“Needful Things” refers to that group of items you would want to have on hand in hard times: say like those two situations mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The perspectives are from:

#1. Kreeve at “on Point Tactical” (onpointtactical.com/Blog via lifeaftertheoilcrash.net – 3/11/10)

#2. James Rawles at survivalblog.com – 3/11/10

#3. Prudent Home – today

It should be noted that none of the lists of items by any of the authors were presented by them as complete and we’re only giving our readers a few items from each list to give a “take” on their views:

#1. “What Tools Will I Need?” by KReeve:

• “… I have a multimeter for electrical issues along with both an electrical and butane soldering iron and lots of solder, wire, and misc electrical parts …”
• “For metal work I have an assortment of files and hacksaws. … .”
• “For carpentry, I have an array of wood working tools. … saws framing hammer, … square, chisels, hand powered drills, … .”
• “For gardening, I have shovels, …, post hole digger, rakes, and hoes.”
• “For firewood I have a chainsaw, … spare bar and chains, files, … oil and gas. I have bow saws and extra blades, and a large two man buck saw. …”

#2. “Some Needful Things” by James Wesley, Rawles (in no particular order)::
“Gamma Seal Bucket Lids

• K & M water proof match cases
• Gerber Omnivore LED Flashlights
• Leatherman Wave Multi-Tool
• CRKT Tanto Pocket Knives
• Maxpedition Gear Bags”

#3. “A Six-Pack” by PrudentHome:

• A couple of rolls (1” & 1 ½”) “X-Treme Tape” (Duluth Trading) for rapid repair of plumbing to radiator leaks (“withstands extreme heat and cold” and “ insulates to 8,000 volts“)
• A file-card to keep your files clean
• Extra charcoal for your back-up cooking stove, grill, Dutch Oven, etc.
• Extra open-pollinated/heirloom garden seed for two full gardening seasons
• Extra fertilizer for one full years gardening
• Moisture Proof Seed Saver Vials (Southern Seed Exchange) – 25, #14’s minimum.

We hope you’ll find some of these ideas useful or at the least stimulating enough to get you own analytical juices flowing. As KReeve said, “What Tools Will I Need?”

Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

We got the heads-up on this cooker from a good friend who was kind enough to introduce us to a close family member that has not only built one, but has modified/improved the plans you’ll read about and has some cooking experience that he can share also. Thank you “Cousin Martin”.

First, lets take a general look at the solar cooker as described by the posting at ‘wikia‘:

“The Fun-Panel solar cooker can be built in about an hour from a single cardboard box and some aluminum foil. This is significant, because traditional solar panel cookers such as the CooKit often require a large sheet of cardboard for construction. The Fun-Panel can also be adjusted more easily for different sun angles. This very powerful cooker is a true breakthrough.”

Here are some of the Fun-Panel’s advantages:

• “It’s easy to figure out how to cut and fold the cooker using the cardboard from half of a single box — you don’t need a big sheet of perfect cardboard. Every US Post Office sells a large cube-shaped box (20” x 20” x 20”) for about $6 that can be used to make two Fun-Panels.
• All cuts are 90 (degree) cuts — no curves.
• It is easily scaled to the size of cardboard box you have on hand.
• You can cook at all sun angles including low sun angles (morning and evening or high/low latitudes)”

Here are some of “Cousin Martin’s” observations/experiences:

