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Raising Feeder Steers

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There are several ways to maximize the use of your land if you have a few acres available. It really doesn’t take as much land as you might think to raise beef steers. You can purchase one or two cows to breed and calve out and sell the resulting offspring for some extra cash for those items you can’t grow yourself, or you can do what homesteaders have done for centuries… raise them for your own freezer.

What You’ll Need

Besides a few acres, you’ll need some form of shelter for your cattle. This doesn’t have to be elaborate. Even a lean-to will do for the steers, although if you purchase a cow to do it all from start to finish and have the ability to create a continuous self-sustaining supply of beef, you may want a more permanent shelter for winter use in colder climates. This isn’t really necessary for the cattle, as they can do very well even in cold, snowy climates as long as they can get out of the wind, but their human caretakers usually prefer to have something more substantial.

You need typical livestock requirements like feed tubs, water buckets, and tubs or troughs. Most of all, you need to find a good source of hay if you do not have enough acreage to grow your own or enough grazing land to support the number of cows you have. To pasture raise your steers you will need one acre of pasture only (no other buildings) to feed up to five steers. However, that number supposes adequate rain, a good rotation system of fences to allow portions to rejuvenate while grazing other sections, and most of all—a year-round growing cycle.

If you live in a cold climate where plants go dormant or an area prone to heavy droughts during the summer, the number of steers per acre drops significantly. In all but the very best of circumstances, you will still need a hay supply during some portions of the year.

You can raise steers on pasture only (many organic growers prefer to do that) and seek out organic hay for those times when pasture is scarce. However, keep in mind that pasture-fed beef gains weight more slowly. If you have the ability to plant a few acres of oats, you are a step ahead of the game and can even ensure that your grain is organic.

The last thing you will need is sturdy fencing. Even though steers are not aggressive like bulls, they can still be pushy if there is some tasty looking weed (or flower bed) on the other side of the fence. Cattle panels are a good, easily affordable type of durable fencing. If you have plenty of strong timber on your property, you can create wood fences, but beware that this type of fencing is prone to rotting and should be checked regularly for breaks or weak points.

Responsibility and Satisfaction

Raising beef cattle on a small homestead gives everyone in the family a lot of satisfaction, and you’ll be happy knowing you have a pure, healthy source of meat for your freezer. It is also a great way to teach children responsibility by letting them help with the chores they are physically capable of handling.

Do always be aware of the fact that these are large animals that can hurt small children without even meaning to, so always accompany small children when they are around the cattle.

Where to Buy Feeder Steers

If you don’t want to have the year-round responsibility of cows to give birth to your steers, you can buy young steers to raise and slaughter. This is not self-sustaining, but it does make it possible to produce large amounts of beef for far less cost than supermarket beef and also lets you guarantee it is raised more natural way. Livestock auctions and local farmers are a good source of feeder steers.

Feeding Your Young Steers

If you own the steer’s mother, she’ll do a lot of the work for you early on. Even if your calf is still nursing, you should provide grain in a creep feeder that the mother cow can’t get into to help your steer grow well. He will likely eat hay or graze alongside his mother from a very young age as well.

Once weaned, the feeding requirements step up, and you will need suitable grazing land, or enough hay to feed your growing steer about fifteen pounds of grass or hay per day until they reach about 800 pounds. After that, you should increase the hay and grain levels to twenty pounds of dry matter and three pounds of grain per day. You can slaughter at any time after they steer reaches 800 pounds—less if you want young beef, but you will get far less product.

The Best of Both Worlds

If you have enough land or hay resources, you may want to raise a few extra steers per year. It is a great way to supplement your income and help you provide for extra items around the homestead. Even just raising two steers per year can feed a family of four and provide several hundred dollars to cover the expenses of raising the pair. That can reduce your total expense for putting beef in your freezer to very little or nothing at all.

©2011 Off the Grid News


Surviving at Sea

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The ocean covers some 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The human race has traveled to the moon, but still hasn’t touched down on the deepest parts of the ocean floor. It is such a force that entire cities have been devastated by a few waves. It has such partners in crime (fiction and nonfiction) as the kraken, the giant octopus, rogue waves, and man-eating sharks. But perhaps the ocean’s most curious feature is its ability to make men vanish. There are so many ways to die on the open ocean that it is among the most dangerous places on the planet. The ocean can become even more dangerous when we become complacent and falsely secure on ships and other watercraft, without paying attention to the enormous capabilities of the behemoth we travel upon.

People have survived over thirty days on the open ocean in life rafts. One Chinese man even managed to stay alive for over 130 days – a seemingly impossible feat. For those who are prepared, however, it may not be such a stretch to be able to stay alive for a significant period of time – a little bit of preparation can go a long way. Perhaps you’ve grown tired of the constant repetition of “be prepared” that tends to be rampant in survivalist articles; this author is no exception, and at times I will throw that moniker around as well, but it is true. It is statistically proven that of the people who face extreme situations, more often than not, those who were prepared or had a good knowledge base and understanding of survival skills were able to survive and return home. Sometimes blind luck shines its face on some random individual, but to be prepared gives you the control to determine the outcome.

Those hard-core individuals that consider themselves survivalists may thrive on an opportunity like this: 30 days in a lifeboat with nothing more than a knife, a couple of cans of sardines, and a couple of bottles of water – but it’s not going to be easy. A life raft is simply that—a raft that saves your life. Beyond the ability to float in an ocean and being relatively difficult to sink, it will do nothing much more for you. Obviously there are ancillary items on board life rafts like desalination filters that can make a huge difference in your survival abilities, but it’s still going to take some knowledge and willpower to keep you alive. It is completely possible to stay alive on a life raft on the open ocean with very few items as long as you plan those items properly and have the skill set or knowledge to back it up. After all, if you’re really going to spend thirty to fifty days on the open ocean, you’ve got plenty of time to put that knowledge to good use. (By the way, it’s not recommended to purposefully get stranded on the ocean.) A survival kit for the open ocean will be slightly different than that which you will want on land; it will definitely be more comprehensive. In the first article of this extreme survival series, a survival kit’s contents were listed; it was built so that you could carry it anywhere you want to go. One suited for the open ocean won’t be too much bigger, but it will have some different items.

  • A waterproof lighter
  • A box of waterproof matches
  • Two skinny, heavy-duty one-pint plastic water bottles– both should be full, and one should be spray-painted black and have a cap with a hole just at ½ inch (or to match your tubing below) cut into it so that the tube can fit snugly through it
  • Twenty-four inches of clear, hollow plastic food-grade tubing (preferably reinforced with fiberglass and about a half inch in diameter)
  • A four-foot square piece of heavy clear plastic sheeting
  • Twelve fish hooks (large stainless steel treble hooks) with a twenty-five-pound leader attached and another seventy-five feet of fifty-pound test fishing line
  • A full-sized paracord (at least 100 feet, but preferably 250 feet), tightly wound
  • A real carabineer with about twelve feet of duct tape wrapped around the non-opening side
  • A small bag of cotton balls and a small piece of microfiber cloth (think an eyeglass cloth, about 4×4 inches)
  • Three freezer bags folded up and protected from sharp edges.
  • A small bottle of isopropyl alcohol (four ounces)
  • A pair of cut-resistant gloves (Kevlar)
  • A multitool device with wire cutters and pliers
  • A sewing needle and some two-pound test line (twenty-five feet)
  • Two heavy-duty key rings (preferably two solid one-inch rings made out of aluminum)
  • 8 foot square of small-knit mesh netting (about ½ cm spaces)
  • A heavy-duty safety whistle
  • Two medium-sized bare spoon lures
  • A small foghorn
  • Some cheap “blublocker” or similar UV protection polarized glasses
  • Thirty feet of thin-diameter braided stainless steel wire along with two pieces, each twenty-four inches long, prefabricated with permanent loops built into each end
  • A knife (preferably a fixed-blade high-quality knife made of stainless steel– even though the blade will not be as sharp)
  • A stainless steel folding knife with a substantial blade (three to five inches)
  • A microfiber towel (12×12)
  • Six 1000-calorie bars (emergency ration bars)
  • Six packets of water (emergency water pouches)

The items in this survival kit won’t make life easy on the open ocean, but with a little bit of work and creativity, it has the tools to help you survive. It should all fit in a case the size of a large pistol case, or roughly equivalent to a notebook computer carrying case, perhaps a bit bigger. These items are not optional; they should be considered standard. This is the absolute minimum amount of items you will want to get caught out at sea with.

