Last summer in Yuma, Arizona, we had the worst thunder/rain storm I have ever seen. We had winds of over 60 mph and astonishing rain. We got about 2.5 inches of rain in about two hours (our average rainfall for a year is 3 inches). At times the rain ... Read More
Off-Grid Living: Take Care of Personal Hygiene
The vast majority of people want to be clean and hygienic. Daily showers or baths (sometimes more than one!), multiple hand washings, and brushing teeth a couple times per day is the norm. If the grid goes down, we will still want to be clean, but it ... Read More
Campfire Cooking: A Skill to Practice Now!
I’d be willing to bet that most of you reading this have at least made s’mores, perhaps even heated up a hot dog or two, around a campfire. Fun stuff, no doubt about it. But, there’s a whole lot more involved if you need to make an actual meal over ... Read More
Shedding some light on flashlights
One of the first things we usually lose in a disaster is electricity. Sometimes the power outage IS the crisis, of course, but it is almost always a side effect of other emergencies as well. While the loss of power is inconvenient at any time, not ... Read More
“Outage” by Ellisa Barr: Book Review
As you turn the opening pages of Outage, the parents of 15 year old Dee, our self-absorbed and somewhat reluctant teenage heroine from the city, are leaving her with her grandfather. He runs a veterinary service on a small farm near the town of ... Read More
