Snake Bites

Snakes in North America are usually relatively harmless creatures but people do get bit by them every year. Regardless of what kind of snake, snake bites should always receive professional medical attention. Poisonous snake bites should see professional attention within 30 minutes if possible.

After being bitten by a snake, the first thing to do is wash the bite area with soap and water, regardless of what kind of snake. If bitten by a poisonous snake, you will want to immobilize the bitten area and keep it lower than the heart.

There are snake bite kits that are commercially sold that are small enough to carry on hikes and camping trips. When bitten by a poisonous snake, you will want to try to suck out the venom right away. Since people's mouths do carry germs, the snake bite kits do have suction cups that can do the job.

After the bite area is cleaned and venom suctioned out if needed, you will want to cover the bite area with a cool compress or moistened dressing to minimize the swelling.

You will want to use a constriction method of wrapping a bandage or cord three to four inches above the bite area if bitten by a poisonous snake. This should not be so tight as to cut off the blood flow. Snake poision works its way up through the lymphatic system and not the blood.

With poisonous snake bites, it is important to see a medical professional as soon as possible to get antivenin.

Frugal Camping

Camping should be fun but not expensive. I have gathered some tips over the years that can help you save on money and still have a fun camping trip. I can't claim that any of these ideas are of my originality.

On extended hiking trips, you don't want to carry a bulky pillow but you don't want to sleep with your head on a rock either. For a nice comfy pillow, carry an extra large sized freezer Ziplock bad. You can fill it with air and put a t-shirt over it.

When you get new shower curtains, don't throw the old one out. Save it for a ground cloth to put under your tent while camping.

Bring along a throw rug or piece of outdoor carpet to place in front of your tent. This will allow you to not track in as much debris into your tent when entering and exiting.

Instead of throwing away rubber gloves, cut them into fine strips to make rubber bands. These can be used to secure your camping or hiking equipment.

If you own a frisbee, take it with you on your next camping or picnic trip. Besides be used for a fun outdoor activity, it can also be used as a paper plate holder for those flimsy but cheap paper plates.

After finishing plastic two liter bottles, you can cut off the bottom portion, file or sandpaper the cut, and then clean. You now have a cheap camping bowl.

On extended camping trips, the few clothes that you bring can get dirty quick. Trying washing them in a five gallon bucket with a plunger and then letting them hang out to dry using a nylon rope attached to two trees. You can hang them up with the left over plastic tags that hold your loaf of bread bags together.

During the summertime, ice in coolers can melt down within a few hours. To prolong the ice in your ice chests, place some aluminum foil on top of the ice and other contents in your cooler.

Many camping spots, mostly where I live, are surrounded by evergreen trees. Carry some baking soda with you on your next camping trip. If you get the sticky sappy stuff from the trees or pine cones, wash it off with the baking soda instead of soap.

Baking soda can also be used to clean canteens and coolers that have started to get a musty smell.

Take some oranges with you on your camping trip. Beside being a delicious treat and a source of vitamin C, you can rub the peels on your exposed skin to act as a mosquito repellent.

Use canning rings to cook your eggs in. This will make a nice egg sandwich as long as you bring along some English muffins.

When the need arises, you don't want to wipe yourself with falling apart wet toliet paper. Save your coffee tins with lids so that you can use them to keep your toliet paper dry.

Gold Panning

Gold panning is an outdoor activity that is fun and can be profitable. Even if you don't get any gold, you can beat the heat by playing in some nice cold stream water.

All you need to pan with is a shovel, a pan, tweezers, and a canister to put your gold in. You can find a gold pan at hardware shops, rock shops, hobby shops, and metal detector stores. The kind of tweezer I use is a suction tweezer that looks like an eye dropper. The canister can be about anything, such as an empty film canister or a see-through glass or plastic vial. Using a sluice can help speed up gold recovery by washing away most of the tailings (the lighter gravel) instead of panning them out. Classifiers can be also used to seperate the size of gravel. Just make sure to check the classifiers real good so that you don't throw away large nuggets.

According to the Department of Agriculture, no permit is needed for recreational gold panning and gold prospecting in the general national forest areas, provided no machinery is used, such as dredging equipment. Some people also pan under state highway bridges. There are places that sell maps in either the prospecting stores or online. There are also clubs that you can join that have their own claims for club members. The easiest way to get started is to just look for locations that have gold mine tours with panning, such as the Phoenix Gold Mine. Most of these places charge for panning, but they usually give you a short instructions on how-to.

Panning is relatively simple but take a lot of experience to get proficient at it. First, you fill your pan with gravel. Then, stick the pan into the water at about a 45 degree angle and move side to side. If the pan has ridges, the ridges should be on the bottom half. The side to side action will wash away the lighter gravel leaving the heavier material such as gold near the bottom. Check your pan regulary for nuggets and flakes of gold by taking the pan out of the water and swishing the pan in a circular motion. Gold is of a buttery color and you should be able to distinguish it from pyrite, which is called fool's gold. When you see the gold, use your tweezers to remove the gold and then place into your canister. There is also a thing called a gold magnet that doesn't actually pick up the gold since gold is not magnetized but removes the black sand, which is usually a combination of minerals that are magnetized, such as pyrite and magnetite.

Here's my set-up and I hope you have fun panning as I do.


My pans with my suction tweezers, a film cansiter, and a plastic vial.


My sluice. It should be placed in water that is moving somewhat swiftly.


