s/o preppers - what survivalist type skills do you want to learn

[Denise in Florida]

In the preppers thread, I mentioned that I was becoming more sufficient in home repair, gardening and raising chickens.

 

I want to add canning, food drying and simple plumbing to my skill set.

 

Whether your goal is to get off-grid or just be more independant what skills are you learning or want to learn?

 

What resources have you found most helpful?

 

I have gotten great gardening information at my local county extension office. Next year I want to take the master gardener classes and the bee-keeping workshop.

[Denise in Florida]

nobody has a wish list of what they would like to learn?

[WishboneDawn]

I'm not a prepper but I also want to learn canning. I'd also like to learn how to process my own meat chickens (they went to a processor this year) and how to make soap from wood ash and lard. :) The soap making was actually what I was going to try this summer (though I'd by the lye rather then extract it) but then I got preggers.

[Denise in Florida]

I'm not a prepper but I also want to learn canning. I'd also like to learn how to process my own meat chickens (they went to a processor this year) and how to make soap from wood ash and lard. :) The soap making was actually what I was going to try this summer (though I'd by the lye rather then extract it) but then I got preggers.

 

ohhhh.... the soap thing sounds fun. Maybe I will put that on the list.:001_smile:

[Soror]

I did my first pressure canning this year and am anxious to do more, but am waiting for a bit of coolness. I'm doing a small fall garden now and hoping it does well. My big goal for the fall/winter is to work on the compost pile- good compost- good garden. Learn more about seed/plant varieties and cold tolerances- work on growing through 4 seasons(I'm building a small greenhouse). We *are* getting bees this spring so I need to research more this winter, we have talked about it for years now but are finally doing it this year. We're also getting chickens(as dh and I finally settled the housing debate)! I also swear that I'm making lard/tallow soap this year, my friends and I planned to do it last year but never got around to it. With our nature study I hope to learn more and more about different plants in the area and what is safe and isn't.

[Soror]

I'm not a prepper but I also want to learn canning. I'd also like to learn how to process my own meat chickens (they went to a processor this year) and how to make soap from wood ash and lard. :) The soap making was actually what I was going to try this summer (though I'd by the lye rather then extract it) but then I got preggers.

 

We also looked into making our own lye as well but I think it best to start with commercial lye, maybe some day! I have tons of tallow I've already rendered, more than I will use. I also have tons of lard rendered and more fat in the freezer to render still.

 

I forgot the kids and I are learning to sew this year. Well, I know some but hope to increase my skill along with them.

[Audrey]

nobody has a wish list of what they would like to learn?

 

 

I would like to learn how to dispose of the bodies efficiently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh! Did I type that out loud? ;):tongue_smilie:

 

 

 

Seriously, though... there are many things I would like to learn. I have zero repair skills when it comes to anything mechanical. I rely on dh for that. It fascinates me, though.

 

I already can food, make cheese and soap, knit and sew, and I'm really good at getting a decent garden to produce. I don't actually like doing any of those things, though. I would love to learn to make furniture. I like to sketch furniture, but I don't have any skills to make it. I would also like to learn to make a decent pie crust from scratch. I have tried many, many times. What I really need is somebody's awesome pie-making grandma to teach me how.

[Denise in Florida]

We also looked into making our own lye as well but I think it best to start with commercial lye, maybe some day! I have tons of tallow I've already rendered, more than I will use. I also have tons of lard rendered and more fat in the freezer to render still.

 

I forgot the kids and I are learning to sew this year. Well, I know some but hope to increase my skill along with them.

 

where did you get all the tallow and lard? Many years ago I tried to make a tallow candle with my girls as part of a history unit study. I looked at the local grocery stores butcher departments but they acted like I was crazy.

[livingnlearning]

Ask at the butcher shops for tallow-or pig fat, I use that to render lard.

 

I'd like to learn more about tanning hides and spinning wool.

 

ETA not thinking clearly when I first wrote this, I meant to say more clearly at the processor-the guy that actually does the slaughtering. Those fats are often trimmed off immediately and thrown away. I get ours from a small local animal processor.

Edited August 24, 2011 by livingnlearning

[Rosie_0801]

I'm working on the knitting and sewing, but I don't believe I can learn to make compost. I've never had any that worked!

 

Rosie

[Soror]

where did you get all the tallow and lard? Many years ago I tried to make a tallow candle with my girls as part of a history unit study. I looked at the local grocery stores butcher departments but they acted like I was crazy.

I buy beef and pork by the animal and when I have it butchered I tell them I want the fat as well, then I render it myself. It goes much easier if you can have them run it through the grinder first but you can chop it yourself as well.

 

I have bought tallow before I was buying beef this way and I got it from US Wellness Meats by the 5 gallon bucket, they sale online. I prefer lard though for cooking so have an overabundance of tallow now and more lard than I can use as well, we go through the meat faster than the fat and I don't skimp on fat!