First things first—rough seas, a struggle with a bigger fish, or just the bright sun in your eyes can cause a tool or the entire kit to go into the ocean. It’s best to tie off everything that is important. Keep the kit closed when not in use and tie a substantial bit of paracord through the handles on the case or through a portion of the fabric itself. Tie off your knife and add a handle lanyard to the knife for when you must use it untethered so you can slip the lanyard around your wrist (make it relatively snug).

Prepare for Your Food Gathering

Tie a doubled-up section of paracord that has been threaded with your two prefabricated wire lines to act as a trolling line base. Reinforce the paracord in a couple places by wrapping duct tape (several wraps) around both of the layers of paracord to create a landing spot for your trolling lines. After you string your two braided wires over the top of the duct taped areas, reinforce further with ¼-inch wide strips of the duct tape at each end of the tape you just placed, so it creates a notch in the duct tape reinforcement so your looped wire end cannot hop out of the notch and onto the bare paracord. Swing your two wire lines up and add a leader of fishing line with a bit of the fifty-pound test and a spoon lure. As the current takes you through the water, the lure will dive, catch sunlight, and shine—perfect for a fish looking for surface food. Because it isn’t huge, you won’t necessarily attract overly aggressive and dangerous fish, but be on the lookout: pull your lines up if you get a shark or other aggressive fish like a marlin looking at it hungrily. You don’t want to risk an injury or damage to your boat. If you cannot handle what you have caught, there are a few ways to handle the situation.

If your trolling line will hold or you prepare in advance, you can attach the folding knife with a combination of paracord and duct tape to the handle end of an oar, and use it as a spear or long stabbing implement. Just be careful to secure the blade when it is not in use to avoid accidental damage to the raft. The other option, of course, is to cut the line. You will want to preserve your lures, but sometimes the risk is too big to take in an aggressive fish or shark. Additionally, if the shark or fish is large and powerful enough, they can actually cause the raft to take on water before they snap the line, so be ready to cut the cord if needed.

You will also want to fashion a net system out of the paracord and the netting you brought so that the netting has two long cords (one on each of two opposite edges of the netting) with excess cord on each end. You will build it this way so you can close off the net by pulling the four ends of cord together to create a mesh basket and bring up some small fish from the surface areas when you happen across a school of tiny feeding fish. They will be jumpy, so be patient, get your net into the water, and then move away from the surface so they can come onto the net and you can pull it up. You can use these fish as food and as bait for larger fish.

You will want to preserve some fish by air or sun drying so you can ensure that you have plenty to eat when you aren’t able to catch any.

Use the Kevlar gloves when you have a fish on the hook so you don’t get injured by the fish, your knife, or the lines.

When you have caught some fish, you can use the tie-offs to set longer lines with baited hooks, but be ready to cut the line if you have something too big on the end of it and it hasn’t snapped. The last thing you need is your floating “fortress” being pulled around the ocean by a sixty-pound tuna.

Bear in mind also that when you eat food, you must also provide the water needed for digestion. Without it you’ll simply complicate the situation. Make sure you have enough water to digest the food.

While you wait for your passive food collection techniques to render some sustenance, you should also begin looking at ways to fresh water. Most life rafts now include some sort of reverse osmosis or forward osmosis desalination filter, which will allow you to get quite a bit of water out of it. It’s smart however, to create much more than you can drink on a regular basis, so you will have it just in case. Included in your survival kit is a pair of water bottles; most likely they’re full, so after you drink them, use the black one for saltwater gathering and the other one for freshwater gathering.

These parts have the capability of making a rudimentary yet potentially efficient distillation set up—a makeshift solar still, if you will. The key is to ensure the saltwater bottle stays elevated (and upright) in comparison to the freshwater bottle; you also want to fill up the salt water bottle with no more than two-thirds liquid. Salt is heavier than water vapor, and therefore, as the black bottle becomes heated up in the sun, vapor begins to form and rise to the top. A vacuum created by the displacement between the two bottles will literally suck up the water vapor into the tube where it then can travel down the tube and recollect as water droplets into the freshwater container.

It’s going to be slow, and it certainly will not provide enough water to keep you working at a normal pace; however, it will provide some ancillary water production. The goal here is to create enough water from as many sources as you can to continue to stay completely hydrated. Remember also that larger fish bones can contain fresh water within their cavities, as well as fish eyes and various parts of sea turtles. You also brought some prepackaged water, so use this to stay hydrated as well.

Use one of the zip lock bags to store extra water. Try to avoid cutting fish and leaving guts in the bottom of the raft, so you can also gather fresh rainwater in the bottom of the boat if needed. Obviously you’ll have to exercise caution and be smart about such a technique; for example, if you are in inclement weather, it may not be smart to stay wet. If needed, use your shirt or the microfiber cloth in your survival kit to sponge up freshwater and collect it in the zip lock bag. You can never have too much water.

Obtaining fresh water to drink will be your number one priority; just because this article highlighted food gathering first does not discount this fact. Be active in your attempts to obtain freshwater.

You will always want to be looking for land, and you may be able to determine distant locations by using your memory and the flow of water. A note to remember: Because an island has four sides (relatively speaking), waves will travel in a starburst pattern away from the island: in between each leg of the starburst, a different set of waves can exist. If you travel along the little rough intersection where two sets of these traveling wave patterns converge (moving in towards the convergence), you should be able to find land relatively soon.

If you’re able to find land, you can still use the raft as a shelter, if no other shelter is available. Without question you want to secure the raft to some sturdy object so high tides cannot take it away from you; you may someday need this raft again.

On land it’s a lot easier to build a fire, especially with the other items in your survival kit. (While it isn’t completely impossible to build a floating fire, you’d need quite a bit of driftwood.)

It’s important to use the theories and ideas covered in this entire series of articles to further your ability to handle a specific survival situation. While it is beyond the scope of the specific article to talk about general survival techniques, a good look at the basics from the other articles will serve to strengthen the content here. Specifically you should remember the following:

  • Communicate with someone where you’re going when you expect to be back, and at what point they should send out a search party.
  • Even though it may be heavy or large or inconvenient, always carry with you the survival kit that matches the scenario you will be involved in.
  • Deal with immediate health necessities: water – shelter – food (in that order; rescue should follow).

As you venture out on the open ocean, no matter how safe or secure you may feel in a big boat, and no matter how sure you are that nothing can go wrong, things can, will, and frequently do go wrong. Preparation is paramount and survival tools can have an immediate impact, but you must provide the willpower and the understanding and knowledge to use them.

©2011 Off the Grid News

Canning Equipment 101: What You Need And Where To Get It

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When I first started canning years ago, I had just a few basic supplies: a water-bath canner, a jar lifter, a funnel, and some jars. In general, I prefer simplicity, and I don’t have room to store a lot of equipment that I only use a few times each year.

But, as my canning repertoire has grown, I’ve slowly accumulated a few more things. I tend to agonize over each purchasing decision, but I’ve never regretted buying canning equipment. In every case, the purchase saves me time and adds to my canning enjoyment. Before I buy any piece of canning equipment, I ask myself these questions:

1)     Can I use this equipment for more than one thing?

2)     Do its potential benefits justify the expense or room it takes up in my storage room?

3)     How often will I use it, and where will I store it?

Whether you’re a beginner canner or an old veteran, you may wonder what’s available and what you really need. Read on to learn everything you need to know about canning equipment.

