What comes to mind when you think of survival? I have to imagine it is a bug-out bag or maybe how to make a fire or shelter, right?
Well, there are SO many aspects to survival and I fear that some are often overlooked!
Let's take a look at natural health. With the way big pharma and Obamacare are headed there will never be a cure for anything, but I truly believe that God blessed us with everything we need to survival and thrive in our immediate surroundings! I believe it is our responsibility to learn how to identify, forage and utilize those gifts. Being able to gather needles from a tree to make pine needle tea which is 4 to 5 times higher in Vitamin C than fresh squeezed orange juice and is also high in Vitamin A is a huge benefit. This tea is a great immune booster, decongestant and an expectorant. You can also use the cooled tea as an antiseptic wash. Be sure to identify your trees properly. You can use any pine needle, but remember that although pines are evergreens, not all evergreens are pines. Knowing the beneficial and medicinal plants in your area can be a huge benefit to you in a survival situation. I will be starting an Introductory Herbal Class in October myself where I will also be offering daily encouragement and accountability for anyone else who is interested in joining in and participating as well. If you are interested in finding out more information on this opportunity, you can do so here.
I carry a homemade salve and a container of Burleigh Balm in my packs all the time along with sample sized bottles of all my essential oils. This will provide me with a very large First Aid kit covering not just wound care, colds and sickness, but additional ailments such as rashes, migraines, inflammation, food poisoning as well as infections, boosting the immune system, earaches just to name a few. Carrying a salve like the two that I carry, enables me to also create topical ointments combining varying essential oils dependent on my family's needs. For more information on the oils and salves that I use, you can subscribe to my natural health newsletter.
Exercise and endurance may be a necessary component to a survival situation as well as staying calm and keeping a clear head. Many of you have survival packs ready by the door or in close proximity. Do you know how much your pack weighs? Have you ever just taken it for a walk, experiencing what it feels like to pack it and carry it? I imagine also that you have a lot of very useful tools inside but do you know how to use them and if you do know how to use them, do you take time to practice and hone in on those skills?
Many people have these very large packs and have never even put the pack on their backs. In a survival situation, if you have never carried any weight on your back for a long period of time, you will most likely head out and either have to lose the pack or start unloading it.
When we go hiking we carry our packs and practice getting used to the weight. We stop during every hike we take, religiously and start a fire utilizing something other than a lighter. We often take time and set up a small shelter or build a shelter from the materials that surround us, again to get extra practice.
We are constantly testing our abilities and improving our abilities even if we are well practiced. Try to start a fire in the rain, wind and unusual circumstances. Use a different method of starting a fire each time from modern tools to traditional and primitive tools such as a bow drill. Knowledge is power in a survival situation of any kind. The more knowledge you have the better prepared you will be.
Exercise now, prior to a survival situation so you will have endurance, strength and be much more limber. Being thrown into a survival situation being out of shape is just asking for trouble. Tight muscles will pull and be strained easily, without endurance and strength you may not be able to accomplish tasks that could save your life. Honestly, you do not need to join a gym – go for a walk, run or ride a bike. Prior to starting any form of exercising, take time to stretch your muscles. Start getting yourself in practice and increase your activity every day. Once you have been exercising for a while, push yourself. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone will help increase your endurance. We are in good health and are very active on a daily basis so when we feel like we can't go on, we push ourselves for another mile.
Exercise is a destresser and also helps detox the body naturally so you will be healthier and have a clearer mind. You will be able to stay calm more easily and control your breathing. Get yourself some weights and start out slow, increasing the number of reps daily. Situps and push ups are utilizing your own body to build varying muscle groups. Using your own body and resistance training can prove to be a very productive workout. We also do such things as chop firewood, swinging a 5 or 8 lb maul can prove to be a very great workout and gets our firewood ready for the woodshed. The key thing is to be active at least 20 to 30 minutes a day and drink lots of water. The important thing is to know that you can carry your pack for a very long period of time without a struggle so start practicing and be prepared!
Now let's talk a bit about survival food. There are many great companies that provide freeze dried meals and many even carry allergy sensitive alternatives in their varieties of foods. I will list several of my favorite companies to purchase from below:
Our family needs to be concerned with the foods we carry and pack because the Mountain Boy is unable to have gluten or dairy and I have struggles with many of the preservatives that are added to food and I need to watch many foods due to a histamine intolerance. So it gets really tricky for our family to just grab prepackaged or freeze-dried foods without thoroughly checking the ingredients. It is good to have such foods on hand, but because we have been on a whole foods diet for such a long time our bodies do not react very kindly to processed foods. Our ancestors all made do with traditional cured and dried foods and that is the approach that we are taking to our survival foods.
Once again, God blessed us with everything we would need to survive. We harvest our meat every year from the wild for our family now and would continue to do so. We freeze, can, smoke, jerk and salt cure our meats currently and will be able to continue to do so, even in the wild if we needed to. Again, learning what is available to us in the wild, so many plants in our surroundings are completely edible and very delicious. The young roots of a cattail plant are a delicacy for our family. They are absolutely amazing sauteed up in a little bit of olive oil with a bit of garlic and season salt, but could also be cooked up in bear lard and enjoyed just the same.
Not only being able to gather your edibles from the wild, you can continue to grow your own food if you are smart. I carry heirloom seeds in all of my survival packs, both big and small. You never know when a short term survival situation could turn into a long term survival situation fast. Having the necessary items to survive a long term situation is important. Here in the Idaho wilderness I can't walk out and expect to find a tomato plant growing wild, but I could easily carry seeds that take up nearly no room at all with no weight either and easily grow them for my family. The additional benefit of an heirloom seed is that you can also save the seeds each year and continue to be able to replant and grow your food.
