Keeping Going

Last time I talked about what I feel is going to happen and how anyone who has not started to prepare should do about it. I strictly covered food in the last post as I believe it is the most important item that can be prepared for. I personally feel that a portion of that food should be hidden as when (not if) martial law is declared, it will be illegal to hoard food. At that point the government will decide what hoarding is. I have heard different numbers thrown around with most of them being between three days and two weeks. 

I am going to talk a little more about food here. What I want to talk about this time is the gathering of wild food. This can mean anything from gathering plants for salads and vegetables to getting meat for the table. First of all, no matter where you are there are edible plants to be gathered. If you live in a city, you can find parks where there are private areas where a person can gather plants without being seen by the authorities or other park users. Even your own yard has many edible plants if you do not poison everything with commercial weed killers and fertilizers. Dandelions and plantain are two very common plants that many people call weeds that are very palatable. Young dandelion leaves and young plantain are both excellent salad greens. Dandelion roots can be dug, dried and used as a coffee substitute. I currently have a couple containers of acorns in my freezer. I am going to shell them and grind them up and in the spring when the dandelions start I am going to gather some roots and dry them. I will then mix the two and make an excellent coffee substitute. I do not remember the percentage of each to make the mixture, so when I experiment and find it again I will put it the recipe in a post on this blog. My advice is to go on line and find out what plants are in your area that can be eaten and then either purchase a good field guide or check one out of the library and go out and see what you can find. You may not want to pick these plants at this time but you need to at least be able to identify them when the time comes.

Hunting, fishing and trapping are also things that you should be able to do. Most areas have some fishing areas available. Many of these are close at hand. Just because the only thing that are there are carp or some other so called "trash fish" do not overlook them. Carp, suckers and many other non-game fish are excellent eating if prepared correctly. I normally go out and catch a few carp in the spring for pickling and smoking. However I have fried, broiled and baked them and they are not that bad. In Europe, carp is the number one game fish and is eaten all of the time. Another thing that can be done about anywhere to put meat on the table is hunting and trapping. Two of my grandsons live in a city of some sixty thousand and trap squirrels and rabbits all of the time. They do it with a live trap right in their own backyard. When I lived in a suburb of Chicago I regularly shot squirrels in my back yard. How did I do it? I used an air rifle. There is no noise and if you are careful, the neighbors will never know what you did. 

There are a lot of ways to obtain food in the wild. Those of you who can get out and get hunting in the rural areas can provide most of your own meat. I know that even now my wife and I live mostly on venison. We cannot afford to purchase the expensive meats in the store. If you live in the country you should be living on rabbit, squirrel, venison, grouse, pheasant and any other wild game that is in season. You should also be picking and eating as much wild plants as possible. Getting used to eating that type of a diet now will only help you when it becomes a necessity; and it will. 

When it comes to fishing, all you read in the outdoor magazines is catch and release. Well, I like to catch and eat. That is one of the reasons that I do not go after the popular game fish. I go after white bass and other smaller fish that are easier to catch and people expect you to keep. That way I can put some in my freezer and not have to pay six dollars a pound at the supermarket. As I said earlier, carp is not a bad fish to eat. Besides smoking and pickling them I can some of them and can then use them for fish patties and similar recipes. That is one of the secrets of survivalism, using things that so-called normal people do not think about using or feel that using some of them is beneath them. 

I hope this week's entry gives some of you some ideas. That is what I am attempting to do, plant ideas so that when the time comes you will have the survival skills you need. Now, before they are required, is the time to practice those survival skills. Trying to learn while you are starving is not the thing you want to do. Next time I am going to go a little deeper into hunting and fishing and perhaps a little on trapping. Until then: practice your skills and "SURVIVE"!!!!

Check out my political blog at:

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

Now What?

I think that now is the time to start thinking about what your will do when the SHTF.  While there is much more I could say in the "Stash It" series, I think it is time for other thoughts. First of all, I feel that we are headed for the greatest depression that the world has ever known. I also believe that it is going allow our government to attempt to take over the country as a dictatorship. We will not be asked what we should do, we will be told. At the end of this post I will leave the link to my "Fasciunism" blog, which is my political blog. You may want to go to that blog to get a more in depth of what I see on the horizon. I will cover it somewhat here but more as what to do when (not if) it happens.. 

Hopefully anyone who regularly reads this column will be ready for whatever comes. Here is what I see. BO is being crowned King of these United States. Everyone is bowing and scraping to him. No one dares say a bad word about him or they will be termed a racist. He talked about "Change" all through his campaign. Look at the cabinet and advisers he has picked. Does that look like change? He has appointed every Clinton retread that is available. Where is the change in that? I know who is pulling his strings and what is going to be attempted. George Soros is the money man behind BO. Soros is a one world government person and will do whatever he can and spend as much of his billions as he needs to to accomplish the task of turning this country into a third world dictatorship. 

First, do not take any of the jobs that BO is making. These are make-work jobs to get you indebted to the government. Remember the government's Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules". This is just another way of redistributing the wealth. Remember seeing the 

TV footage from China of the thousands of people diligently sweeping streets? Well that is the kind of thing that is going to happen here. BO is going to be like FDR on steroids. He is going to implement a national health care system on the order of Canada's. Canada has some of the best health care in the world; right across their southern border. That is a fact. I have spoken to Canadians who come to the United States every year to get the care they are denied in Canada under their national health care system. Enough already about what is going to happen, we need to look in this blog at what to do. As I stated, you can go to my other blog to get more political information.