Water-Bath Canner or Steam Canner

The very first piece of equipment you’ll buy is probably a water-bath canner or a steam canner for processing acidic foods like peaches, jams, and applesauce. A water-bath canner is basically just a very large pot with a rack for the jars to sit on. Look for a stainless steel or aluminum model at hardware stores, thrift stores, and most large retail stores. Buy one large enough to hold at least six quart-size bottles. You’ll also find canners at thrift stores or yard sales. Just make sure it comes with a lid and has handles to carry it from the sink to the stove.

Steam canners are surrounded by controversy because the USDA has deemed them unsafe. However, several other studies contradict this position. I own a water-bath canner and for years, I believed steam canners were unsafe. Recently, though, I’ve started doing some research into steam canners, and I just might have one in my future. My current home has a glass-top stove—a problem with most water-bath canners. Steam canners are a lot lighter, use less water, and heat up more quickly.

Pressure Canner

Once the canning bug bites you, you’ll probably want a pressure canner. Low acid foods, including most vegetables, meats, and soups, must be cooked in a pressure canner, which cooks the foods at high enough temperatures to destroy all bacteria. Pressure canners have either a dial gauge or a weighted gauge to measure pressure.

Buy a stainless-steel canner that comes with at least a one-year warranty. This will most likely be the most expensive piece of canning equipment you purchase. If you do a bit of scrounging, you might find an old one at a yard sale or thrift store, but make sure the lid fits securely and the dial gauge is accurate. There should also be no pitting or gouges in the metal, as this can weaken the canner and make it prone to failure.

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Jars and Lids

Your mom might have used old commercial spaghetti sauce or mayonnaise jars for canning, but this is a big no-no. These jars aren’t designed for multiple uses and may crack or even explode in a steam pressure canner or water bath. Buy jars made specifically for canning and check them every time you use them for nicks and cracks. Check at yard sales or ask around. My elderly neighbor gave me boxes and boxes of canning jars she no longer used.

You’ll also need some lids and rings. Traditional rings can be used over and over. I’ve got some that are probably at least twenty years old. Unfortunately, lids can only be used reliably once—a fact that irks me every year. You can find both rings and lids at grocery stores, hardware stores, or online retailers.

Recently, I discovered reusable lids from a company called Tattler. At first, I thought it was a gimmick, but they really do work and come with a lifetime guarantee. They cost more, but I love the idea that I can use them forever. Now that’s true self-sufficiency. You can get the regular mouth size here and the wide mouth size here.

Steam Juicer

I balked at buying this one for a long time, but now it’s one of my favorite pieces of canning equipment. Put any fruit in the top chamber and the steam softens it so the juices flow easily from a surgical tube right into your clean jars. I use this to extract juice quickly and cleanly from chokecherries, grapes, berries, and even my neighbor’s crab apples.

Food Mill

Early on, I bought a small food mill at my local hardware store. It turned out to be a huge disappointment. It held only a small amount of food at a time, and the work was arduous and slow. Since then, I’ve upgraded to a larger food mill that attaches to the tabletop. These mills have adjustable sieves to control how fine the puree is. They work wonderfully for making applesauce and jams or processing tomatoes and pumpkin. I also use my large food processor for making batches of salsa and spaghetti sauce.

Accessories

Of course, you don’t need every canning accessory you might see online or in hardware stores, but there are a few that are indispensable. First, of course, are a funnel and a jar lifter. You’ll also want a heavy-duty oven mitt for lifting jars out of hot water. I like the non-stick silicone mitts for this job.

I have a friend who swears by her apple peeler-corer-slicer, but I’m unconvinced. I’ve borrowed it once or twice to make applesauce, but I feel like it takes away an awful lot of the fruit along with the peel. Besides, it’s messy and cumbersome. I prefer a plain old paring knife for this job. I do love my cherry pitter for processing cherries. And of course, a few large bowls, hefty cutting boards, measuring cups, wooden spoons, and a good set of knives are indispensible.

©2012 Off the Grid News

1 Thing Everyone Is Missing In Home Defense

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break inWhen someone buys a gun for home defense, they tend to fall into one of three categories. These categories are based on the amount of thought an individual puts into their planning. Although you may find yourself falling in between two categories, these distinctions should help you see any improvements you can make in your home defense plan.

The first category—we’ll call it Category A—is an individual who buys his or her first home defense firearm. They buy a box of ammo and load the weapon; they then put it under the bed, in the nightstand, or in the gun safe. There really isn’t any more to their preparation. Yes, having a gun is better than throwing a rock, but honestly, at this level of planning, that’s about all you can say about it.

The next category, B, is the person buys their weapon, buys quite a few boxes of ammo, and becomes proficient with their weapon. They keep it loaded and in a safe, easy-to-access area. They maintain proficiency and are most likely considered to be a gun guy or gal. And while the level of defense is on a whole different plane than Category A, it can still be better.

The third and final category—you guessed, C—is the planner. They know having the weapon and being proficient in it is only a stepping-stone to proper home defense. This article will examine how the planner operates.

First off is weapon selection. Proper weapon selection is based on a few important factors. You want to be able to bring enough gun to the fight without endangering others in the process. There are three main places people live. You have the cities and suburbs, and then you have the rural folks. Each of these areas is distinct and has its specific requirements.

When living in the city in place like townhouses and apartments, over penetration is a big deal. Defending yourself should never put your neighbors or family in danger. Something like a rifle or even some twelve-gauge shotgun rounds can present a danger inside an apartment. Older apartments and townhouses built from brick have a much lower chance for over penetration, but modern sheetrock is a different story. The same goes for houses in the suburbs; some suburban homes will be made from brick, while others could be made from vinyl siding or other thin materials. So what kind of weapon does a city or suburb dweller needs to protect their home?

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When it comes to over penetration, experiments have been conducted over and over, and all serious defensive rounds penetrate drywall and sheetrock. Even twelve-gauge number four penetrates walls. So what does this teach us? First those city and suburban folk have to learn to be a darn good shot. Second, round selection is critical. Reduced-recoil shotgun rounds, the kind favored by police, have a perfect place here. They are still potent man stoppers, perhaps even more so than their full-powered counterparts, but the best part about these rounds is that the reduced recoil means reduced penetration on walls and bad guys. The pellets are much less likely to go through the bad guy and continue on into the walls behind him.  Should you miss, these rounds will lose a lot of velocity fast, especially after going through a wall.

Handgun rounds like the .45 ACP and 9mm are also well suited. By nature, handgun rounds never travel as far as rifle rounds. Special rounds like the Mag Safe SWAT round are excellent choices. These rounds are pre-fragmented to aid in breaking apart and not penetrating through the bad guy. I suggest these rounds to anyone who wants to defend their home with a handgun. I would go as far as to say that this is the best compromise of power and safety one can use.

Rural folks have it much easier to defend their homes. When the homes are anywhere from hundreds of yards to miles apart, your selection opens up a bit. Over penetration inside the home is still a concern, however. Putting your family at risk is counter intuitive to self-defense.  The rural defender has the advantage of knowing if anything is at risk behind the bad guy; he has a lot less to worry about.  The same standard of shotgun and handgun still applies here, as both are excellent choice.  A rural resident also has the option of using a rifle if they know their family is secure. In a home with no children, the rural defender knows the only other resident is his wife and most likely knows exactly where they are.

A rural resident should still own a rifle if they have chosen a shotgun or pistol for home defense. In a rural area, you have a much better chance to encounter feral, rabid, or aggressive animals. The ability to engage a wild and dangerous animal at long range is a much safer alternative. Men and women living on the border also have to deal with the potential for dangerous illegal aliens, including criminals and drug smugglers. The ability to be properly armed to engage these threats is critical.

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Beyond the Weapon

Weapon selection plays an incredibly critical role in home defense, but it isn’t everything. Planning beyond the weapon is a key to success. The first step is proficiency with your weapon. Seeking out proper instruction and training is important. Simple weapons familiarization and target practice can save the day. All the fancy mag changes and shooting stances don’t mean diddly if you can’t hit your target or know how to apply proper remedial action.