If you are new to gardening, two highly recommended tools are The Gardening Notebook and this amazing Planting Calculator.
We already live a much different life than the average, but when thrown into a survival situation we would all be fending for ourselves and looking to achieve the same thing. Learning from one another is important and finding different perspectives on things is important. There are certain staple foods that we stock up on in great quantities sea salt being one of them. Salt is a useful staple in not just flavoring our food, but being able to preserve our food. We raise honey bees, so our honey is another staple that we stock up on and refer to as our Homestead Gold. It is not only a great sweetener, will last indefinitely, but also has a lot of medicinal value and uses. I have my honey bees directly in front of the raised bed in my garden that has my herbs and medicinal plants giving it even further medicinal value. I also grow stevia in my garden which is a perennial plant and another amazing asset to our homestead.
For those of you that are not used to cooking and baking from scratch or need to cater to specialty diets, you may find my new cookbook, The Trayer Wilderness Cookbook ~ Homesteading The Traditional Way ~ Volume 1 useful. You will also find tips & recipes on canning, cooking and baking with essential oils, using your woods stove or a solar oven to cook your food and a lot of gluten free and dairy free tips, tricks and recipes to accommodate everyone.
I also stock up on Tattler Canning Lids. They are reusable canning lids that are priceless if we end up in a survival situation because they would allow me to continue to preserve my food via canning indefinitely.
We are equipped to continue in a modern way, but are also well versed in living off the land and in a very traditional and even primitive way. Being able to exist this way is a key factor in survival in our opinion and we feel that although there are a lot fo great products on the market to help us survive in varying ways, there could possibly come a time when what we may need to exist is depleted or no longer in existence. Knowing how to live off the land is what will move us forward in an extreme survival situation and for us, that describes our lifestyle.
Learn the skills and knowledge you will need to exist without the modern conveniences of today so you are prepared for anything.
The month of September is National Preparedness Month and this year The Prepared Bloggers are once again bringing you a great 30 day series on how to be better prepared in 2015.
This was one of my contributions and I hope you have enjoyed it. Below you will find all the other contributors and their posts. I highly encourage you to check them out!
P.S. For taking the time to join us and read this post, we would like to extend a 15% discount on everything in our store for National Preparedness Month. After placing your order, just enter NATIONALPREP in the coupon code when completing your order.
September is National Preparedness Month and The Prepared Bloggers are at it again!
It's safe to say that our ultimate goal is to help you have an emergency kit, a family plan, and the knowledge to garden, preserve your harvest and use useful herbs every day – without spending a ton of money to do it. Luckily that’s obtainable for every family and a journey we would love to help you with.
This year we have posts about food storage, 72-hour Kits & Bug Out Bags, and every aspect of preparedness, from water storage to cooking off grid. You’ll also find many ideas to help you be more self-reliant. Look for information on the big giveaway we've put together for later in the month.
Be sure to visit our sites and learn as much as you can about being prepared. We'll be using the hashtag #30DaysOfPrep for these and many other ideas throughout the month of September, so join in the conversation and make 2015 the year you become prepared.
Food Storage
The Prepared Pantry: A 3 Month Food Supply | PreparednessMama
How to Wax Cheese for Long Term Storage | Perky Prepping Gramma
Dispelling the Canned Food Expiration Date Myth | Self Sufficient Man
6 Canning Myths You Must Know | Melissa K. Norris
How to Dehydrate Cherries | Mom With a PREP
How to Dehydrate Milk for Long Term Storage | Perky Prepping Gramma
Self-Reliance
Survival Tips from the Great Depression | Self Sufficient Man
The 5 best crops for Self Sufficient Gardeners | Our Stoney Acres
Butchering a chicken | The Homesteading Hippy
Self-Sufficiency Simplified | Blue Jean Mama
3 Small Livestock Preparedness Tips | Timber Creek Farm
Essential Oils for Preparedness | Mama Kautz
Farm First Aid Preparedness | Timber Creek Farm
72-Hour Kits or Bug Out Bags
How to Build a 72-hour Go Bag | Blue Yonder Urban Farm
Build Your Dollar Store B.O.B. for your Car in minutes! | Simply Living Simply
10 Essential Oils You Need in Your B.O.B. and at Home | Blue Jean Mama
10 Must-Have Herbs for Your B.O.B | Simply Living Simply
Preparedness
How to Make a 72 Hour Emergency Kit | Mom with a PREP
5 Things New Moms Can Do to Prepare for Disasters | PreparednessMama
Trauma Essentials for the Prepper | The Prepared Ninja
Emergency Preparation for Those Who Are Disabled or Elderly | A Matter of Preparedness
10 Most Important Items a Female Prepper Should Have | Living Life in Rural Iowa
How to Prepare Your Car for Winter | Frugal Mama and the Sprout
How to Prepare For a Power Outage | Blue Yonder Urban Farm
Why Natural Health, Exercise and Whole Foods Play a Role in Survival | Trayer Wilderness
Getting Started With Water Storage | The Backyard Pioneer
10 Totally Free Prepping Things to Do | Living Life in Rural Iowa
21 Prepper Tips I Wish I'd Heard Before I Started Prepping | Urban Survival Site
Is Homesteading Like Prepping? | The Homesteading Hippy
What You Should Consider When Fire Is A Threat | Trayer Wilderness
11 Ways to Cook Off-Grid | Melissa K. Norris
#TrayerWilderness #30DaysOfPrep #NatPrep
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