My classifiers. There are commercial classifiers out there, but I decide to use some things from home. Notice the spaghetti strainer.


Emptying the sluice into a container. Make sure to wash each part of the sluice into the container.

Earthworm Composting

Vermiculture, which is earthworm composting, is a convenient way to get rid of organic waste while providing a good fertilizer for your garden. All you need to get started is some worms and a container with some bedding.

The worms you need to get are red worms. Don't go collect wild night crawlers because they won't be able to eat on your vegtable waste. If you know of any stables in your area, you can go ask the stables if you can gather red worms from their manure piles. If that sounds like too much work for you or if you think that's just a little too gross for you, you can purchase online at Planet Natural. You want to obtain about two pounds of worms for every one pound of waste per day that you produce. The worms do reproduce about every 90 days, so, you can actually start off with fewer worms and let them populate accordingly to your waste.

Earthworm bins can be built out of wood or you can use Rubbermaid bins. Planet Natural also sales bins specifically made for earthworms. You want the bin to be around eight inches to a foot deep and can be in any length and width that you choose.

Once you have your bin, you want to place it in a dark place. Earthworms love the dark and moist but not wet soil. The bin should be kept around 40 to 80 degrees fahrenheit. The bin should also be placed in a quiet and usually undisturbed location.

For the bedding, you can use shredded up newspaper or carboard that has been soaked and fill the bin about half full. Don't start off with or use any manure or garden soil to begin with; this will cause gases and heat up the bin and can kill your worms. Fine sand, leaves, egg shells, and/or saw dust should be added on top of the damp shredded newspaper or cardboard. Earthworms don't have teeth and need the gritty stuff to help digest food.

After you have the bin set up, add the earthworms about half way down into the bedding. You then want to put a lid on the bin to keep out the light. Leave the worms alone for a week and let them start working on their bedding.

After the first week is over, it's time to start adding the organic waste. Fruit and vegtable peels, coffee ground, tea bags, and egg shells can be added to the bin. Avoid putting in animal remains and byproducts such as dairy into the bin; this will cause the bin to smell. Don't add too much food or the food they the worms don't eat can start to rot and also cause a smell. If given the right amount of food, the bin shouldn't smell at all.

You will know when to add the compost from the bin to the garden when you realize that there is no original bedding left. When this happens, you need to make a new bin and transfer your worms to it and transfer the contents of the old bin to your garden.

How to Make and Uses of Vinegar

Vinegar has a variety of uses outside of cooking and can be bought cheaply. If you grow your own fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes and berries, you can make it for even less than store costs. You can even use a 10% sugar solution.

The strength of vinegar is dependent on the sugar content of the fruit that you use. That's why sweet apples are usually better than tart or sour apples. If using cider or juice instead of using fresh fruits, don't use any juices that have peservatives. That will prevent the sugars from fermenting.

Fill a one gallon jug, preferably glass, with whatever juice you are using. You will need an airlock on the jug. You should search for a wine and/or beer making supply store to obtain an airlock. You could possibly use a rubber glove with a needle prick in one of the fingers to do the same job, but it's not reliable as a real airlock. You could also punch a hole in a corn cob and attach a rubber hose where the other end is submerged in another jar of water. The goal is not to allow oxygen to get to your batch but still allow for the escape of carbon dioxide from the fermentation process.

It's not necessary to use yeast to get the fermentation process going. Wild yeasts should already be present. You should start to see a grey foam on top in a couple of days, which is showing the yeast is doing their job. This first fermentation process should last about four to six weeks, which at that time the bubbling should start slowing down and then come to a stop. When it comes to a stop, the fermentation is done. You now have cider.

The first fermentation took place within the liquid. The second will take place more on top. This time we want to expose the batch to oxygen. We want as much surface area on top of the batch as possible. You can do this by splitting the batch in two different jugs or by pouring the batch into a pan. Let the batch be exposed to air for a couple of hours and then cover with a cloth. You want air to get to the batch but not bugs and dust. You want to keep the batch around 70 to 80 degrees. Too cold, spores will go dormant; too hot, spores will die off. The second fermentation can last from three to six months depending on the surface area of the batch.

Home-made vinegar is going to be stronger than store-bought. You may want to dilute it with water.

Once you have your vinegar, you can put it to all sorts of uses. Vinegar is a great window cleaner. You can also use it to clean counter tops, stove tops, and anywhere else that you would normally use a store-bought window cleaner. Vinegar can be used to take of stickers, labels, and decals.

Placing open bowls in a room can eliminate cigarrette smoking odors. Vinegar can also be used with your laundry rinse cycle to leave them soft and sweet smelling. If you have sticky or smelly hands, such as after cutting onions, washing your hands with vinegar will reduce the smell and wash away the stickiness.

For sediments and build-ups on your shower head, coffee pot/maker, tea kettle, etc., dipping or washing them with vinegar will make them look new again. With the shower heads (metal not plastic), boil them for 15 minutes in a half-and-half solution of vinegar and water. The same half-and-half solution can be ran through your coffee maker as if you were making a pot of coffee. This can also be done with your iron (don't use on clothes).

When poaching eggs, use a few drops of vinegar to keep the whites together. You shouldn't notice any taste difference.

Vinegar can also be used for medical uses. You can use it to cool off sunburns and help prevent infections. For tooths aches, vinegar rubbed on the tooth and gums give a short pain relief.

As you can see, vinegar is easy to make but yet time consuming. It can also be used for many different purposes. Make sure you stock up on some and be prepared for any home emergency.