Next is making sure your partner is proficient your firearms or their own. My wife dislikes my twelve-gauge pump shotgun; its recoil is too heavy, and she’s never been comfortable with it. She’s a dead shot with her .38 special though.

Next piece of equipment is a good flashlight. I have a weapon-mounted flashlight on my shotgun, and my wife has her ultra-bright Side Winder flashlight. Her flashlight has multiple settings, one white light, one red light, and one blue light. Light discipline is also important; specifically, learning when to use your flashlight should be part of your training. It should be used when you know you can’t see anything in the next room, and the room is very likely to house the predator. A flashlight turned on too early will reveal your position.

A piece of equipment you may have never thought about is a good pair of ear protection. Firing a weapon indoors is ridiculously loud. In Afghanistan I suffered permanent loss of hearing from firing a machine gun inside a building.  There are expensive electronic ear protectors that amplify noises below a certain decibel point and mute noises louder than a certain decibel point. These would probably be the best to have, but they are expensive.  My wife and I both have an inexpensive eight-dollar set we bought to double as both our range and home defense ears.

Next is something to carry your ammunition. At night I tend to sleep in a pair of basketball shorts and a shirt. My wife is in pajama pants and a shirt as well—not exactly the best tactical wear. She luckily has pockets she can put a couple of speed loaders in, but I prefer a bandolier belt for shotgun ammunition. It carries twenty-five rounds and cost five bucks.

The Plan

We have the gear and we have the guns; now we need to use the most effective weapons we have, and it’s contained in the six inches between your ears.  It shouldn’t just be your plan; it’s your family’s plan. Each plan will have to be different to meet different needs, to accommodate different size families and homes. A plan should be simple and known by everyone in your home. Your plan should not be to clear your home and engage the intruder. Your plan should be to get you and your family to a safe location.

My family’s plan is simple. In the event an intruder is in our home, we grab our weapons, our ear protection, and extra ammunition. Next, my wife and I quietly and carefully move to our son’s room. I cover down the hallway as she grabs our son from his bed. We again quietly move back to our bedroom, while she carries our son and I provide the security.

Once we are back in our room, she takes our son to the master bathroom, which is only accessible through our room. On the way, she takes her cell phone and calls the police. I cover the door at an offset angle with my shotgun, and we wait until the police arrive.

This is our plan for a nighttime break in. In the case of a home invasion, we have a different plan that is still very similar. My wife gets our son, and I cover her. If possible, we retreat to a safe location and call the police.

These are my views on home defense, the equipment I prefer, and some examples of my family’s plan. While you may have different preferences, it doesn’t change the fact that you need to take planning seriously. Owning a gun is simply not enough. Engage the weapon between your eyes, and your chances of safely defending your family will increase tenfold.

How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If You Can’t Get Your Bug-Out Bag

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How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If Your Bug-Out Bag Is Destroyed

Image source: Pixabay.com

The need for making sure you have the necessary equipment and supplies for survival can’t be overstated. While it is theoretically possible to survive off of what you simply find, the reality is that the less you start out with, the worse your chances are of survival. That’s why people store items in survival kits.

But what if you can’t get to your survival kit, bug-out bag, everyday carry bag or get-home bag? What then? While we like to think that we keep ourselves equipped and supplied at all times, the reality is that there are always times when we’re not. What do we do in those times? Or what do we do if our home is destroyed and we can’t get back in to pick up our bug-out bag?

A lot would depend on the disaster that was happening and how much warning you’d have. But there are some cases that would make it impossible. Maybe they’re not very likely, but they do exist.

Take a nuclear war, for example. Granted, we’re not living in the Cold War anymore and the chances of a nuclear confrontation have been reduced drastically. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Both Russia and the United States still have large stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with other countries having considerably less. Rogue countries would like nothing more than to detonate such a bomb in America.

But there are many other things that could make it impossible to get back home, such as an earthquake, a chemical spill, a major storm or certain acts of terrorism. In any of these instances, you might suddenly find yourself without your bug-out bag or the ability to go home and get it.

This Crazy New Device Can Start A Fire Even In The Worst Conditions

That’s why you need at least one spare bag or kit, hidden in an alternate location. This set of gear might not be quite as good as your main bug-out bag, but it should still cover all of the bases, giving you enough to live off of. It should also have the necessary food and other supplies that you’ll need to stay alive. Ideally, it would be a mirror image or your bug-out bag, but the reality of cost will probably force you to go with some lesser expensive options.

For that matter, why stop at one? If an extra set of gear is a good idea, why not have two or three of them, secreted in different locations? Not only will that help ensure that you have access to them, but that you have access no matter where you are.

How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If Your Home Is Destroyed

Image source: Pixabay.com

Your spare kits should also include at least one good sturdy set of outdoor clothing, a jacket and a good pair of walking shoes. Odds are that when you are away from home, you won’t be dressed for heading out into the wilderness, so you’d better make sure you have what you will need. Bugging out into the wild in a shirt and tie or a short dress just doesn’t work out all that good.

The other thing to consider hiding with your spare kits is weapons. If you have a concealed carry license and are carrying every day, then that might not be much of an issue; but if you don’t, then any weapon you stash with your backup kit would be the only one you’ll have.

Find a Good Place to Stash It

Stashing your backup kit too close to home totally negates its purpose. On the other hand, you don’t want to stash it so far from home that you can’t get to it within a day, even if you’re on foot. So, you need to pick the location or locations carefully, making sure that they are someplace you’ll be able to get to.

If you own a business that’s a ways away from your home, that might be an excellent place to make a stash. For that matter, you might want to do more than just stash a bug-out bag there, splitting up your stockpile and keeping part of it at your business. That gives you a secondary bug-in location, if you can’t use your home.

Another option is at someone else’s house if you have a like-minded friend who lives in an appropriate area to leave your stash. That could even be a reciprocal agreement, where you keep a kit at their house and they keep one at yours. Doing it that way will motivate them to say yes and probably to leave your kit alone, so that it’s ready when you need it.

This New Lantern Provides 100,000 Hours of Emergency Backup Lighting

How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If Your Home Is Destroyed

Image source: Pixabay.com

A third possibility is a storage rental. These are available all over the place and some of them are quite inexpensive, especially if you’re just renting a small one. Like your business, this would provide you with a place where you have room to store more than just a bug-out bag, for a small monthly fee. While most of these places say that they’re only open during the day, if you can get over the fence during an emergency, you can pick your stuff up at night, too.

Finally, you can always consider burying your spare kit in the middle of nowhere. There are a number of ways of waterproofing equipment that you want to bury underground, such as using PVC pipe or a five-gallon bucket. Burying it will make it hard for others to find so that it hopefully won’t be bothered. Just make sure that nobody sees what you are doing so that it won’t be stolen. (Recommended: How To Build A Waterproof Underground Cache On A Budget.)

There are two problems with burying a stash. The first one is making sure that you have good landmarks to find it once again. Remember that some landmarks may disappear, such as trees that die. So have more than one set of landmarks that you can use. Secondly, you’ll need something to dig it up with. That can be a problem if the soil has a lot of clay in it or is difficult to dig in for some other reason.

Don’t Stop There

Having a spare set of gear is probably the most important reason to set up a survival stash. But let me give you one more. That’s to stash extra food. A typical bug-out bag has only three days worth of food in it. That’s not enough, as far as I’m concerned. So you might want to create some stashes which are just food.

These stashes will be easier and cheaper to set up, because you don’t have the cost of all the equipment. You can easily stash five days worth of food in a five gallon bucket and bury it somewhere, giving you accessible food when disaster strikes.

Do you have secondary caches? What advice would you add? Share your suggestions in the section below:

Could You ‘Live Off The Land’ With Your Gun If Necessary? Read More Here.

