On this Holiday Weekend, my thoughts for you

I use to love Decoration Day/Memorial Day.  It was always the time we got to go down to my grand parents and spend a day decorating graves of our family members who had passed on.  Before this trip, Mom always took us up to Ft Leavenworth to decorate Aunt Francis' grave too.  I still go to Ft Leavenworth and decorate her grave each year.  It isn't just those who died while serving our nation like Aunt Francis did but our family members who gave us so much.  We are a part of them.  They were part of what made us "Us".  Honor them for what they gave you. 

I also wanted to add a note as several have said they could not add comments here so I went exploring and discovered when I clicked on the thing that said 0 comments, it then brought up a box for you to comment on.  So we now know how to make comments!

I will continue to urge you to share what you know with your neighbors.  You don't have to know it all, just a few things to share.  Knowing who around you is of a like mind may save your lives in the future.

I heard a show earlier this year which I thought might be a little extreme but they replayed it Thursday and I realized we all need to hear it now, right now!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/doctorprepper/2012/05/24/doctor-prepper-show

I first learned about FEMA Camps from a Missouri Representative (not mine) who contacted me wanting to know if I could get him onto  Richards-Gebaur Air Reserve Base.  He had requested a tour of the FEMA Camp there and was refused permission to visit.  Several people had contacted him saying evil things were a foot in our good land.  

This was a big eye-opening event for me.  It was a huge complex, well lite with a fence that was meant never to be crossed and security patrols guarding it 24 hours a day.  He told me he wanted to get some pictures and then remove his card and insert another before guards got to us.  I was laughing to myself because over the years we've taken lots of pictures of forbidden things on military sites and never once been stopped.  I was shocked at how fast they had a security team to us!  I gave them my ID and told them I hadn't been to  Richards-Gebaur since the 1970's when it was an active Air Force Base and we were just looking around before going to the Commissary that was still there.  They took the camera and deleted  the pictures he had taken and told us it was a restricted area and we apologized and went our way.  It helped that I had coolers in the car!  I was never so scared in all my life and I suddenly realized there might in deed be something to those stories about FEMA Camps.  They were not used for folks who had no where to go after Hurricane Katrina.  They didn't use it to store Prisoners in.   So what is the plan that FEMA built these huge centers across our country.  Now I know why he felt he had to hid his first memory card and fool them.  What is FEMA hiding from us?

Why are they suddenly buying hollow point bullets in massive quantity to give Forestry Agents, etc.  I've heard 1st hand accounts of hyper inflation in other countries and it's not a pretty site and takes many, many years to recover.   Getting your neighbors on board and have food, water, medical supplies can mean the difference in you surviving or being shipped off to a FEMA Camp.  This is a time when you don't want to be out looking for supplies. 

Listen to this show and find your safe zone with folks surrounding you that you know and trust. 

Have a blessed Memorial Day Weekend!
Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com

It's Tick Season

I confess, I rarely have ticks on me all though I'm out side all the time.  I take Vitamin B-1 and garlic capsules and ticks don't like it.  But it is tick season and I just found this tip on Budget 101 that sounds great!  I'm going to try their Spritz to prevent ticks to see if I can keep them off my dog.  Frontline is not worth the money I spend on it! 

Tick season has struck and those nasty little buggers are plaguing kids, pets and outdoor enthusiasts alike! Here is a simple, painless way to remove a biting tick- as well as prevent future ticks from climbing all over you!
Ticks can transmit a number of painful, debilitating diseases including:

1. Lyme Disease
2. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
3. (HA) Human Anaplasmosis
4. Babesiosis
5. Southern Tick Associated Rash Illness
6. Ehrlichiosis
7. Powassan Virus
8. Tularemia

That's the bad news, the Good news is- in order to get one of those illnesses, a tick must be feeding on it's host for 24 hours, which means that you have nearly a full 24 hours to find and remove a tick before it can transmit one if it's nasties to you!

Here is a simple, effective, yet painless way to remove an embedded tick:

Squirt a glob of liquid hand soap to a cotton ball, Cover the entire tick with the soaked cotton ball for a full 20 seconds. The tick will cease biting, back out and will remain stuck to the cotton ball when it's pulled away.

Using this method assures that the ticks head is also removed and is not accidentally left in the skin (which commonly occurs when they are "yanked" out using tweezers.

If you are unsure of how long a tick has been embedded on your skin, place it in a jar in rubbing alcohol so that it can be tested for Lyme disease.

If you have a tick on your person and it is not yet biting, you can apply a piece of scotch tape to the tick, it will stick to it, fold the tape closed and throw it away. No need to burn it and have the nasty smell linger in your home, it won't be able to get free.

To Prevent Ticks:

• Wear light clothing
• Fill a small Spritz bottle with water, add 40 drops of Tea Tree Essential Oil, shake and spray on liberally.

 Budget 101 is a great site with millions of great tips!  Here is the link to this article and will get you on their site!  http://www.budget101.com/myo-pesticides/easy-tick-removal-kid-safe-repellent-3822.html

Today Friday May 11, 2012

I will be on Blog Talk Radio again tonight with Sheri the Organic Pet Lady.  No clue what all we'll cover but we'll have fun chatting about everything from prepping to animals.  I just got 40 new baby chicks/turkeys this week!