Edited August 24, 2011 by soror

[Melissa in Australia]

My Dh and I have been striving towards a self sufficient lifestyle for 19 years. We have learned so much. It has been an unbelievable journey. We live like this not because we think the world is about to collapse or anything like that, we just LOVE the lifestyle.

Along they way we have learned skills like;

milking a cow

raising our own meat and butchering the meat,

growing just about all of our fruit and veggies year round

having solar hot water system

building our own house,

sewing the majoroty of our own clothes,

and the list goes on

our latest project are bees, plus soalr electricity.

[Soror]

We have been looking at solar hot water plans as well, dh thinks it would be one of the easier ones to implement for us here. We have looked at solar electricity but it hasn't seemed feasible as of yet. Of course there are always more projects than time! We have butchered our own rabbits here and deer but nothing bigger. I don't know if dh would be keen on anything like a hog, of course right now I cannot get him to entertain the idea of even raising a hog, although he is ok with goats, we just have to work on the fencing, which will require lots of time.

Edited August 24, 2011 by soror

[WishboneDawn]

We also looked into making our own lye as well but I think it best to start with commercial lye, maybe some day! I have tons of tallow I've already rendered, more than I will use. I also have tons of lard rendered and more fat in the freezer to render still.

 

I forgot the kids and I are learning to sew this year. Well, I know some but hope to increase my skill along with them.

 

I should have said tallow. Why waste lard on soap. (<---See? I now know the difference. :D)

[Onceuponatime]

I think I would like to learn about keeping bees for honey. Can you do that on only one acre?

[Carrie12345]

Well, I've already been *learning for a couple of years now. I think what I need most is the opportunity to *practice*, and that's where it gets frustrating for me. Between equipment costs and HOA-type restrictions, I'm a bit limited at the moment.

 

-Chickens. Primarily for eggs, but I do think I should experience getting a bird on my table at some point!

-Canning. I'm considering getting the equipment next year to try out on our propane grill's burner attachment. I have a glass top stove with auto shut-off when the glass reaches a certain temp.

-Better/more intensive/longer season gardening. I'm working on it. ;-)

-Keeping goats for milk and milk products. I find the size of the average cow a bit intimidating, lol. (My aunt was attacked by her own horse, so I have "issues" with big animals in tight spaces.) We are fans of goat-based products.

-I would like to figure out how/if we can turn our creepy basement crawl space into a safe, dependable root cellar and/or cheese cave. Right now, it's damp and buggy.

-If I could learn how to replace a window, THAT would be fabulous! Our windows are terrible, and I can't really afford to have someone come out and replace the number we need done.

-A while back, I was trying to learn how to add a hand-pump attachment to my well. I gave up, but I really should go back and look into that again. We had a nearby bolt of lightning trip our well's breaker the other day, and I had a moment of real panic!

[Carrie12345]

I think I would like to learn about keeping bees for honey. Can you do that on only one acre?

 

An acquaintance of mine keeps bees (and produces enough honey to sell at the farmers markets) on their 1/2 acre! :)

[Soror]

I should have said tallow. Why waste lard on soap. (<---See? I now know the difference. :D)

 

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

[Denise in Florida]

We have been looking at solar hot water plans as well, dh thinks it would be one of the easier ones to implement for us here. We have looked at solar electricity but it hasn't seemedI feasible as of yet. Of course there are always more projects than time! We have butchered our own rabbits here and deer but nothing bigger. I don't know if dh would be keen on anything like a hog, of course right now I cannot get him to entertain the idea of even raising a hog, although he is ok with goats, we just have to work on the fencing, which will require lots of time.

 

:iagree: I have so many ideas and a limited space/time/money continuum. :lol:

 

At this point we are short on cash flow so I am concentrating on the lowest cost/highest payback items. I really want to look into alternative power but that is waaaaaay down the line moneywise.

 

My favorite projects were the chickens (love fresh eggs) and garden (tons of gazpacho and pesto).

[Denise in Florida]

I think I would like to learn about keeping bees for honey. Can you do that on only one acre?

 

I want to try but I only have a medium large city lot. :glare: The first question for me is "can you do it in town?" My local county extension office runs a bee-keeping workshop/seminar for urban beekeeping so I hope I qualify.

[Soror]

:iagree: I have so many ideas and a limited space/time/money continuum. :lol:

 

At this point we are short on cash flow so I am concentrating on the lowest cost/highest payback items. I really want to look into alternative power but that is waaaaaay down the line moneywise.

 

My favorite projects were the chickens (love fresh eggs) and garden (tons of gazpacho and pesto).

