Self-sufficient/preparedness living--Where to start?

[Joel_BC]

BarredBuff wrote a couple of great posts above. Others are offering good stuff, too.

BeccaJoVon, self sufficiency is relative, and the specifics of "preparedness" depend a lot on what you're aiming to prepare for. Moolie has described an impressive "72-Hour Survival Kit" for regional or community emergencies:
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=8983&p=22
(Go to post #218 in that thread, on the page that should show up when you click.)

Also, we had some good discussion on the topic of emergency room lighting, for times when you might have a power failure in your community or neighborhood:
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=11535&p=1

Maybe you're after more of a general approach or set of steps... in which case, the links I've posted here are just details.

 

[Joel_BC]

(mistaken post edit... removed by me)

 

[hqueen13]

What a great topic, and one close to my heart as we slowly approach being able to do what we only dream about right now.

One of my big deals will be not getting in over my head. It shouldn't be a problem, for the most part, but I think it is a mistake easily made. Sure I can handle 30 chickens, 15 rows of tomatos, and an acre of corn, and, and, and... Suddenly things are way too complicated, and it is harder than ever to take a step back and see the bigger picture to be able to regroup.

I guess "quality, not quantity" is important here.

 

[FarmerJamie]

And if you find yourself forcing yourself to do any of this, it's not worth the stress.

 

[moolie]

Wow, some great advice above

Definitely don't get in over your head. Pinpoint the things that are most important to you, and the most do-able for you. Start slow and know that any lifestyle changes that you may make (or want to make) really do mean an adjustment in thinking and living. Don't feel judged, either for living differently to others around you, or by people whom you may feel are further ahead or doing more than you. Do what is right for you, and your family, at this point in time. DO NOT go into debt in order to "get further ahead"--this is a total oxymoron, live within your means. If you find that something isn't working or isn't for you, change it.

Ask questions fearlessly, no question is a dumb one. :

We all come at this from different backgrounds, budgets, home and family situations--there is no one right way to be more self-sufficient. It is a journey, like so many things in life, rather than a destination. Each new skill learned is another mountain climbed

 

[the funny farm6]

Wow, some great advice above

Definitely don't get in over your head. Pinpoint the things that are most important to you, and the most do-able for you. Start slow and know that any lifestyle changes that you may make (or want to make) really do mean an adjustment in thinking and living. Don't feel judged, either for living differently to others around you, or by people whom you may feel are further ahead or doing more than you. Do what is right for you, and your family, at this point in time. DO NOT go into debt in order to "get further ahead"--this is a total oxymoron, live within your means. If you find that something isn't working or isn't for you, change it.

Ask questions fearlessly, no question is a dumb one. :

We all come at this from different backgrounds, budgets, home and family situations--there is no one right way to be more self-sufficient. It is a journey, like so many things in life, rather than a destination. Each new skill learned is another mountain climbed

This is very true!

 

[BarredBuff]

Wow, some great advice above

Definitely don't get in over your head. Pinpoint the things that are most important to you, and the most do-able for you. Start slow and know that any lifestyle changes that you may make (or want to make) really do mean an adjustment in thinking and living. Don't feel judged, either for living differently to others around you, or by people whom you may feel are further ahead or doing more than you. Do what is right for you, and your family, at this point in time. DO NOT go into debt in order to "get further ahead"--this is a total oxymoron, live within your means. If you find that something isn't working or isn't for you, change it.

Ask questions fearlessly, no question is a dumb one. :

We all come at this from different backgrounds, budgets, home and family situations--there is no one right way to be more self-sufficient. It is a journey, like so many things in life, rather than a destination. Each new skill learned is another mountain climbed

Excellent point!!! This used to be a thing for me, I wanted to just catch up to everyone.