 

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/doctorprepper/2012/05/11/pet-prep-radio

Join Sheri The Organic Pet Lady on Friday, April 27, 2012 as she welcomes Special Guest, Cherlynn Bell, a former Biochemist and Veteran of the Missiouri National Air Guard and Air Force to the show to discuss her experience teaching frugal preparedness and survival skills. Together we will discuss the journey of learning how to prepare from “scratch” for people who cannot afford to buy things like powerless appliance. This show will discuss preparedness  for emergencies for Pets and their People too! As always, this show is sure to be informative and educational! Invite your friends and family to join us-Chat Room will be open for questions and the phones will be open to call in! 347-326-9064

Cherlynn

brchbell@yahoo.com

You're a prepper whether you know it or not

It's true of almost everyone!  Folks will say they are not preppers but they really are.  Did you get up today?  Well that's prepping.  You got up to deal with whatever needs to be done.  You got up, got dressed.  Had breakfast and headed out the door.  All prepping to keep a job and get money to buy the things you want or need.  Just about everything you do makes you a prepper.  I just came in on this beautiful day to fix dinner.  I would of rather stayed outside but I needed to get dinner going so my family can eat together and then get their own work done for the day.  Now as much as I'd like to stay out, I also prefer they be able to do their own jobs so I don't have to do it all.  So I prep and fix dinner so they can eat and have energy to do their work before going to bed. 

There are all kinds of preps you can think of people do.  How about those who go to church?  Aren't they prepping too?   I bet you can think of lots of other preps people do without ever thinking of them as preps!

You buy insurance prepping in case disaster hits you.  So doesn't it make sense to lay some food and water aside for those little crisis that pop up? If you ever are around when a big storm is moving in and go to the store to discover empty shelves you'll feel stupid that you didn't prep ahead of time and now you have to do without the items you thought you needed.  Doesn't it make sense to lay some money aside so you can handle when the motor goes out or the hot water heater gives up the ghost?  Having as little as $1,000 set aside for emergency use can be a real life saver when you least expect it. 

So now you can have insights to share with those so called non-prepping friends.

Have a great day!
Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com

what have you done toward prepping this week?

I try to do something toward our preps every week.  Sometimes when we can afford it we lay in supplies or equipment.  But if we can't afford to I still need to work on preps.  Learn a new skill.  In today's computer age that is easy!  Web sites and you tube videos abound!  Of course you need to use some common sense watching those video's.  Just because they make a video up doesn't mean they actually know what they are doing!  Most do but I've seen enough who don't to warn you to use good sense.  If they are teaching a skill you don't know but are thinking that it doesn't look right then check out other videos covering that skill and compare.  You can learn all kinds of things like cooking, canning, storing foods, hunting, trapping, I even found some great videos about using sling shots!  Once you watch the video's then you need to practice the skill so you know how to do it.  

The last several weeks I've been on a new learning curve.  When you suddenly find out you and family members are allergic to eggs, all gluten, all dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, shell fish, mushrooms, sesame seeds, corn, soy beans and the list goes on.  You have to start from scratch and learn to cook all over again. 

You can't use the same grain grinders without a lot of trouble.  If I run a gluten grain through my mill then I have to wash thoroughly all that can be washed and after it's dry then I have to run white rice through it until it finally comes out white.  Then I have to wash it all again.  It takes a couple days to get it back so I can grind our non gluten grains again.  Then you have to know what has to be ran through the blender instead of the grain mill and what has to go through the hand grinder instead of the electric mill. 

Next I went through our food storage recipes and out of the 133 recipes we had, we can still use 45 of them and another 10 with some adaptions. 

Trips to the grocery store have became a long affair.  You have to read each and every label.  Some items are easy to spot like wheat or eggs but others we had to learn the hard way.  "Modified"  Anything that has been modified we now know to avoid.  Modified corn starch has wheat in it.  I can use corn starch but 2 other family members can not so we have to use arrow root or tapioca starch instead.  These items are important because when you make up non gluten all purpose flours they have a good portion of starch in them.  Like 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cup white rice flour and 1 cup corn starch.  There are several different blends of all purpose flour but that is the easiest one to do. 

Any way I have a good handle on all of this now so I'm back to building up our storage again.  We had a roast chicken this last week so I made chicken broth up and got 7 pints off of it.  I also had gone grocery shopping and discovered I could not use a single can of any of the canned soups available.  I even had a hard time finding beef and chicken broth I could use!  So I need to start making my own canned chicken & rice soup and my own cream of chicken soup and cream of celery soup to have on hand for the meals that need those. 

I made 7 can Taco soup this last week and canned up 4 pints with our left overs.  I also canned up red and white beans.  The last time I bought canned beans and made chili with them we discovered the beans were hard and really messed up our meal.  I will now regularly cook up beans and can them to have ready to use. 

So now I'm on a roll again.  I would love to hear what you have been doing toward your preps too!

Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com