Setting Up A Preparedness Group In Your Area

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    I really want to set up a preparedness group my area. Especially one that offers kid friendly get togethers and classes! Setting up a preparedness group can be a valuable resource for you.  Having a community means having back up when you need it. In case of emergency, you can't do everything on your own. You will need help. I am not good on hunting, but I can cook large meals, forage, garden, and preserve food. I may not be great on the medical side, but, I can teach, sew and Crochet. Think about all of the skills you are great with and can share with others. Now think about all of the skills others can share with you! My grandparents and their siblings had a community in the mountains. Each all chose their professions based on what would benefit the community. I love this idea. (No, I'm not talking about running for the hills and making a commune, but, knowing a bunch of like minded folks with different skill sets sounds nice to me.)
    I have been kicking around a few ideas on what kind of group classes that can be offered. Not all of them are 'kid friendly' but all of them would be good skills to learn. Not sure when I will be able to set up my own prepareness group any time soon. But, I have found a lot of people in my area that have the same interests as we do. I'm making friends. 

1. CPR/ First Aid
2. Join or start a Neighborhood Watch
3. Check to see if your Local Ag Extension offers classes.
4. Also try your local parks and wildlife centers
5. Foraging classes 
6. Master Gardener's like to put on presentations
7. Thrive Life Freeze Dried Foods have in house demonstration parties. 
8. You can do a group buy in to save money by buying bulk
9. Prepping on a Budget would be a good class
10. Couponing class put on by a local expert
11. Herbal/medicinal speaker
12. Bug Out Bag demo to see what others are packing
13. Primitive skills/camping trip
14. Self Defense Class- Most instructors will come to you
15. Paint ball special ops team challenges (How fun would that be!)
16. Sewing Basics- Fun for the whole family
17. Creating fire in different situations- Everyone needs to know and practice this!
18. Hiking with BOBs- Trust me... You need the practice!
19. Dutch Oven cookout
20. Old fashioned barn raising- or help someone build something else. Good practice or teaching experience. 
21. Making homemade DIY items; Soap, laundry detergent, cleaners
22. Essential Oil classes
23. Local Nurse presentation
24. Craft classes
25. Hunting/Tracking lessons
26. Water filtration/expert 
27. Bow practice day
28. Basics of distillation
29. Agua ponics, hydroponics expert presentation and maybe even a field trip
30. How Tos and Expert Demos: rocket stoves, waste oil demos,
31. Butchering Techniques 
32. Communications
33. Trapping
34. Emergency Shelter Build
35. Brewing Homemade beer
36. Various classes on food preservation- huge learning list here!
37. Preserving with a food saver
38. Pressure canning 
39. Water bath canning
40. Oven dehydrating
41. Medication alternatives (Herbal and Medicinal/Pet)
42. Prepping for pets
43. Building a root cellar
44. Cast iron cooking
45. Home made bread baking
46. Making apple cider vinegar and its uses
47. DIY candles
48. Knot basics
49. First aid preps and buy in
50. Meat preservation
51. Greenhouse build
52. Raised garden beds
53. Composting
54. Solar energy (I wonder if Home Depot or Lowes has an expert) 

     These are just a few of the classes or discussions I am interested in learning about. Do you have anything you would add to this list? 

Thank you to Alyssa over at The Bow Legged Cowboy for letting me pick her brain! 

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Operation: Candling Week 1

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OPERATION: Chicken Hatch is well under way! 

     We candled at day 4. We saw some spider web looking things in a few of them. It was still hard to determine if our eggs were developing. A couple of the egg's shells are so dark, we can only see the yolk part expanding. Since we do not know exactly what we are looking for, we have been checking back with The Chicken Chicks page to see what a developing embryo looks like at each stage. It has been so hard NOT to check them on a daily basis. I think this is one of the most exciting adventures we have embarked upon thus far in our journey. 
     We had our Amazingly Awesome Neighbor, Bree, come by to help us candle on day 7. We made our garage as dark as we could and I held the flash light tightly on the top, with the egg cupped in my hand. Bree took pictures of our eggs and then a video of one that moved around quite a bit. I can't wait for you to see it! At this stage, the chicks wings, comb, beak, and legs have began to form. We swear this little chick looked like it was swimming. Want to see? I was going to wait till the end, but I can't help but to show you now! 

     It is not as good as watching it live and in person, but still an amazing video! Thank you to my Amazingly Awesome Neighbor, Bree, for all your help and support, (and great camera!) Bree has 5 eggs in the incubator so far. Zoey and I have 2. Our experiment to see if the eggs could be incubated was a success! We are gathering more eggs to be incubated. We will put the newly gathered eggs into the incubator on the 30th. Those will all hatch together. I am not sure how many we will actually have of our own vs Bree's. Our chicks are not laying as well as hers right now. 
     Here are all of our candled eggs. You can see most of the dark embryo areas within the eggs. Some of the shells were too dark to see into them. Others, were as clear as day. 

Stay tuned for next weeks post on Water Candling Eggs!

(It is safer for the light sensitive chicks!)

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Operation: Chicken Hatch

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     We have hatched chicks at the childcare center I work at for years, but we have never actually hatched chicks ourselves. Definitely not from our own eggs! Are we a bit ambitious? Perhaps, but learning is what we do best around here. Even fails are not looked upon as regrets, just opportunities to learn. 

     The other night, Zoey and I were talking about chickens. We had gone by a local feed store to pick up feed for our chickens and the pig. We were really excited for spring and new spring chicks. No one in town has chicks yet. So I thought, why wait? I have a rooster, my Amazingly Awesome Neighbor, Bree, has a rooster... So why not? I also have some awesome connections at our local Ag Extension office. I gave my friend a call and asked if we could borrow an incubator. 

The very next day... Tadaa! 

Operation: Chick Hatch is underway! 

Funny side story, she told me to fill the bottom reservoir, and we did. BUT, I thought the whole bottom was the reservoir, and filled the whole bottom. Yup, I pretty much flooded the garage floor. 

     One of my nephews, Collin, came to stay the night and he helped us set up the incubator. I explained we were going to hatch our own chicks. I'm not sure he knows what to think of us. I have heard the words 'strange' and 'cool' come out of his mouth on several occasions. He is 10 and pretty much a city type kid. 

     Now to figure out if our eggs were actually fertile. We headed on over to The Chicken Chick to see how to tell if our eggs were going to produce some babies. Lots of great info there. We learned about blastoderms and the difference between an incubated fertile egg and an un-incubated fertile egg. This morning I cracked open one of our eggs laid by Little Red, and guess what we found? A BULLS EYE! 

     We have long suspected our Jersey Giants were laying eggs, but our rotten little stinker pup, Bo, was finding them and eating the eggs as they laid them. Today, we found an egg from one of our Jersey Giants. We marked it with a JG, for Jersey Giant, and the date we put it in the incubator. 

     Bree came over later and put in 4 more eggs, marked with her initials and the date. These are just our tester eggs. According to these instructions sent to me by a friend that swears by the Farmer's Almanac, we need to wait a few days to start incubation. Like I said, we are just testing to see if our eggs are truly fertilized, and what they look like when they have been incubated for a while. We watched a cool video from a Wiki How tutorial about candling eggs. We plan on trying it in about 4 days. If we see signs of fertilization and growth, we will place the eggs we gather between Jan. 22nd and the 29th into the incubator with the others as well. 

Yes, we fixed the upside down eggs very carefully...

Wish us luck and stay tuned for updates! :D 

Have you hatched your own chicks? 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.