 

[moolie]

Here is the post from my journal that Joel_BC mentioned above in case anyone is having difficulty finding it--I couldn't get directly to it from his link (took me to the first page of my journal):

More stuff from a few recent "preparedness" threads that I want to keep track of:

We have spent the last few months amping up our ability to evacuate quickly in case of wildfire (the Slave Lake AB fire helped to spur us on--wildfires completely decimated a town of 7000 a few hours north of us back in May, and we live in a suburban neighborhood on the edge of the city next to forested and grassland areas). The sunsets have been very red and the air smoky some days these past couple of weeks due to wildfires in the area and one never knows.

We have a grab list posted inside the back door coat closet of what to grab out of the closet (72-hour kit, emergency contact list, binder of important papers, passports, box of photo negatives and digital photo backup hard drive), the pet carrier is in the main floor laundry room, and everyone has a 72-hour kit at work/school (we get winter blizzards and there may be a time when everyone is stuck and can't get home so everyone has food, water, and basic supplies) plus the one here at the house, and we have the usual emergency kit in the car (first aid kit, basic tools, winter items).

The 72-hour kit at school is something that perhaps others don't do (and may not be feasible for younger kids) but our 2 teenagers each have 3 neoprene pencil cases in a drawstring gym strip bag in their lockers at their schools containing:

72-Hour Emergency Kit: Flashlight/batteries, Hand-warmers, Gloves, Toque, Socks, Matches, Candle, First Aid kit, Tylenol, Emergency blanket, Sewing kit, Duct Tape, Notebook/pen, Deck of cards, City map, $20 in coins, Emergency contact list

6 Water bottles and a 72-Hour Emergency Food Kit: 6 Granola Bars, 3 Trail Mix, 6 Fruit Leather, 3 cans Pork & Beans, 3 Fruit Cups, small Stainless Steel Bowl, Spoon, Emergency contact list

72-Hour Personal Hygiene Kit: Toothbrush, Bar of Soap, Washcloth Tablets, Sanitary Pads, individually wrapped Wet Wipes, Hand Sanitizer, Q-tips, Tissues, Emergency contact list

Each kid has an Emergency Contact list in each of the 3 kits as well as in their wallets with phone numbers for all family members including our out of town contact so they can check in either by cell phone or school land line. The bag 'o stuff fits easily into their school backpacks should they need to take it anywhere, and they also always have a change of clothing (gym strip) in their gym lockers plus whatever coat/jacket/outdoor layers they wore to school that day so we feel they are pretty prepared to go it alone for a while.

Hubs has a zippered nylon bag containing similar items (slightly different food choices plus a hand-crank radio, work gloves and basic tools) in his desk drawer at work.

eta: I should perhaps note that the reason the kids have $20 in coins, is because we don't have bills in Canada for $1 or $2 amounts anymore, so they each have a change purse of "loonies" ($1 coins) and "toonies" ($2 coins). Oh, and a "toque" (say "tuke") is a knitted hat in Canuck wink

Our main concerns when it comes to emergency preparedness are blizzards and wild fires, so we need to be both prepared to hunker down and take care of ourselves as well as to evacuate.

There is a website called www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net that recently asked their readers to take part in what they call the "seven day challenge", a series of one-day "emergency" events that were emailed out. I didn't get the emails, but found the website a while back in the midst of organizing our emergency supplies and our family did play along for the challenge. I'm sure you could go back and do the challenge after the fact to check each area of preparedness.

We found that we are pretty ready for power and water outages, to take care of our sanitary needs, and that we are nicely able to evacuate on short notice. We live in an arid area and have full water barrels under our 4 gutter downspouts (for non-potable use although I'm sure we could filter and boil in a pinch) and we have a 55 gallon water storage barrel in our basement (should get at least one more should we be waterless for more than a week). We also live near a creek from which we could gather water and purify it. We have crank flashlights, a solar-powered camping lantern/radio (saving for a crank model as well), and lots of candles/holders for light. We also actually have a bucket toilet and a couple of solar showers because my girls and I are Girl Guides (like Girl Scouts in the US) and we camp a lot throughout the year.

We would be ok with cooking without power because we have plenty of camping equipment and fuel plus a bbq with two tanks, but our only alternate method of heating our home is a not-too-efficient fireplace in our family room. We could make it work for a week or so if we blocked off the doorways out of the room with blankets and all huddled in that room, but our winter temps typically go down to the minus mid 20s Celcius.

