Author: Linda Holliday

Editor’s Note: This article was generously contributed by Linda Holliday. Water is at the top of any prepper’s list of items to have on hand but without stores of water or the convenience of freely flowing tap water, finding and treating water could be difficult. In a crisis, not having water could be deadly. Linda discusses a method that preppers could use to create your own DIY Water Well to ensure you have a source of water when you need it. This idea is not only for emergencies, you can take advantage of a well on your property right now.…

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As recently as 100 years ago, the most important site consideration for homesteaders and villages was whether plenty of good water was within easy reach. When electric power lines and drilled water wells reached rural areas, however, close proximity to clean water became immaterial – or so we assumed. Our nonchalant attitude regarding water is rapidly changing, according to well pump installers I spoke with recently. Many are seeing an upsurge in interest by homeowners wanting to learn about and fit hand pumps to their water wells. There are now numerous manually-operated water pumps to choose from, depending on factors…

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I can’t imagine housewives today saving used cooking grease in a can to take to the butcher in exchange for a few cents and extra meat rations, yet that’s what millions did during World War II. Reading through a 1944 “Good Housekeeping” magazine the other night, I began to comprehend the extent of wartime frugality I’d heard about from old-timers through the years. The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” reminds us about scrap metal, rubber and paper drives, but I never really considered how rationing affected people daily. I should have learned from my mother, who was a youngster at…

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Up until a toxic chemical oozed into the Elk River in Charleston, W. Va., last month, we thought most pollutants could be smelled, seen or tasted. We were wrong. West Virginians are apparently fortunate that Crude MCHM (4-methylcyclohexanemethanol) smells like licorice. Otherwise, no one may have noticed the toxic chemical seeped into the public water supply. Since Crude MCHM is stored in tanks just a mile and half upstream from the city’s water source and is commonly used locally in coal mining processes, I was shocked to learn the company supplying Charleston with water does not test for it. My…

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Before hopping a northbound Greyhound to visit my daughter recently, I went online to buy her a good, long-lasting water filter to strain the fluoride, bleach, birth control pills, drugs, bug killer and other mysterious poisons from her St. Paul, Minn., drinking water. The selection was astounding – a virtual array of filtration devices that eliminate the above-mentioned contaminants, plus a host more, including iron, hydrogen sulfide, lead, mercury, calcium carbonate, magnesium, chromium, bacteria, algae and fungi. A radiation filter even removes Iodine -131 , Radium-226, Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Uranium-238, Ionic contaminants, Hexavalent Chromium and more. I wondered, how did all this…

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In late 2009 my boss plunked a book with a hazard-yellow cover on my desk and said, “This might interest you.” I didn’t know it then, but reading “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler would be the final push that changed the course of our lives. My husband, Darren, and I were already on the road to self-sufficiency, but now felt utter urgency. Within a year, I quit my job. We sold all of our trinkets and trappings on eBay and bought a rustic homestead far from the city. Written in 2005, the book details the numerous potential catastrophes…

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As the U.S. government begins scaling back its Food Stamp Program, I wonder how 48 million recipients (almost 1 of every 6 Americans) are being advised to make the transition to reduced or discontinued benefits. Cuts loom ahead, too, for Social Security and other programs. Is home gardening ever encouraged as a way to offset the escalating cost of, well, just about everything? Some say it would be cruel to ask people to grow some of their own food as Americans did during the first two world wars. Literature from those eras, however, indicates people felt good about contributing, they…

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Increasingly aware of potential U.S. economic collapse, author Marjory Wildcraft wanted to learn from those who already lived through it – the Cubans. Wildcraft, best known for her “Grow Your Own Groceries” video series, reasoned it was best to speak with these survivors personally to hear how they fed themselves when imports stopped arriving. In February, as Wildcraft interviewed Cuban residents, she sought their advice for Americans preparing for economic collapse. Their answers surprised her. “Every single one of them said something about being ready to share with your neighbors, to help out in your community and do your best…

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When garden composting caught on in the early 1980s, I thought back to my mother sending us kids to the garden every night to bury the day’s apple cores, carrot tops and hickory nut shells. It seemed Mom was ahead of her time. Or was she? I’ve been reading in the “1881 Household Cyclopedia of General Information” about enriching soil. In the days before chemical fertilizers, making compost was vital for a successful harvest. Only a lazy farmer was not continually building up his soil. And to neglect the earth meant to have poor quality vegetables and crops. “The best…

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My mother practically raised my sister and me in the woods, teaching us to hunt for game, what mushrooms were good to eat, how to fish and catch frogs, and find all sorts of wild berries and fruit to eat. I realized many years later that all that hunting and gathering kept us fit and healthy. Our groceries were not sprayed with toxic chemicals, radiated, wrapped in plastic, injected with hormones or genetically modified. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but I maintained perfect attendance from kindergarten through eighth grade. When we were young, Mom pulled us in our toy wagon…

