Posted on 11/23/2012 7:22:24 PM PST by Kartographer
Survival Diva here to discuss an important, life-saving tactic that too many Preppers leave out of their preparedness plan. We may think we have everything covered for survival, but what if we’ve prepared for six months or a year when a crisis comes that lingers for years? Few of us have the resources to put three, four, or five years of food storage and preparedness goods aside, but depending upon the emergency, we may need to figure out how to make it through a breakdown in infrastructure lasting that long.
As David has said before, the “stuff” that you store up is only there to help you get from one predictable source of provisions to the next. It won’t last forever, but it will give you time to figure out or set up sustainable solutions.
One of the most obvious choices for developing a sustainable food supply is through gardening…specifically with heirloom seed that can be dried and used season after season. In my opinion heirloom seed is imperative for long term survival. We will need a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits to combat appetite fatigue and for good health, especially when food storage begins to dwindle. If you can afford the cost, adding heirloom seed to your bartering goods stash will give you plenty of bartering leverage.
(Excerpt) Read more at survivethecomingcollapse.com ...
Thanks for the tips. If I do it, it will be a start from scratch proposition, but they say learning new stuff keeps Alzheimers away.LOL
The Belts will probably need replacing. they get brittle.
LOL
I wonder if there is a repair shop that specialises in really old sewing machines?
Work smarter, not harder.
:)
If there are no doctors, I'll offer what I was trained to do as an EMT and have many types of over the counter meds for pain, plus other selections for pain and other ills, plus splints for broken bones which I hope doesn't happen to anyone. There will be a lot of muscle and joint pain due to more physical activity.
If Johnny gets a bad enough cut, I promised to use a skin stapler on him as I'm not stitching anyone with a needle without anesthetic which I wouldn't have. I'd also use Steri-Strips to hold wounds together. Have plenty of antibiotic ointment for wounds. What I have for care is too long to list.
Gas, ammo, alcohol, canned meat, medicines.
The ones I've dealt with didn't really need much work except for belts But they are pretty old and don't have many bells and whistles. And really there doesn't seem to be much that can go wrong with them. Of course we may have been very lucky.
Old Sarge lost his guns in a tragic boating accident - I should know, I was with him and suffered the same losses.
Amazon.com has a treadle powered machine:
In my area gardening is one of the best ways to obtain meat.
My good friends wife wanted a garden but our soil is sandy so, being a good husband, he had 4 dump trucks of topsoil delivered. The deer love her beans! The squirrels and rabits too. He built a six foot fence the folowwing year and watched them jump over it with ease. The next spring he raised it to 12 feet and was able to enjoy veggies that cost thousands of dollars a plate. Sadly, his bride was opposed to hunting...
The adage “they don’t make them like they used to” goes double for sewing machines. The owner of my local (non-specialist) repair shop looked at me like I had two heads when I asked if it would be more economic to buy a new sewing machine rather than pay to repair my mother’s that she’d gotten in college. He had quite a few functional treadle machines on display, and the prices weren’t anywhere near Antiques Roadshow, just what you’d pay for something high-quality.
So no specialist needed.
I would advise to pick up a bunch of extra needles in different sizes and a few belts too. Also, don't forget to stockpile thread, but I guess that was a given.
Thread, yeh if you can find any decent thread. I read somewhere that they had so much stockpiled in warehouses that a lot of the thread in stores is kinda rotten/not as strong-course you can read anything these days.LOL.
Well thirty years ago we used to have a singer repair shop in a town about 30 miles away. It’s gone now, so I’ll probably have to go a ways to find a repair shop these days.
My pictures are completely unorganized since I got my new computer, but somewhere I have a good picture that I will try to find and post.
That is a great photo. Going to frame it for my office.
Whoo Hoo. That looks a lot like the machine I got from my other Grandma. It had a choice of foot thingy to make it go or a metal piece that you could move your knee against, IIRC.
She gave me that machine when I was a teenager, and I later used it to make a bunch of baby clothes for my girls. I packed it all away, and haven’t dragged it out lately.
She also gave me her little portable machine in 1982 and it is a lot lighter and smaller, so I started using it. Now that the kids are all grown, I rarely need a machine-just a few hand repairs, sew on a few buttons, and a little free-hand embroidery to put the kids names on stuff.
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