• ’My experience with this very simple and VERY cheap-to-construct cooker has definitely convinced me of the practicality of solar cooking. It plainly has its limitations, but you really can cook without fire, without fuel, without smoke, and without electricity. Because it so cheap to build, it is very cost-effective. So many preparedness items involve $$ that are in short supply. This is one everybody can have, and the fuel is free.”
• “I cooked in the solar oven today. I put a sectioned sweet potato in at 11:30, in enough water to float the sections. I pulled it out about 2:00 and it was fully cooked. The ambient outside air temperature was 52 F and the official winds were NW at 12, gusting to 18mph, though I cooked in a wind-sheltered area. I re-oriented the oven twice during the cooking.”
• Here are three techniques “Cousin Martin” has found to improve the solar oven construction experience:
• “Scoring” the outer layer of the cardboard along the projects fold lines with a shallow cut using a razor knife
• Using a stiff straight-edge for the initial bends of the fold lines. Cardboard has a ‘bias“ because of its internal stiffening structures and it doesn‘t want to bend straight along just any line that happens to be drawn on it. The aforementioned scoring helps, but so does a stiff, straight board or piece of metal held along the fold line as one bends the cardboard.
• I used 3M general purpose aerosol spray adhesive (the Home Depot, <$5) to bond the aluminum foil to the cardboard after all the folds had been “worked into” the cardboard.”

A genuine “thanks” is appropriate here to PH’s friend and “Cousin Martin” for their observation and interest in providing preparing families with a great alternative cooking method for good times or bad.
Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

Note: You can read the first part of our review here.

‘Continued Review’: Chapter 2 – Basics

The really smartest teachers and instructors begin their class with the assumption that the students know little or nothing about the subject matter that’s going to be presented and they begin from the beginning.  Mr. Solomon begins his class the same way in his Chapter 2 – Basics:

• The author notes that vegetable plants are very much the product of human development and as such require an environment that is highly favorable to their development with sunlight, shelter, water, fertilizer and little competition from other (wild) plants or animals.
• “ … heirloom varieties, bred before the use of chemical fertilizers, are especially good at growing in ordinary soil.”
• Mr. Solomon breaks down vegetables, by name, in a chart according to the level of care needed to have them productive: Low Demand (carrots and turnip greens), Medium Demand (sweet corn and tomatoes), and High Demand (cauliflower and Italian broccoli).
• He points out that soils are richest where rainfall is just sufficient and therefore plants, animals and people are healthiest when growing in/on/from these soils. His example is prairie soil.
• The author continues by describing and defining a complete organic fertilizer (COF) he has developed, which along with compost  will provide optimum plant nutrition. He describes it as a “… concocted by the gardener.”
• On page 24, Mr. Solomon offers a key reason for growing your own vegetables: “… a comparison of nutritional tables published by the USDA over the past 25 years (covered in the March 2001 issue of Life Extension Magazine) shows that the average nutritional content of vegetables has also declined about 25 to 33 percent across the board — all vegetables, all vitamins and minerals. …”
• An excellent chart of “Fertilizing values of manures and simple fertilizers” is presented on page 28 and is sandwiched in between informed commentary on variables for the listed values with  suggested uses in/for your garden. Here it is also noted that the healthiest animals with the soundest nutrition provide the most valuable manure.
• In his section on Increasing soil fertility, Mr. Solomon shines by speaking to a broad economic range of readers and enabling almost anyone to improve their soil in a step-by-step program.
• His last chart in Chapter 2  is “Soil improvement in a nutshell”. This chart discusses soil improvement in terms of the demands placed on the soil by the types of vegetables to be grown in it: Low demand, Medium Demand, and High Demand. Preceding and subsequent pages of the chapter discuss soil improvement with clarity by presenting definitions, examples, and usages/applications.
• In his chapter Summary, Mr. Solomon says, “This chapter has provided the bare minimum of information and some basic techniques. If you knew nothing more than this, and if you spread some manure and lime (or, better, manure and COF), dug the ground once a year, followed the vague instructions on the back of seed packets, put in some seedling and a few seeds, hoed the weeds, and did a bit of thinning, you would have a productive garden.” — He’s absolutely right.

Chapter 1 and 2 alone should give the idea that Mr. Solomon’s book isn’t just a good gardening book but an excellent gardening “reference book” also. It is and we’ll be continuing our review and discussion of subsequent chapters shortly.

