Basic Preparedness Information

Basic Preparedness Information to Share:
http://www.rocketstove.org/
http://undergroundhousing.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/build-underground-greenhouse-garden-year-round.html
http://lifehacker.com/build-your-own-bicycle-powered-battery-for-emergency-po-1456439155
http://www.pegasuslighting.com/battery-operated-lights.html
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Converter_vs_Inverter
http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Made-Vertical-Hydroponic-System-1/
http://www.diyfactory.org/A46IhHoWn7B5Yt/The-Rain-Tower-Modifications-Tips-And-Ocean-Solution-Fertilizer-Review.html
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/how-to-save-fuel-costs-with-a-wood-powered-pickup-truck.html
http://www.richsoil.com/sepp-holzer/sepp-holzer-permaculture.jsp
http://permaculturenews.org/resources_files/farmers_handbook/volume_4/3_no_till.pdf
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pot-in-a-Pot-Refrigerator
http://yvonnessilverlinings.blogspot.com/2012/04/nuclear-bomb-explosion-effects-with.html
http://www.amazon.com/Caframo-Ecofan-Alcona-Black-Powered/dp/B00GXHUCQQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430767724&sr=8-1&keywords=heat+powered+stove+fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqD4QhGZ7XA&feature=youtube_gdata John Kohler Juicers Growing Your Greens

Taking Care of Your Health Keeps You Ready For Emergencies

No matter what kind of emergency comes your way, you will handle it better if you are healthy.

That is why I write so much about health. 

Staying healthy is much harder to do if you don't pay attention to what you put in your body. That is much like trying to run a jet on car fuel or vice versa. 

You need to know what the beautiful and complex machine that is your body, needs to keep it working well. That will not happen by accident, so you might as well take a little time to learn what your body needs you to eat to make it work well.

I have posts on this blog about nutrition including basic nutrition charts. You can print the nutrition charts out and post them where you can see them while you plan and make meals. Once you learn the basics you can start on more complex information about nutrition and work your way up to phytonutrients and herbs, etc.

Google spiders have industriously indexed the spit out of this blog, so you can use a Google search to find whatever you want on here. I  used key words when I wrote these posts, but the industrious Google spiders went way beyond that, so that makes it easier for you to use this site.

Just to get you started with this, "food", "survival food", "nutrition", and "health" are some of the key words for this blog. If you put in even part of the name of this blog with a search term, Google will give you lots of my posts about that subject. There are over 500 posts on this site, so it might keep you busy a while.

I intend to write about how to decide what to eat and when. I think of this as a sort of, "Order Of Operations", or O.O.O. for short.

I consider this sort of thinking most relevant for a morning meal, or breakfast, if you prefer that word.

I like to do my oil pulling before I even drink a sip of water. The oil pulling works better if you have not eaten or drank anything for a while. The best is after you have been asleep a while. I then brush my teeth, the roof of my mouth, gums and tongue, etc. I concentrate most on skin areas instead of teeth. 

Oil pulling seems to have the greatest effect for improving blood circulation and general health of my mouth when I do that. My face and eyes even seem to do better.

I often do basic exercises right after this. Some exercises work much better on an empty stomach.

When I finish my basic exercises, I like to drink water and then juice, preferably fresh. I don't always get that, though. 

Juice loses much of its health value within a very short while after you make the juice, so it is best to drink it as fast as you can manage it. If I can't manage to do that, the next best is to put the juice in a nice mason jar that is closed tight, in the fridge. That is my second choice for healthy juice. It is not even close to as healthy for you as fresh juice, but sometimes we don't have the time for that.

Choco D, or my diatomaceous earth drink recipe that I have on this site, is my next choice for order of operations.

The reason for what I pick to go in me is that your food needs water to carry your nutrients throughout your body. Juice is really healthy basic nutrition that goes quite directly to your body where it will do the most good. Juice makes you healthy much faster than anything you eat, including something that is semi-liquid, like a smoothie. Juice is a form of nutrients that is much easier for your body to take in and make use of.

Choco D is next because the minerals in it, and the microscopic "lawnmower" blades that chop potential parasites up into bits too small for them to reproduce from, work best on a comparatively empty stomach. 

