Category: Survival Tips

We think it’s important for families to be as prepared as possible for any natural or other disasters that may come their way.

October 30, 2015

The Benefits of Long-Term Food Storage and Preparedness

This article was originally published in November of 2014, but I felt led to re-publish in order to stress the benefits of preparedness. Preparedness isn’t just for “zombie apocalypse” type of situations, but can help us to weather personal basic emergencies well too.

Greetings, friends! Later in the week I’ll have another post on organization, but today I wanted to share a post that my new friend Lance wrote for us. As regular readers know, I’m a huge believer in preparedness. Lance is too: he and his wife not only have a six month emergency fund, but a six month food storage supply as well. Lance was generous enough to share with The Frugal Farmer readers today about the hows and whys of his stellar food storage system. Welcome, Lance! Thanks to Laurie for the invitation to write on The Frugal Farmer. What a cool opportunity after leaving a short comment the other day on one of her articles. That turned in to several wonderful e-mails and the opportunity to share a little about us and how we prepare for the future. I know my wife has dreamed of us sharing pictures of our garage and basement with people all across the world, sorry honey 🙂 . I really should have cleaned things up first! Read more

August 31, 2015

Physical Fitness and Self Sufficiency

If you’ve ever watched shows such as Doomsday Preppers (we watch on Netflix for $8 a month), you may have noticed that at the end of the show they give each person, couple or family a preparedness rating. Many times where people lose it on their score is in the area of physical fitness. They’ve done all of the technical things they need to do to be prepared, such as storing up food and water, preparing an alternate heating source, etc., but they’re not physically prepared for the hard work of survival during tough times. Read more

August 11, 2015

The Four Tenets of Physical Self Sufficiency

Often times when it comes to being prepared to handle a disaster, people aren’t sure where to start. It can seem like a daunting task to gather 6 to 12 months worth of food or to set up a bug-out location where you can survive totally off the grid in all forms of weather. If you’re new to prepping, don’t panic. Today we’re going to share the 4 basic tenets of being physically prepared and self sufficient. Better yet, we’re going to show you how to put together a plan to get prepared without breaking the bank. Read more

July 27, 2015

Why You Need Multiple Streams of Income

A friend of mine wrote a post today asking if the 9-to-5 job was dead. I’m not sure if the regular day-to-day working job is dead, but one thing is for sure – the work environment of today is changing.

Years ago we got wise to the concept of multiple streams of income. We spent some time thinking about how interesting it was and about how we like for our family to gain some other income sources one day. At the time, he had a job in the manufacturing industry and I was a full-time stay at home mom. We were blissfully floating along in our financial ignorance, trusting that employers had the same faithfulness to their employees as Rick had to his employer. Read more

May 26, 2015

How to Practice Physical Self Sufficiency

As we work on redefining our mission here at the Frugal Farmer, I spoke earlier on how to practice spiritual (emotional) self sufficiency and how to practice financial self sufficiency. I also shared some important survival tips for everyday life. Today we’ll talk about the third part of self sufficiency: physical self sufficiency.

The Keys to Physical Self Sufficiency

Physical self sufficiency involves a couple of different aspects of preparedness: the self sufficiency of your actual body, and self sufficiency pertaining to the things you need to care for yourself and survive. Physical self sufficiency is equally as important as the other two elements of self sufficiency (emotional and financial), but encompasses different things. Read more

May 18, 2015

Survival Tips for Everyday Life

A few years ago, I took a class that was instrumental in teaching me the importance of thinking “big picture” in everything I did. Part of what the class focused on was always being prepared for an emergency situation. There are some SHTF scenarios in which we have advanced notification, like hurricanes and the like. But many SHTF situations simply pop up unexpectedly, think: bombings, terrorist attacks, robberies, etc. Read more

May 12, 2015

Have People Lost the Ability to Think Big Picture?

Think BIG!

So often in life, I see people (myself included) making decisions that benefit them-short term but damage them long-term. It’s as if a majority of society has lost the ability to think big picture. This summer I’ll turn 48, which means 50 is just around the corner. There’s something about turning 50 that makes one evaluate life, and as such, I’ve spent the last few months really working on looking at every decision from a big picture standpoint. I want to live the second half of my life much more intentionally than I’ve lived the first, and I believe a good way to do that is to look at decisions from a big picture standpoint. What does it mean to think big picture? Here are some examples that have happened to me lately that have caused me to start analyzing the human mind and its seeming inability to think big picture. Read more

May 9, 2015

How to Practice Financial Self Sufficiency

This is part two of a three part series that bounced off of a post I wrote about the three parts of self sufficiency. I wrote about part 1, Spiritual (also called “Emotional”) self sufficiency here. Today we’ll talk about financial self sufficiency. Financial self sufficiency encompasses what we need to know and do to be free from financial stressors and potential financial problems that affect not just our personal situation but the world in general, especially in a SHTF scenario. Read more

May 4, 2015

How to Practice Spiritual Self Sufficiency

Practicing Spiritual and Emotional Self Sufficiency in Times of Crisis

Last week, I wrote here about the Frugal Farmer’s Three Rules of Self Sufficiency. From here we plan on breaking down each rule and talking about it more in depth. Today we’ll talk about how to practice spiritual self sufficiency.

Spiritual self sufficiency encompasses both “spiritual” and “emotional” self sufficiency. Many people ignore this vital key to preparedness. Read more

April 29, 2015

Take Care of Your Own Family First?

MINE!

In the nearly 3 1/2 years that we’ve run The Frugal Farmer, I’ve had a handful of people say, in the nicest way, that the idea of self-sufficiency seems to them, well, a bit selfish. I get that. I can see how it would be easy to gather the opinion from the self-sufficient lifestyle that it is a selfish concept.

However, in my nearly 48 years on this earth, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it’s best not to form opinions about things and people until you’ve looked/thought/researched big picture. Read more