Until a little later; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

Chapter I, con’t: “Size of your garden”

• “As a rough gauge, take the 2,00-square foot wartime allotment plot in the United Kingdom. Britain’s cool and frequently cloudy summers mean that most vegetables grow more slowly than they usually do in the United States or southern Canada. But on the plus side, the mild English winters allow gardeners in many areas to harvest frost-hardy crops year-round. The wartime British were not expected to make a complete family diet pot of 2,700 square feet of vegetables. Their staff of life was bread from the local baker. … Probably during the war years vegetables, including potatoes, did not make make up more than a third of the family’s total caloric intake.”
• “ … If your goal is to produce not half, but nearly all the calories and nutrition needed year-round, and your family can depend on the ordinary potato as their healthful staff of life, then you can add more land in order to produce sacks and sacks of nutritious spuds or sweet potatoes. … The good thing about potatoes is that working plots of this scale (from 500 t0 750 square feet per each adult depending on water conditions/SS) can be done entirely with hand tools. To produce the same amount of nutrition by growing cereal grains would require five to ten times as much land per person. The healthful potato is really the thing for getting through hard times.”

PH Comments: We are in strong agreement with Mr. Solomon in his comments regarding the nutritional value found in both Irish and sweet potatoes (and recommend growing both where possible) but again we part company as regards his method of gardening requiring relatively large amounts of land.

Based on our own experience, our observation that the average homeowner/gardener in America has significantly less land to work with than Mr. Solomon proposes,  and at least two major gardening methods that require relatively little land and have proved reliable/productive here and around the world: we support/advocate the more intensive gardening systems found in John Jevons’ “ ‘How To Grow More Vegetables’ “ and Mel Bartholomew’s “Square foot Gardening”.

We plan to continue reviewing Mr. Solomon’s excellent book (and to continue commenting where we think appropriate) coming up as he has produced a wealth of gardening information and insights for dealing with gardening in hard times.

Until a little later then: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

An Apology: We have missed a full week “plus” of posts due to illness within our family. Our health concerns seem to be diminishing with this brief time in treatment and we hope to have all well and about soon.

We have just a couple of post’s planned for this week with a full schedule beginning the next week. Thank you for your understanding.

Continuing Book Review – “ ’Gardening When it Counts’ “ by Steve Solomon: Introduction/Chapter I-  con’t:

“The coming hard times”

• “We are soon going to base our civilization on something other than oil … or else we aren’t going to have much of a civilization left. Soon, everything made with oil is going to cost a lot more; gasoline, food, clothing, transportation, heating of houses, etc. And after that, if oil is still the basis for almost everything we do, then everything is going to cost even more.”
• “… those practicing raised-bed intensive methods will discover that intensive use of land requires large quantities of water, manure/compost, and fertilizer.’
• “Water has become scarce in many places. … watersheds are becoming ever more degraded, lessening the recharge of groundwater.”
• “Chemical fertilizers and many organic ones too, are made with petroleum or natural gas, so they are going to become more expensive.”
• “This book is for people who must have a good result.”
• “The successful home gardener must start with strong seeds and truly healthy transplants of varieties that are dependable and productive.”
• “Actually, to veggie garden successfully you only need a few hand tools, used properly.”

PH Comments: We agree with most of Mr. Solomon’s statements. We sincerely question his observations/conclusions however regarding the use of raised/intensive planting beds as requiring “large quantities“ (what are “large quantities” here and how does that square with these intensive techniques being taught/used successfully in some of the most difficult terrain, climate and poorest countries in the world? – Check out and follow up on some of this work being done via Bountiful Gardens catalog) of  “…water, manure/compost, and fertilizer.”

Again, we are going over Chapter I carefully to establish where Mr. Solomon is coming from in his observations and conclusions. There’s plenty of room, in our view, for honest yet differing opinions as to what might work well or best in particular situations. We have an open mind.

Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

We’re going to do something a little different here at PrudentHome, as regards more traditional book reviews; we’re going to do a running book review and commentary. Each mid-week post over about a two month period of time (we plan on building in a couple of “open’ weeks within this time frame in order to allow for information that may be of urgent interest) we’ll present our continuing review with commentary.