Raising Feeder Steers

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There are several ways to maximize the use of your land if you have a few acres available. It really doesn’t take as much land as you might think to raise beef steers. You can purchase one or two cows to breed and calve out and sell the resulting offspring for some extra cash for those items you can’t grow yourself, or you can do what homesteaders have done for centuries… raise them for your own freezer.

What You’ll Need

Besides a few acres, you’ll need some form of shelter for your cattle. This doesn’t have to be elaborate. Even a lean-to will do for the steers, although if you purchase a cow to do it all from start to finish and have the ability to create a continuous self-sustaining supply of beef, you may want a more permanent shelter for winter use in colder climates. This isn’t really necessary for the cattle, as they can do very well even in cold, snowy climates as long as they can get out of the wind, but their human caretakers usually prefer to have something more substantial.

You need typical livestock requirements like feed tubs, water buckets, and tubs or troughs. Most of all, you need to find a good source of hay if you do not have enough acreage to grow your own or enough grazing land to support the number of cows you have. To pasture raise your steers you will need one acre of pasture only (no other buildings) to feed up to five steers. However, that number supposes adequate rain, a good rotation system of fences to allow portions to rejuvenate while grazing other sections, and most of all—a year-round growing cycle.

If you live in a cold climate where plants go dormant or an area prone to heavy droughts during the summer, the number of steers per acre drops significantly. In all but the very best of circumstances, you will still need a hay supply during some portions of the year.

You can raise steers on pasture only (many organic growers prefer to do that) and seek out organic hay for those times when pasture is scarce. However, keep in mind that pasture-fed beef gains weight more slowly. If you have the ability to plant a few acres of oats, you are a step ahead of the game and can even ensure that your grain is organic.

The last thing you will need is sturdy fencing. Even though steers are not aggressive like bulls, they can still be pushy if there is some tasty looking weed (or flower bed) on the other side of the fence. Cattle panels are a good, easily affordable type of durable fencing. If you have plenty of strong timber on your property, you can create wood fences, but beware that this type of fencing is prone to rotting and should be checked regularly for breaks or weak points.

Responsibility and Satisfaction

Raising beef cattle on a small homestead gives everyone in the family a lot of satisfaction, and you’ll be happy knowing you have a pure, healthy source of meat for your freezer. It is also a great way to teach children responsibility by letting them help with the chores they are physically capable of handling.

Do always be aware of the fact that these are large animals that can hurt small children without even meaning to, so always accompany small children when they are around the cattle.

Where to Buy Feeder Steers

If you don’t want to have the year-round responsibility of cows to give birth to your steers, you can buy young steers to raise and slaughter. This is not self-sustaining, but it does make it possible to produce large amounts of beef for far less cost than supermarket beef and also lets you guarantee it is raised more natural way. Livestock auctions and local farmers are a good source of feeder steers.

Feeding Your Young Steers

If you own the steer’s mother, she’ll do a lot of the work for you early on. Even if your calf is still nursing, you should provide grain in a creep feeder that the mother cow can’t get into to help your steer grow well. He will likely eat hay or graze alongside his mother from a very young age as well.

Once weaned, the feeding requirements step up, and you will need suitable grazing land, or enough hay to feed your growing steer about fifteen pounds of grass or hay per day until they reach about 800 pounds. After that, you should increase the hay and grain levels to twenty pounds of dry matter and three pounds of grain per day. You can slaughter at any time after they steer reaches 800 pounds—less if you want young beef, but you will get far less product.

The Best of Both Worlds

If you have enough land or hay resources, you may want to raise a few extra steers per year. It is a great way to supplement your income and help you provide for extra items around the homestead. Even just raising two steers per year can feed a family of four and provide several hundred dollars to cover the expenses of raising the pair. That can reduce your total expense for putting beef in your freezer to very little or nothing at all.

©2011 Off the Grid News

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Surviving at Sea

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The ocean covers some 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The human race has traveled to the moon, but still hasn’t touched down on the deepest parts of the ocean floor. It is such a force that entire cities have been devastated by a few waves. It has such partners in crime (fiction and nonfiction) as the kraken, the giant octopus, rogue waves, and man-eating sharks. But perhaps the ocean’s most curious feature is its ability to make men vanish. There are so many ways to die on the open ocean that it is among the most dangerous places on the planet. The ocean can become even more dangerous when we become complacent and falsely secure on ships and other watercraft, without paying attention to the enormous capabilities of the behemoth we travel upon.

People have survived over thirty days on the open ocean in life rafts. One Chinese man even managed to stay alive for over 130 days – a seemingly impossible feat. For those who are prepared, however, it may not be such a stretch to be able to stay alive for a significant period of time – a little bit of preparation can go a long way. Perhaps you’ve grown tired of the constant repetition of “be prepared” that tends to be rampant in survivalist articles; this author is no exception, and at times I will throw that moniker around as well, but it is true. It is statistically proven that of the people who face extreme situations, more often than not, those who were prepared or had a good knowledge base and understanding of survival skills were able to survive and return home. Sometimes blind luck shines its face on some random individual, but to be prepared gives you the control to determine the outcome.

Those hard-core individuals that consider themselves survivalists may thrive on an opportunity like this: 30 days in a lifeboat with nothing more than a knife, a couple of cans of sardines, and a couple of bottles of water – but it’s not going to be easy. A life raft is simply that—a raft that saves your life. Beyond the ability to float in an ocean and being relatively difficult to sink, it will do nothing much more for you. Obviously there are ancillary items on board life rafts like desalination filters that can make a huge difference in your survival abilities, but it’s still going to take some knowledge and willpower to keep you alive. It is completely possible to stay alive on a life raft on the open ocean with very few items as long as you plan those items properly and have the skill set or knowledge to back it up. After all, if you’re really going to spend thirty to fifty days on the open ocean, you’ve got plenty of time to put that knowledge to good use. (By the way, it’s not recommended to purposefully get stranded on the ocean.) A survival kit for the open ocean will be slightly different than that which you will want on land; it will definitely be more comprehensive. In the first article of this extreme survival series, a survival kit’s contents were listed; it was built so that you could carry it anywhere you want to go. One suited for the open ocean won’t be too much bigger, but it will have some different items.

  • A waterproof lighter
  • A box of waterproof matches
  • Two skinny, heavy-duty one-pint plastic water bottles– both should be full, and one should be spray-painted black and have a cap with a hole just at ½ inch (or to match your tubing below) cut into it so that the tube can fit snugly through it
  • Twenty-four inches of clear, hollow plastic food-grade tubing (preferably reinforced with fiberglass and about a half inch in diameter)
  • A four-foot square piece of heavy clear plastic sheeting
  • Twelve fish hooks (large stainless steel treble hooks) with a twenty-five-pound leader attached and another seventy-five feet of fifty-pound test fishing line
  • A full-sized paracord (at least 100 feet, but preferably 250 feet), tightly wound
  • A real carabineer with about twelve feet of duct tape wrapped around the non-opening side
  • A small bag of cotton balls and a small piece of microfiber cloth (think an eyeglass cloth, about 4×4 inches)
  • Three freezer bags folded up and protected from sharp edges.
  • A small bottle of isopropyl alcohol (four ounces)
  • A pair of cut-resistant gloves (Kevlar)
  • A multitool device with wire cutters and pliers
  • A sewing needle and some two-pound test line (twenty-five feet)
  • Two heavy-duty key rings (preferably two solid one-inch rings made out of aluminum)
  • 8 foot square of small-knit mesh netting (about ½ cm spaces)
  • A heavy-duty safety whistle
  • Two medium-sized bare spoon lures
  • A small foghorn
  • Some cheap “blublocker” or similar UV protection polarized glasses
  • Thirty feet of thin-diameter braided stainless steel wire along with two pieces, each twenty-four inches long, prefabricated with permanent loops built into each end
  • A knife (preferably a fixed-blade high-quality knife made of stainless steel– even though the blade will not be as sharp)
  • A stainless steel folding knife with a substantial blade (three to five inches)
  • A microfiber towel (12×12)
  • Six 1000-calorie bars (emergency ration bars)
  • Six packets of water (emergency water pouches)

The items in this survival kit won’t make life easy on the open ocean, but with a little bit of work and creativity, it has the tools to help you survive. It should all fit in a case the size of a large pistol case, or roughly equivalent to a notebook computer carrying case, perhaps a bit bigger. These items are not optional; they should be considered standard. This is the absolute minimum amount of items you will want to get caught out at sea with.

