Books Available Oct 3, 2012, and Homestead Revival Preparedness Challenge entry

Homestead Revival Preparedness Challenge 39

“Welcome to Prep Utility Vehicle!  I'm a Canadian homemaker with a large family and I'm always trying to help us to be more self-sufficient. I'm fairly new to modern "prepping," but growing up we were 70s-80s-style preppers/self-sufficiency folks/farmers with buckets of dry-ice-stored wheat, large cans of dried food stored away, big garden, goats, chickens, and huge batches of canning.  My dad even built a 5-foot tall dehydrator.  (There were only 4 of us!)  I sure wish I had that dehydrator now.

Over the past years I have always continued canning, but since I've had my own family, we have only lived in town.  So, I have a raised bed and some amaranth in containers, and  shelves that I am slowly filling up with my own canning, purchased food, medical supplies and other things. I try to vacuum-pack dry goods, but have had poor success so far with keeping a seal on my jars done with a Foodsaver attachment. 

This month:

--(well, yesterday) I picked 100 lbs of local field tomatoes, seconds, at 1/2 the price of picked, and 42 lbs of perfect peppers at 1/3 of the picked price.  (Are 42 lbs of perfect peppers about a peck?  I hear a tongue twister coming on...) and went back today and picked another 30 lbs of peppers and got the forgotten onions.  I will be making canned products such as lecho (a Hungarian tomato and pepper sauce for serving with sausage over potatoes--delicious!), and the rest probably keeping as simple as possible, and turning into sauce, pressed raw with my Kitchen Value food mill purchased last year at Home Hardware (a Canadian store), or chunked.  It takes way too long for me to dip and peel tomatoes; I have to choose the quickest ways of preserving to get these things put away as they're ready, and I have no freezer space to hold it till I have more time.  I tend to go crazy canning a ton each of a few things per year, then different things the next couple of years, assuming I can enough of each to last until the next time.  I find specializing more efficient.

Making lecho today

--I bought another big bag of dehydrated vegetables for vacuum packing.  Have done some of my own dehydrating, and plan to make the odds and ends into a nutritional "green powder" for my emergency storage, but this adds to my head start.  It was half price and took a lot less time than my own has!

--I bought dozens more second hand canning jars and lids.  We were away for cherry season though, and then had overseas family visiting, so haven't actually done any canning yet!  (Blushing!)   Also, my September thrift store expeditions turned up a large boxful of Food Saver vacuum canisters and vacuum attachments for only $7.50! Also a brand new handheld vacuum sealer (Debbie Meyer) and 30 bags. That’ll help put food on my shelves and keep it good for a while.  At least, as long as I can get a good vacuum out of the Foodsaver.

--I read (and recommend) the magazine Backpackers, Survival Issue. Jam-packed with info, not prepping, but survival in some natural disasters, extreme conditions, and accidents.  Also Mother Earth News special issue; How to Grow and Preserve Your Own Food. Learned a lot from there about building soil with bark mulch, and growing tomatoes in the house all winter.  Also at freeplants.com, I researched about growing blackberries (I am getting some runners soon) and about building potting soil. Very helpful.  Learned about cooking over a fire with cast iron pans from some prepper friends.

--The most time of all (at least 2 hours a day) has been spent wading through each day’s free download offerings from Kindle for e-books on preparedness topics, in order to build my knowledge and skills. I look for free books on various self-sufficiency and prepping topics as well as politics and also fiction. To save my prepping friends time hunting for themselves, I started posting what I find each day here at this blog. **Importantly, you don't need a Kindle to read the books, you can read them online or on free Kindle apps for PC or other devices.  

You can see today’s Kindle freebies below.  

(I was hesitant about posting this here but 2 of my prepper friends online *strongly insisted* that I post; one has been here at Homestead Revival quite a while and really feels that you all would love to know about it; the other said,"The amount of reference material is truly amazing. Your work is a valued prep...Please take your candle from under the basket."

Thanks to Homestead Revival for letting me join their Preparedness Challenge link-up. I hope you find something that helps you.

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Please check back to past days too; some books are only free 24 hours, others 2 days, and a few even more. If you come here not on October 3, 2012, please see P.U.V. Home Page for current books.

(By the way, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually the slowest days for books.)