Here’s why, because Mr. Solomon’s gardening book is one that deserves our special attention as it’s written especially for our times (and beyond?): hard times.

Here’s the beginning: Introduction -

“These days I feel fortunate to have retired to one of the world’s most remote places, Tasmania, a temperate south pacific island with a climate that is a lot like Oregon’s. From here I can enjoy a slight sense of detachment as I watch how the planet is going. But Tasmania is not self sufficient, so I am not nearly as detached as I wish I could be  about the hard times I foresee coming. I have the feeling that I should share some gardening knowledge I’ve accumulated with those who are probably soon going to need it, which is why I wrote this book.”

Here’s some of Mr. Solomon’s history, perspective and viewpoint:

• “I had a five-acre (two-hectare) homestead …”
• “In 1979 I created Territorial Seed company, …
• “During the 1980’s, when intensive (gardening) had become the standard practice, several things came together to teach me it was not the best way. Because I was running a seed company, I had to do a variety of trials. … Trials require that you grow plants far enough apart that each can develop to its full potential. One thing I noticed from doing this was that my trial plots didn’t need nearly as much irrigation as my intensive veggie garden. Another was that these well-separated plants got much larger; they tasted better than crowded vegetables did when they weren’t harvested promptly; and many vegetable species grown that way yielded more in relation to the space occupied, not less as I had read in books by intensive gurus.”
• “… I researched the nearly lost art of vegetable gardening without irrigating at all, which is mainly done by putting plants extremely far apart.”
• “These days I no longer raise my vegetables using the extreme intensive method that is still advocated by Everybody Else. And I irrigate much less than most people. If I did not have irrigation, I could still grow my garden. I believe I’ve worked out methods that best suit the coming hard times.”

PH Commentary: Please note here that Mr. Solomon has five acres of land on which to  plant his garden, he speaks very much from the viewpoint of a professional seedsman who has become disenchanted with the method (intensive gardening) used by “Everybody Else”  for some specific reasons: irrigation, harvesting-timing concerns and eventual yields, to name three..

High water use in intensive gardening is a very controversial conclusion as we understand it.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

The answer came to me driving home the next night after work: chapati.

I remembered a conversation I’d had a few months earlier with an Indian-born co-worker concerning the bread she was using at her meal.  She called it a chapati, it was round and flat and she said that it was a traditional bread in her family (and over a lot of India) and that it was simple and tasty requiring little preparation. She gave me the recipe then and there on a small piece of paper: whole wheat flour and water, with a little salt and oil being optional. You could cook it on a griddle or really any flat cookware such as a cast iron skillet.

Ideal!

Here’s the recipe she gave me in a more formal format from asianonlinerecipes.com

Chapatis Recipe:

Ingredients: 3 cups Fine wholemeal (wheat/PH) flour or roti flour

1 ½ teaspoon Salt or to taste

1 tablespoon  Ghee or oil, optional

1 cup Lukewarm water

Method:

• Put flour in mixing bowl, reserving about half cup for rolling chapattis.
• Mix salt through the flour in the bowl, then rub in ghee or oil, if used.
• Add water all at once and mix to a firm but not stiff dough.
• Knead dough for at least 10 minutes (the more it is kneaded, the lighter the bread will be.
• Form dough into a ball, cover with clear plastic wrap and stand for 1 hour or longer (if left overnight, the chapattis will be very light and tender).
• Shape dough into a balls about the size of a large walnut.
• Roll out each one on a lightly floured board (using reserved flour) to a circular shape (about six or seven inches in diameter per other sources/PH) to a circular shape as thin as a crepe.
• After rolling out chapattis, heat a griddle plate or heavy-based frying pan until very hot, and cook the chapattis, starting with those that were rolled first.
• Put chapati on griddle and leave for about 1 minute.
• Turn and cook other side a further minute, pressing lightly around the edges of the chapati with a tea towel or egg slice.
• This encourages bubble to form and make the chapattis light.
• As each one is cooked, wrap in a clean tea towel until all are ready.
• Serve immediately with butter, dry curries or vegetable dishes.

