- Your home-repair tool kit(s). Yes, you CAN get by with a multi tool and a rock, but real tools work a lot better for their intended uses. Get a couple gooseneck crowbars, if you don’t have them already.
- Your kitchen tools. You CAN peel potatoes with a machete, and cook ’em in a canteen cup, but why not think up a way to bring along your favorites? (I have a knife/tool roll that I bring to cooking jobs, but a quick yank can pull 2 magnetic strips out of a sheetrock wall to pack them, too…..)
- Your water heater. About 20 gal. of clean water you can get to, even if utilities are out.
- Manual pencil sharpeners (the cast aluminum ones from an art or craft work better than the slightly-cheaper plastic ones). Quickly put points on sticks/darts, make your own fire tinder rapidly.
- Picnic/Party coolers. There’s almost always a need to keep cold things cool, and hot things warm, without external power.
- Zip-top storage bags–at least a zillion uses.
- Ground cayenne pepper (or hotter chiles). Season food (obviously), repel deer and various other pests, use as a blood-coagulant on wounds (not fun, but does work), steep in warm veg oil for a day or so and fill a dollar store spray bottle when the commercial pepper spray runs out.
- Rope, cord, string, twine. Need I say more?
- Your kids’ old BB guns/slingshots/bows and arrows. Cheap and quiet small game-getters, and there’s an old saying “It hurts a lot more to be hit by a BB, than missed by a .44 Magnum”.
- Electrical extension cords. If there is power available, you’ll need ’em. If not, more cordage.
Outhouse Chicken Coop [Easy DIY]
Keeping chickens is so much a part of a self-reliant lifestyle, that most cities now have ordinances to allow chickens in small quantities as a nod to sustainability. And a few hens are not hard to accommodate.
This old outhouse has been with me now for almost 30 years. But I no longer had a use for it as originally intended. Re-purposing was in order! With just a few modifications it has become an adequate chicken house.
- I covered the open hole seat area with a new sheet of plywood
- Cut a hole in the side about 10”x10” for the chickens to go in and out
- Tacked the fence wire around the hole with 2×4 to frame the opening
- Since the door had long ago fallen off, I replaced it with a full view used storm door from a used center for $8
- I installed two dowel rods for roosting areas
- I attached an old wooden crate for a nest box onto the wall
The chicken pen is away from the barn, so I ran an electric drop cord to it for supplemental lighting and to power the water font heater. That is working just fine and I am using a timer that I got for my Christmas lights to control the lighting.
Their chicken pen is a metal pergola I got on clearance at the end of the season a couple of years ago and covered with chicken wire, including the bottom—predator control! I used cable ties to secure the wire. In the summer they have outside roosts. Added bonus, last summer the squash crawled up and over it providing shade for the chickens and a vertical trellis for the squash!
This was a last minute, just before winter hit, project. Adjustments I hope to make this spring include:
- Add tin under the roosts in order to funnel the manure into plastic gutters run along the bottom of the tin for ease of cleaning and to catch the manure for the compost pile
- Construct roll away nest boxes with outside access so that I don’t have to enter the 4’x4′ building—and the little devils don’t eat their eggs
- Add a secure clip to the light hanger
- Tin the outside of the building
- Hinge the seat area and line the rectangular box under it with tin to keep their feed in
- I might do some stencils on the glass door
Except for the obvious form of the building the function has been completely altered!
Related: Chicken Doctoring
How to Earn Extra Money as A Tour Bus Driver
Have you ever wanted to travel, go to places and see things that you thought you would never be able to see, and meet interesting people? And get paid for doing it! If the answer is yes, then let me tell you about what life is like as a professional tour bus driver.
Before we get to the good stuff, let me tell you how you can get started. There are some hoops you must jump through before your adventure begins.
You must be 21 years of age, (I don’t think this will be a problem for most of our readers), and have a Commercial Drivers Licenses, (CDL), in the state in which you reside. Here’s where the hoops start.
The first hoop you must jump through is to pass a CDL physical exam and drug screen. The exam is usually good for two years. However you will be subjected to random drug screening test with your employer.
The driver’s license must have certain endorsements, for a tour bus driver you must have what is called a “P” endorsement, which is for passengers, and pass the air brake qualifications portion on your CDL written test. This test is in several sections, and takes 30-45 minutes. After passing the test you must then pass a driving test in the type vehicle you will be driving. This test is comprised of various skills, and is followed by a 15-20 mile driving test.
