by Prepare Magazine | Apr 5, 2025 | Blog, Uncategorized
When you start gathering different essential oils to use for natural health and other purposes, lemon essential oil should be one of the first ones you get. Instead of coming from the plant itself, lemon essential oil is unique in that it is pressed from the peels of the lemon. Here are a few of the many different ways you can use this particular type of essential oil:
Use it For a Disinfectant
Are you tired of using chemical cleaners and those containing alcohol? If you just want to disinfect areas of your home, like kitchen counter tops or doorknobs, you can do so by making a natural spray with lemon essential oil. Not only does the lemon disinfect areas naturally, but the scent makes it smell much better in your home every time you use it. Fill a spray water with water and add about 20 drops of lemon oil. You can also add some tea tree oil, which provides even more disinfectant power. Spray the areas where you need disinfecting and wipe away.
Improve Your Oral Health
Lemon is also very good for your teeth and gums. While lemon juice directly on your teeth can be too harsh and strip the enamel, there are ways to use the lemon essential oil. For one thing, you can add a few drops to a small cup of water and gargle with it after you have brushed your teeth or between meals. This is going to give you fresh breath and help with halitosis. Another option is to whiten your teeth by mixing baking soda with lemon oil and brushing your teeth with it after your regular tooth brushing routine.
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It Improves Your Mood and Gives You Energy
If you aren’t a morning person, but have obligations forcing you to get up early every day, lemon essential oil can be your new best friend. It will improve your mood and make you feel refreshed, which gives you a nice boost of energy in the morning. Try using a diffuser with some essential oil in an area of your home where you spend the most time in the morning, whether it is your kitchen while preparing breakfast for the kids, or your baCategoriesthroom when you are getting ready.
These are just some really simple ways to use lemon essential oil that helps get you ready for the day, improve your oral hygiene, and give yourself a clean house without all the harsh dangerous chemicals.
As you can see, lemon essential oil is a great one to add to your collection. In fact, it’s one of the best ones to start with because these three ideas are only the beginning!
by Prepare Magazine | Apr 5, 2025 | Guest Bloggers, Uncategorized
It may seem odd that on a preparedness blog we are talking about the Winter Weather Treat of Snow Cream. To be sure, preparedness is our main goal, but making good use of time and resources also applies to living with what life hands you and making the best out of a potentially uncomfortable situation.
When live gives you lemons, make lemonade – when winter gives you an abundance of snow, make snow cream!
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As winter weather continues to keep spring at bay, it may seem as if there is nothing to do, especially on those days when new snow drifts keep you inside the house. Here is a fun, old-fashioned and delicious way to beat boredom as well as a unique way to prepare candy.
Making maple snow candy is perhaps most famous from it’s description in the Little House on the Prairie series. Here’s what you’ll need for your own maple snow candy:
- A large cooking container. I used a soup pot but you can use any bowl or pot large enough to pour your syrup into.
- A medium saucepan for melting the syrup in
- Mixing spoon
- Maple syrup, the darker the syrup the more maple flavor the candy will have.
- Of course, the most important ingredient of all, snow!
First, go outside and find a clean patch of snow. The further away from a city you live the easier this will be. Fill your pot up to the very top and leave it just outside your door. This allows you to work quickly once the syrup is heated but also keeps it from getting too frozen as it would if you put it in the freezer.
Next, take your maple syrup and pour it into a medium saucepan. Make sure you cover the bottom of your saucepan with syrup. Place the saucepan onto the stove on medium. Stirring constantly, wait until the syrup bubbles and fluffs up to twice its original size, so that it looks more like honeycomb candy than syrup. It should also lighten to a pale brown taffy color.
Then, go grab your snow container. Working quickly, pour the syrup on top of the snow. You can make patterns and shapes or just simply drizzle it.
Let it set for about 45 seconds to a minute. At this point the boiling hot syrup will be barely warm to the touch and firm enough to pick up and eat.
Enjoy the delicious maple candy, which is as much fun to eat as it is to make.
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Kathleen-June G. Horne is a survival enthusiast and amateur outdoors-woman. She graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2015 with a degree in business and has written two books, a historical young adult novel entitled “The Sparrow’s Call” and a Christmas devotional, “24 Days of Devotion“. She was homeschooled until college, and used her free time to learn all she could about all the things people used to know. She runs the blog Miniskirts & Margins which is about fashion, her Southern Baptist faith and the adventures she runs into.
Listen to this podcast to get to know Kathleen-June G. Horne a bit better!
by Prepare Magazine | Apr 5, 2025 | Blog
At first glance, Canning sounds like one of the scariest ways to preserve food. With freezing, you toss food in freezer bags and store it in your deep freezer. With dehydrating, you stick it in a machine that slowly dries it out. With canning though, you need a canner, canning jars and there’s always the possibility that jars explode. Honestly though, canning isn’t as scary as it sounds. Buy quality glass jars, follow directions to a “T” and you’ll be just fine.
