Saturday, July 28, 2012

Preparedness Challenge #37

Welcome to the Preparedness Challenge! Each month USA Emergency Supply hosts a give away to encourage families to set something aside to prepare for a time of emergency or the unexpected. Those who link up or leave a comment of something they did during the month to be prepared will be entered in the drawing (please take a moment to read the rules at the bottom of the post).


How I Met The Challenge!

I've been out of town most of the month, but here are a few things I managed to do anyway...

• Food Storage:  Bought more rice and added another bag of wheat to up my storage a bit - I hear prices are going up on that kind of thing. Wish I had room for even more!

• Emergency Preparedness: I'm currently hosting a THRIVE party to purchase some shelf stable foods. If you'd like to add to your own emergency food storage, you can help us both by placing an order! (Just click HERE.)

• Sustainable Living: Learned a lot from Joel Salatin this month... does that count? I also acquired two more basil plants, four more lavender plants, attended a meeting with a Range Management Consultant and had plant samples from my acreage identified. Now I know some of the edible (and toxic) weeds and brush for my goats to browse on. I also acquired a DVD on Polyface Farm... I'm really jazzed about learning a few things to make my homestead more sustainable.

Today's Give-Away & Last Month's Winner!


Last month's give-away from USA Emergency Supply was the Aquamira Water Bottle and FilterI'm pleased to announce the winner today...


Congratulations 
Laura of Laura Williams' Musings!

This month our give-away item will be arriving at someone's home, just in time for the apple harvest! The Back to Basics Apple Peeler allows you to peel, core, and slice an apple in about one minute. I love how it makes my apple pies look so much prettier, but really, all those uniform slices actually help the pie to cook more evenly (at least it seems that way to me). And it definitely makes dehydrating apples better. 

Anytime your slices are all the same size, you're going to have a better success rate over all. Thicker slices take longer to dehydrate than thinner ones and then you have to take a lot more time to assess every single slice. When their the same size, you only need to examine a few really well and if you see consistency, you can assume you have it throughout. And it can be used for more... click here to read all about it. Also, if you'd like to know more about dehydrating apples or making your own applesauce, USA Emergency Supply has a page dedicated to the topic of Dehydrating Fruit.


The winner will be able to select between the suction base and the clamp mount.


Now it's your turn to join the Preparedness Challenge..

Join the Challenge & Enter The Give Away

To be entered in the drawing, leave a comment (with your email info) on something you did this week to be more prepared in terms of food storage, emergencies, or sustainable living (or all three areas!) OR link up your Preparedness Challenge blog post (you only need to comment or postnot both). Posts not related to at least one of the three areas of preparedness will not be counted toward the give-away. Please be sure to clearly state in your comment or post what you did this month to be more prepared (see my example above as one easy way to do this). Again, the three areas we are focusing on include: 


• food storage for life's unexpected events whether related to long term effects from a disaster or a job loss and everything in between

• emergencies for times of power outages, natural disasters, and such

• sustainable living in order to be more independent, both physically and financially, and to live as close to the land as possible given each individual's situation 

Please be respectful of our challenge and only add a post on one of these three preparedness topics ONLY in order to retain the integrity of the link up event. If your post is just a general homesteading post, please save it for the Monday Homestead Barn Hop.

NOTE: This challenge and give-away ends Friday, August 3rd at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Be sure to take the Preparedness Challenge picture and add it to your blog so others know you're participating and hopefully they'll join up, too! THANK YOU!!