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With so many folks preparing to survive economic depression as our parents and grandparents did in the 1930s, I wonder about our “progress” since that humble time. Over the years, I’ve been privileged to meet many elderly country folks who said the Great Depression meant little to them. Perhaps it was because they were children at the time. But, perhaps their contentment during those hard times was because their families were self-sufficient. In the era before Welfare, their root cellars were full, water was free and neighbors traded with each other as a way of life. Those old-timers also had…

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Remember how horrifying the thought of acid rain was in the 1980s? On its way to earth, rain picked up sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from industrial emissions, killing 300-year-old cedar trees in the Northeast. Dead fish floated in lakes. Birds fell from the sky. In Europe, poisoned rainfall eroded nose from marble statues. Instead of nourishing and revitalizing life, rain became something to fear. We don’t hear much about acid rain anymore. Perhaps it’s because we actually made headway in cleaning up our act, reducing U.S. emissions by as much as 67 percent from 1995 to 2011, according to…

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For years, I have stated vigorously that my feet will never leave Ozarks soil again, but you know what they say about never saying never. I recently traveled with a marketing group to Southeast Asia, which gave me an opportunity to learn a bit about the culture, water issues and people-powered tools still in use. First, I had to get past the motorbikes. As soon as we left the airport headed for Ho Chi Minh City, the cartoonish beeps of “motos” came at us from every direction. It was nearly midnight, yet we were in the midst of a confused…

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A Missouri filmmaker has assembled an eclectic mix of gardeners, natural builders, homesteaders, preppers and farmers who have at least one thing in common – they are not preparing to survive one calamity, but developing self-reliant skills to last a lifetime. Producer Sophek “Sean” Tounn said the film, “Beyond Off-Grid,” is intended to wake folks up to the precarious nature of society’s modern grid and to motivate all of us to take direct action to reduce our dependency on the modern system. Citing Hurricane Sandy as an example, Tounn said the contemporary way of living is not conducive to health…

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Last summer, when a friend presented me with a set of author Marjory Wildcraft’s gardening DVDs, I thought I already knew everything about growing vegetables. This winter, I finally started watching “Grow Your Own Groceries” and was amazed at how much I didn’t know about rabbits, chickens, compost and bugs. The home video of Marjory, husband Dave and their kids demonstrates how the family created their self-sufficient homestead. Marjory shows how they made soil from Texas sand and clay, set up rainwater catchment systems, began raising livestock and how more than half their diet now is organic food they grow.…

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Is it just me, or are there entirely too many old T-shirts in the world? Perhaps I had a few as a youngster, but the first I can truly recall was a white T-shirt with a rubbery photo of a Studebaker on the front. I wore it with stylish orange hip-huger bell-bottoms embroidered with butterflies. Because I was 14 and bought the shirt with my dish washing earnings, I wore it until the emblem eroded and the fabric turned gray. Now it seems, T-shirts are everywhere and often free, given out at fundraisers, sporting events and as advertising. Our local…

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When I was young, I’d watch in fascination as my mother used her treadle sewing machine (a late 1800’s Singer that belonged to my great-grandmother) to fashion all sorts of clothing, blankets, couch covers and schoolbags.  I’d sit on the floor and watch as her feet deftly pedaled fast on the straightaway and then slowed as she rounded a curve or reached an end. Built before electricity, the heavy Singer emitted a peaceful clicking sound, interrupted only when the ancient leather belt flew apart. Mom would stop pedaling, rejoin the leather ends with a bent nail and bit of tape,…

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Editors Note: We have discussed the importance of sanitation here on the Prepper Journal before and Linda has written this excellent article with advice from an old book that shows how you can make your bathroom time much more pleasant than squatting over a hole in the rain. Outhouse from the rear Besides taking for granted how simply water normally arrives into our homes, sometimes we also fail to consider how easily we can discharge waste-water. Looking through one of my favorite old books the other night, I was reminded of how easy most of us have it today. The…

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In the 1960s, my father spit out the word “plastic” as if it were poison. To him, anything made of a substance other than real wood, metal or glass was junk. Now, I understand. In this article, we are going to show how to build a recycled patio door greenhouse that uses what you have on hand already and some hard work to allow for food production all year long. Our first greenhouse was entirely plastic, a snazzy do-it-yourself kit Darren ordered online for about $1,600. He eagerly awaited the day the UPS truck showed up with the soon-to-be mega-veggie-growing…

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In times of drought or should the municipal services that you rely on cease working, it may be necessary to know how to filter rainwater. During our boiling, broiling, blistering summer of 2012 here in the Missouri Ozarks, water was a topic of conversation wherever we went. Creeks and ponds dried up (some never recovered) and the water table dropped, forcing a few neighbors to have their well pumps lowered or to even have deeper wells drilled. Many folks shared memories of rain barrels, cisterns, hand pumps, and drawing water with a well bucket as a child, usually on grandpa…

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