Want to learn more about generators?

My friend Lisa Bedford ("The Survival Mom") just underwent a ten-day power outage in Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. Needless to say, their generator was a life-saver. They were in a position to help neighbors as well.

Because of the huge spike in interest in the aftermath of a series of natural disasters, Lisa is holding a mini summit about different kinds of generators ... which also happens to be her husband Steven's specialty.

The summit will be comprehensive. "We have a plan for people who can't afford the big standby but still need something semi-permanent to keep their homes energized," she wrote me, "and then we have a lot of other suggestions for different types of generators, including power banks. We will touch on solar a little bit as well."

Additionally, she says participants will "get spreadsheets to help them with calculations, and a private and temporary email address so their questions can go directly to Steven. I have a private Facebook group set up, and then we have a series of four classes coming up on Sunday afternoon. It's all going to be recorded, of course, so people don't need to be there for the live sessions."

If you're interested, please register here.

Launching another NaNoWriMo project!

A friend (Lisa Bedford, the Survival Mom) and I decided to embark on Camp NaNoWriMo during the month of April.

Lisa and her daughter are doing a joint project and trying their hand at fiction for the first time. I'm pushing through to do a rough draft of my next Amish inspirational (working title: Thomas' Redemption). Onward!

Is anyone else doing this April madness?

How to make your own yeast

My friend Lisa Bedford, the Survival Mom, has the niftiest post up: How to make your own yeast.

A lot more people are baking at home these days, and yeast has become a premium item. In some places, it's in short supply. Lisa offers a wonderful tutorial on a DIY option for this bread stable. Go check it out.

Oh no, not another hurricane...

It's becoming chillingly familiar:

Yet another natural disaster is targeting the weary and hard-hit people on the southern and southeastern coasts.

I get email updates from Lisa Bedford (the Survival Mom), and this morning I received this: A Round-Up of Hurricane Survival Resources.

And it occurred to me, not for the first time, the dedication and effort of this woman to help people prepare themselves for life's cataclysmic uncertainties.

If you're in the possible path of Hurricane Nate, please please take advantage of Lisa's recommendations.

Backlog of podcasts

Oops -- my bad -- I've been neglecting to post my podcasts with The Survival Mom Radio as they come available. I'll try to do better.

From September 18: Getting Ready for Winter

From September 25: Looking Meat in the Eye

From October 2: Fall Gardening Preps

Getting out of the cities when the time comes...

There is a fascinating article up today on SurvivalBlog called A Husband and Wife's Thoughts on The Crunch. It's written by a couple who lives on an historic farm and who frequently have guests and visitors anxious to learn about rural life.

"Lately," they write, "the two of us have been talking about world events and the need for folks to organize in like-minded communities or to acquire 'survival' retreats. But there is something that has puzzled us. As long time readers of SB, we have of course taken notice of the many letters and articles about bug-out-bags and getting out of the cities 'when the time comes'."

"Many people seem to think they need to get the just right gear and vehicle in order to leave the cities and go someplace else in the collapse because the cities won't be livable. It seems to us that kind of thinking is a bit backwards. If someone who has spent a life in the city suddenly tries to move to the country in the time of turmoil and confusion, it's the country that will be unlivable. 'Country liv'n' is just so vastly different from city life, that few city folks are likely to be able to make it."

See the whole cartoon HERE:

What this couple articulated so well in their article is that just getting to a rural place in a "bleep" situation isn't enough. In fact, it's nothing. Sure, you might be safe from roving gangs of marauders, but then you're faced with the immediate and pressing need for food, water, and shelter. Camping in the woods offers none of that, at least for any length of time.

It always cracks me up to hear the Rambo types announce that they'll just camp in the woods and bag a deer to feed their families. To which I want to reply, have you ever hunted? Can you field-dress a deer? What do your wife and kids think of the bloody mess you're creating? How will you fend off predators (two and four-legged) while dressing the deer? And most important of all, how will you preserve the meat?

And this assumes, of course, that you're even able to shoot a deer to begin with. Because believe me, if you're out in the woods hunting because you're desperate for food, there are likely to be thousands of others out there with the same idea. There won't be a deer around.

In short, this comes down to what I've been urging for a long time: if you feel the need to learn about sustainability, start now. I'm not talking about the urban definition of "sustainability" where you take a bus instead of owning a car and recycle your aluminums; I'm talking about going as rural and low-tech as possible, starting now.

Yeah yeah, I can hear your litany of excuses now, about why you can't leave the city and move rural... and I don't want to hear them. I'm not saying your excuses aren't totally valid and entirely truthful; I'm just saying I've heard them all already. But those excuses, however valid, won't hold water if your city is crumbling around your ears, there's no food to be had, and you need to escape.

