Rainmaker's Survival Novel

David Mauldin has his first novel complete and available both at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

The web page at trailquest:

http://www.trailquest.net/SLOH.html

will give many more details, let you feast on a sample, and show you the cover. He's been practicing what he preaches, and knows his way around survival. A long distance backpacker, friend and mentor, I count him among the gifted ones.

Self Reliance Via Sustainable Edibles

I pruned some wild muscadine vines, placed the clippings in jars of water. I plan to plant the clippings when roots have formed. I planted some fruit with their seeds as nature would do earlier this week. Hopefully one of these methods of propagation will work. Muscadines can be eaten raw, made into jam and jelly, or fermented to produce red wine.


This butternut squash has a bounty of seeds which will be dried and saved for next years garden. I bought heritage seeds, not hybrid. Plants grown from heritage seeds can produce year after year. This is the way old timers grew gardens. Pioneers brought seeds with them from the previous year's crop as they moved west.

I believe in self reliance. The more skills we can develop the less dependant we are on the economy. Learning to sew, bake, garden, hunt, gather and harvest wild foods is empowering. These are skills that can be lost much like Native Americans lost their heritage skills when the white man moved them on to reservations, giving them canvas for tepees and cattle for the fall hunt. When they adopted the rifle and stopped making spears, brain-tanning hides and teaching these skills to their young, civilization as a whole suffered.

Its important to maintain the entire base of knowledge from civilizations, not just in writing, but in practice.

My acorn studies are coming along wonderfully. We actually enjoyed acorn burgers for supper, complete with mushroom gravy.

Fun In the Woods

Having fun in a secret place, spending the day creating something new, and sharing it with friends is one of life's greatest joys.