First things first—rough seas, a struggle with a bigger fish, or just the bright sun in your eyes can cause a tool or the entire kit to go into the ocean. It’s best to tie off everything that is important. Keep the kit closed when not in use and tie a substantial bit of paracord through the handles on the case or through a portion of the fabric itself. Tie off your knife and add a handle lanyard to the knife for when you must use it untethered so you can slip the lanyard around your wrist (make it relatively snug).

Prepare for Your Food Gathering

Tie a doubled-up section of paracord that has been threaded with your two prefabricated wire lines to act as a trolling line base. Reinforce the paracord in a couple places by wrapping duct tape (several wraps) around both of the layers of paracord to create a landing spot for your trolling lines. After you string your two braided wires over the top of the duct taped areas, reinforce further with ¼-inch wide strips of the duct tape at each end of the tape you just placed, so it creates a notch in the duct tape reinforcement so your looped wire end cannot hop out of the notch and onto the bare paracord. Swing your two wire lines up and add a leader of fishing line with a bit of the fifty-pound test and a spoon lure. As the current takes you through the water, the lure will dive, catch sunlight, and shine—perfect for a fish looking for surface food. Because it isn’t huge, you won’t necessarily attract overly aggressive and dangerous fish, but be on the lookout: pull your lines up if you get a shark or other aggressive fish like a marlin looking at it hungrily. You don’t want to risk an injury or damage to your boat. If you cannot handle what you have caught, there are a few ways to handle the situation.

If your trolling line will hold or you prepare in advance, you can attach the folding knife with a combination of paracord and duct tape to the handle end of an oar, and use it as a spear or long stabbing implement. Just be careful to secure the blade when it is not in use to avoid accidental damage to the raft. The other option, of course, is to cut the line. You will want to preserve your lures, but sometimes the risk is too big to take in an aggressive fish or shark. Additionally, if the shark or fish is large and powerful enough, they can actually cause the raft to take on water before they snap the line, so be ready to cut the cord if needed.

You will also want to fashion a net system out of the paracord and the netting you brought so that the netting has two long cords (one on each of two opposite edges of the netting) with excess cord on each end. You will build it this way so you can close off the net by pulling the four ends of cord together to create a mesh basket and bring up some small fish from the surface areas when you happen across a school of tiny feeding fish. They will be jumpy, so be patient, get your net into the water, and then move away from the surface so they can come onto the net and you can pull it up. You can use these fish as food and as bait for larger fish.

You will want to preserve some fish by air or sun drying so you can ensure that you have plenty to eat when you aren’t able to catch any.

Use the Kevlar gloves when you have a fish on the hook so you don’t get injured by the fish, your knife, or the lines.

When you have caught some fish, you can use the tie-offs to set longer lines with baited hooks, but be ready to cut the line if you have something too big on the end of it and it hasn’t snapped. The last thing you need is your floating “fortress” being pulled around the ocean by a sixty-pound tuna.

Bear in mind also that when you eat food, you must also provide the water needed for digestion. Without it you’ll simply complicate the situation. Make sure you have enough water to digest the food.

While you wait for your passive food collection techniques to render some sustenance, you should also begin looking at ways to fresh water. Most life rafts now include some sort of reverse osmosis or forward osmosis desalination filter, which will allow you to get quite a bit of water out of it. It’s smart however, to create much more than you can drink on a regular basis, so you will have it just in case. Included in your survival kit is a pair of water bottles; most likely they’re full, so after you drink them, use the black one for saltwater gathering and the other one for freshwater gathering.

These parts have the capability of making a rudimentary yet potentially efficient distillation set up—a makeshift solar still, if you will. The key is to ensure the saltwater bottle stays elevated (and upright) in comparison to the freshwater bottle; you also want to fill up the salt water bottle with no more than two-thirds liquid. Salt is heavier than water vapor, and therefore, as the black bottle becomes heated up in the sun, vapor begins to form and rise to the top. A vacuum created by the displacement between the two bottles will literally suck up the water vapor into the tube where it then can travel down the tube and recollect as water droplets into the freshwater container.

It’s going to be slow, and it certainly will not provide enough water to keep you working at a normal pace; however, it will provide some ancillary water production. The goal here is to create enough water from as many sources as you can to continue to stay completely hydrated. Remember also that larger fish bones can contain fresh water within their cavities, as well as fish eyes and various parts of sea turtles. You also brought some prepackaged water, so use this to stay hydrated as well.

Use one of the zip lock bags to store extra water. Try to avoid cutting fish and leaving guts in the bottom of the raft, so you can also gather fresh rainwater in the bottom of the boat if needed. Obviously you’ll have to exercise caution and be smart about such a technique; for example, if you are in inclement weather, it may not be smart to stay wet. If needed, use your shirt or the microfiber cloth in your survival kit to sponge up freshwater and collect it in the zip lock bag. You can never have too much water.

Obtaining fresh water to drink will be your number one priority; just because this article highlighted food gathering first does not discount this fact. Be active in your attempts to obtain freshwater.

You will always want to be looking for land, and you may be able to determine distant locations by using your memory and the flow of water. A note to remember: Because an island has four sides (relatively speaking), waves will travel in a starburst pattern away from the island: in between each leg of the starburst, a different set of waves can exist. If you travel along the little rough intersection where two sets of these traveling wave patterns converge (moving in towards the convergence), you should be able to find land relatively soon.

If you’re able to find land, you can still use the raft as a shelter, if no other shelter is available. Without question you want to secure the raft to some sturdy object so high tides cannot take it away from you; you may someday need this raft again.

On land it’s a lot easier to build a fire, especially with the other items in your survival kit. (While it isn’t completely impossible to build a floating fire, you’d need quite a bit of driftwood.)

It’s important to use the theories and ideas covered in this entire series of articles to further your ability to handle a specific survival situation. While it is beyond the scope of the specific article to talk about general survival techniques, a good look at the basics from the other articles will serve to strengthen the content here. Specifically you should remember the following:

  • Communicate with someone where you’re going when you expect to be back, and at what point they should send out a search party.
  • Even though it may be heavy or large or inconvenient, always carry with you the survival kit that matches the scenario you will be involved in.
  • Deal with immediate health necessities: water – shelter – food (in that order; rescue should follow).

As you venture out on the open ocean, no matter how safe or secure you may feel in a big boat, and no matter how sure you are that nothing can go wrong, things can, will, and frequently do go wrong. Preparation is paramount and survival tools can have an immediate impact, but you must provide the willpower and the understanding and knowledge to use them.

©2011 Off the Grid News

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Canning Equipment 101: What You Need And Where To Get It

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When I first started canning years ago, I had just a few basic supplies: a water-bath canner, a jar lifter, a funnel, and some jars. In general, I prefer simplicity, and I don’t have room to store a lot of equipment that I only use a few times each year.

But, as my canning repertoire has grown, I’ve slowly accumulated a few more things. I tend to agonize over each purchasing decision, but I’ve never regretted buying canning equipment. In every case, the purchase saves me time and adds to my canning enjoyment. Before I buy any piece of canning equipment, I ask myself these questions:

1)     Can I use this equipment for more than one thing?

2)     Do its potential benefits justify the expense or room it takes up in my storage room?

3)     How often will I use it, and where will I store it?

Whether you’re a beginner canner or an old veteran, you may wonder what’s available and what you really need. Read on to learn everything you need to know about canning equipment.