Here’s a bread for hard and really hard times that requires: no baking (and therefore no oven), no yeast, no oil (though optional), no salt (though optional), very little water, and very little hands-on time.

It’s a bread that is very nutritious, can be cooked fresh with each meal, may be stuffed or  used as a roll-up with almost any other available food, used as a flat bread, or folded over on one end used as a spoon/scoop for liquids or soup/stew-like foods. There’s almost no waste.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

Plastic, Liquid Medicine Dispenser: This dispenser is a single, contained unit consisting of a reservoir that holds about 2.5 ml (cc) of liquid medicine (originally) with an attached threaded dispensing nozzle and a screw-on top. Finally, a snap-on/off cap covers the nozzle and screw-on top.

This small, 2&1/4in. tall x 7/8in. wide x 3/4in. deep unit makes a great mini-oil dispenser after you expand the nozzle dropper’s opening and channel with your Swiss Army Knife’s leather punch blade (or similar tool). The foregoing procedure will let you get rid of any medicine residue by turning the unit upside down on a paper towel overnight and “load” the unit with a multi-purpose oil of your choice directly via oil can nozzle inserted into the nozzle of your new mini-oil dispenser.

This unit (formerly a dispenser for prescription liquid eye-drops) is now your field-kit oil dispenser that will deliver a surprisingly large number of discreet drops of oil to keep you moving parts moving and your metal surfaces from rusting.

Breath Mint/Candy Tins: We re-use our Altoid-type tins after wiping any residue from inside the now-empty tins with a small rag saturated with rubbing alcohol and letting air-dry. We use three sizes: a. 3/4in. deep x 2&½ in. wide x 3&3/4in. long (mints-type), b. 7/8in. deep x 1&1/2in. wide x 3&3/8in. long (chewing gum-type) and c. 5/8in. deep x 1&1/2in. wide x 2&1/2in. long (tiny-tin type).

Each type tin might find use as/in your mini-kits: fishing, first-aid, tool, survival, fire starting, or parts etc.

Please note that the ziploc-type pill pouches mentioned in Part II last week will fit nicely into tins a. and b. above and that your new mini-oil dispenser would fit well into a.

Plastic Test Tubes/”Tube Vaults”: These test tube shaped, screw capped containers are about 5.75in. tall x 1in in diameter. They will hold about 50ml (roughly 2 oz.) of liquid and are “…  made from food and pharmaceutical grade, crush resistant, polyethylene terephalate (PET).”

They are described as”Baby Soda Bottles” by one source (stevespenglerscience.com) and as “Tube Vaults” by another (countrycomm.com).

They appear to be nearly indestructible by crushing, dropping, etc and are light-weight. Their weakness seems to be that they are not flame proof and that extreme heat will melt them.

They would seem to have use as mini-cache tubes, food/ condiment containers for sealed foods/condiments for the back pack, or serviceable as almost any kit container. We just got a supply (15 for about $10 + postage) and are working them into our programs as we write this.

We’re mentioning them last because you’ll probably have to buy these as containers and not find them from re-use sources. We think they’re worth the bucks but take a look at the sources we’ve named, or kk.org/cooltools, and decide for yourselves.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers moving fast.

Prescription Pill Containers/”Bottles”: The ones we’re referring to are the plastic, screw-top variety that generally come in a an orange color, see-through, with a white top. They are cylinder-shaped and vary in size, happily, with our two most common sizes used being about 1& 1/4in. wide X 2&3/4in. high and 1&1/2in. wide X 3 &3/4in high.