I have posts with links to other blogs that explain a lot more about how this stuff works, if you want to find out about it more.

I mostly drink a smoothie or eat the muesli that I also have recipes for on this blog, next. You want to use the enzymes from your juice to be able to make use of some very good nutrition. 

A healthy smoothie or muesli are some of that very good nutrition. These are not your only choices, but you need to make sure you pick something very healthy.

I usually drink green tea next. Green tea has excellent antioxidents in it. People who drink a little green tea regularly, have longer lives than most people who don't.

I keep drinking more water throughout the time that I am eating and drinking all of the aforementioned. Water, and plenty of it, has amazing benefits for our health. A good rule of thumb to figure out how much water you need daily is:

Check what your body weight is and think of half of that amount in ounces. Drink that much, or more of water a day. If you use a metric system to measure water, you can google something, like, "convert ounces to metric". There are lots of these online and some will offer charts as well.

By the time I get all the aforementioned into me, I am usually too full to eat anything bad for me. This is generally a pretty good thing.

I hope this, O. O. O., helps you to work out a plan for what fuel to put in your body so you can stay very healthy.

Stay Healthy For Preparedness With Your Weight

It occurred to me that readers might not be aware that calculators are available on the internet to help you know if your weight is right for your height and age. I just checked my own and I liked the one on the Center for Disease Control (CDC). They tell you whether you are in the normal, overweight or obese weight range and what your BMI or Body Mass Index is. Your BMI is an estimate of the ratio of fat to muscle in your body.

You can not be well prepared for a disaster unless you do your best to maintain good health. If you are sick, you will not be able to cope as well with a disaster situation, as you would if you are in good condition.

It is not possible to even know what your physical condition is for weight, unless you know if you are normal or weigh too much. Nice online calculators are a tool to help you figure out how you are doing in the weight area. 

There is a great deal of variation in what online calculators tell you about your weight. Several of them informed me that I am underweight, which is pretty funny, since I just managed to lose enough weight to get to the top of  my normal range, according to the CDC calculator. I think that one seems to be closer to accuracy than most of the others for me. 

Part of the way that you can tell which online calculator to believe is what your eyes tell you when you look in the mirror. Do you have a roll or several of them around your middle? Even if an online calculator tells you that your weight is normal or below, having too much fat around your middle, means that you are at greater risk for having health problems like heart attacks.

The CDC BMI calculator is linked below. It will give you an idea of how you are doing with your weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html


If you put "weight chart age height" into a search engine you should get plenty of other sites to help you check your weight in relation to your age and height. Some of them will probably tell you how to calculate your BMI as well, but I prefer to have the site calculate it for me. 

Other sites wanted me to do arcane math contortions to figure it out myself. The CDC is not only closer to what I think is actually happening with my weight, they are nice enough to set up their site to calculate my BMI for me and for readers who might like to have it do the same for them.

Please check on how you are doing in the weight area so that you will know what to do to keep yourself healthy. If you find that you, like many others around the world, need to lose weight and eat better, then you can use my blog to help you with that. Use Google search engine to look up which of my blog posts are about healthy diets and nutrition. 

I now use allrecipes.com to find healthy recipes. The site will give you recipes for special diets, or to use a certain ingredient, or several ingredients. I like the idea that you can look in your fridge and see what you have, then look at allrecipes, to see what you can make with your fridge contents.

May you stay healthy and happy, and therefore ready for any emergencies that may come into your life.

Crock Pot Dangers

Readers who are familiar with this blog know that I think preparedness is not very useful, unless you do your best to be healthy enough to survive, before any particular disaster strikes.

This post is part of my ongoing effort to help readers stay healthy enough to survive disasters. The specific subject is dangers to your health from crock pots.

Some crock pots contain lead in their glazes and it leaches out into the food that you cook in your crock pot. Eating lead is definitely bad for your health. Even very small doses of lead is bad for your health, because it builds up in your body over time and it is very hard to get out.

I became aware of this problem from reading a review on crock pots on the Amazon site. I like to use this site to do research even on things I don't want to buy from them, because the reviews and comments are so often very helpful.