That's why this couple who wrote in to SurvivalBlog are urging you to walk the walk NOW. "If you are already living your TEOTWAWKI existence as you believe it will be," they write, "you won't much need trade goods for getting what you may need. You'll have already gathered the tools of self-sufficiency... The problem is, if you haven't already been living in 'the country' and acquiring the knowledge, skills and goods you'll need, you will be just like [a] fish out of water... You'll have a very hard time functioning in a strange environment. You won't know what you need (except by reading someone else's barter list. Viagra! Really?) Simply put, you won't know how to live if you only know a pre-crunch 'walking on cement' life."

In other words, the knowledge and skills and equipment (and community!) necessary for a successful post-bleep life don't happen with a three-day bug-out bag on your shoulders and a rifle in your hands. It comes from years of trial and error. It comes from experience. It comes from failure. Because the worse -- the very worse -- attitude you can have about country living is, how hard can it be?


I suppose I identify so strongly with this letter because of the constant struggle Don and I have even after so many years of rural life. Since we knew virtually nothing when we first embarked on our rural adventure, everything we do here has been a strong uphill battle, an incredibly steep learning curve. Everything is more expensive than we anticipated (and/or is correlated with a lower income than most people are comfortable with). Building up a self-sufficient farm from scratch is virtually impossible from bare land, not without lots of money and (more importantly) lots of time and dedication. And if you're living in the city (and this assumes you have a piece of land to begin with...!), you simply don't have the time and dedication to build a homestead.

In our case, we had the advantage that the biggest infrastructures on our farm were already in place when we bought this land, namely a house and outbuilding, and rudimentary fencing. Imagine how much more time and money it would have taken had we needed to build a house, buy the fencing materials (did you know T-posts are now going for about four bucks each?), build outbuildings (believe me, building the new barn last year was expensive enough!)... and this doesn't even begin to address the complications of gardening with our short seasons and hard clay soil, the intricacies of caring for livestock, and the challenge of growing wheat.

I guess my point to this rant is, don't have a Rambo mentality. Don't depend so much on your bug-out bags that you believe once you escape an urban environment, everything will be ducky. Don't think you can acquire knowledge post-bleep.

Here's a guest post I wrote for The Survival Mom on bugging out to the country.

This couple concludes their article with these prescient words:

"I will close by saying, forget the bugging out bags. There's a world waiting for you to discover. You can live in it now. You can learn it now. If you don't, well, it may soon be too late. ...[I]t's a whole different world when crunch time comes. And you better have learned what those differences are while you still have time."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Survival Mom -- book review

Today is an exciting day -- it's the release date of Survival Mom Lisa Bedford's new book, appropriately entitled Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios.

Lisa and I have been cyber-buddies for about a year, and I was happy to receive an advanced copy of her book with an eye toward doing a review of it. Well oh my goodness, it eclipsed all my expectations -- it's an invaluable reference. I've used it as such during my own writing.

The nice thing about Lisa's writing is she focuses on ordinary folks. Suburbia. Families. Just plain people. You know, the ones who are struggling in a hard economy, who don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on underground bunkers, who have kids in school and a drawer-ful of unpaid bills. In other words, she's one of us.

Her book covers all the facets necessary to help ordinary people prepare for hard times, whether those hard times are economic, natural disasters, or other difficulties. Her writing is folksy, humorous, down-to-earth, practical, and above all useful.

She also doesn't pull any punches about the tendency to deny reality -- or as she so succinctly puts it, it's time to put on the big-girl panties and face facts.

Her book is a wonderful blend of the serious and practical, but written with warmth and humor. She interviews people who have survived difficulties -- natural disasters, home invasions, job loss, etc. In all cases, these anecdotes illustrate one single unifying factor: prepared people are far more likely to survive than unprepared people.

If you want a one-stop guide for preparing, get Lisa's book. You won't be disappointed.

On the radio!

I'm honored to be among the first guests featured on The Survival Mom's new Blog Talk Radio program.

The nice thing about this format is you can listen from anywhere (unlike a radio program, which is usually regional) and you can also call in and/or submit questions.

This is Lisa's first excursion into radio and she is über excited about the new format. Tune in and give her some support!

Guest Post: The Survival Mom

I'm honored to have Lisa, The Survival Mom, send this guest post on homeschooling. After reading the post below from the pastor regarding socialization, I think this message is an important one.

Enjoy!
_______________________________

SMART and STUPID Homeschooling

For the past seven years I have homeschooled my two kids. My daughter is now entering 7th grade, and my son will be a 4th grader. I’d like to say it’s been smooth sailing, but I have made some pretty stupid mistakes. I’ve also made some smart decisions that have ultimately been responsible for seven wonderful years. Here are a few of the smartest and stupidest things I’ve done.

SMART: We decided to homeschool long before my kids were ready for school. This gave me lots of time to research and time for our families to get used to the idea. All the other grandkids were headed off to public schools. Ours weren’t. That took some getting used to.