We peel the labels off and wash the containers in a luke-warm, dilute, dishwashing solution and rinse. We then turn them upside down until dry and use them for around-the-house storage of small nuts and bolts, nails and screws, small parts for household equipment, and sewing paraphernalia. They also lend themselves to back-pack (BOB, WOB, GOOD, and Get-Home Bags) uses as mini-kit containers (fishing, medical, repair, parts, etc.) and auto kits of similar types and uses. Labeling is mostly kept to a minimum because of their see-through feature.

PH Hint: If you can’t find enough of them around your house (or in the size you need), check with older parents or grandparents: they’re almost sure to have some and maybe in just the size you need.

The Pill Pouch: I first ran into these little jewels a while back when my wife used them to separate and store our vitamins and medicine for a vacation trip. These zip-lock type little pouches ( about 1& 3/4in. high X 3in. wide) are heavier and more sturdy in construction than sandwich-type baggies and although you can see through them, they also have the convenient feature of a designated and prepared section on the side to enable you to indicate contents and/or use, notes, etc.

These little pouches are described as air-tight, and both moisture and spill proof. They also lend themselves to being reusable.

Please note that these small pouches, while excellent for their advertised purposes, would also find use in your mini-fishing kit (to separate: fish hooks, swivels, and split shot, etc.), your fire-starting kit (to hold a few vasaline-soaked cotton balls), your glasses-repair kit (separating screws and/from parts), your mini-medical kit (for a quick-find of any small, important item), or any other small kit you carry in your pack. Also, please note that they will fit nicely into the larger of the two prescription pill containers we’ve described in the preceding section.

PH Hint: I found that we didn’t have enough pill pouches to meet our current (and expected future)‘kit’ needs so we broke down and purchased fifty for less that than $2 at our local big box store.

Next time, we’ll continue our discussion of non-food containers and their uses. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers moving fast.

by Stephen Clay McGehee

It is amazing what can fit on today’s small USB drives, so if being prepared is important to you, it’s time to set up your own “Life on a Drive”. A standard piece of preparedness advice is to have a water-proof, fire-proof container with all of your important papers in it, and another with copies of those papers. A USB drive gives us more options, so let’s use them.

I began my own “Life on a Drive” project with a standard USB drive that can be purchased cheaply at any office supply store. A 2GB drive will work just fine, but as always, a larger drive gives you more space for more options. Start by going to www.portableapps.com to set up your USB drive with some basic (free) software such as a word processor, PDF viewer, email program, and whatever else looks interesting to you. Portable Apps allows you to simply plug your USB drive into any Windows computer and use your programs without leaving any trace on the host system. All your data and settings are saved to the USB drive – portable apps just uses the hardware and operating system of the host computer – nothing else.

This assumes, of course, that a computer and printer will be available at some point. While an extreme disaster may make your USB “Life on a Drive” useless, the incredibly small size and weight of a USB drive makes it well worth having even if there is only a low probability of having a computer available.

Once you have the portable apps system set up, start copying scanned images of your important papers and photos. Here are some ideas for what to include:

Scanned Images

• Passport
• Wallet contents (Driver’s License, credit cards, insurance cards, etc.)
• Recent utility bill to document your current place of residence
• Recent bank statement (to show account information)
• Investment statement (to show account information)

Text Files

• Contact information (name, email, phone, address)
• Central contact – who your family agrees to contact in case of separation.
• Family information – full name, date of birth, social security number, height, weight.

Photos

• Recent passport-type photos of your family members. Along with a good description, this can be used to quickly create a “Missing” poster to be distributed, or to distribute to various shelters

Family Information
The confusion that reigns following a large disaster means that family members could easily be separated. Having the information needed to reunite a family can be crucial. In 1998, I served as a radio operator in a Red Cross disaster shelter as wildfires burned large portions of our county. I had several requests from frantic people to try and help them locate other family members after they were separated. Having the right information can make it much easier to be reunited after a large-scale disaster. Planning to make sure that doesn’t happen in the first place is a much better way to go, of course.

Security
The information you will have on this drive must be protected! Make sure that all files that contain any sensitive information are encrypted.