Surviving IV

Living the type of survival lifestyle that I did that summer can get kind of lonely. There were neighbors around and I did get into the county seat for the flea market and to pick up stuff from the food pantry, but the rest of the time I was alone. The well which had been on the place was bad so I had to haul my water in. When I went out picking aluminum cans, I would go to one of the parks and get twenty gallons or so of water. In this way I could collect any aluminum cans in the garbage at the park and get my water, making it a profitable trip. My water for washing was left in a five gallon bucket in the sun or in my solar shower in the sun. The solar shower would bring the water almost to a boil. When I went fishing I only caught enough fish that I could use up the same day. When in the parks I picked wild plants to be used as greens. I picked dandelion greens, plantain, stinging nettle and a couple of other plants whose names escape me these many years later. Later in the summer I picked raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. All in all, between fishing and picking wild food, I ate fairly well throughout the summer. The reason I had to go to the food pantry was that at the time I only had a two week supply of food on hand for survival. That taught me to have a much longer supply on hand. I now feel my wife and I could live close to a year on what we have on hand. With my small garden at the survival site, I grew quite a bit of food. Had I stayed another year I would have expanded the garden and grown much of the food I needed for the summer. As it was, I had all the beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes and tomatoes that I could use. The camper I was living in that summer had no way of being heated and I did not make enough money to outfit it for being heated. I also had not been able to find employment to supplement what little I was making. This being Northern Wisconsin and the winters being what they are, there would be no flea markets at which to make money and I would definately need heat. I therefore decided that I would have to leave the area and go somewhere to find a job. I left in September of 1984 and used all of my money for gas for the station wagon which was again loaded with all of my belongings except my guns. These I secreted on my survival property. I was headed in the general direction of Chicago and did not want to take them there where the gun laws are harsh. I stopped at a friend's house in southern Wisconsin to spend the night and they had some painting that needed to be done. I spent a couple of days there doing some painting and made enough money to get me the rest of the way to Chicago and even some eating money. So, after spending five months in the survival mode, I found myself in Chicago. I still owed several thousand dollars in bills from the business and several thousand more in back child support. It took me three years to get it all paid off and another three years to get back on my feet. I then came back to Wisconsin and now live a better survival life than I was before the job loss and divorce. I now live where I feel I could survive anything that happens and if not I still own the old acre of land. I think that before too much time has passed we all are going to need all the survival skills that we can put forth. Coming next; Starting over.

Surviving III

Surviving is not too hard if you prepare yourself. I had fishing eqipment, so fish were on my diet quite a bit. I dug worms right on my acre and went fishing. One of the first things I did was to borrow a roto-tiller and dig small garden. I could just as well have dug it by hand, but as long as there was a roto-tiller available to borrow, I took advantage. I used part of my small amount of money and purchased several packages of seeds and planted my garden. My garden was only about 200 square feet and all I had was beets, carrots, onions, radishes, lettuce and tomatoes. I planted this the first week I was there so I would have some vegetables as soon as possible. My fishing was limited at first as there was a trout stream about five miles away and that was the closest fishing available. I was short on money for gas at first, so some of my fishing was done on a small stream within walking distance that contained chubs and shiners, (minnows). I fished there a lot and kept and ate the largest ones. I also started walking the roads and picking up aluminum cans. I also picked up anything else that looked like it might be worth something. There was a flea market and auction together twice a month in a town twenty miles away. By June, I had enough stuff to warrent setting up there to sell. The other reason for going there was that the local food pantry was located in the same town. They were only open once a month and I needed what they would give me to get me through until my garden started producing. I used my aluminum can money for gas, sold almost everything I took to the flea market and used half the money at the auction to buy more to sell at the next market. At least once a week, I would go out and park along the highway and walk several miles picking up aluminum and anything else. I did all of my cooking outside, I slept with the door open and due to the fact that it faced east, was up with the sun every day. I had a 5 inch tv that plugged into the cig lighter of my station wagon. Each evening I would watch the local and national news to get the weather forcast and see what type of lies were being told nationally. This was the only hour each day that I used the tv and I rarely played a radio unless it looked like a storm might be coming. My only real recreation was reading. Everything else I did was for my survival. Next post I will finish up on this subject.

