Ferfal's Second Circle

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/04/five-circles-of-preparedness.html

2)The 2nd circle is one that expands a bit more, and includes your body as well. Your physical capabilities. Are you physically fit and in good health? Can you honestly say you’re doing what you can to stay in shape, healthy? If its within you age and physical possibilities, do you train and work out so as to be able to defend yourself with nothing more than your body? Do you have the physical strength to perform various task, carrying loads, etc?
Surprisingly enough. These two are the most important and often the ones that are most overlooked since its not about buying stuff with your credit card on the net, but actually sweating and physically working to achieve them.

This is my weakest area! Both my wife and I have started working on this area. Its very sad that I have let myself fall to the condition I am currently in. With hard work this will be remedied. This summer the boys and I and maybe the wife will be doing some serious hikes in the national forest to supplement our daily workouts.

This soon will not be the weak link in our plans.

Ferfals 5 rings Ring 1

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/04/five-circles-of-preparedness.html

1)The 1st circle refers to your head, your knowledge and mindset. The knowledge being the set of tools, the software you use to deal with different situations.

I keep working on my head and the heads of my immediate and extended family. We constantly work on skills, obviously we can always use improvement.

We have quite a diversity of skills in our toolkit, mostly due to the number of people in our family.
I am encouraging the boys to go into careers that will be useful in just about any situation. One of the boys wants to go into the medical field, his plan is to get his nursing degree and then go become a vet.

I already have one boy who is a marine who is a communications specialist.
The youngest wants to go into EOD in the Navy.

The girl is currently getting her mathematics degree and is planning on teaching high school math.

My wife is a great homemaker and is improving her food storage skills, and has always been very good at pre electronic food preparation.

Also we are working to bring the family closer together. Once we have managed to accomplished this, we will be able to add my Sister an avid prepper, my ex-wife and her long time boyfriend who has been a student of the martial arts and has been a close friend for decades. My other sister already lives on a 20 acre lot in Washington state, although they are far from the rest of us they have been practicing their skills for several years now and have done very well for themselves.

Ferfals 5 circles of prep

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2010/04/five-circles-of-preparedness.html

What I like about ferfals posts is first my youngest son (Who turned 18 yesterday) nickname is Ferf, and second he has survived and is surviving in a real situation so what he says is from experience.

I will try and break down my preparedness using his formula. This way I can improve my ability to react to situations as they happen.

Bite the bullet EE vs SR food systems

VS

Not literally but the boss and I had some extra cash come in due to some enormous hours I did a couple months ago and a lucky 3 week paycheck, and some savings we had. With the dollars value falling we were trying to decide how to preserve the value of our money and prepare for anything that may come up.

I had sent the boss some links for our prep work and I had wanted her to go over them and help me make a choice of what was better, Emergency Essentials with the 6 gal pails and #10 cans or the shelf reliance with the nice stocking shelves and the #10 cans. She said get them both, it is the best way to preserve our money, we will eat all of it over time and it is not likely to get much cheaper.

So this morning I ordered the years supply from both companies and I will compare them as I get the orders. So far my observations from the website info is as follows

Price: EE-$899 vs SR-$1044
Calories: EE-2200 vs SR-2029
Shipping: EE-$12 vs SR-$15.99

So so far EE has it in the bag although to be fair SR comes with a very nice shelf that allows loading from the rear of #10 cans and is all in #10 cans

I also bought a water filter from Ready Made Resources (this I will use while hiking and camping and I have wanted one for a very long time)

We also purchased a meat grinder that we have been wanting for a very long time.

Easy 3 Month Food Supply

 1 Gal Virgin Olive Oil
 1 Gal Peanut butter
 1 Gal Coconut Oil
 2 Cans of spam 12 oz
 3 Cans of Tuna 6 oz
 3 Cans of Chicken 6 oz
I believe a Multi Vitamin would be needed to supplement missing veggies

Quad Rail, foregrip and laser...

My friend from TX breaking at least one rule of gun safety but he does look pretty cool.

I added a quad rail and foregrip (that I had to move very far forward to allow a magazine to be seated) And an inexpensive laser.

Free books Links

http://www.muddywaterpress.com/It_sTheEndOfTheWorrldAsWeKnowIt_AndIfeelFine.pdf
Excellent "FREE!!" Prep book from MC at http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/ I am sure anyone coming here has read it.

A very well written "FREE" fiction novel LightsOut by halfast.
http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/fiction/lightsout1-10.pdf
http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/fiction/lightsout11-20.pdf