Our lack of an alternate method of heating our home during an extended blackout (because we have a gas furnace with an electric fan) is our weakest area. We all have good down sleeping bags (and 4 good tents of various sizes) and know how to winter camp, but that's not really a long-term solution. We personally determined that we should save up for and purchase a wood stove, or wood cookstove, for our basement as an alternate heat source--which will also save us money as we have access to wood (just have to cut and haul).

Food-wise, I was brought up by a very stocked-up Mom (we lived on a remote island and the grocery barge didn't always come in every week) and I was taught how to preserve and cook by my Grandma and Oma, so we have plenty of food. Much is in the freezer, but I have been working on diversifying this storage by canning more meat (although most is frozen) and getting into dehydrating. Lots of canned fruit, tomatoes, and meals--but most of our veggies are frozen rather than dehydrated.

We are even prepared to evacuate our cat: her pet carrier is ready to go with 2 small stainless steel bowls, a gallon jug of water, a gallon pail of dry food plus a sample bag of cat treats (our pet store regularly gives us these), a gallon pail of kitty litter, and a small litter pan.

k0xxx, I'd be very interested to know what types of things you have in your "emergency procedures" binders--would you mind sharing the types of things you have organized? I'm sure many of us would be very thankful for any advice you can offer

We have a "grab" list by the back door coat closet (no coats, just shelves) where we store all of our camping equipment and emergency 72-hour kits, and we do have a bag containing our important documents stored there along with a box of our photo negs/old family photos not scanned yet and a hard drive of all our digital photos, but I'd love to be more organized as I'm sure we haven't thought of everything yet.

Thanks i_am2bz

I totally can't take credit for the kitty preparedness--I got the idea from the "seven day challenge" that I mentioned, someone commented that they had their kitty carrier all ready to go like that so we set ours up similarly. We had all the stuff, just not together in one place.

The challenges really made us think about things. We are used to doing things differently while camping, but not so much at home. It was the little things that got us--it's really an in-grained compunction to turn on light switches etc. even though you know the power is off. It's such a habit.

It's taken us a few months to get this prepared as well, our kick-start was a wildfire that decimated a town in northern AB back in May. We live two blocks from the edge of the city, where there is both grassland and forest that are tinder dry for most of the year since we get so little rainfall/snow throughout the year. So we started with the government of Canada preparedness website http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx and went from there, finding more sites as we googled. There are a lot of people out there with advice, and most of it is pretty good from our point of view, it just takes some searching.

The first thing that we did was to evaluate the different types of emergencies that may happen in our area, and the different scales of emergencies (local, regional, national). We "war gamed" the different scales, mainly because of the different responses and relief that would be involved depending on the scope of the emergency. We then divided the emergency plans into those three scales. Without going to grab one of the binders, I believe that we have things arranged something like this:

National
Multiple Terror Attacks
Nuclear Detonation/Emergency Eminent
Nuclear Detonation/Emergency Occurred
EMP Event Eminent
EMP Event Occurred
Pandemic

Regional
Multiple Terror Attacks
Nuclear Emergency Eminent
Nuclear Emergency Occurred
Earth Quake

Local
Earthquake
Wildfire
Winter Storm
Dam Break
RR HazMat

We have included monthly checklists of preps, as well as photos of Electrical and Gas shutoff points (in the case that someone other than my wife, daughter, or myself is helping).

BTW, when deciding on the minimum supplies that you would need to get through an emergency, take your location into consideration. In the case of the US, FEMA says for everyone to be prepared for 72 hours on their own. In reality, you should prepare for much longer, especially in rural areas. In the even of a large scale disaster involving one or more urban areas, the rural areas will be on their own pretty much until the larger population centers are taken care of. It just makes sense, in disaster relief, for aid to go into the areas of the greatest population first.