Water-Bath Canner or Steam Canner

The very first piece of equipment you’ll buy is probably a water-bath canner or a steam canner for processing acidic foods like peaches, jams, and applesauce. A water-bath canner is basically just a very large pot with a rack for the jars to sit on. Look for a stainless steel or aluminum model at hardware stores, thrift stores, and most large retail stores. Buy one large enough to hold at least six quart-size bottles. You’ll also find canners at thrift stores or yard sales. Just make sure it comes with a lid and has handles to carry it from the sink to the stove.

Steam canners are surrounded by controversy because the USDA has deemed them unsafe. However, several other studies contradict this position. I own a water-bath canner and for years, I believed steam canners were unsafe. Recently, though, I’ve started doing some research into steam canners, and I just might have one in my future. My current home has a glass-top stove—a problem with most water-bath canners. Steam canners are a lot lighter, use less water, and heat up more quickly.

Pressure Canner

Once the canning bug bites you, you’ll probably want a pressure canner. Low acid foods, including most vegetables, meats, and soups, must be cooked in a pressure canner, which cooks the foods at high enough temperatures to destroy all bacteria. Pressure canners have either a dial gauge or a weighted gauge to measure pressure.

Buy a stainless-steel canner that comes with at least a one-year warranty. This will most likely be the most expensive piece of canning equipment you purchase. If you do a bit of scrounging, you might find an old one at a yard sale or thrift store, but make sure the lid fits securely and the dial gauge is accurate. There should also be no pitting or gouges in the metal, as this can weaken the canner and make it prone to failure.

New DVD shows you all the basics and techniques of preserving this years harvest…

Jars and Lids

Your mom might have used old commercial spaghetti sauce or mayonnaise jars for canning, but this is a big no-no. These jars aren’t designed for multiple uses and may crack or even explode in a steam pressure canner or water bath. Buy jars made specifically for canning and check them every time you use them for nicks and cracks. Check at yard sales or ask around. My elderly neighbor gave me boxes and boxes of canning jars she no longer used.

You’ll also need some lids and rings. Traditional rings can be used over and over. I’ve got some that are probably at least twenty years old. Unfortunately, lids can only be used reliably once—a fact that irks me every year. You can find both rings and lids at grocery stores, hardware stores, or online retailers.

Recently, I discovered reusable lids from a company called Tattler. At first, I thought it was a gimmick, but they really do work and come with a lifetime guarantee. They cost more, but I love the idea that I can use them forever. Now that’s true self-sufficiency. You can get the regular mouth size here and the wide mouth size here.

Steam Juicer

I balked at buying this one for a long time, but now it’s one of my favorite pieces of canning equipment. Put any fruit in the top chamber and the steam softens it so the juices flow easily from a surgical tube right into your clean jars. I use this to extract juice quickly and cleanly from chokecherries, grapes, berries, and even my neighbor’s crab apples.

Food Mill

Early on, I bought a small food mill at my local hardware store. It turned out to be a huge disappointment. It held only a small amount of food at a time, and the work was arduous and slow. Since then, I’ve upgraded to a larger food mill that attaches to the tabletop. These mills have adjustable sieves to control how fine the puree is. They work wonderfully for making applesauce and jams or processing tomatoes and pumpkin. I also use my large food processor for making batches of salsa and spaghetti sauce.

Accessories

Of course, you don’t need every canning accessory you might see online or in hardware stores, but there are a few that are indispensable. First, of course, are a funnel and a jar lifter. You’ll also want a heavy-duty oven mitt for lifting jars out of hot water. I like the non-stick silicone mitts for this job.

I have a friend who swears by her apple peeler-corer-slicer, but I’m unconvinced. I’ve borrowed it once or twice to make applesauce, but I feel like it takes away an awful lot of the fruit along with the peel. Besides, it’s messy and cumbersome. I prefer a plain old paring knife for this job. I do love my cherry pitter for processing cherries. And of course, a few large bowls, hefty cutting boards, measuring cups, wooden spoons, and a good set of knives are indispensible.

©2012 Off the Grid News

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How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If You Can’t Get Your Bug-Out Bag

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How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If Your Bug-Out Bag Is Destroyed

Image source: Pixabay.com

The need for making sure you have the necessary equipment and supplies for survival can’t be overstated. While it is theoretically possible to survive off of what you simply find, the reality is that the less you start out with, the worse your chances are of survival. That’s why people store items in survival kits.

But what if you can’t get to your survival kit, bug-out bag, everyday carry bag or get-home bag? What then? While we like to think that we keep ourselves equipped and supplied at all times, the reality is that there are always times when we’re not. What do we do in those times? Or what do we do if our home is destroyed and we can’t get back in to pick up our bug-out bag?

A lot would depend on the disaster that was happening and how much warning you’d have. But there are some cases that would make it impossible. Maybe they’re not very likely, but they do exist.

Take a nuclear war, for example. Granted, we’re not living in the Cold War anymore and the chances of a nuclear confrontation have been reduced drastically. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Both Russia and the United States still have large stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with other countries having considerably less. Rogue countries would like nothing more than to detonate such a bomb in America.

But there are many other things that could make it impossible to get back home, such as an earthquake, a chemical spill, a major storm or certain acts of terrorism. In any of these instances, you might suddenly find yourself without your bug-out bag or the ability to go home and get it.

This Crazy New Device Can Start A Fire Even In The Worst Conditions

That’s why you need at least one spare bag or kit, hidden in an alternate location. This set of gear might not be quite as good as your main bug-out bag, but it should still cover all of the bases, giving you enough to live off of. It should also have the necessary food and other supplies that you’ll need to stay alive. Ideally, it would be a mirror image or your bug-out bag, but the reality of cost will probably force you to go with some lesser expensive options.

For that matter, why stop at one? If an extra set of gear is a good idea, why not have two or three of them, secreted in different locations? Not only will that help ensure that you have access to them, but that you have access no matter where you are.

How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If Your Home Is Destroyed

Image source: Pixabay.com

Your spare kits should also include at least one good sturdy set of outdoor clothing, a jacket and a good pair of walking shoes. Odds are that when you are away from home, you won’t be dressed for heading out into the wilderness, so you’d better make sure you have what you will need. Bugging out into the wild in a shirt and tie or a short dress just doesn’t work out all that good.

The other thing to consider hiding with your spare kits is weapons. If you have a concealed carry license and are carrying every day, then that might not be much of an issue; but if you don’t, then any weapon you stash with your backup kit would be the only one you’ll have.

Find a Good Place to Stash It

Stashing your backup kit too close to home totally negates its purpose. On the other hand, you don’t want to stash it so far from home that you can’t get to it within a day, even if you’re on foot. So, you need to pick the location or locations carefully, making sure that they are someplace you’ll be able to get to.

If you own a business that’s a ways away from your home, that might be an excellent place to make a stash. For that matter, you might want to do more than just stash a bug-out bag there, splitting up your stockpile and keeping part of it at your business. That gives you a secondary bug-in location, if you can’t use your home.

Another option is at someone else’s house if you have a like-minded friend who lives in an appropriate area to leave your stash. That could even be a reciprocal agreement, where you keep a kit at their house and they keep one at yours. Doing it that way will motivate them to say yes and probably to leave your kit alone, so that it’s ready when you need it.

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A third possibility is a storage rental. These are available all over the place and some of them are quite inexpensive, especially if you’re just renting a small one. Like your business, this would provide you with a place where you have room to store more than just a bug-out bag, for a small monthly fee. While most of these places say that they’re only open during the day, if you can get over the fence during an emergency, you can pick your stuff up at night, too.

Finally, you can always consider burying your spare kit in the middle of nowhere. There are a number of ways of waterproofing equipment that you want to bury underground, such as using PVC pipe or a five-gallon bucket. Burying it will make it hard for others to find so that it hopefully won’t be bothered. Just make sure that nobody sees what you are doing so that it won’t be stolen. (Recommended: How To Build A Waterproof Underground Cache On A Budget.)

There are two problems with burying a stash. The first one is making sure that you have good landmarks to find it once again. Remember that some landmarks may disappear, such as trees that die. So have more than one set of landmarks that you can use. Secondly, you’ll need something to dig it up with. That can be a problem if the soil has a lot of clay in it or is difficult to dig in for some other reason.