I’d suggest you begin your canning career with simple water-bath canning. Click the image to your left for more about those. Then wait to move to pressure canners after you’ve become more confident with this process.
A fun place to start is by making jelly or jam. Pick your favorite fruit, find a jam or jelly recipe and give it a try. You need some half pint glass jars and tongues that will allow you to grab hot jars out of boiling water. Follow the recipes and directions and you’ll do fine. Any jars that don’t seal properly should go in the fridge and be used right away.
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Another great place to start is to with a simple vegetable canning project. Canning green beans is very simple and you can use the beans throughout the year in any dishes you’d use store-bought canned beans. Clean, cut, and blanch your green beans to get them ready for canning. Then follow canning instructions to make sure you cook them long enough and get them to a high enough temperature to kill any bacteria and create a good seal. As with any type of canned good you should store jars that didn’t completely seal in the fridge and use them within the next couple of day.
Another great option is pickles. If you have a bunch of cucumbers growing in the garden, or want to try your hand at some sort of other pickled vegetable (like cauliflower, peppers, or okra for example), give canned pickles a try. The vinegar solution already does a great job preserving the food. Canning ads even more time and allows you to store vegetable that would otherwise go back quickly even longer.
Stay away from canning meats or high acid produce like tomatoes in the beginning of your canning career. Those can be a little trickier to can successfully. Get a few batches of canning under your belt, and invest in some good canning gear (including thermometers and proper canning pots) before giving these types of canned goods a try.
Remember, you don’t have to wait until the summer harvest to can foods. You can can from your freezer in the winter! It warms the house and the heart! Plus, canned foods are preserved even when/if the power goes out.
Enjoy your canning journey!
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Affiliate Discloser: The author of this blog post is an Amazon Affiliate. Should you click and purchase any item linked here, the author may receive minimal compensation for the recommendation. Regardless of the affiliation with Amazon, the recommendations are tried and true and will never be suggested without first being vetted and verified.
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Donna Miller is a teacher, author, sought-after speaker and trainer. She has been both a guest and host on internet and broadcast radio talk-shows and in television interviews. She enjoys teaching online and local classes & ladies retreats. Donna is happily married and has three adult children, with one daughter-in-law and one son-in-law. She and her husband (Joseph) are the founders Millers Grain House and YourPreparation Station among other leading entities in the current Preparedness movement.
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by Prepare Magazine | Apr 5, 2025 | Uncategorized
Lighthouse for the Blind – Saint Louis Helps People Survive Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Tornadoes & Other Disasters
By Jeff Dunlap
Lighthouse for the Blind-Saint Louis, a not-for-profit entity also known as LHB Industries, Inc., is one of the nation’s top providers of emergency preparedness kits to help people survive earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, terrorist attacks and building lock-downs.
Unlike many nonprofit entities, the Lighthouse is acting like a for-profit company to advance its charitable social services mission. It is an excellent example of a nonprofit functioning like a for-profit enterprise to advance meaningful social services programs.
LHB’s survival kit brand is Quake Kare. Its products number more than 100 custom- and pre-packed survival kits. But that’s not all.
The 48 legally blind employees at LHB plants in Overland and Berkeley, Missouri, outside St. Louis, also produce medical kits; catheters; aerosol and liquid paints; aerosol and liquid cleaners; adhesives; eco-friendly products; and others for business, consumer, government and military customers nationwide.
The Lighthouse also offers two additional commercial product lines that are sold to consumers and businesses nationwide via retailers and LHB websites.
One is the Tear Mender brand of non-toxic, all-natural adhesive and sealants for repairing clothing, fabrics, footwear, leather, upholstery, vinyl and other items for indoor and outdoor use. The other is RapidFix, a premium line of industrial and consumer bonding products that repair damaged items that include rubber, glass, copper, aluminum, steel and most plastics.
Founded in 1933, LHB is a 501(c)3 organization that helps people who are visually impaired maintain dignity and independence by offering employment, education and support services.
All sales revenues from Quake Kare, RapidFix, Tear Mender and other LHB brands directly support LHB’s 16 different Blind Community Outreach Programs. These “See the Future” programs serve children and adults who are legally blind in Missouri and Southwestern Illinois.
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Supporting Nonprofit Mission
John Thompson, LHB president, says, “Many non-profit organizations felt the impact of economic recession a few years ago and government sequestration. We chose to boost our commercial business to offset losses from government and military contracts by evaluating potential acquisitions of established for-profit companies whose operations would be a good fit for us and create revenues to support our non-profit mission. Our acquisitions are helping us achieve that goal.”
