Five Points in Setting up a Patrol Base

FIVE POINTS TO SET UP A PATROL BASE:

A Patrol Base is used when doing a patrol to provide a secure point as a base of operations for the patrol conducting the work and is established by a larger element.


5 Points to remember when establi...

shing a Patrol Base.


1. You must be able to defend the patrol base from all directions but is it is discovered, your aim is to melt away, not to stand you ground.


2. The position you select to establish your patrol base in must be easy to conceal and off the beaten track.


3.The Patrol Base must be established near a supply of fresh water you can purify to drink. This is essential.


4. The terrain you establish the patrol base in must not interfere with any radio communications your unit is using although you should for the sake of security restrict your use of radio communications to avoid discovery in a high tech environment.


5. The Patrol Base should be established near enough to the objective of your mission to allow your main force to support your Raid, Ambush or Recon patrol.


These are combat arms tricks we used back when but are not only useful for your tactical teams but also for any movement your teams make.

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Cooking Carp

Cooking Carp

When I was growing up, my family lived on a subsistence farm part of which lay in the bottom-lands along the Kalamazoo River East of Battle Creek, Michigan. At that time before the 10 August 2010 Enbridge oil spill, the river was relatively unpolluted and particularly after my Dad died when I was 12 we gathered a lot of our meals from the river bottom-lands.

Even today if you can find the rare areas of more or less unpolluted river bottom lands, the marshes are some of the richest food gathering areas you can find.

One of the easiest meals were the huge carp that migrated up and down the river to spawn. We netted them and also would spear them whenever we got the chance and even occasionally caught one of the 20 to 30 pound monster fish on a hook and line, Wow was that a fight!

A carp is pretty much despised here but we ate them just as they do in Europe. Grandpa would smoke them and we had several other recipes.

The instant the carp is out of the water kill it, hang it by the lips and cut a half inch oval from the bottom of the tail just behind the carp's anal orifice. The fish will bleed out from that and most any residual taste from their indiscriminate feeding habits will leave with the blood.

When the fish stops bleeding clean the carp by scaling it, cut out all if its fins and a half inch area around them skin the fish and then we found that by scrubbing the fish with a clean clothe dipped in salted water it would remove any "muddy" taste. (use about 1 teaspoon of salt per quart of water for your scrub)

Cook the carp as soon after cleaning as you can. A carp has soft flesh and many bones but that never bothered us when we were hungry, and smoked carp, smoked over a hickory or apple smoke is pretty good.

Here are some more recipes for the carp we caught.

My grandpa's favorite was Carp in beer.

You will need

a 4 to 5 pound freshly caught carp cleaned as above.
a cup of salt.
2 medium sized white onions.
a lemon.
a bay leave.
6 black peppercorns.
1 11 ounce bottle of dark beer, grandpa made his own so I don't know what brand.
a tablespoon of fresh butter.
a tablespoon of white flour.
a teaspoon of sugar.
a 1/4 teaspoon of powdered ginger.

Now cut the fish into 1 inch thick slices.
Spread the fish pieces with salt covering both sides and let them lay for 30 minutes.
Scrap of the salt and wipe the pieces of fish clean.
Lay the slices of fish in a large lightly greased skillet and place over them piece of cheesecloth large enough to form a bag or a envelop when doubled over on itself.
Put the onions and lemon on the piece of cloth after slicing them very very thin, also the bay leaf and the peppercorns.
Fold the cloth over to close it like a bag over the onion and lemon slices tie both ends of the cloth bag.
Now pour the beer over the fish, if it isn't enough to cover the fish slices add more beer.
Close the pan and simmer over a low heat for 30 minutes.
The flesh of the fish should flake easily with a fork when the fish is done.
Now remove and discard the bag with the onion and lemon slices (we fed it to the pigs.)
Lift out the pieces of fish and slip them to a warmer platter to keep warm.
Work the butter, flour sugar and ginger into a smooth paste and add this in small flakes to the liquid remaining in the pan.Stir it until smooth.
Pour over the fish slices.
Serve.

This will serve 6 to 8 normal folks and closer to 4 to 5 hungry farm-working kids.

Another good recipe my Mom likes is Carp Fish in Tomato Sauce.

You will need:

a 4 to 5 pound cleaned carp, (see above on cleaning carp).
1 and 1/2 tablespoons fresh sweet butter.
6 green onions. (Mince them).
1 minced garlic clove.
a bay leave.
A pinch of Thyme.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
a large pinch or dash of black pepper.
2 cups of red wine.
1/2 cup of tomato paste (we make our own from Roma tomatoes)
2 tablespoons of cooking brandy.