 

Right now we have more money than time here, dh has worked 6-7 days a week for nearly 2 yrs and it is just now slowing down. But we still like to look at what is the biggest payback, that is why we got meat rabbits first, good farm fresh meat chickens are the most expensive meat around here. Rabbits were easier to raise than chickens. 2nd after meat we use produce, we'll see how the garden does. I've had raised beds but this is the first year w/ a 'real' garden. I'd like bees as well because that is my primary sweetner and really w/ plenty of honey I'm fine not to use anything else. I just ordered 5 gallons from the co-op. My mom did give me farm fresh eggs so it didn't make financial sense to raise our own but she no longer has enough. It will still take a while for it to be worth it though as we don't have any structure for them.

[Lady Florida.]

I'm not a prepper but I also want to learn canning.

 

Same here. Not a believer in armageddon, but I want to learn to can. We're also considering getting chickens for eggs. I'm getting better at growing food (tricky in Florida), and am teaching myself to knit. I can crochet, and sew, and between dh and me we are good at making basic repairs.

 

A friend and I are planning to attend Becoming an Outdoors Woman in Ocala in March. I'm proficient at some of the skills mentioned, but want to improve in other areas, and learn some new ones. These probably aren't the kind of "skills" you meant though.

 

All of the above are just because I'd like to know how to do these things, not because I think they will be necessary to know in my lifetime.

[laughing lioness]

I would love to learn to make furniture. I like to sketch furniture, but I don't have any skills to make it. I would also like to learn to make a decent pie crust from scratch. I have tried many, many times. What I really need is somebody's awesome pie-making grandma to teach me how.

 

Have you seen Ana White's site? I made my first furniture this summer, with help from the kids. The beginner plans are actually easy (o.k., cutting straight was challenging but the actual building was really easy).

 

I learned how to make pie-crust from a good friend of mine in a fellowship class. She had a couple of us over, years ago, to learn how to make apple pie. We used a 1956 recipe- lots of butter :)

[HistoryMom]

I think it's funny and enlightening that the "preppers" activities are the exact same as my desired "healthy and environmentally sound lifestyle" activities. :)

 

I just canned for the first time yesterday. I now have eight beautiful quarts of crushed farmer's market tomatoes. My next canning project will be peaches, and then figs (which grow in our yard). I very much want to have a big garden, but in the mean time, I'm trying to buy only local produce from the market. Once I've got my garden, l also want to have a couple of chickens to eat the bugs and give us eggs. I've been working up to it slowly, spending 15 minutes every evening in the yard cleaning up the flower bed and lawn. Once that's well-maintained, I'll consider expanding the garden beyond the three small raised beds we have now. DD and I are doing nutrition and food production as a HS topic, so planning and executing on the garden together will be a nice, long-term project.

[livingnlearning]

I'm not a prepper either, more of a throwback! :D All I prep for is not having a lot of money and that's been happening for a long time. We like doing for ourselves with our food though.

 

We did a very simple solar hot water system-it's not good through the winter here at -30 temps so we disconnect it but for half the year it supplements the system so we use about a third of the gas for the water heater that we do in the winter. It's basically black irrigation pipe plumbed in to the water heater-so the sun is preheating the water and so the water heater doesn't kick on. This winter we hope to plumb in the water jacket on the cook stove to be our winter hot water supply.

[WishboneDawn]

I think it's funny and enlightening that the "preppers" activities are the exact same as my desired "healthy and environmentally sound lifestyle" activities. :)

 

I think of it as getting back to old-fashioned competency. :D It's also wrapped up with moving out into the country where all the convenience stuff is no longer so convenient now that it's a longer drive and so more work to get. It take minutes for instance to make laundry soap when I'm out and over an hour just to pick it up at the grocery store. A minute to run down to the pantry for a can of something I've stocked up on rather then that hour or so again.

 

That and we now need stuff I just can't find. Winter, wool, work socks for my husband? Where???? Better to just buy some yarn and knit them up myself.

[WishboneDawn]

I think it's funny and enlightening that the "preppers" activities are the exact same as my desired "healthy and environmentally sound lifestyle" activities. :)

 

I just canned for the first time yesterday. I now have eight beautiful quarts of crushed farmer's market tomatoes. My next canning project will be peaches, and then figs (which grow in our yard). I very much want to have a big garden, but in the mean time, I'm trying to buy only local produce from the market. Once I've got my garden, l also want to have a couple of chickens to eat the bugs and give us eggs. I've been working up to it slowly, spending 15 minutes every evening in the yard cleaning up the flower bed and lawn. Once that's well-maintained, I'll consider expanding the garden beyond the three small raised beds we have now. DD and I are doing nutrition and food production as a HS topic, so planning and executing on the garden together will be a nice, long-term project.

 

Me too but I'm too lazy to do all the plowing and such. :) I'm think raised beds and maybe even a meat pig next year. The pig should plow and fertilize all in one season!

[Aggie]

I think I would like to learn about keeping bees for honey. Can you do that on only one acre?