LHB has been generating more revenues, sustaining employment and enhancing community services since its February 2014 purchase of the emergency survival kit production company Quake Kare, which was originally based in California until LHB acquired and moved the company to St. Louis.
Then, in June, 2015, LHB acquired all assets of Val-A Chicago, Inc., the family-owned producer of Tear Mender products since 1932.
In August 2017, LHB bought the RapidFix brand of adhesives from Boss Products USA, LLC, of Norton Shores, Michigan. Boss Products USA had begun selling RapidFix products nationally and internationally in 2008.
“Like for-profit businesses that want to be successful, not-for-profit organizations must operate strategically and efficiently to sustain their mission,” Thompson says.
“Our acquisition and integration of Quake Kare, RapidFix and Tear Mender are natural expansions of LHB manufacturing operations because kit and product assembly are our core competencies,” he says.
“We are very proud of our skilled employees in both of our production plants, and we are proud of our mission-specific staff members who develop, sustain and provide our meaningful programs for the blind community in Missouri and Illinois.”
Brian Houser, LHB’s director of sales and marketing, explains, “Quake Kare has been busy since we unloaded a fleet of semi-trucks with Quake Kare inventory in St. Louis in 2014. The same applies since we acquired the Tear Mender and RapidFix assets.
“With Quake Kare, our sales spike whenever an earthquake, serious flood or destructive tornado occurs. Our phone lines ring whenever disaster happens,” Houser says.
“As a not-for-profit organization we do not want to profit from disaster,” Houser asserts. “But Quake Kare survival kit sales do increase during National Preparedness Month and whenever there is a major hurricane, earthquake, tornado, terrorist act or mass shooting,” he says.
“LHB currently employs 48 people who are legally blind in two manufacturing plants in St. Louis County to assemble, pack and ship Quake Kare survival kits and other products to customers nationwide. And every penny of Quake Kare product sales revenue directly supports Lighthouse service programs.”
“We are proud to provide more than 100 different survival kit products and equipment to help people survive virtually any disaster situation,” Houser says.
“We donated 36,000 emergency water pouches to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts,” he adds. “The 36,000 pouches provided life-sustaining amounts of water for 6,000 people for three days after we shipped them to Food Bank Corpus Christi for distribution to relief efforts in the area.”
“Government research shows that many families, schools and businesses are not prepared to deal with disaster, and many don’t have a disaster plan in place,” Houser continues. “In today’s uncertain environment, it is crucial for people to plan for emergencies to help save lives.”
“We advise people in all walks of life to follow these steps for emergency preparedness”:
- Acquire emergency survival kits and supplies for homes, offices and vehicles, including for children and pets.
- Develop emergency preparedness plans based upon different disaster scenarios – and practice them.
- Stay informed about disaster preparedness news and updates by following media reports.
Here’s one example of many Quake Kare products:
Quake Kare’s ER™ Emergency Ready Two Person Tornado/Hurricane Survival Kit contains essential, lifesaving items necessary to sustain two individuals for three days in the event of home evacuation or needs for she
lter-in-place following a devastating tornado or hurricane.
Packaged in a portable, water-resistant six-gallon container, “this kit contains effectiveand reliable survival food, water, lighting, radio/communication, first-aid, sanitation and shelter supplies to help people survive man-made and natural catastrophes,” Houser says.
“Its contents also include a solar/hand-crank powered flashlight, NOAA weather band radio and USB device charger for charging smartphones and other USB devices so disaster victims can stay in touch with loved ones,” he notes.
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Transitioning Acquisitions
Establishing Quake Kare kit assembly, manufacturing and shipping operations at LHB required some investment in new equipment.
LHB Vice President of Manufacturing Clint Cruse, says, “We augmented our packaging line and warehouse operations with new equipment to streamline order fulfillment, and engaged a consulting process engineer to assist in retrofitting our headquarters plant to handle ‘just-in-time’ product packaging operations.”
LHB established an assembly line with roller conveyors that enable components of various survival kits to move easily from station to station during assembly. Marked bins hold kit components, and any common elements of these are positioned close together to minimize movement.
Houser says, “More shelves were added to the warehouse to accommodate Quake Kare inventory and we maintain an organized workflow for building kits and handling fulfillment orders.”
“Many of our employees are visually impaired,” Houser continues, “and there has been a learning curve for all involved.”
“We do not believe a person who is visually impaired is a liability, but an asset. With training and adaptive technology—such as magnifiers, CCTVs, JAWS, computer screen reader programs and Zoomtext—a person who is visually impaired can easily become a productive employee.”
New employees learn how to navigate LHB facilities by shadowing a blind veteran employee, and all undergo mobility training before navigating on their own,” Houser says.