Thanks Mark! Lots of food for thought there, will have to do more research and work on our plans. Most likely for us to have to deal with are wildfires, blizzards, pandemic, drought, with a mild chance of tornado. We feel pretty well prepared for a week (need more water to go further) but have food, first aid, and light for months and cooking fuel for at least a month (maybe two). Our weak point is definitely home heating.

The RR HazMat is one that my hubs was always concerned about when we lived at our old house, which was 1/4 mile from RR tracks and a level crossing, we're much further away now. The nuclear issues are far less likely here, although I'm sure that Montana or Idaho has a nuke power station that could affect us if there was an accident (we have none in western Canada). We are well upstream of the local city water reservoir dams plus we are on high land that has never flooded (good drainage during thunderstorm flash-flooding, unlike much of the city), pretty much no chance of landslide/avalanche as we're nowhere near mountains, and also not much chance of earthquakes here so far away from any faults (although we used to live in Vancouver and learned all about what to do while we were both in school).

And a list of books that I've found helpful over the years:

Is there a thread that lists a few good SS books for those of us that are just getting started?

Not sure about an existing thread as I couldn't find anything with the Search feature, but a few books that have been super helpful in our family's journey toward more sustainable living have been:

Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century by British father and son duo Dick and James Strawbridge (the one I linked to above)

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It which is a compilation of several books by the late John Seymour (also from the UK)

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills which is a new printing of a 1970s Reader's Digest book (I have the old yellow cover version)

Any one of the books I've linked to above are a GREAT starting point, then you can move on to specific topics that you need more info on:

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving or the Canadian version: Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 Delicious and Creative Recipes for Today

Putting Food By by Ruth Hertzberg

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation (excellent resource)

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables by Mike & Nancy Bubel (excellent resource)

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzette Ashworth (excellent resource)

For gardening and food preservation information, google your local state university extension department and you can usually download tons of great info sheets of various topics and individual veg crops. Some that I've found very helpful include: Utah State and Oregon State. Locally I rely on a provincial publication called Alberta Yards & Gardens as well as gardening books by the late garden nursery owner and former Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, Lois Hole. "Sunset" and "Ortho" books on gardening are also great, often available from used book shops.

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew (borrow from the library or buy this one used, it's full of good info but he gets a little tiresome)

http://www.mysquarefootgarden.net/ is great for lots of free info on Square Foot gardening, and she offers "e-books" that you can print and put into a binder--I actually bought these last year when they were bundled together for something like $14 and the Planting by Colour title is very useful. It takes you through the gardening season week by week from starting seeds to harvest for your growing zone. The Gardening for Beginners title is great if you have never gardened before and want to start up quickly.

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening or and old copy of Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte (two of my fave garden books of all time!)

Organic Kitchen Garden by Julie Roberts (a lovely read about an old Victorian country house garden brought back to life with a combo of traditional and modern methods--beautiful photographs if you are into eye candy, and good gardening resource)

Homegrown Vegetables, Fruits & Herbs: A Bountiful, Healthful Garden for Lean Times by Jim Wilson (formerly of PBS series The Victory Garden) (an excellent resource full of solid vegetable gardening information with pages on individual veggies, herbs, and bush/tree fruits--super for beginners and experienced gardeners alike)

Gardening with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for a New Generation by Lynn Coulter (lots of info)

Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! by Patricia Lanza (I don't own this but have borrowed it from the library a few times)

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by Elliot Coleman and Barb Damrosch (I don't own this but have borrowed it from the library a few times)

Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison (I don't have this one, but have borrowed it often from the library and am on the lookout for a copy for myself--excellent resource that helped us organize our emergency preparation)

When there is no Doctor (free pdf file, super resource)

And more recently I have found a free online copy of The Have More Plan by Ed and Carolyn Robinson, which is a total 1940s blueprint (still remarkably useful today!) to homesteading and self-sufficiency.

 

[hqueen13]

Oh geez... more reading to do....
Gee thanks moolie as if I had copious spare time to read the books I have!!

 

[BeccaJoVon]

Oh geez... more reading to do....
Gee thanks moolie as if I had copious spare time to read the books I have!!

There is a lot to absorb, but I am very thankful for all the help!