Aside from the usual slow and steady food, water and medical supply preps, here is what we did this month:
- Our primary focus has been on preparing our garden areas and planting seeds. This is our first year planting, so it’s been quite an adventure!
- Cleaned up our old tents and practiced setting up/tearing down. And created two camping gear “go boxes” to include tents, camp stoves, camp showers, etc.
- Set up our Waves for Water family filter (2 bucket gravity fed style).
- Studied up about dog “carting” which is the idea of having one or both of our large dogs pull a good-sized garden cart with supplies in it (I am looking at the canvas garden cart at Costco). This has become a future project that we might try this summer.
- Created a secondary food storage location at my mom’s house, one state/six hours away. This is our primary bug-out location until we can purchase property.
- Laminated four state maps for the go bags. I got these free at the state visitor’s center on the interstate. I folded them in half before laminating to cut down on their size.
- Read, or skimmed, 13 library books about gardening and homesteading. Ordered Guide to Virginia Vegetable Gardening as an addition to our prepping library.
Overall it has been a pretty steady month for prepping and we have had a lot of fun gardening in the unseasonably warm weather here in Virginia.
What did you do?
(Monday: “I’ll Figure It Out If/When I Need To”)
This week we finally got my wife her handheld radio (Wouxun KG-UV6X) and started programming it for the frequencies we use most often, along with the FRS, Weather, emergency comms frequencies as well (not transmit, just receive for the latter two). Being Amateur Radio operators we don’t have cell phones and instead use the radios to communicate when one of use is away form the house.
Did you take a HAM radio class to get started?
My girlfriend and I are doing an edilble wild foods class this weekend. I find it interesting that there is food all around us if we know what to pick.
http://wildfoodadventures.com/workshop.html
We have those here in Virginia too. I am going to try and take one this summer or fall. Especially for the mushrooms!