In addition, LHB has adapted the assembly plant environment and equipment to ensure worker safety and ease of operational efficiencies. Here are a few of many adaptations:
•Cameras are installed on labeling machines so a legally blind person can see inside the machine to place labels correctly, or see misalignment, damage or other issues;
•Machine-guarding safety rails have been added or upgraded;
•The packaging system was retrofitted and bolts were replaced with hand knobs so employees who are visually impaired can make adjustments without using wrenches;
•An “audio scale” for weighing materials enables employees who are legally blind to hear weight and count information rather than relying on a digital screen;
•A portable closed-circuit TV system enlarges printed material for visually impaired employees so they can better see work instructions.
•Assembly line fixtures have touch-sensitive centerlines and alignment features;
•Windows near ceilings add natural light so workers have better visual acuity. High-intensity lights also are used to show contrast and better visual acuity; and…
• Building aisles and exits are installed with grid plate materials for visually impaired employees to feel with their canes and feet to safely maneuver throughout the plant.
John Thompson points out, “More than 70% of people who are blind in the U.S. are unemployed. When hired for a job, they typically become very devoted employees as they are thankful for the opportunity to work, earn money and to be considered an asset for an organization. Absenteeism and employee turnover are extremely low.
“National Industries for the Blind conducted an analysis of this subject and determined that, for every dollar the federal government spends on supplies and services through an agency such as the Lighthouse, $3.33 is returned to the Federal government via decreased transfer payments such as Medicaid and Social Security, and increased income and FICA taxes, thereby saving taxpayers money while fulfilling an important social service mission.”
For information about Lighthouse for the Blind-Saint Louis and its many useful products, please call 800.542.3697 or 314.423.4333, or see the website http://www.lhbindustries.com.
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by Prepare Magazine | Apr 5, 2025 | Blog, Uncategorized
When it comes to gardening accessories, I really am a picky, tight-wad. I repair most of the ones that I have used before buying new and spend very very little on new gadgets from year to year. Mostly because I’ve not found things that work like they say they will or that I cannot create cheaper than purchase. That was until I was able to review The Roo.
Forever. I do mean forEVER since I’ve been gardening I have used the ‘shirt tail’ method of harvesting something at any given moment. As an upright human with opposable thumbs, I figured this was my best shot at gathering my goodies from the garden when I ventured out without a basket, which, was often. Boy, was I wrong on so many accounts!
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Enter The Roo – as in Kangaroo. After being given the opportunity to play with this one (yes, the bright pink girly one – don’t worry, it’s not the only color) I’m completely sold on this being the better option for gathering and working in the garden. It’s like the ‘shirt-tails’ method on steroids. You can harvest almost a full bushel without ripping collar or buttonholes! It even surpasses the proverbial harvest basket. 
Here are just a few reasons why:
- The heavy duty, yet soft and pliable canvas material is lightweight but a very substantial blockade from thorns and dirt.
- The straps make for very comfortable and even weight distribution of not only the apron itself but the load you may carry.
- The pockets hold tools, stakes, twin and gloves (I’m a dirt-under-the-nails-gal myself)
- At the price and my limited skill of stitch-witchery, I could NEVER make one (much less design one) that is this effective.
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Wearing it:
- Putting it on and wearing it about all day long, I hardly even noticed it was there as I moved throughout the garden. It was not in the least bit cumbersome nor did it inhibit my movement like so many other ‘smock’ type aprons I’d tried to use before.
- It was easy to done all by myself even though there are adjustable straps and hooks.
- The ability to tie it up and USE the actual Roo Feature (the load and drop pocket) was simple while wearing The Roo.
For me, nothing that is merely well-made or pretty passes the test unless it is actually functional. The Roo passed this test with flying colors! The function of its main feature (the easy load and unload pocket) was really what made me take note of how ingenious this is.
The pocket is a simple fold up style that does have a lot of room for carrying fruits and veggies. But the fact that with a slip of a knot, you can easily unload a bushel of beans onto a table or into a wheelbarrow without bending over or lifting up the heavy load actually made me try it over and over.
The distance to unload is not so far that you’ll bruise your produce and the way The Roo becomes like a gentle ‘chute’ or ‘slide’ makes it a controlable exit. It is almost second nature to unload without harming the harvest.
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I highly recommend that you connect with Pantry Paratus and pick up The Roo (in a color of your choosing, of course)! I think, like me, you’ll find it comfortable, well-made, easy to use and above all of those features, ingeniously functional.
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Donna Miller is a teacher, author, sought-after speaker and trainer. She has been both a guest and host on internet and broadcast radio talk-shows and in television interviews. She enjoys teaching online and local classes & ladies retreats. Donna is happily married and has three adult children, with one daughter-in-law and one son-in-law. She and her husband (Joseph) are the founders Millers Grain House and YourPreparation Station among other leading entities in the current Preparedness movement.
