for some of you it might seem funny but having a survival backpack is not such a bad idea
• think about water and food
• always know how to get in touch with your loved ones
• think about a place you would go in case of an extreme event
• try to think of a group of friends that you would want to group with
• stay informed on how to survive without all the wonders of modern technology

Step 2: Initial reaction
Initial reaction planning is all about what would you do if an extreme event would happen in the following 15 minutes.
In you're planning stage (step 1) you have to think about this too.
When it happens decide fast if you have to run or you can barricade. The decision has to be smart and fast and you must have all the means necessary to do both.
Don't expect others to take action, be prepared to take leadership and implement your plan. Even a bad plan is better than no plan.
Step 3: Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery is all about what you do after the event consumes.
Let's say you had a good plan and a very good initial reaction and you survived until now. What do you do next?
This is the most complicated step in your journey and depending on the nature of the disaster you might not even live to see the end result but it all depends on how you start it.
You have to think fast about the following aspects:

• restoring law and order: a small military force would be perfect, try to choose people with both brains and muscle
• start rebuilding the basics: food and water and medical help
• invest resources in protection
• try to reach to other groups, negotiate and create new groups that are bigger and powerful
• when things calm down start investing in research, try to restore old world factories, get power up
• always be open-minded