First of all: Do you have enough food to last for at least a year if martial law is declared and the shelves in the grocery store are suddenly empty? Do you have enough ammo to take care of any needs when BO and his new gun-hating attorney general make the ammunition so expensive that only drug dealers will be able to afford it? Do you have a supply of silver or gold and other barter goods? Do you have as good a supply of your medical needs as you can get? Are you prepared to defend yourself from roaming gangs, be they government or other? Are you prepared to leave your home and go someplace safe if need be? These and many others are questions you need to answer. They could be the difference between you becoming a slave and living free and possibly even between life and death. That is what I am going to talk about for the next couple of weeks.

Let us take them in order, food first. I feel that every true survivalist should have at least a one year supply of food on hand at all times. A two year supply is even better and that is what I strive for. Now if you have that much food on hand and Martial Law is put into effect you will very probably be accused of hoarding food and that will be made illegal. That is one of the reasons I have been doing all of the entries on "Stash It": you will need to hide your food supply. You will want to hide it where you are able to get at it any time you want it, but others not privy to your hiding places will not think of looking. A couple of places would be the second water heater I talk about and another place would be in a refrigerator or freezer laying on its back, buried in the ground. You are going want to have some freeze dried meals and also you can do as I do and dehydrate fruits and vegetables yourself. Then you will need to package them in vacuum sealed containers to store for a length of time. You may also want to plan for not having electricity. BO is bound and determined to shut down the coal industry and if that happens there is no way that enough electricity can be generated to satisfy the country. In that case any frozen food you have will need to be canned or dried. Be prepared to do those things very quickly before the food spoils. If you have an electric stove, have a backup for that too. I am not going to get any deeper into the food subject as I have covered it in past posts. One thing I would like to add before I close this week's entry is to be ready to grow at least some of your own food. Even if you live in an apartment in a city, there are things that you can grow indoors. I may do some entries in the future on that subject. For now: PREPARE and SURVIVE.

Political blog link:

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com 

Stash It - 6

CLOSETS: Building a false wall or ceiling in a closet is one of my favorite ways of hiding weapons, long guns in particular. A closet that has a considerable amount of space to one side of the door is best for a fake wall. It is difficult to tell from the outside of the closet exactly how much room should be inside the closet, One thing you do not want to do though, is to make the storage area too big. This might bring the size of the inside of the closet to someones attention. I try to store my guns against the wall flat when I use a false wall. My widest gun is a bolt action that measured about three inches across. You can save some room by removing the bolt or leaving it in the open position. I make a one by four frame around one end of the closet. I net put a one by two across the back wall at the height that the barrels will be. Into this one by two I drive a nail for each gun barrel to lean against. These should be wrapped with tape or cloth to keep them from marring the barrel. If your closet has a high enough ceiling, you can put a one by four shelf directly above the barrels of that line of guns and set another row of guns on top of it. When I did it, I simply installed some hooks for my handguns and then put up a shelf for ammo. Now you will need a sheet of sheet rock, painted the same color as the inside of the closet. This sheet needs to be cut to the exact size of the inside of the closet. Now, if the end where you are putting the storage unit has a closet rod connected to it, you will need to cut the sheet in two at the level of the rod. Next cut half circles in both pieces so they fit tight against the rod. These sheets can be held in place by using either the magnet or spring-clip type of cabinet door catches. You will probably need four for each piece. If you are not cutting the sheet for a closet rod, you can get by with just four. Now if you are working around a rod, get a closet rod holder to match the one on the other end of the rod and attach it to the wall you just installed. If it is completely round you will need to cut it in half and install it in two pieces. you may want to install a piece of dry wall tape across the crack, making sure to only attach it to one of the pieces. What you want to do is anything to make it look like the rest of the closet. To open the unit, the best way I found was to install two hooks on each half of the sheet and hang a couple of ties or belts on each hook. Then you can simply grab the hooks and pull out the section you want. The same method could be used for a one piece wall.

Another method of utilizing a closet is to install a false ceiling. This is the method I used in one apartment I lived in. Nail a one by four to each wall with one edge against the ceiling. Now you need to come up with a way to attach your guns or other valuables to the ceiling. I simply located a couple of the ceiling joists and installed a series of screw eyes. A would put one gun against the ceiling and mark the spot for the screws. After installing the first set of four, (one for each side of the stock and one on each side of the barrel), I placed the next gun in the opposite direction, (first barrel pointing right, next barrel pointing left), and installed one screw eye at the stock and one at the barrel on the outside of that gun. I kept doing this, reversing every other gun. I secured the guns to the ceiling by tying a piece of nylon cord from screw eye to screw eye. Get good sized screw eyes, because as you will notice, each will be supporting the end of two guns. Now get your piece of sheet rock and cut it to fit snugly between the walls and install some cabinet door catches and you can snap it into place. Yo facilitate getting mine out. I simply drilled a small hole in one rear corner. the hole was just large enough to get my index finger in and pull. The hole was not noticeable unless you were looking for it.You can also attach trim to the new piece of sheet rock to make it look even more natural.  When I moved from the apartment, I simply took my guns and replaced the false ceiling. I am not sure whether the landlord ever found it or not. I just know that when he inspected the apartment prior to returning my deposit, he did not mention it. 

Other ideas next time. Until then SURVIVE.   Check out my other blogs.

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

http://www.realenvironmentalism.blogspot.com