The reviewer that I read, on Amazon, is a chemical engineer and he tested his own crock pot and threw it out after he got the dreadful results. I am very glad I read his helpful review before I bought a crock pot. 

I hope you will be able to use the information I got from him and others to help you make a choice of crock pot that will help you and your family stay healthy.

Some crock pots cite FDA guidelines as to safe amounts of lead to have leaching out of their crock pots into your food. I don't think ANY lead amount is safe to have leaching into my food. I have therefore decided to include crock pots here that are not supposed to have lead in their glazes, in their liners, or the crock pots without liners.

Bear in mind that no matter how lead-free the glaze on your liner is, it can still leach lead into your food if it becomes damaged. You need to get rid of your crock pot or liner, if you see chips, tiny cracks, or a hazy look to the glaze that probably indicates that the glaze has become dangerously thin for some reason. The hazy look may mean that your crock pot is now leaching lead into your food, even without any cracks.

Essenergy (VitaClay) brand does not leach any lead, but comments made me fear that it is a fire risk, so I don't want one of those.
Procter Silex does not have lead in their glaze.
Kitchen Aid does not have lead in their crock pot glazes.
Miriams Earthen Cookware (liners and cookware only) is lead free.
West Bend has lead free glazes on their crock pots.
Hamilton Beach also does not have lead in their crock pot or liner glazes. 
Cuisine Art was also mentioned as safe and one or more of their pots even has a probe that can be placed in meat to maintain or reach a specific temperature. This sounds extra safe for meat eaters, to me.

There may be other brands that are safe. I don't care to list the ones that are definitely not safe. The above were good enough for me to do further looking. 

Before you rush out and buy one of the aforementioned brands of cookware, I think you might want to go to the company site and look at their materials and the mandatory statements they have about them. Things can change very fast and you need to keep checking to stay safe.

I wish to make my own herbal supplements, etc. in a crock pot, so I not only want a lead-free crock pot, I need one that will not scorch precious herbs with long cooking times at low temperatures. That was what I was looking for when I found the alarming news that many crock pots are leaching lead into our food that we cook in them. 

I am off to find the elusive safe crock pot that will not burn the herbal stuff I want to cook in it. Best wishes for your own good health.

Update On Water-efficient Food Growing

This summer has taken a lot of my time for food growing. I have spent most of it on a self watering system. This is because I hate wasting water even though I live in a place that has plenty of water and does not seem in danger of having water shortages soon.

It is distressing to see water problems getting worse in so much of the world. Places that already had difficulties with enough clean water to keep people healthy, are getting worse due to climate change. Places that never had water problems are now getting them due to climate change. It is obvious that these water problems will only worsen as climate change becomes worse.

My neighborhood is taking some steps to prevent future water problems. I am very proud that my neighborhood has people in it who are so aware and interested in taking care of our future and that of people who will live here after us.

One of these steps to prevent future water problems is the planning and installation of a system to melt snow and return it to our groundwater. 

The normal method of handling snow is to scoop it up with heavy machinery, load it into lots of big trucks and haul it outside the city and dump it there. 

A big advantage of the new snow melting in place system is that it will help to prevent saltwater intrusion into fresh water aquafers beneath us. We are very close to the ocean, so this could easily become a problem some day.

Not only does the snow melting system prevent saltwater intrusion into our fresh water, but it also saves a great deal on fuel for all of the snow hauling that now takes place.

They plan to dig a large hole under our recreation center parking lot and install a heater there. This system was planned by students at our local college. They did it free of charge. This is good for us because we get a system that we can more easily afford and it is good for the students, because they are gaining valuable experience that will give them jobs in the future. I expect they will get the first of those jobs designing more of these systems for the rest of the city. 

My small contribution to water efficiency with my self-watering garden is not nearly as impressive as the snow melting. I hope that more people will learn a little bit from mine and increase the good effect, however.

The self-watering system that I used outside uses rain gutters to hold water with a float valve to control the amount of water that goes to the plants.