STUPID: It was futile to argue with family members about our decision. With time, they saw that our kids were turning out just fine. In fact, just two years into our homeschooling venture, I heard my mother-in-law comment about a particularly well-behaved kid, “I’ll bet he’s homeschooled!”

SMART: I introduced my kids to literature that I thought was too advanced for them. We either read it aloud, listened to the unabridged recorded versions, or they read it on their own. I was so proud of my daughter for reading Little Women, Robin Hood, Mary Poppins, and other unabridged classics that no longer appear on public school reading lists.

STUPID: Initially, I thought we would always use the same curriculum. We began with an activity based curriculum, KONOS. It was fun building our own model of a medieval castle and turning a chicken into a preserved mummy, but after a while, it became burdensome to constantly have major projects to prepare for. When I saw that our next unit included making leather moccasins by hand, I started looking for something different.

SMART: We formed friendships with other homeschooling families. We’ve vacationed with one particular family at different times of the school year, gone on numerous field trips together, and it’s turned into a whole-family friendship.

STUPID: I was naïve in not realizing that politics and personalities can cause problems within homeschooling groups. The first group we joined was wonderful, or so I thought, until I learned that one of the moms had taken a singular dislike to my six year-old daughter. The woman was deranged, but we ended up leaving the group when we realized she had influenced other families and we no longer felt welcome. Yes, it was bizarre and maybe not the norm, but I was probably too trusting.

SMART: I’ve been willing to stop using a particular curriculum or method when I found it wasn’t working. Saxon Math was a terrific choice when my daughter was in kindergarten, but halfway through first grade, she started freaking out when faced with a page of dozens of math problems. After a few weeks, I switched to Singapore Math, and it was a much better fit.

STUPID: At times we really overdid it with field trips. In our city, there are dozens of possible field trips. We belong to an email loop that informs me of every ballet, play, and other cultural event, all with unbeatable ticket prices. After two years of one, and sometimes two, field trips a month, I realized it was too much. The field trips were great but between traveling to and from and then a good dose of socializing at the event, we ended up losing entire school days.

SMART: Choosing the best over the good. Field trips and extracurricular activities are all well and good, but ultimately, you have to remember that you’re supposed to be doing school! One year, we dropped everything: a Tuesday morning Bible study, AWANAS, ballet, and sports. It wasn’t that those things weren’t important. We had just started spending less time with school, and I needed to refocus. Bit by bit we’ve added some of those activities back into our schedule, but I constantly have to maintain a balance and drop the good when it starts overtaking the best.

STUPID: At first, I didn’t think I needed guidance. I was maybe a little too cocky my first year of homeschooling. After all, I had been a classroom teacher for several years and had trained teachers, so homeschooling would be a piece of cake, right? Well, not quite. I had some real difficulties with coming up with a schedule that worked for us. I also hadn’t counted on trying to do school with a three year-old climbing all over me, the table, and the math manipulatives. It was our third year when my daughter was in second grade, that we started using curriculum that came with a weekly schedule. It was such a good feeling to check off each activity and lesson and a little humbling for this know-it-all.

SMART: Not trying to duplicate school at home. We’ve only used one or two books I suppose could be called textbooks, and my kids have never sat at desks. Years ago, before we began homeschooling, I saw a poor little eight year-old boy sitting at his family’s kitchen table with a stack of textbooks and workbooks two feet high. I felt sorry for him and knew instinctively that this wasn’t how I wanted to homeschool. We’ve always been, what I call, casual homeschoolers. Definitely not the textbook/desk type.

STUPID: I tend to be pretty independent and I didn’t think I needed a boost of motivation every now and then. I’ve missed several homechooling conventions, but when I go, I leave charged up and ready to take on a new year.

SMART: Early on we realized that homeschooling is a lifestyle. Learning becomes a whole-family activity. Family vacations become long distance field trips. Questions from the kids become research assignments. Yeah, it doesn’t always make us popular with the kids, but life is all about learning, and we try to reinforce that concept every day.

STUPID: Doing something just because other families are doing it. It was cute watching my little five year-old doing ballet, but it took her taking me aside, as a nine year-old, and saying, “Mom, I just don’t want to do ballet anymore. It isn’t me,” for me to realize we’d overstayed our welcome with ballet. I had fun visiting with all the other ballet moms, but while I was busy chatting and sharing recipes, my little sweetie was feeling like a clumsy misfit. We immediately dropped ballet and never looked back.

SMART: Taking comfort that tomorrow is another day. When we have a day when we’ve been busy with errands, chores, and other stuff and no “school” happens, I know that tomorrow we get to try again. Besides, the kids are always learning something, even if it’s the fact that the dry cleaners will donate a bedspread to Goodwill if it isn’t picked up on time!

My takeaway lesson is that homeschooling doesn’t demand perfection. It’s more a matter of enjoying the journey, learning from mistakes, and focusing on what is most important, fostering a love of learning in our children.