Emergency Preparedness

Please join me in congratulating the winners of the Photo and Book Review Contest.

First place: Jeremy H. — wins the $100 gift certificate.

Second place: Cheryl H. — wins the two-person survival kit backpack.

Third Place: Bill C. — wins the tactical shoulder bag.

Steve will get your prizes out to you within a few days.

We’d like to thank everyone who entered the contest and also all of you who voted on the various submissions. It was a pretty close race toward the end!

Caption: My dad built this windmill. The balance of the blades is ‘pert near’ perfect, with no detectable wobble. The tail is a silver tea service platter pounded flat with the ornate rim cut off. With the slightest breeze that thing starts turning and producing voltage.

My problem in entering this contest is not being able to chose from all the great survival and preparedness books that I have, they all have good information and I wouldn’t want to be without any of them. I’m constantly adding to my library, both in book form and on my Kindle Fire.

So, which one of them has inspired me the most? Taught me best? Encouraged me to keep going longer?

I thought back to the very first book that got me interested in all things to do with self-reliance, preparedness, homesteading, raising livestock, growing a garden, canning, living frugally.

That would be Carla Emery’s “Old Fashioned Recipe Book-An Encyclopedia of Country Living”. I found a battered copy of her 1974 edition at a local library when I was a young wife and mother trying to stretch our income to cover our needs and I knew it could help us out.
I remember sitting in the living room of our trailer late at night, the only one awake besides the cat, reading Carla’s fascinating book. She credited the idea of the Book to a subscription to Organic Gardening. Emery wrote: “It got me to thinking about how it seemed so many city people were wanting to move to the country and all the things they needed to know”. So she decided to write the “go to” manual for Back to the Earther’s, as she called them.
Unlike most books hers was advertised before it was written. She felt like she could adequately cover the subject in 2, at most 3 months, so she placed an ad for her book-to-be in the classified section of 3 magazines. The book would be written in installments for a total cost of $3.50.
She received hundreds of responses for a book that consisted of a Table of Contents and some good ideas.
Carla Emery started the Book in 1969. She was still working on it at the time of her death in 2005. Oh, she completed it! The first edition was mimeographed sheets that were collated around a huge table by a group of people passing the pages to each other. When the Book took off and the public became interested in it Bantam Books produced a printed copy, the one which so inspired me in 1993. From an original 529 pages the book grew to over 900 pages, single space, so crammed with information and experience that it reads like a novel in some parts. It morphed from being a basic country handbook to the 2010 edition which includes information on: living off the land, growing your own food, building a cabin…making egg noodles from scratch, delivering a baby, tap a maple tree, forage for wild food, use medicinal plants. Yes, her encyclopedia does cover all those topics, and does a thorough job of it, too. That’s just a smattering of the information available from the Book.
The Old Fashioned Recipe Book is exactly what it says it is: a recipe for living a responsible, self-reliant life. The Book taught me gardening and canning.
From Carla I learned how to raise chickens, preserve their eggs, and then slaughter the roosters and old hens. I made my own sausage from deer meat from her recipes.
Most of all I learned to work hard to do a job I was dedicated to: being a wife and a mother and the teacher of my children. Because of Carla’s work I was able to make some of my dreams come true. When I’m in need of new inspiration or a refresher course I reach for one of the 3 editions of her Encyclopedia. She was, and is, the best source of information I’ve ever found.

I have not written a book report in some time, but I hate to pass up a chance for free gear. The book I would like to report on is “Patriots” by J.W. Rawles. When I was first introduced to the survivalist way of living a good friend of mine suggested this book to me. At the time I did not think that a fictional novel was going to be much help to me. I was wrong…very wrong! Since I have read it, I continually loan it out to people close to me in order to help them get on track when it comes to being prepared for a less than pleasant SHTF scenario. “Patriots” in all actuality is less of a novel and more of a “how to guide” on the subject of group survival. The book is filled with colorful characters and a great story line which makes for easy reading. This is one of the few books that I have read that I could not put down once I started reading it. If you feel like you have hit a wall in your personal training, have covered all your bases, or you are just getting started than this book is a must read for you. You will be able to learn about group development, barter and trade, communications, a little guerrilla warfare, and be entertained all at the same time. I don’t know how to stress enough how important this book is to anyone preparing for TEOTWAWKI!