A man from the eastern part of the USA, named Larry Hall is the one who invented this rain gutter watering system. Thousands of people are already using his system and they are very generous in sharing their experiences and the modifications and improvements they make as well. He is on facebook and on youtube as well. Here are links to get you started with his system:

http://containergardening.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/self-watering-rain-gutter-grow-system-larry-hall/

https://www.youtube.com/user/larrylhall


The bottom one is for his channel on youtube. He has links to lots of videos about his system to show what he and others have done with it.

There is nothing like letting plants take whatever water they need, as they need it to make them healthy and beautiful. They make you the same when you eat them. YUM!

A local hydroponics store gave me a free system that I plan to keep inside. They told me that it is a $500.00 system. That is certainly a lot more than I planned to spend right off. I have not used it yet, but it is high on my list. I have to do a bit more with the Larry Hall rain gutter system first. It will be winter all too soon, so that will stop what I can do outside for a while, so I have to make use of outdoor growing while I still can for this year.

I also have plans to make several hydroponics tower systems. I have most of the supplies for some of those, but not the pumps. Those are the most expensive part of that system. Those have free plans and materials lists to make them. I already posted links for those, but will do it again, to make it easier for others to make those as well. Here is a link to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTc6Sv2Gi3o

http://www.tomorrowsgarden.net/

This last one is a link to the plans to make your own rain tower hydroponics system. He even includes templates for cutting out parts for it.

The original inventor of those used a 5 gallon bucket as the base for his towers. This means that it will not take much more room in your home than a potted plant. You can get as many as 28 plants in one tower. You replace the plants as you use them, so this will make a big dent in your food budget. You will be much healthier as well, when you eat the food that you grow in your Rain Tower hydroponics system.

The knowledge that you are making the world a better place in many ways, should make you feel even better than the personal benefits to you, when you use your Rain Tower hydroponics system.

I hope that you will go make a rain gutter self watering system or a Rain Tower hydroponics system and benefit yourself and the world by doing so.

A Tree That Might Save Your Life - Maringa Oleifera, or Moringa Oleifera

One of the solutions to many disaster problems may be a tree called a Moringa or a Maringa tree. You can eat most of the tree, either fresh or dried. The leaves are higher protein than milk and they have more vitamins than most vegetables. 

The seeds can be ground up and used to clean dirty water. Not having clean drinking water can cause more deaths than a disaster itself, so Maringa tree seeds can save lives in a disaster.

There is more than one type of Maringa tree. I am aware of at least three types. Only one will clean water. That kind is a Moringa Oleifera. 

Many countries now grow Moringa trees. These trees have already saved countless lives during disasters and in everyday living for poor people.

Moringa trees come from Africa and are a hot weather tree. They are quite hardy and will live in varied climates. 

In colder climates, Moringa trees do not make it through the winter outside. They can be treated as an annual and replanted from seed every year or potted and moved inside.

The problem with potting a Moringa tree is that they grow very fast and very tall. They can grow 15 to 20 feet tall in a year. 

A man on youtube was kind enough to demonstrate how to deal with a potted Moringa tree. He cut his off down to the hard, stiff, woody part and then had two trees. The rooted bottom part of the Moringa tree will grow another top and you can take the cut off top and grow roots on it. He chose to shorten the cut off top part of his tree since the cut off part was long and spindly, before he potted it. He had staked it  for support, before he cut it off originally.

You can dwarf your Moringa tree so that you can leave it inside all the time. Here is a link to an article about dwarfing fruit trees: 
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/create-dwarf-tree-orchard-23420.html

Be sure to look at the links in the above article. It has a lot of links to universities that teach agriculture.  

I have just received my first Maringa seeds from an online order. I got a lot of them and hope to harvest and eat leaves and other parts of the trees. I intend to dwarf my trees and grow them mostly indoors, since they prefer warmth. Since I live in a cold climate, I may take some trees outside during the summer to give them a boost with more sunlight. 

According to the people I got my Maringa oleifera seeds from, once the trees get a woody base on their trunk, they become more hardy and can tolerate some cold. I gather that a hard freeze will kill them, however.

Making powder of the Maringa leaves sounds like a good idea for emergency use. It also sounds like a good idea to keep plenty of Maringa oleifera seeds on hand for emergencies, because of their ability to clean dirty, contaminated water.