Don’t Stop There

Having a spare set of gear is probably the most important reason to set up a survival stash. But let me give you one more. That’s to stash extra food. A typical bug-out bag has only three days worth of food in it. That’s not enough, as far as I’m concerned. So you might want to create some stashes which are just food.

These stashes will be easier and cheaper to set up, because you don’t have the cost of all the equipment. You can easily stash five days worth of food in a five gallon bucket and bury it somewhere, giving you accessible food when disaster strikes.

Do you have secondary caches? What advice would you add? Share your suggestions in the section below:

Could You ‘Live Off The Land’ With Your Gun If Necessary? Read More Here.

The post How To Guarantee Your Survival Even If You Can’t Get Your Bug-Out Bag appeared first on Off The Grid News.

1 Thing Everyone Is Missing In Home Defense

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Home Defense

Home Defense

When someone buys a gun for home defense, they tend to fall into one of three categories. These categories are based on the amount of thought an individual puts into their planning. Although you may find yourself falling in between two categories, these distinctions should help you see any improvements you can make in your home defense plan.

The first category—we’ll call it Category A—is an individual who buys his or her first home defense firearm. They buy a box of ammo and load the weapon; they then put it under the bed, in the nightstand, or in the gun safe. There really isn’t any more to their preparation. Yes, having a gun is better than throwing a rock, but honestly, at this level of planning, that’s about all you can say about it.

The next category, B, is the person buys their weapon, buys quite a few boxes of ammo, and becomes proficient with their weapon. They keep it loaded and in a safe, easy-to-access area. They maintain proficiency and are most likely considered to be a gun guy or gal. And while the level of defense is on a whole different plane than Category A, it can still be better.

The third and final category—you guessed, C—is the planner. They know having the weapon and being proficient in it is only a stepping-stone to proper home defense. This article will examine what seemingly everyone misses in home defense — planning.

Proper Weapon Selection

First off for the planner, is weapon selection. Proper weapon selection is based on a few important factors. You want to be able to bring enough gun to the fight without endangering others in the process. There are three main places people live. You have the cities and suburbs, and then you have the rural folks. Each of these areas is distinct and has its specific requirements.

City and Suburb Home Defense

When living in the city in place like townhouses and apartments, over penetration is a big deal. Defending yourself should never put your neighbors or family in danger. Something like a rifle or even some twelve-gauge shotgun rounds can present a danger inside an apartment. Older apartments and townhouses built from brick have a much lower chance for over penetration, but modern sheet rock is a different story. The same goes for houses in the suburbs; some suburban homes will be made from brick, while others could be made from vinyl siding or other thin materials. So what kind of weapon does a city or suburb dweller needs to protect their home?

When it comes to over penetration, experiments have been conducted over and over, and all serious defensive rounds penetrate drywall and sheet rock. Even twelve-gauge number four penetrates walls. So what does this teach us? First those city and suburban folk have to learn to be a darn good shot. Second, round selection is critical. Reduced-recoil shotgun rounds, the kind favored by police, have a perfect place here. They are still potent man stoppers, perhaps even more so than their full-powered counterparts, but the best part about these rounds is that the reduced recoil means reduced penetration on walls and bad guys. The pellets are much less likely to go through the bad guy and continue on into the walls behind him.  Should you miss, these rounds will lose a lot of velocity fast, especially after going through a wall.

Handgun rounds like the .45 ACP and 9mm are also well suited. By nature, handgun rounds never travel as far as rifle rounds. Special rounds like the Mag Safe SWAT round are excellent choices. These rounds are pre-fragmented to aid in breaking apart and not penetrating through the bad guy. I suggest these rounds to anyone who wants to defend their home with a handgun. I would go as far as to say that this is the best compromise of power and safety one can use.

Rural Home Defense

Rural folks have it much easier to defend their homes. When the homes are anywhere from hundreds of yards to miles apart, your selection opens up a bit. Over penetration inside the home is still a concern, however. Putting your family at risk is counter intuitive to self-defense.  The rural defender has the advantage of knowing if anything is at risk behind the bad guy; he has a lot less to worry about.  The same standard of shotgun and handgun still applies here, as both are excellent choice.  A rural resident also has the option of using a rifle if they know their family is secure. In a home with no children, the rural defender knows the only other resident is his wife and most likely knows exactly where they are.

A rural resident should still own a rifle if they have chosen a shotgun or pistol for home defense. In a rural area, you have a much better chance to encounter feral, rabid, or aggressive animals. The ability to engage a wild and dangerous animal at long range is a much safer alternative. Men and women living on the border also have to deal with the potential for dangerous illegal aliens, including criminals and drug smugglers. The ability to be properly armed to engage these threats is critical.

Beyond the Weapon

Weapon selection plays an incredibly critical role in home defense, but it isn’t everything. Planning beyond the weapon is a key to success. The first step is proficiency with your weapon. Seeking out proper instruction and training is important. Simple weapons familiarization and target practice can save the day. All the fancy mag changes and shooting stances don’t mean diddly if you can’t hit your target or know how to apply proper remedial action.

Next is making sure your partner is proficient your firearms or their own. My wife dislikes my twelve-gauge pump shotgun; its recoil is too heavy, and she’s never been comfortable with it. She’s a dead shot with her .38 special though.

Next piece of equipment is a good flashlight. I have a weapon-mounted flashlight on my shotgun, and my wife has her ultra-bright Side Winder flashlight. Her flashlight has multiple settings, one white light, one red light, and one blue light. Light discipline is also important; specifically, learning when to use your flashlight should be part of your training. It should be used when you know you can’t see anything in the next room, and the room is very likely to house the predator. A flashlight turned on too early will reveal your position.

A piece of equipment you may have never thought about is a good pair of ear protection. Firing a weapon indoors is ridiculously loud. In Afghanistan I suffered permanent loss of hearing from firing a machine gun inside a building.  There are expensive electronic ear protectors that amplify noises below a certain decibel point and mute noises louder than a certain decibel point. These would probably be the best to have, but they are expensive.  My wife and I both have an inexpensive eight-dollar set we bought to double as both our range and home defense ears.

Next is something to carry your ammunition. At night I tend to sleep in a pair of basketball shorts and a shirt. My wife is in pajama pants and a shirt as well—not exactly the best tactical wear. She luckily has pockets she can put a couple of speed loaders in, but I prefer a bandolier belt for shotgun ammunition. It carries twenty-five rounds and cost five bucks.

The Plan

We have the gear and we have the guns; now we need to use the most effective weapons we have, and it’s contained in the six inches between your ears.  It shouldn’t just be your plan; it’s your family’s plan. Each plan will have to be different to meet different needs, to accommodate different size families and homes. A plan should be simple and known by everyone in your home. Your plan should not be to clear your home and engage the intruder. Your plan should be to get you and your family to a safe location.

My family’s plan is simple. In the event an intruder is in our home, we grab our weapons, our ear protection, and extra ammunition. Next, my wife and I quietly and carefully move to our son’s room. I cover down the hallway as she grabs our son from his bed. We again quietly move back to our bedroom, while she carries our son and I provide the security.

Once we are back in our room, she takes our son to the master bathroom, which is only accessible through our room. On the way, she takes her cell phone and calls the police. I cover the door at an offset angle with my shotgun, and we wait until the police arrive.

This is our plan for a nighttime break in. In the case of a home invasion, we have a different plan that is still very similar. My wife gets our son, and I cover her. If possible, we retreat to a safe location and call the police.

These are my views on home defense, the equipment I prefer, and some examples of my family’s plan. While you may have different preferences, it doesn’t change the fact that you need to take planning seriously. Owning a gun is simply not enough. Engage the weapon between your eyes, and your chances of safely defending your family will increase tenfold.

The post 1 Thing Everyone Is Missing In Home Defense appeared first on Off The Grid News.

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