Prepped Living Blog

Spring is here and with it has come more sunny days. Warm weather and sunshine mean that the local flora has started to bloom. When we first moved to the mountains, I was surprised by the number and variety of flowers that grow here throughout the spring and summer. I feel truly blessed by the abundance of flowers and plants that we find in our local area.  Here are some of the beauties we are currently enjoying or about to enjoy. I hope these pictures brighten your day!       We used to see an abundance of these on the property (with the exception of the sweet pea which grows across the water). Unfortunately, many of these varieties seem to be very tasty to the deer. They have dug up and eaten a large portion of our wildflowers. They seem particularly fond of any white variety, especially the trillium, which they have almost demolished. Nonetheless, we still have quite a few flowers that bloom on the property and I thoroughly enjoy walking the area on sunny days and finding new blooms

The idea behind Prepped Living does not equate with building a bunker and filling it with MREs. It is meant to be a way of life. It can incorporate aspects of homesteading, homemaking, preparedness, self-sufficiency, gardening, foraging, DIY, and yes, even survival skills. It means doing what you can when you can to develop essential skills and improve your health. It is meant to be woven into your everyday life, not to be an all-consuming burden to your time or resources. In reality, it is nearly impossible to be completely prepared for all potential emergencies. If you would like to read about why we developed an interest in living a bit more prepared, see our " About Us " page on our website. Each family's version of prepped living will look different. You may raise livestock on a large piece of land. You may have a container garden on your apartment balcony. You may have neither, but perhaps you make your meals from scratch and do a bit of sewing. All of these skills

This week I started some of our garden plants indoors. This got me thinking about garden seeds and their importance for food security - both for preparedness and for self-sufficiency. During WWI and WWII in Britain, Canada, and the United States, people were encouraged to plant home gardens. Gardening seemed to fall out of favor for a number of years, but interest is growing once again. The COVID Era shutdowns showed us how quickly our supply chain can become disrupted. Even today I see signs in stores warning customers that supply chain issues are making it difficult to stock certain items. With this in mind, it might be a good time for more people to think about putting in a garden or at the very least investing in some quality garden seeds. When choosing seeds for your garden, especially if you are choosing seeds with self-sufficiency or preparedness in mind, it is important to choose non-GMO, non-hybrid, open-pollenated, heirloom seeds so that they can produce seed for you to use t

A while back, my mother dehydrated onions to gift to our family. She put them in a gallon size plastic Ziploc and gave them to us. My husband recently bought me a jar vacuum sealer, so I decided to move the onions to a glass container and vacuum seal them to lengthen their shelf life. When my mom dehydrated the onions, she left them in rings to cut down on the work required to prepare them for dehydration. This is my preferred method as well, but I haven't bothered to do anything else with them so each time we have used them, I had to mince them. Since I was planning to vacuum seal them, I knew I could store more and save myself some time later down the road if I turned them all into minced onions prior to vacuum sealing them. I took the dehydrated onion rings and put them in our food processor.  I blended them for a couple of minutes, and voila - minced onions! Once I had a full jar, I folded a paper towel over the top of minced onions as a precaution. Since I had never used a va