Knotty Oak Homestead

We're preparing for the possible landfall of Hurricane Sandy. I thought I'd post a small list of things I've learned from pa...

It's the final day! I think they're giving us a break after yesterday's doozie. It's a day of service and I was actually p...

This one took me by surprise. I guess I kind of knew it was possible, but the actuality was a bit of a shock. Unfortunately, I was not abl...

I told you it was coming! No power cooking day! Just this morning I was heating up some homemade instant oatmeal in the microwave (how lam...

It's Day 4 - Helping Those in Need! This one is an interesting one. As I'm the primary cook, cleaner, teacher (we homeschool), ch...

I was afraid it would be a no electricity day, but I am so glad it wasn't. After yesterday's stress of having no running water, I ne...

So, this morning I took a nice long, hot shower (it had been a few days), and during my shower I thought, "I bet they'll have a wat...

Yesterday the Seven Day Challenge sponsored by the gals over at Food Storage Made Easy  started! For some reason I didn't get the e-ma...

This morning I was thinking that I would like to do one thing each week this month to help our family be better prepared. So, here is ...

Happy September! This month is National Preparedness Month (and the month of my birth...) :-) Today I donated blood to the Red Cross. It was...

Last year at my church's annual Women's Conference I taught an Emergency Preparedness workshop. For this year's conference they...

I was doing a search for the shelf life of taco shells and came across this really cool site: Still Tasty: Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide ...

We were very blessed and have come through the storm unscathed. We fell asleep to the wind and rain beating our house (which strangely remin...

For us here in Maryland, Hurricane Irene won't hit until late Saturday evening. Today I went to the store to see if I could maybe ge...

So, we had no water from a water main break over a week ago, we had that earthquake hit, and now we've got a hurricane on it's way! ...

The past few days we've had a lot  of rain. Well, last night there were two water main breaks within a mile of our house. We had sup...

I just updated my "The Storm Cellar" tab that you see above. Now included are pdf documents of things I used to teach an emergency...

A couple weekends ago I taught an Emergency Preparedness class at my church. My father-in-law gave us this great emergency candle that is si...