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“Feeder” mind-set means being in control of a situation, proactive rather than reactive. It is an optimistic outlook that reframes any situation as a learning experience. Kevin Estela teaches survival skills from this feeder-based perspective, which is what separates his teaching style from other wilderness instructors.
Kevin has written the quintessential guide for an outdoor enthusiast’s “bucket list” of skills—how to make a fire, build a shelter, gather food, find water, use a knife correctly, and make cordage. These skills will keep you safe and better prepare you to deal with emergencies in the field, when you’ll need the additional skills of signaling and communication. Each chapter concludes with more advanced techniques to build your skills in various challenging situations, with tips that even seasoned survival enthusiasts haven’t thought of.
101 Skills You Need to Survive in the Woods is not a onetime read but a lifetime reference you will turn to over and over again. It will become the first thing you pack for any adventure and might just save your—or someone else’s—life.
Eating on the Run will equip you with a working knowledge of dozens of readily harvested plants, grasses, nuts, and berries that require the least, if any, preparation. You will learn how to distinguish safe plants from toxic varieties, which parts of the plants are edible and when, and where abundant supplies are likely to be in each season. Plus, the author shares delicious ways to enjoy the plants when on the move.
Wandering the woods in search of mushrooms is one of life's great pleasures. But be careful to pick the right ones! With Edible Mushrooms in your backpack, you'll know to pick only the safest, most delicious chanterelles, truffles, morels, and more. Author Barbro Forsberg presents 40 edible species and reveals how, when and where to find them-knowledge gained over the course of four decades spent mushrooming in the woods.
Discover such aspects of mushrooming as:
All content has been verified by a professional mycologist. Plus, nature and educational photographs illustrate how mushrooms grow, the environments where you can expect to find them, and the ways in which the same species may vary from one sample to the next. So whether you're an experienced mushroom hunter or a novice to the art, with Edible Mushrooms you can confidently recognize, pick and eat the tastiest wild mushrooms.
Good Berry Bad Berry is the authoritative one-stop guide to the beautiful world of wild berries, with clear descriptions and full color photographs of 40 of the most noteworthy and widely available berries in North America (as well as a separate listing of berries found only in certain regions).
An added bonus of growing your own food is that it is cheaper, fresher, tastier, and as organic as you make it, and your footprint (carbon and otherwise) is greatly minimized. Fred Demara's revised how-to manual, Guerrilla Gardening for Long-Term Survival, gives readers food for thought about starting their own guerrilla gardens.
Novices eager to collect tasty wild mushrooms will find this unique guide invaluable. Unlike others, it focuses only on those mushrooms that are both safe to eat and delicious. Most important, this book presents the eight rules of mushroom gathering in a straightforward fashion — including "Never, never take a mushroom with gills," and "If a mushroom smells rotten, it is rotten." Among the many mushrooms covered are the cep; the red-cracked, larch, bay and birch boletes; hen of the woods, chanterelle, trumpet chanterelle, hedgehog fungus, common puffball, horn of plenty and cauliflower mushroom. Each is identified with several color photographs and identification checklist, and there's also information on mushroom season, handling, storage and cooking, complete with recipes.
Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.
The largest edible fruit native to the United States tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. The trees are an organic grower’s dream, requiring no pesticides or herbicides to thrive, and containing compounds that are among the most potent anticancer agents yet discovered.
In Pawpaw (a 2016 James Beard Foundation Award nominee in the Writing & Literature category), author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit’s own “Johnny Pawpawseed”), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven’t had one in more than 50 years.
Should a national disaster occur, how will you respond? What will occur when critical societal services cease to function? As a prepper, you will likely be ready to hole up and live off of your stored supplies, at least for a while. But what do you do during that time? What are your next steps? And how do you defend yourself against others who have not prepared for such a disaster?
Survival covers all the situations that you may face when the lack of governmental infrastructure leads to social upheaval and chaos. Because most of the population is unprepared for a disaster of any kind, this book gives both the trained and untrained prepper valuable information needed to have any chance of survival in a world where organized government assistance may not be available. Importantly, it details the crucial steps you need to take in addition to doing everything other survival manuals advise. These critical tips go beyond stockpiling food, water, and weapons.
Offering battle-proven advice, author Steve Mattoon explores what it takes to survive alone versus in groups, each approach presenting its own advantages and challenges. Discover how best to defend yourself, what to use, and how to most effectively use the tools you have at your disposal. Whether you find yourself in a rural area or an urban jungle, this book will prove an essential addition to any prepper’s bug-out bag.
A major outdoor survival book, The Extreme Survival Almanac is unlike anything else on the market. It’s written specifically for regular folks who may be suddenly forced to survive in the wilderness without assistance … and with no planning, specialized training nor equipment. This remote-area survival manual provides clear decision-making guidelines to walk you step-by-step from the first signs of trouble all the way through to rescue. It outlines specific courses of action for every type of survival scenario imaginable, including thousands of useful tips, directions and suggestions that can be understood and followed by the panicked and possibly injured layman stranded in the woods, in a vehicle or at sea.
Sections are devoted to topics like surviving in land-locked settings, including in the desert or in the tundra, as well as surviving at sea. Each section covers the basics for survival in detail, including how to create shelter and find water or food in each scenario. Also included are appendices with navigation tools and maps detailing unique information such as prevailing ocean current patterns, prevailing wind patterns and common commercial flight routs.
Delicious wild edible plants and mushrooms are abundant throughout North America, not only in the wilderness but in urban areas, too. Learn how to identify, harvest, and eat the tastiest plants in your backyard. Dandelion flowers become wine, Japanese knotweed becomes rhubarb-like compote and tangy sorbet, red clover blossoms give quick bread a delightfully spongy texture and hint of sweetness.
The Fruit Forager’s Companion is a how-to guide with nearly 100 recipes devoted to the secret, sweet bounty just outside our front doors and ripe for the taking, from familiar apples and oranges to lesser-known pawpaws and mayhaws. Seasoned chef, gardener, and forager Sara Bir primes readers on foraging basics, demonstrates gathering and preservation techniques, and presents a suite of recipes including habanero crabapple jelly, lime pickle, pawpaw lemon curd, and fermented cranberry relish.