Two Year Blog Anniversary

    Yahoo!  We made it.  Today marks the 2nd year anniversary for Countrified Hicks.  Can you believe it? I am so please you stuck by me for 2 years and if you are new to my blog, hope you stay awhile and have a look around.
   In the past years, I have shared nearly 100 recipes with you, numerous posts and videos on frugal living, as well as posts on how to dehydrate and can; farm living; and homeschooling.  I have completed over 260 blog posts, meaning I average a new post about once every 3 days.
      In the past two years, no post has received nearly as many page views or comments as the post on frugal living on how our Family of 4 live off of $1300 a month. That post alone generated over 65,000 page views!
     Other popular posts over frugal living include:
   Video blog #2 and doing laundry country style.
     As far as recipes go, my post clicked upon and pinned recipe is How to make homemade bread in one hour with nearly 10,000 page views.

One of the loaves of bread that I made.

   Other popular posts of my recipes include:
French Toast Casserole and Homemade biscuits with Chocolate Gravy.

My French Toast Casserole

   Finally, to wrap things up, the most popular post on Farm Living would have to be on How to grow fodder for your animals and for prepping, How to set up a Cache Bucket.

The food items to go into a survival bucket.

Day 1-7 of fodder growth

   What has been your favorite post I have done these past two years?  What do you want to see more of?  

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Caché Bucket Set-Up

     In the prepping community, there is a lot of talk about survival caches but  lot of people really are not sure what a cache is.  A cache is just a hidden place you hide prepping gear.  It is similar to a bug-out-bag (BOB) but with a survival cache', you bury generally a bucket or PVC pipe full of supplies you may need when bugging out.  Let's say you are prepping for an economic collapse or something of that nature and your bug out location is 50 miles away.  You have to travel by foot so you bury a bucket full of supplies in a secret place along your route.  Such as one bucket every 10 miles or so.  By doing so, you will have necessary and helpful items along your route to aid in your travels that you do not have in your packs.  These buried areas are your survival caches.

       For us, we always break our storage down into 5 categories:  Food items; Health items; Hygiene Items; Light/Heat; and Useful items.  In an impractical world, each bucket would contain every single item you could ever imagine you would need but realistically that is not possible.

     We use 5 gallon round buckets or 3 1/2 gallon square buckets.  The 5 gallon buckets you can purchase at Wal-mart or a farm & ranch store.  The 3 1/2 gallon square buckets we get for free from bakeries.  Most grocery stores have bakeries inside and these bakeries purchase their icings for cakes in 3 1/2 gallon square buckets.  Once the icing is used and the buckets are empty, they generally throw them away.  Just ask them for them and 90% of the time, they are willing to let you have them.

     Here are the items we placed in our newest bucket (3 1/2 gallon size):

  For food stuff for this particular bucket, we have 4 slim jims, a large can of beef stew,  6 servings of chili, 1 can vienna bites, a small can of tomato juice, a V-8 smoothie, 1 can of tuna, 4 pkg. of Ramen noodles, 1 pkg. of sunflower seeds, 2 pkgs. of long grain & wild rice with seasonings, 2 small pkgs. of turkey nuggets (dried meat).

      Other food suggestions you can put in a bucket could be MRE's, water purification tablets, peanut butter and cheese crackers or beef jerky.

   Health stuff is a box of 40 count acetaminophen, some band-aids (3 regular size and 8 mini), 5 cotton swabs, 12 alcohol swabs, 1 lg. feminine pad, 1 tube triple antibiotic, 1 box of 36 count antihistamine, 3 sterile gauze pads, 5 cough drops, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, and 2 pairs of medical gloves. 

     Other items you could include would be anything you find in a first aid kit like tweezers, fingernail clippers, bulb syringe, benadryl, imodium, carmex or hydrocortisone cream.  

    Hygiene items for this bucket are 8 personal clothes (you can use for washing or use like toilet paper), 1 toothbrush, a small toothpaste, deodorant, small bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion, 2 hotel-size soaps, a 36 count package of wet wipes, a small package of tissues, 2 feminine pads, and 1 1/2 rolls of toilet paper. 

      You could also include a razor, comb, shaving gel or floss. 

