Preparedness Challenge & Giveaway #34

Another month has come and gone. It was a busy month and the coming months will only be busier.

The Preparedness Challenge link up/blog hop is hosted by Homestead Revival every month. You will visit some great blogs, learn something new and meet some great homesteaders when you visit the others who participate. Be sure to check them out!

How I met the challenge this month:

Food Storage-for life's unexpected events whether related to long term effects from a disaster or a job loss and everything in between.
    *I added 12lbs of sugar, 30lbs of flour, 4 cans of tuna, 4 cans of cream soups, one pound of rice and this:

A Presto 16 quart Pressure Canner. After doing much research, I found this canner to meet most of my requirements, the two biggest being cost and something safe to use on my smooth glass top range.  It has a lot of good reviews. Another thing that sold me was the 5, 10, and 15 pound weights. I've never used a pressure canner (or cooker) before. All my past experience has been with a water bath canner, so I'm excited to learn a new skill in the coming weeks.

Emergency Preparedness-for times of power outages, natural disasters, etc.
    *I purchased more face masks, hand sanitizer and added 8 more 2 liter bottles of water to our stored water supply. A cheap alternative to purchasing a barrel to store water is 2 liter soda bottles. Here is instructions on how to prepare your soda bottles. Be sure to date them! Sine I filled these at the end of the month and so I dated them for next month.

Once the 6 month expiration has expired, I just move my bottles to the area where I store non-drinkable water. This would be water you can use for anything other than to drink/cook with such as flushing toilets.

Sustainable Living-in order to be more independent, both physically and financially and live as close to the land as possible given each individuals situation.
    *We purchased and planted a plum, nectarine, and peach tree; 2 red seedless grape vines, 6 strawberry plants, 8 asparagus roots as well as various annual vegetable plants (carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc). I also made a 6 bar batch of blender soap.

Things seem to move slow until I actually write down everything we accomplish and realize it was better than I thought.  I need to be more diligent in the area of emergency preparedness.

What do you do to prepare for emergencies?  Do you have extra flashlights, batteries, or oil lamps, etc?