This can be cooked in a Dutch Oven or in a tightly closed pan in the kitchen.

Butter the pan or Dutch Oven well.
Heat the rest of the butter in a skillet and saute the minced onions and garlic; add the bay leave, the thyme and the pepper as they cook.
When the onions are tender but not yet brown blend in the wine and the tomato paste and pour over them.
Simmer for some 15 minutes stirring occasionally.
Put the whole cleaned carp into the Dutch Oven or Pan, strain the sauce over it and if a Dutch Oven bury in the coals and cook for one hour. In the Kitchen with a sealed pan cook for 40 to 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

This will serve 6 to 8 folks or closer to 4 to 5 hungry kids.

We also smoked the carp and used them as a fish barbecue as well as fed them to our pigs. Never wasted much when I was growing up, we were poor but the food was good.

Parched Corn the Original MRE.

Parched Corn

Parched Corn was one of our original, Meal Ready to Eat when my ancestors raised Cain all through the Great Lakes and Ohio Basin.
...

Here is another way to store your corn for the winter season.
Take and let some large yellow and white ears stand on your corn stalks until they dry. Remove the ears before hard frost and check them to ensure they are dried hard. Sweet corn kernels will shrivel up a lot as they get drier. Bite a drying kernel and when you do it should still "give" just a little.
At this point you can remove...
the kernels and keep them in a covered dish in the refrigerator (up to several months if you desire.)
When you are ready to parch them act like they wet popping corn, use a small amount of cooking oil in your popping pan and stir the corn kernels until they turn a light brown. The kernels will half pop and are a wonderful tasting treat for a long winter evening with the family.
We used to take handfuls of parched corn and chew it on the trail as our feild rations along with Pemmican. It is light and sustaining, and a man can carry quite a lot on a mission.

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How to tell if a stream will develop the horsepower to generate electricity.

How to tell if a stream will develop the horsepower to generate electricity.How to tell if a stream will develop the horsepower to generate electricity.

First find out how many gallons per minute of water will flow past a given point in the stream.

To do this put up a temporary board dam with a notch or weir cut into the top board.
...

To figure out the amount of water flowing through the weir, use this formula.

Three times the width of a weir, times the square root of t...
he depth of the water.

As a example, a weir notch 25 inches wide with 4 inches of water flow going over it will equal 400 gallons per minute (25 x 16 (4x 4) flow.

(Note my math is subject to analysis and correction by those better then mathematics then I)

Now to determine horsepower available multiply the gallons per minute water flow times the height of your dam (The number of feet the water will fall from the top of the dam breast to the water surface below )

In the case of a 400 gallon per minute flow and 10 foot head you will get about 1 horsepower of usable work from the water flow following the formula (rate of flow times height divided by 4000 equals the horsepower of work available from the water flow.).

Another method to determine the horsepower available from a given stream of water is called the float method.

Take a weighted piece of wood. Let it float down the stream in a strait stretch in the middle. Measure how far it floats in a minute. (you must weight the float by tying a weighted line to it so that the surface current and the wind will not push the float along faster then the water current is actually going.).

If the float moves 25 feet in a minute that will be your velocity.

Multiply your velocity by .75 to get your average stream flow. (25 x .75 = 18.75 feet per minute true stream velocity)

Now calculate the average width and depth of the stream. Multiply this by the velocity to give the cubic volume of water flow.

For example Average width of 6 ft by average depth of 3.5 ft with a velocity of 18.75 feet per minute flow to get a average flow of 393.75 feet per minute. Now say you have a drop of 9 feet. Multiply this equals 3543.75.

Horsepower available equals the weight in pounds of a cubic foot of water (62.5 pounds per cubic foot of water) times the flow of water in cubic feet per minute times the fall of the water, divided by the constant of 33,000 (3543.75 x 62.5 = divided by 33,000 = 6.7 horsepower.

Now multiply that by .8 because the the falling water is reckoned to be only 80% efficient in converting power. (6.7 x .8 = a practical actual horsepower rating of 5.36 for that streams head of water.

My grandpa taught me this and I never thought I would be able to use it, now, it may be the "High Tech" of a grid down future.

For those of you near moving water this is the math to make it useful to you.

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SCROUNGING MATERIAL FOR SURVIVAL AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

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SCROUNGING MATERIAL FOR SURVIVAL AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

I have been reading and chatting with a lot of other prepper's, homesteaders and survivalists, and  wanted to put my two cents in on the subject of scrounging.

Much of North America would even now qualify as a gigantic shore to shore garbage dumb, for a scrounger instead of the pristine wilderness many seem to be preparing to deal with and in a major disaster, especially TEOTWAWKI it will only get worse.