     Light and heat items for this bucket are a flashlight, matches, lighter, cotton round soaked in wax and paper strips.  The wax cotton round is very useful to have.  As you burn a candle, just dip a cotton round (things women use to remove make-up from their face) into the wet wax and let it harden.  Once harden, tear the round in half to expose the fibers and when needed, light the fiber.  These will burn anywhere from 5-15 minutes which allow you time to really get a fire going good.  The paper strips just allow you something else to light in case you can't find dry items, etc.

      Other things to put in a bucket in this area could be hand warmers, gloves, stocking caps, & a glow stick.

    The useful items we have in this bucket are a small pocket knife, 5 pieces of paper and a pen, 5 zip ties, 2 kitchen sized trash bags, 2 plastic forks, plastic spoon, a pair of 36" shoe laces, 4 sugar packs, 1 sweetener packet, a tea bag, a small jar of instant coffee, 1 package of snus (could be traded), 1 roll of duct tape, vegetable seeds (carrots, pumpkin, peas, bell pepper, tomatoes, radish, cucumbers, lettuce and a 14 variety salad blend), 2 baggies and a baggie full of toys (14 rubber bouncy balls, 3 hot wheel type cars, 3 spinning tops, and 5 small dinosaur toys).

     Other useful items you can put in one include paracord, electrical tape, multi-function tool, a deck of cards, can opener, fishing line and hooks, tarps, superglue, sewing kit or a million other things.

     I know that this bucket does not have EVERYTHING but it is just not possible.  What items I think I may need that is not in this bucket will be in the next one.

     There are four in our family so I always include 4 water bottles.   I put one in each corner of the bucket so if you have to carry it, the weight is distrubuted more evenly.          

    And as you can see from the photo below, all items listed fit perfectly & tightly into a 3 1/2 gallon bucket. Now it is ready to be sealed and hidden.

You can find more of my posts on Prepping here.

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Root Cellar

    I have been wanting a root cellar FOREVER.  One of our chest deep freezes went kaput awhile back so my hubby stripped it of its motor, etc. and set to work giving me a make-shift root cellar.  I am so happy.

Here is the chest deep freeze before burial. 

Breaking ground...

Buried!

My 15 year old son who helped dig the hole. 

My hubby:  the brains and brawn of this project!

   So, that's it.  It is done.  The average temperature inside it is between 52-55 degrees.  Right now I am keeping some potatoes and carrots in there.

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This Mind be in You
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I'm a Prepper, Are you a prepper? Maybe you should be a Prepper too!

 I'm a Pepper.  Are you a prepper?  Maybe you should be a prepper too!

One of our cabinets.

       Don't you love the today's title?  If you are old enough to remember the old Dr. Pepper commercials, then you will appreciate the humor in it.  If not, sorry.
       Anyway, some of you may be wondering what a prepper is.  Well, a prepper is someone who prepares for the unknown.  I heard there is even a television show out now about preppers.  We do not watch tv at our home.  Well, we do.  We watch DVD's and Blu-rays but have not had a satellite dish or cable in over 5 years.
       Back to the subject at hand.  We have been prepping for about 3 years now.  We are not die hard, hard core or anything like that but the world is getting unstable with the national and global economy, natural disasters, and world conflicts.  I just want to be able to take care of my family if something happens.
       Do not judge me.  I am not crazy.  (Well, I am but that has nothing to do with why I am a prepper.)  Click on this link that was put out by the American Trucker Association (When Turcks stop, America stops)
I do not know what tomorrow holds but I want to be prepared.  I do not want to fight my friends and neighbors for items because no one was ready.  I want to be able to help them out if something happens.  I am not just talking national.  It could be loss of power from a few days to a few weeks due to an ice storm or tornado.  I do not want my children crying for food.  I want to be ready.
       Everything I have saved and purchased can be used if nothing ever happens.  I have one room strictly full of shelves filled with supplies and groceries.  We have flour, sugar, rice, and beans in 5 gallon buckets.  We have quite a bit of water and water purification tablets.  My family knows how to hunt and fish.  We have 2 gardens and I do a lot of canning.  Sometime I will do a full post about all we have done to prepare, along with showing you the contents of our 72 hour kits.    Is that something you all would be interested in seeing/reading about?
       Are you doing anything to prepare for a disaster of some type?  What are you doing?  If not, would you like to share why not?
   

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