The next step is probably the hardest. You must gain experience driving a bus. There are several routes you can take. One, school districts are usually looking for school bus drivers, and second, many metropolitan transit companies are looking for drivers. Unless you have prior experience driving the big rigs (18 wheelers), or you can find a small tour bus company that will hire and train you at the same time, the first two options may be your best opportunity.
I chose the second, driving for a metropolitan bus company, and I did have some big rig experience, prior to CDL’s, when I was much younger.
Now the adventure begins. The picture you see is similar to the type tour-bus that I drove for approximately five years, part-time/full-time.
How’s the pay you ask? You are not going to get rich driving a tour-bus, however there are some pretty cool perks. The pay ranges all over the books. Some motor coach carriers pay by the mile, some pay by the hour, some pay by the trip, and others have combinations of all the above. Most all pay a per-diem for meals, and pay for you’re sleeping accommodations when on overnight, or multi-night stays. The company I worked for paid mileage rate or an hourly rate, whichever was the greater. And there was an 8 hour minimum pay if you were called to work, regardless of how few hours you drove or miles you drove.
The cool perks were that I got to go to places I had never been, and see and do things I had always wanted to do, like:
- Seeing shows in Branson, MO.
- Going to major league baseball games in Atlanta, GA, and St. Louis, MO
- Touring major civil war battlefields at Gettysburg, PA and Shiloh, in Tennessee
- Touring Washington, DC and seeing all the history that our Nation’s Capital affords. Even if we don’t always agree with what goes on concerning our government, the visit to the Smithsonian is worth the visit.
- Touring homes such as Washington’s- Mount Vernon, and Jefferson’s- Montpelier
- Going to places like Disney World in Orlando, FL, and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
There were so many experiences and places; there is not enough time or space to list them all. The really cool perk was: I got paid to do it, and in most instances, the driver is comped, in other words, I never had to pay to see and do all these things.
However, there are a few drawbacks. You probably have guessed a few by now.
- The first is being away from home and your spouse, for those of us married.
- You drive some really weird hours, a lot of very early mornings, and late nights.
- The one thing that surprised me the most was the amount of night driving you had to do. You will often be called to work on short notice.
There are others, but like every job, if it were perfect, everyone would be doing it. Driving a tour-bus may not be for everyone, but I can honestly say I enjoyed my time behind the wheel, and it did help supplement our income. I still have an active CDL, and current CDL physical.
Should You Consider a Bug Out Bike?
The right bicycle can mean fun and exercise. But it can also be one of your most valuable preparedness items.
Think about it:
It is one of the most popular recreational “vehicles“, takes up very little space, is easy to transport with a bicycle carrier, and doesn’t need fuel or need to be fed!
The bicycle is also awesome as a bug out vehicle if you want to save money, the grid goes down, or you want to bug out without a vehicle.
1. Bikes Are Great For Money Savings
Your bicycle can take you to your job on a nice day and up to the market with no gas spent using just your own muscles for power. Put some pack bags on it and you can carry a lot of groceries or other items. And you are exercising too!
With a bicycle generator, you can power a small TV, computer, recharge batteries or your cellphone and get exercise too!
2. Bikes Don’t Need Fuel in Grid Down Scenarios
For whatever reason, if the grid goes down you still have transportation that takes absolutely no fuel. It is easily repaired, stored, hidden and practically silent! I hate meeting bikes on the trail with horses as almost invariably the horses spook when encountering bikes.
Fit it with packs and you can haul a lot. Add a cart and you can haul water, produce, and even animals.
3. Bikes Can Get In and Out of Places That Cars Can’t When Bugging Out
The right bicycle can pretty much go anywhere off-road that a horse can. You can pack it and you can even pull a cart with it. On the road you can easily go 40 mph with the geared bikes and travel all day if you are in shape and with a cart or packed you can weave in and out of stopped traffic easily. You can even make it into a camper!
And you can customize your bike fairly easily and cheaply. Add a windshield or surry top. I have even seen rifle mounts on mountain bikes used for hunting.
Homestead Security With Barbed Wire Fencing
Whether you are bugging in or bugging out to a retreat location, barbed wire may be your most inexpensive perimeter barrier and warning system of an impending breach if you attach simple bells to the wire.
Barbed wire was first invented in the United States in 1874 to contain livestock inexpensively. Its first use in war was in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and it has been a staple item in wars and conflicts ever since besides being used in prisons and concentration camps as an effective human containment fence.
Most rolls of barbed wire can be deployed just by sticking a length of pipe or wood through the hole in the middle of the roll. Please use heavy leather gloves when handling barbed wire.