 

I want to try but I only have a medium large city lot. :glare: The first question for me is "can you do it in town?" My local county extension office runs a bee-keeping workshop/seminar for urban beekeeping so I hope I qualify.

 

Some cities have ordinances against keeping bees in town, but they are based on fear. There are hives in the city whether kept by a beekeeper or not.:D One of the biggest issues is a water source. You don't want your bees drinking your neighbor's pool water, again, because of the fear. If you get hives, keep them kind of hidden and don't advertise you have them. Make sure kids and pets can't get to them.

 

I'm not a prepper either, more of a throwback! :D All I prep for is not having a lot of money and that's been happening for a long time. We like doing for ourselves with our food though.

 

We did a very simple solar hot water system-it's not good through the winter here at -30 temps so we disconnect it but for half the year it supplements the system so we use about a third of the gas for the water heater that we do in the winter. It's basically black irrigation pipe plumbed in to the water heater-so the sun is preheating the water and so the water heater doesn't kick on. This winter we hope to plumb in the water jacket on the cook stove to be our winter hot water supply.

 

Do you have a link for this?! Or can you send step-by-step instructions? It kills me that we're spending money heating our water when the sun does an excellent job here for most of the year.:glare:

 

We're also interested in an inexpensive DIY solar heating method.

 

One thing I'd like to practice is preserving meat with salt. Has anyone ever done this? I've read about filtering water but haven't actually done it yet.

 

I can't get anything to grow. Between the soil, drought, and heat, every garden I've had here is taking a beating. Next year all I want to grow are sunflowers. :) I guess having a greenhouse might help.

 

Another thing I'd like to become proficient in is knowing edible local plants. A good friend specializes in this and he named some plants at our house that are edible at certain times, then poisonous at others.

 

Dh can butcher and brain-tan hides. Livingnlearning, tanning hides is *hard* physical work. Start with a small hide like a rabbit. Each animal has enough brains to tan its own hide. Dh's friend started with a buffalo hide and said he'd wished he'd started with a mouse hide!

[Soror]

http://www.builditsolar.com/

 

Dh and I have looked at a lot of the projects on here and are hoping to do the $1k water heater option.

[Denise in Florida]

I think it's funny and enlightening that the "preppers" activities are the exact same as my desired "healthy and environmentally sound lifestyle" activities. :)

 

I just canned for the first time yesterday. I now have eight beautiful quarts of crushed farmer's market tomatoes. My next canning project will be peaches, and then figs (which grow in our yard). I very much want to have a big garden, but in the mean time, I'm trying to buy only local produce from the market. Once I've got my garden, l also want to have a couple of chickens to eat the bugs and give us eggs. I've been working up to it slowly, spending 15 minutes every evening in the yard cleaning up the flower bed and lawn. Once that's well-maintained, I'll consider expanding the garden beyond the three small raised beds we have now. DD and I are doing nutrition and food production as a HS topic, so planning and executing on the garden together will be a nice, long-term project.

 

Bolding mine: Yes, that is why I was started the thread. The preppers discussion reminded me of the skills and lifestyle I would like to move toward.

 

I don't expect armageddon, but I hope our society will move away from the disposable lifestyle to one that is more independent and sustainable. That is where I am placing my emphasis for now.

 

The folks here are so knowledgable and come from such wide spread backgrounds I knew I would get good ideas. :001_smile:

[Denise in Florida]

Same here. Not a believer in armageddon, but I want to learn to can. We're also considering getting chickens for eggs. I'm getting better at growing food (tricky in Florida), and am teaching myself to knit. I can crochet, and sew, and between dh and me we are good at making basic repairs.

 

A friend and I are planning to attend Becoming an Outdoors Woman in Ocala in March. I'm proficient at some of the skills mentioned, but want to improve in other areas, and learn some new ones. These probably aren't the kind of "skills" you meant though.

 

All of the above are just because I'd like to know how to do these things, not because I think they will be necessary to know in my lifetime.

 

It is remarkably difficult to garden in Florida. :confused: I had better more productive gardens in New Mexico. When dh was transferred to Florida I thought yippee all that rain it will be easy to garden. :lol:

[livingnlearning]

Our water system was derived from the $1000 plan at http://homepower.com/basics/hotwater/ but even more simple. We had a ton of black plastic irrigation pipe (approximately 100 feet? maybe more?) so we just plumbed it into the water system-it's like having the hot water holding tank and solar heater all in one. Basically if you think of the hot water in your garden hose after it's been out in the sun? We plumbed that into our hot water system. DH handled the plumbing work and could explain it in more detail if I asked him. Note I didn't say it was an ATTRACTIVE water system. But it works really well. We had bought the pipe at an auction so I'm not sure how much that would cost new but the rest of the supplies were about $20-30 I think?