Surviving II

After having a sale of all of my household and landscaping equipment at my home I took what was left to an auction house and sold that. With the money I took in I paid my rent up to date and my utility bills. Everything that I had left I had packed into my station wagon which was one of two large items I did not sell. The other was an old over the cab, 8 foot pickup camper. I had purchased this because it went with the truck that I bought to do my landscaping. I sold the truck at the sale but not the camper. A friend of my sons got his dad's trailer and loaded it on and pulled it 240 miles north for me. I had kept enough money to pay for his gas. I had the camper put on an acre of ground which I co-own with three of my cousins. It is what remains of my grandfather's farm. The camper had no stove, no refrigator, in fact nothing inside except the table and the seat cushions and a couple of the cupboards for storage. The land is on a county road so it is fairly well travelled. I set the camper on blocks at the back or the acre with the door pointing away from the road. Actually the door pointed east to take advantage of the morning sun and not to be in the hot afternoon sun. I fixed myself a fire pit just outside the door on which I did all of my cooking. I had containers of water which I kept in the sun for warming. This is the water I used for washing myself, my dishes and anything else that needed cleaning. When I needed really hot water, I heated it in a container on the fire. Inside the camper there was no bed in the over the cab space, so I put a false floor on it raising it about eight inches. I used this space in which to store my guns and ammo. The one small closet took care of my clothes, with a box being put on its floor to hold shorts, socks and hankies. There were a couple of small cabinets which were plenty to hold what little food I kept on hand. I had no money to purchase meat or anything like that so I had no use for refrigeration. My fishing equipment and what tools I had kept were kept under one side of the camper with an old tarp hanging down to protect them form the weather and to keep them hidden. I moved to this camper in the beginning of May, as I had to be out of my house by the end of April. I stayed there until mid-September. Next post I will talk about some of the things I did to survive.

Surviving

I began to tell about a personal survival situation in my last post. I had been working as a foreman in a machine shop for eight years when it shut down and moved in 1980. I immedaitely got a job a night superintedent in an electronics firm. In 1982 that plant shut down and moved to Mexico. My wife divorced me because I could not hold down a steady job. At least that is what she said at the time. I had bee running a small part time landscaping business at the time and decided to take it full time as I could not find another job. I had to move the business out of the house I had been living in as she got the house. I rented a large house with enough space for both my landscaping equipment and to refinish furniture which I was attempting to sell at a local indoor flea market. I sold everything I had including a piece of property in northern Wisconsin to finance my going full time in the business world. I did well in 1982, building up a good sized clientelle for spring to fall lawn care plus some major landscaping jobs. I also did fairly well at the flea market. In 1983 the bottom fell out. The summer was very dry and people did not want landscaping done. the following winter was warm and dry and I sold only a fraction of the firewood I had the previous year and made very little on snow removal. These were the two things I did to make money through the winter. By the spring of 1984 The business was deeply in debt, I was three months behind in my rent and behind in my utilities. The flea market business had taken such a downturn that I had given up my spot in the indoor market and moved everything to my house and went occasionally to other markets. I was not making much money at these markets, sometimes not enough to pay my gas, meals and spot rent. The credit card companies were dunning me for the money I had used to run the business, my landlady was about to evict me and the utilities were about to shut me off. Stay tuned for my next posting and I will tell you how a survivalist gets out of a situation like this and what I did.

Real possibilities

As a survivalist, I get asked a lot; "What are the chances of a real life survival situation happening today?" My stock answer is; "It depends on what you consider a survival situation". All you need to do to find a survival situation is to look at hurricane Katrina. There were survivalists there and they made out fairly good. That is, the ones the government did not catch. If the government caught the smart survivalists, they took away their firearms and made them leave their homes. That is one of the most unconstitutional things that could be done. A person has the right to keep and bear arms and protect their property. What the government did was to open up the property of those survivalists to looters. It seems that in this country today, the looters and other scum have more rights than the average citizen. But that does not have as much to do with being a survivalist as it does to protecting our rights. I have another blog at http://therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com/ . In that one I explain what I believe is happening to America. Every survivalist should probably read it, as the two areas are probably going to affect each other. I know politics is already affecting survivalism and militias, which are closely related. Back to possibilities. There are floods, tornados, fires, terrorism, blackouts, the possibility of war in this country, oil shortages causing the war, etc, etc. I think that you can probably see what I mean when I talk about survival situations happening all the time. It can even be something as simple as loss of a job or a divorce. In my next post I will talk about my own experience some years ago when I lost my job, (plant shut down and moved) and had that followed shortly by a divorce and then had a small business which I was running on the side go bust. It was a true survival situation for me. Watch for my next post on Monday.

