My neighbor has already started to plant seeds in her garden, the early seeds like beans and peas.  I, on the other hand, have done nothing.  I know that there are a lot of talented gardeners that have itchy green thumbs that really want to get our there and get started – I’m not one of them.  Thankfully, my husband was born with a green thumb and so we will have a garden.

Read our Ready or Not #50: Planning a Garden. Am I going to explain how to prepare your soil?  Nope.  Which plants you should buy?  Nope.  I’m going to ask you to do something else.  Read our article and find out what.

Yup.  You read the title correctly.  No shopping for 3 months.  Have you ever had someone challenge you to live off your food storage for an extended period of time?  Did you take up the challenge?  How did that go?

Read our Ready or Not #174: No Shopping for 3 Months to lean about one woman’s determination to feed her family of 10 without going shopping for 3 whole months!

We have gathered a few links to various resources that can help get you prepared in all different types of emergencies.  You can get to that page by clicking on the Preparedness Links in the navigation on the left-hand side of our site.

If you have found other links that you think are good, please share them with us.  You can e-mail them to dawn at a prepared home dot com.

Springtime is a good time to evaluate your 72 hour kits and your gardening habits.  Our Ready or Not #173: 72 Hour Kits and Gardens will motivate you to update your kits and to get your garden started.

Everybody knows (and expects) to see beans in chili, or refried beans in a Mexican dish, or garbanzo beans in a three bean salad.  Right?  Right.

But black beans in brownies?  Wouldn’t that cause a family mutiny?

Read our Ready or Not #172 Substitute Beans for Oil to learn how you can substitute mashed beans in the place of cooking oil or shortening — without your family realizing it!  This substitution is far healthier than using oil and shortening — and maybe you won’t stress out about eating a couple of brownies for supper.

I just found out that Utah Governor Gary Herbert designated April 4-10 as Earthquake Preparedness Week.  That’s this week.  As in, there’s only today and tomorrow left in our state’s Earthquake Preparedness Week.  What are you going to do in the short remaining time of Earthquake Preparedness Week to be prepared in the event of an earthquake?  (After all, we know its just a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if.’)  One good thing you can easily do is read our Ready or Not #171: Earthquake Readiness.

Do you think your 72 hour kit is for big emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and cranky children?  (Yes, asking a cranky child to update the contents in a 72 hour kit — eating old granola bars and putting in fresh ones — can possibly improve that cranky child’s disposition!)

Read our Ready or Not #170: Use Your 72 Hour Kit to expand your thinking on how a 72 hour kit can be of extra service.  And, to learn how important it is to gain knowledge.

Tax time is here, and for all of you anxiously waiting to get your hot little hands on your tax refunds, what are you going to do with it?   Yes, that 60” plasma TV might be really enticing and a vacation would be a lot of fun.  Let me give you a suggestion — read what it is in our Ready or Not #169: Prepare for Disaster.