Morrisville's emergency notification system

I got this information off of the Town of Morrisville's newsletter.

"Morrisville recently changed its emergency notification system to ReadyWake!  Make sure you register your number at https://wakecounty.onthealert.com/ to be notified in the event of an emergency.  The system will only be used for emergency purposes such as:  drinking water contamination, utility outage, evacuation notice and route, missing person, fires or floods, bomb threat, hostage situation, chemical spill or gas leak or other emergency incidents where rapid and accurate notification is essential for life safety."

You may wonder if any of these scenarios could ever happen here, and if you would need to be notified.  I was interested to see that a train derailment caused 300 people to be evacuated because of possible hazardous chemicals in eastern North Carolina just a couple of days ago:

http://www2.wnct.com/news/2013/feb/04/clean-continues-after-eastern-nc-train-derailment-ar-2995710/

If I were Santa

Merry Christmas!
If I were Santa I would give you all the food, cash and necessities to get you and yours through your lean times. But, alas, I don't have the resources to do that and besides, becoming self-reliant through provident livingis something the Lord wants us to choose to do for ourselves. So, here is my preparedness present to you:

http://peaceofpreparedness.com


This website is Debbie Kent's accumulation of preparedness information and motivational talks. It teaches us how to live providently so that we can provide for ourselves and our loved ones now and during hard times. The site has a vast and wonderful Resource Library and continues to be my favorite preparedness site so I keep on recommending it for your preparedness questions.

(I plagiarized this post from another preparedness person, but I feel the same way about Debbie Kent's website.  So consider this post "re-gifted".)

A reminder to sign up for Baby Steps

I haven't mentioned this in awhile, so I thought I needed to say it again.

FoodStorageMadeEasy.net has a great series of checklists that they will email you, one every other week for a whole year.  It is free, and is such a great reminder of things you need to accomplish to get your family prepared for emergencies and food shortages.

Go to this page to sign up:
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/babystep-checklists/

Three Years Ago Today- The start of FoodStorageMadeEasy.net

http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2011/05/12/4-big-food-storage-excuses-and-how-to-overcome-them/

Today Julie and Jodi do a little reminiscing about the start of their food storage blog.  I really love their blog and website.

New stuff on Debbie Kent's website

I just got this email from Debbie Kent, about her website.  I don't know her personally, but she has one of the best LDS food storage websites I've ever seen. (See url below)




Hi Friends,
Just a little note to let you know that the February and March Preparedness Classes are now up and running on my website.
They can all be found here, along with many others. Enjoy and feel free to share.

The 4 class videos I put up are:
2011 No Knead Breads
2011 Gardening
2011 You Can't Beat Wheat
2011 Shelter, Sanitation & Water

Happy Easter!!!
Debbie--
Check out my Website http://peaceofpreparedness.com/

The Top 50 Survival Blogs

If you want to start reading some of the best blogs about Survival, they have recently been ranked and published on this website:

http://www.survivaltop50.com/

Most of these are probably not written by LDS people, and they cover a lot more subjects than just food storage, but if you want to take a look you are welcome to.

I think it would be a completely different list if they were ranking Food Storage sites.  I personally, would put     http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/    and     http://www.providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,1706-1,00.html  at the top of that list.

Washing Machine for Emergencies

I just bought this emergency washing machine from Emergency Essentials. It cost $14.95.

It looks a little like a plunger. (In fact, some survivalist books say you can use a clean plunger. But this one has been engineered to do a better job on clothing- see the grill? That keeps the clothes from getting sucked up into the plunger, and creates a vacuum to pull the water through the clothing better.)

You take a 5 gallon bucket and cut a hole in the lid for the handle to stick through. Put water and some laundry detergent in the bucket with the clothing, and beat the clothing like you are churning butter. (If you don't have a lid with a hole in it, you can churn it without a lid, but you have to be more careful not to slosh the water.)

I think it looks like it would do a better job than scrubbing on a washboard, which some of my boys had to do on their missions.

Making Cheese

I read "Totally Ready" on Feb. 18, and her post was all about making cheese. It had the recipe and the instructions for making a cheese press. I was fascinated with the idea, although it seems really time consuming.

Click on her blog on Feb. 18 "Say Cheese...Yummy" and scroll down and look at the cheese press, it would be pretty easy to make. But I guess I would have to have access to a cow to get some milk.

I am hoping that someday I have all these useful contraptions: a cheese press, an alfalfa sprouter, a solar oven, a woodburning stove, etc.

Food Storage Challenge

I just heard about a Food Storage Challenge that is being done at http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/. I might be a week late in telling you about it, but it is still interesting to go there and learn about it.

They are going to announce, on a surprise date in September, when you are supposed to experience an "emergency", whether it is an electrical blackout, or loss of water, or an evacuation, etc, and you are supposed to try to live as if you are in that emergency. I doubt if I will do it, but I am going to follow along and read the blog posts of everyone else. I need to learn how to get through those types of things.

Wayne and I did a somewhat similar challenge when we were engaged. Our student ward bishop at BYU surprised us one sacrament meeting by asking the whole ward to go without shopping at the store for one whole month, to see if anyone could do it. Wayne and I made it through a couple of weeks I think. I know his roommate Dave quit after just a few days, because he was forced to eat popcorn for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Bakin' with Powdered Eggs

I want to heartily recommend using powdered whole eggs for all your baking, they don't taste different at all. I have used them for at least 21 years, since we moved to North Carolina. I never have to worry whether I have eggs in the fridge for baking. (I only use them for baking. I use real eggs for scrambling, boiling, etc.)

You just use 1 Tablespoons of egg powder and 2 Tablespoons of water to substitute for one egg in a recipe. Easy!

P.S. I was asked where to buy this product. I order it from Emergency Essentials. Their website is www.beprepared.com.

Websites: Food Storage, Pandemic

I found two excellent websites about food storage. The first is called Food Storage Made Easy, written by Jodi and Julie. Check it out.

One of their posts that I really liked was entitled "Lies about Long Term Food Storage Debunked!!" You can find it by clicking HERE.

The next website is one that tells you how long the shelf life is for all different foods, including the ones opened in your fridge. The website is called StillTasty.

Starting a Food Storage Plan for the Year

I have to tell everyone that Carolyn Nicolaysen on her Totally Ready blog has just restarted her one-year food storage program. (It is her Feb.2, 2009 entry, entitled "Our General Store").

Today is the day it begins, and if you read her blog every day and do what she says, you would have a great food supply built up by next year.

I love her blog, and have learned great things about emergency preparedness from her.

If you don't want to wait a year to get the whole program, you can go back and read her posts from the past couple of years, she has already been through the whole thing before. She also has a book you can pay $6.95 to download.