Food Gathering II

While trapping is not a politically correct thing to do nowadays, it is one of the best ways to procure meat in a survival situation. While hunting may produce larger animals, it is noisy to use a gun and time consuming with either a gun or bow. While you may bring down a deer or other large animal with a gun, can you really use that much meat all at once? In a survival situation, you may not have the ability to preserve and store a large animal. Catching a rabbit, muskrat, beaver, possum or coon may be a much better option. With traps, you can put out several and only take the time to check them a couple of times a day. These traps are on the job 24 hrs a day seven days a week. By checking them morning and evening, you can probably keep a goodly supply of meat on hand. One thing about trapping is that you need to know animal habits. This is a good hobby now while you are not in a survival situation. You do not need to do any actual trapping, in fact much of it may be illegal. Just get out in the woods and study all of the small animals and birds in the area where you intend to ride out a survival situation. That is right, I said birds too. While fur trappers try not to catch non-target animals, survivalists need to catch anything that will fill the pot. Once you have done your homework on animal behavior, you will need to decide what type of trapping you want to do. There are foothold traps, connibear body hold traps, snares and live traps. Live traps are great for experimenting with your knowledge of trapping. While living in a suburb of Chicago, I had a couple of box traps which I used to trap pests for the neighbors. Coon, possum and squirrel and even one skunk got taken to the forest preserve and released. Live traps are a little bulky for a survival situation. My own survival trapping gear consists of a half dozen foothold traps and a spool of snare wire. If you have no traps there is always the possibility of building a deadfall trap or a pit trap, or even a spring trap using a tree. These are methods you may want to study and know how to build them. However, I feel it is better not to rely on them and to have traps on hand as they are much more time consuming and not as reliable. All in all, trapping is a great way to procure food and the study of animals and their habits is a great hobby now when there is no survival situation. Even if a survival situation never occurs, you will have had the enjoyment of being out in the woods and learning about nature.

Food Gathering

If I seem to dwell a lot on food, it is because it is so important. We cannot live too long without food and finding it in a survival situation can be, next to having water, one of the most important things you do. Hunting, fishing and trapping are some of the most effective ways of procuring food. Fishing and trapping are both better than hunting. I say that because they are both silent methods of taking food. While you can hunt with a bow or a spear, these methods are not as effectivce as fishing or trapping. I am not talking about sport fishing here, I am talking about taking as many fish as possible with as little effort as possible. It is using methods like trot lines and set lines. It is using nets and fish traps. This is pure survival fishing, not sport fishing. My favorite method is trot lines. This is a heavy line with several hooks tied on at one or two foot intervals with one end tied to a haevy weight or tree on shore and a heavy weight on the other end. That end is thrown out as far into the river or lake as possible. They can also be stretched across small streams or rivers. These should have the hooks baited and be thrown out in the evening and be taken up in the morning. At least that is the way it should be done if you are trying to keep others from finding out where and how you are obtaining food. During survival situations you do not know when someone will want to steal your food rather then co through the work of obtaining their own. A set line is another good method of obtaining fish without actually being there. If you have only lighter fishing line this is the method to use. One or two hooks are tied on and baited, a sinker is used and the line thrown out as far as possible. Now the other end of the line is tied to a strong, springy tree limb or small bush. The limb or bush will act as a rod playing the fish and it will be there when you get back. These are methods you can use any time and any place. They can be used night and day if you are in a remote area where you are not worried about people stealing your fish or equipment. I will cover more on this subject next post.

Food Storage II

As I stated in the last post, vacuum sealing is the ideal way to store much of your food. We also can as much food as possible. Our only problem is that we do not have a lot of storage space for canned food. We can the items that we cannot dry and that we have storage room for. At the present time we are looking at canning two wild turkeys. The only other way to keep meat is in the freezer and when you do a lot of hunting and have quite a bit meat, the freezer fills up. We normally can venison, but have never tried wild turkey. I am sure it is no different than canning any other type of meat. The other thing that I do with meat is to jerk quite a bit of it. I am also going to try jerking some of the turkey this year. The reason that I do so much drying and jerking is that once I vacuum seal it, I can store it anywhere, even where it will freeze. Our home has no basement and limited storage space, so being able to store food where it might freeze in the winter is a great help. I have not yet done it at this location, but intend to bury an old freezer or refrigerator for extra food storage space. If it is an upright freezer or a refrigerator, you just dig a large enough hole to lay it down in with the door facing up. The door needs to be below ground level and then you can cover it with hay or straw and some boards. This is like a root cellar and it is a storage area that you will only want to open occasionally. This will keep food from freezing and will keep most other people from knowing where you have your surplus food stored. It works well for storing other items such as guns and ammo as well. A chest freezer is the best as it is the largest and holds the most. It is just that the hole needs to be much bigger and that is more work. If you have a storage shed on your land that does not have a floor, this is the ideal spot to bury your chest. Next best is right next to a garage or other building so that the lumber used to cover the hole can look like that is just a storage spot for the lumber. The more you can hide from prying eyes the better off you are. As a survivalist, you do not want to be ripped off.