For home defense purposes you do not want to stretch it. Rather leaving it laying loosely coiled around the perimeter of your property will deter most intruders. The ends can be loosely tied off to bushes or a stake or cement block, even a large rock set on the end will stop it from coiling back on you. It sends a signal that you are ready to defend your home.
In a landscaped environment with a hedge or even a lot of flowers around the perimeter, if there were an instance WROL the barbed wire can be deployed in less than an hour and hidden by the landscaping.
In my reading about the economic collapse of Argentina one of the things that came up was neighbors and neighbor kids raiding the gardens that people were surviving on. No one wants to shoot a kid for raiding a garden, but if your life depends on that garden, what can you do? By deploying barbed wire loosely around the garden it will slow people getting into it, and it also really slows them from getting out of the garden with their booty. Your garden will be less of a target than other people’s gardens.
It is recommended in most defensive situations that you have a clear field of vision right around your home – lawn. But it is also recommended that any low lying windows have some protective shrubbery to deter entrance or peeping Toms. Here too barbed wire can be an excellent deterrent loosely coiled beneath windows or across driveways or entrances that you do not want breached.
Your barbed wire can be fairly easily rolled up when the threat subsides and is reusable. What else can you buy for less than $50 that will provide an effective perimeter barrier and early warning system with some inexpensive bells attached?
NOTE: For any of you using barbed wire as livestock fencing, alternate which side of the post it goes on so that if something takes it down (deer, horse, bull, snowmobile, 4 wheeler runs through it) it will only take down a 20′ section of fence as opposed to a 200′ section.
Using Thorn Bushes for Security (and Other Defensive Landscaping Tips)
Last year was a particularly bad winter and it killed a lot of my rose bushes right back to the roots – and some it just plain killed. As I was cleaning up the roses and pruning the dead branches (and bleeding from multiple scratches to my arms and face) this spring it occurred to me why roses were so popular in Medieval times when marauding vandals and knights raided villages and outlying homesteads at will.
I was thinking about the English cottage gardens and how they were built to keep out livestock. Hmmm, defensive landscaping in order to survive. It made perfect sense to me. You could easily use a nasty hedge or roses or thorn bushes for home security. I’ve been thinking about this all summer and have even done some research on the subject.
If you go to eHow, they advise keeping everything open and low shrubbery as your neighbors are your best defense – that just doesn’t seem too practical to me in a WROL situation.
On several sites there was talk about open space for a good field of vision around the home, and using thorn bushes and hedges as protective barriers.
Hedges
Hedges are a popular way to gain privacy, block traffic noise and wind. Here in the North many people plant an evergreen hedge of either pine/spruce trees or arborvitae – a native species with flat needles. These evergreen hedges block the relentless prairie winds and even the snow from piling up against the houses.
Hedges are a natural barrier whether evergreen or deciduous. A tightly spaced tangled rose, lilac, barbarry or honeysuckle hedge will keep out most critters and intruders. Please hesitate at invasive species like bamboo and always check to be sure what you are purchasing is hardy in your zone. A sturdy hedge around a property provides privacy and directs visitors to where you want them to enter.
Fences
Fences are another option to keep people/critters out or in. Chain link fences are fairly inexpensive. Tall wooden ones offer privacy. Adobe and rammed earth enclosures are popular in the southwest. If you are living rural, you will see a lot of barbed wire fencing around pastures as well.
All of these provide some degree of protection and funnel traffic flow where you want it. In town wooden privacy fence covered in vines with a multi-species hedge in front.
Driveways
Open lawns and driveways are ideal for a Mad Max invasion. Imagine intruders deciding to storm your home with a four wheel drive truck.
So how do you stop them? If you take a look at most convenience stores, they have these cement posts carefully placed in front of the store to stop a vehicle – I wouldn’t want to hit one of those!
So I started looking around at what I have that could be defensive in the driveway and stop a vehicle, or at least make them think twice because even if they ran these over the oil pan would probably be punctured. Hmmm, those cement statues I am so fond of could be a defensive barrier in time of need! Imagine hitting one of these 4′ cement statues!
What do YOU have around that would work as a barrier in your driveway? Preparedness is all about thinking ahead. :)
Paths and Entrances
Stone house with open entrance. Note how intruders could be beside the door when answered. And then there is the “fatal funnel” where there is no cover near the door and an invading group would have to commit to a full frontal assault square in your sites. This can be accomplished with shrubbery on either side of the door or with simple handrails.
Rails and shrubbery to funnel the visitors to the door. Again, funneling visitors directly to the door with no place to stand other than in the line of sight. Barred door, funneled, but with space to conceal on either side. Funneled with brick around the entrance and a dog sign in the yard. Which house would YOU prefer to defend?