We are rich as a society today and for a skillful scrounger, the materials and other stuff people discard and throw away and out can be recycled and reused to build many, many things

My relatives and friends who served in Vietnam have told me many stories about how skillful the NVA regulars and the VC guerrillas were at scrounging and recycling anything American our other Free World military forces threw out to their own advantage.

We are rich as a society today and for a skillful scrounger, the materials and other stuff people discard and throw away and out can be recycled and reused to build many, many things

My relatives and friends who served in Vietnam have told me many stories about how skillful the NVA regulars and the VC guerrillas were at scrounging

Great book for Herb users

Here is a link to a good book for gardeners and those interested in using or gathering herbs http://www.amazon.com/Great-Terrible-Herbal-Presents-ebook/dp/B0092ZV6X4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348278266&sr=8-1&keywords=Kim%27s+Herbal+guide

Edible flowers for your garden

Edible flowers

Not only pretty, but nutritious too.

I have grown a number of different flowers since my grandmother taught me gardening in the late 1960's early 1970's. It was Grandma's contention that the garden was not only the most productive part of the farm but should be the prettiest. So always it was full of annual and perrienial flowers, many of which doubled up as either herbs or slad vegetables or both.

Here is a list of some of the flowers and what you can use them for.

Begonia; The stems can substitute for a late season rhubarb.

Calendula; Also known as pot marigold the pretty yellow flowers add a
golden color to your soups, scrambled eggs and grain dishes
substituting for saffron.

Carnations: Are both edible, although i find them rather bland but add a pretty
garnish to your meals.

Chives; One of my personal favorite, i love their flowers, the bees love
them and i love adding them to my potatoes, soups stews and
salads.

Chrysanthemums; Depending on which plant they can be a bitter or mild salad
herb, to taste the flower before adding it to yoursalads and you
can briefly blanch and add to your stir fries too.

Dandelion; My mom and grandma's favorite flower and herb and tonic and
early spring vegetable. You can use the leaves in the early spring
as a salad or boiled green wwith a touch of vinegar it is delicious,
the flowers are not only pretty but the bees love them and we
fried them and used them as garnish in our salads, and the roots
grandma and mom dug and used for a coffee type drink substitute
after cooking until very brown. The only problem we had is we
could never get enough to satisfy my mother and grandmothers
appetite for dandelions and I would always laugh when people
complained about them in the yard, they didn't know what good
eats they were missing.

Daylily; Eat these beautiful flowers either raw or fried.

Dianthus; You can use these pretty members of the carnatian family as a
addition to your salads or as a colorful addition to herbal butters.

Gardenia; The blossom is a pretty garnish for your salads.

Geranium; The geraniums have very many tastes and scents and can be
used on and in pastries and as a flavor for water based drinks.

Honeysuckle; The nectar in the trumpet shaped flowers is sugary and deliciious.

Lavender; A beautiful herb, medicinly it is used as a herbal expectant and
antispasmodic and the flowers are a favorite for our bees. It
smells good dried as a scent and is quite pretty in our garden
edges.

Nasturtium; One of my favorites, I love the flowers plant it everywhere and I
love the peppery taste of the flowers as well.

Pansy; Can be added to your salads and used as a garnish.

Rose; Not only beautiful, but also the petals can be used to make
scented rose water, the rose hips can be used to make high
vitamin C drink, rose hip jam and jelly and we raise a pale
flowered variety mostly for the hips that can be eaten as a
delicious fresh fruit.

Rosemary; The herb has pretty blue blossoms that have a delicate
fragarence. The bees like most herbs love Rosemary. You can
use the flowers and the leaves in soups, stews, on pizza and as
a sorbert.

Sunflower; You can eat the seeds but also pick the flowers before they open
and steam or boil the buds as you would artichokes and eat with
a vinegar dressing or with butter. The yellow flower petals can
be added to your salads as a slightly bitter garnish as well.

Thyme; Another beautiful and fragerent herb, with different varieties
such as lemon and pinapple thyme, there are over 500 varieties
of thyme. Thyme can be made into potpourri, added to soups
and other recipes.

Tulip; Origenally domesticated in what is now Turkish anatolia for the
edible roots, today they aremostly grown for their flowers. Tulip
flowers are also edible with a sweetish taste and can be added to
minced vegetables or salads.

Violets; These beautiful spring flowers are not only attractive but edible
as well. the blossoms can be added to your spring salad, added
to a syrup for flavor and the flowers can also be candied and
used to decorate cakes and pastries.

These are just a few of the many edible flowers you can grow in your garden for color and flavor.