You may become healthier if you include Moringa leaves and other parts of the Moringa tree in your diet. They seem fairly easy to grow, so you may enjoy growing them for your own use.

A Threat To Your Health In Your Drinking Water That You Can Fix

Most people assume that since their cities put chlorine in their drinking water that it must be good for their health to drink it all the time, or at least safe to drink.

The reason for having chlorine in your drinking water is that if it is not in there you will have a chance of dying soon of disease from bacterial contamination in your water. It has to be in there to keep you alive for right now.

There is a problem with the chlorine staying in your water after it protects you from disease. That chlorine that just protected you, will now start causing you problems. Just because the chlorine does not kill you as fast as the disease germs do, does not mean that it won't kill you or hurt you eventually.

Here is a link to a report to thoracic, or chest doctors about the dangers of chlorine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136961/

Here is another article that is easier to read and understand: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2011/chlorine-accidents/

Here is a link about what to do if you are exposed to a lot of chlorine on the Center for Disease Control site from the USA:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp

It is not very nice to tell you about problems without giving you a solution, besides first aid and medical care afterwards. Prevention is good.

Therefore, try not to drink water with chlorine in it. Reverse osmosis is a pretty expensive way to get chlorine out of your water. If you have the money and want to use it to clean up your water, go for it.

There are cheaper ways to get chlorine out of your water. Less expensive than reverse osmosis, are various methods of filtering out the chlorine. They have filters that can be put on the water line into your home and will remove chlorine from the water as it enters your home. Unless you are especially handy, this will require a plumber or other specialist.

You can buy a filter that fits on the end of your kitchen tap that filters the water as it comes out. They also have some filters that will fit on the faucet in your bath or shower. I read that you are exposed to more chlorine than you drink, by a shower or bath.

There are other filters that can be pumped manually to force water through them. Those kind are often used by disaster workers or missionaries who go to remote areas. 

Other filters work by gravity. You pour water into them and catch the clean water as it drips into another container. Brita makes these and they can often be found in department stores, including Wal Mart and the like.

I believe that one of the best kinds of filters for people of fairly modest means is Berkey. They are made in Texas in the USA. These are often used by preppers and stored away waiting for a disaster to strike.

Berkey filters remove 99.99% of chlorine from your water and you can buy an additional filter to remove fluoride, which is not good to swallow either.

Katadyne is the name of a brand of filters that disaster workers and missionaries often use. They make a big filter that can be pumped in order to filter large amounts of water as may be required for an entire village.

Here are sites to look at filters:
http://berkeywater.com/start.main.html


https://www.brita.com/?locale=us&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=Purification%2520System&utm_campaign=BFR_Product_General+Filter_Broad


http://www.katadyn.com/usen/


 These are reverse osmosis systems:  http://www.kinetico.com/water-system-quick-quote/


http://www.aquatechnology.net/homeusero.html

In case you can not afford any of the systems mentioned above, you can get a lot of chlorine out of your water by just letting it sit exposed to air for a while. It is a good idea to put something that will let the chlorine escape on the top of the container and still keep out dust and bugs. A piece of cloth, with a rubber band or cord or piece of yarn or string around the top of your container, will work. 

Chlorine is quite volatile, so you can boil your water to encourage it to evaporate from your water. 

There is yet another cheaper way to get bad stuff, including chlorine out of your water. It is by using the ground up seeds of a tree called a Maringa Oleifera. There are other kinds of Maringa trees besides Oleifera, but Oleifera is the only type that I am sure will clean water. I already wrote about this tree on my blog. You can do a Google search with the name of my blog and Maringa and my blog post about Maringa trees will pop up. It tells you more about how to use the tree to purify water and the nutritional benefits of Maringa trees. They are amazingly good for you when you eat most parts of the tree.

It will help you to live longer and stay healthy longer if you get chlorine out of your diet and drinking water. If you have to use it to purify water during an emergency, it is still a good idea to find a way to get the chlorine out of your water before you drink it. If you want to avoid drinking chlorine during a disaster, it is best to plan something like a filter or boiling, to have on hand.

I hope you will take care of yourself and your family by finding a way to keep chlorine out of your body and those of your family.