The Urban Survivalist

A couple of years ago I did a post about my daily pocket carry. Then Ferfal made me start to think about it again in his most recent post . I went back to my original post on the topic and noticed that he just commented on it a month ago. My pocket carry has changed a bit in two years so it's time to revisit the topic. First of all I upgraded my flashlight. I went from a single AAA Rayovac pen light to a 2x AAA Streamlight Stylus Pro. The Streamlight is much brighter and more durable. The Rayovac is smaller and lighter. It's durable enough for light duty use and after several months in my pocket I still have it and it still works just as reliably as the Streamlight. The light isn't very bright, though. In a truly dark room it's completely worthless. It took getting stuck in a pitch black warehouse to make me realize how bad it really was. The Streamlight doesn't exactly light up a room but it's bright enough to light a clear path no matter how dark ...

It was a beautiful day yesterday and I was stuck babysitting so I took the opportunity to get the garden prepped. My sunchokes have been in for a couple of weeks and I think that they're starting to poke out. I'm not sure what they look like when they're sprouting but these don't look like the weeds that I've seen popping out over the years in this part of my yard. I'm assuming that they're the sunchokes. If someone knows let me know. I also prepped up the corner of the yard that I'll be planting my three sisters garden in. I broke up the ground, got rid of the grass and weeds, mixed in some compost and laid down some mulch. While I was breaking up the ground I noticed that my hop plant was getting invasive. I found a big rhizome breaking off from the main plant. I dug it up, cut it and planted it in another spot along my fence. Hops are like weeds. You can break off a chunk of root that has some shoots growing off of it, plant it elsewhere an...

I finally found a store that carries plastic seed starter trays. I picked a few of them up just in case I won't be able to find them again next year. I also picked up a bunch of heirloom seeds. I couldn't find heirloom corn to save my life but I did find some blue "decorative" corn that looks promising. I also found some scarlet runner beans. I've already got the squash covered but I went ahead and picked up a few more packets of various varieties, anyway. So it looks like I'll be planting some blue corn to start everything out. The scarlet runners will go in after the corn gets off to a good start. I'm still trying to decide what route I want to go with the squash. I'm leaning towards butternut. That's just for the three sisters garden. I think I have room for two plots. The planters are pretty well planned out but I'm seriously considering doubling the volume of my planters. I just don't think that 6 inches of soil is enough ...

"Gold is the money of kings. Silver is the money of gentlemen. Barter is the money of peasants. Debt is the money of slaves." I dabble in precious metals. I have been for a few years now. I wish I would've gotten into them when they were 1/3 the price that they are now but who didn't? I don't have a lot of extra cash to blow so I don't go overboard with them. I just buy a few coins here and there when I have some spare cash. Even if you only drop a few bucks a week you'll be surprised at how fast your stash builds up if you stay consistent. You don't need much disposable income. There are plenty of ways to build up the PM stash without breaking the bank. The cheapest way to collect precious metals is to look for it in change. It's extremely rare to find junk silver in change these days but every once in a while I still get lucky. Times are tough and a lot of people are breaking open their piggy banks. This leads to a lot of older coi...

So my seeds that I started a month ago aren't doing so well. I managed to get a couple of tomato plants, a few cayenne plants, some cabbage and some squash to pop up. Out of 120 "pots" only 10 of them produced anything. Interestingly enough, all of the tomatoes and the cayennes were heirloom seeds that I'd saved from last year. None of the tomato seeds that I bought germinated. The same goes for my peppers. To be fair I bought them last year but I'd still expect them to have more of a shelf life than they did. They were stored in a cool, dark, dry space. Maybe the seed companies are just getting so good at engineering their seeds that they can control how long they stay viable now. All of the squash seeds that I planted were bought this year so there's no reason that I should have gotten such a crappy yield out of them. Maybe it didn't work out because the tray didn't get warm enough. My buddy used one of these pellet trays last year and all...