TODAY'S BOOKS:

Growing Herbs Indoors : Your Guide To Growing Herbs In Containers For A Vibrant Indoor Herb Garden

Beginners Guide To Organic Gardening And Composting
Only 16 pages so probably pretty basic.

Oral Health, Naturally: Homemade Toothpaste and Mouthwash Recipes

Homemade Cosmetics: Over 100 Recipes You Can Make at Home

Drinkable History: Horrifying Authentic Techniques for 3000 Year Old Hard Cider, 1500 Year Old Mead, and 1000 Year Old Ale

Health - Overcoming Fatigue & Chronic Illness

From a Bush Wing: Notes of an Alaska Wildlife Trooper
”flying experiences as an Alaska Wildlife Trooper…while stationed throughout one of the most dangerous environments in the world. “

The Future of Social Security: Considering Privatization

The Mayan Prophecies

TRUE WAR/SURVIVAL ACCOUNTS

The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (Boomer Book Series)

Hopkins War - 1- Arnhem Belle (Hopkin's War)
First of a story in 11 parts. ”Wartime Holland - where the price for being found with a carrier pigeon is death. One boy and his family, desperate to help the allies, find four birds. What will they do? … Arnhem Belle tells the true story of a courageous boy and his family and the pigeon that made it back to Britain, against all the odds.”
and follow ups
Hopkins War - 2- Lady Limoges, Hopkins War - 3 -Billy Banks, and Hopkins War - 4 - Paddy Mayne. It looks like there are also parts 5-11 but they are pricey for the size (short). Hopkins War--All parts

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FICTION

Lost on the Road to Nowhere
“a family-friendly adventure, recommended for anyone ages 8 and up... four children are stranded all alone in the North Carolina wilderness. They face an untold number of miles of deserted road between them and the medical help they desperately need to find for their parents, who have been badly injured in a wreck on Christmas Eve. As the three brothers and their baby sister climb out of that wrecked car, leave their trapped parents behind and begin an unforgettable journey, they must rely on one another more than they ever have before. They must plan together. They must improvise when they encounter dangerous bears, nightfall, and a mysterious old woman. With snow on the ground and time running out, the four children must find a way off the road to nowhere if they are going to rescue their parents – and save themselves.”

Election 2048
Speculative future, American politics.

The Terror of Tyrants
Nuclear terrorism, then, “socialism has the nation in its grip and within days, the America that has survived two hundred and forty years will be no more. As time runs out two patriots must find a way against all odds to thwart a final blow to liberty that looms only days away.”

Extinction Dawn
Short story. “A small group of commandos are trapped within the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city. Surrounded by enemies they begin with a goal of escape but soon seek only to survive.”

Flash Crash
"In 2020, Europe is a dangerous place. The oil shock of 2013 has relegated most citizens in the Hub to a marginal existence, surviving on food handouts. … Meera's missed date with her ex-boyfriend, a hit-and-run in North London and a massive explosion in the Spanish mountains set off a series of events that will change the world for ever, triggered by a meltdown in the world financial system unless Eli, Meera and Fern can race against the clock to reveal the truth. If you have been watching the recent news about the world's financial system and wondered 'What if...?", then this book is for you."

Sci-Fi
The Glass Ruins
“Jasper Carnelian is a family man living in a post-collapse America with only the remnants of our current technology…The story alternates between Jasper’s trip to present-day Seattle and a time in the post-collapse future when Jasper is just ten years old (time–travel). In the present, he meets homeless men who discuss the failings of our world, lives through a bombing attack, and struggles to find his mother as a city falls into chaos. “

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SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS

Breakdown
“An influenza plague decimates humanity...A man loses his wife and baby daughter...Six years after a pandemic devastates the human population, former rock star Chris Price finally makes it from New York to Britain to reunite with his brother. His passage leaves him scarred, in body and mind, by exposure to humankind at its most desperate and dangerous. But another ordeal awaits him beyond the urban ruins, in an idyllic country refuge where Chris meets a woman, Pauline, who is largely untouched by the world’s horrors. Together, Chris and Pauline undertake the most difficult facet of Chris’s journey: confronting grief, violence, and the man Chris has become. They will discover whether the human spirit is capable of surviving and loving again in this darker, harder world. “
List Price: $4.99 (Print Price: $14.95)
Current Price: $1.99