Food Storage

Storage of food can be a problem but if you do some thinking and some planning it does not have to be. First of all you need to decide what you want to store. Many survivalists put a lot of faith into thing like wheat and other grains that need to be ground and will feed you a very bland diet for quite a while. Personally, I would rather store the types of foods I use now. Should you enter a real survival situation and need to change your diet to all wheat products, that is going to put more stress on an already bad situation. I am now drying and packaging fruit and vegetables. These items will keep for several years, even if I do not rotate them. That is the problems with storing all grains. They will not last forever and do you want to be eating nothing but your stored wheat while you are putting more in storage. I use my dried products as I go along, usually nothing gets to be over five years old. Everything I have can be either reconstituted or used dry. One of the things that I have invested in is a vacuum sealer. I vacuum pack about 90 percent of all of the food I dry. I have a solar drier and an electric drier. That way if the weather is not conducive to drying with the solar when I am ready, I simply use the electric one. After I have dried a fair amount of product, I put it in vacuum bags and seal it and put it in storage. I also purchase dried foods in the store which I repackage into vacuum bags. These bags are reusable and can be used several times. They just hold a little less each time you cut the top off and open them. If you are careful how you cut them off, you do not lose much space. Now in the fall I am drying so many things that my solar drier is full and I am also using my electric drier. More on food storage next time.

Free Food

One of the things az good survivalist needs to do is to learn to live off the land. This means that even now when we are not in a survival situation, we need to see about getting free food. In fact, I consider it especially important now. We can learn what to gather and where to gather it and have no fear of starving. Once we are in a survival situation, it will be too late to start learning. I am always looking for wild food. At the present time, I have 2 wild turkeys, 3 squirrels, some fish, blackberries, blueberries and some of last year's venison residing in my freezer. The freezer is getting too full so the wife and I are going to can the two turkeys. That is because it is time to go out and get another one. As I have stated in the past, a freezer is great storage, just make sure that you will be able to can or otherwise preserve everything in it should an emergency arise. I also have black walnuts drying in a junk car that I use for a solar food processer. These are in the car along with peppers from my garden and a couple of other things. We are also drying fruits which we are buying at the store. Having dried food on hand is always a good idea. But right now wild food is the important thing. As soon as the ground is covered with acorns, I will be racing the squirrels for them. I will also be doing more hunting and fishing this fall. When there is not a survival situation, spring and summer is the best time to look for plants like dandelions, stinging nettles and the multitude of other plants that are not only deible but excellent eating. Fall and winter are the time for hunting and gathering nuts, late berries and looking for other things that could keep a person alive. Fishing can be done all year if you do not mind ice fishing. Even if you do not like the cold you should try ice fishing if you live in an area where the water freezes over for most of the winter. In a survival situation it could mean the difference between life and death. I will be going out of town this weekend, so there may not be an entry on this blog until Monday, then more on food.

Stash It 3

When making home made storage units some of the best things ar old refrigerators, freezers or even an old water heater. The reason for this is that it is fairly common to see more than one of any of these appliances around the house. The refrigerators and freezers are well insulated and while not fire proof are somewhat fire resistant. Where you do not have room for an extra large appliance, store some of your valuables right in your working refrigerator or freezer. My son who lives in a trailer store all of his important papers and his few valuables right in the freezer along with his frozen food. Not too many thieves would think of looking there unless they were interested in stealing food. When using a non-working freezer or refrigerator for storage, take out the compressor but leave an electric cord on and plug it in. You will probably want about a ten watt bulb inside anyway to keep away moisture and the old refrigerator odor. You could always put in some desicant if you do not want to keep the light burning. An upright freezer with a lock on the door makes a fair gun safe. You can always use a chest type freezer and just add racks along each side, storing ammo in the middle of the freezer. Finding a locked freezer in your spare room, garage, out building or basement will not look suspicious to a thief. Another way to do this if you do not have any other room is to put the old appliance out on your porch in plain sight. As most areas have laws that these have to be chained shut so children cannot get into them, you can wrap a chain around it and put a padlock on it and it will look like a junker that you are waiting to get rid of. For using a water heater, just take out the tank, put your guns or other valuables inside, replace the top and set it next to your working water heater. Now add pipes to make it look like it is connected to your water system and you have fairly safe storage. I have seen more than one home that has two working water heaters. Next entry I will be talking more about food.