This is the ongoing story of The Place, Salty and Spice’s bugout location, weekend retreat, hunting and fishing preserve and camping area in North Missouri.
This is the story about turning a previously uninhabited wilderness property into a prepper’s retreat…
The “big clearing” in the spring
Welcome to The Place.
The Place is 30ish acres of untamed never-inhabited land. It is prime deer & turkey habitat located somewhere in rural North Missouri. This landing page is where we collect the links that tell the story of the history and the ongoing construction of our retreat, as it happens. I hope you enjoy it, perhaps pick up a couple of useful ideas and learn from our mistakes so you don’t have to repeat them.
Posts about The Place:Â
The Place: Building a prepper retreat / recreational area, introduction – In 2014, Spice and I purchased an acerage (30 acres m/l) in an extremely rural part of North Missouri, with the idea to develop it as both a prepper’s retreat should we need it, as well as a recreational area for us and our family. I will be sharing updates, at first going back in time and eventually going forward as we make improvements.
Basic hand tools/gear are under-rated survival equipment: Three examples – Three years of work at The Place convinced me that hand tools and gear are both invaluable and underrated.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Even With Wildlife and they’re eaten to bare sticks. Apply pepper spray liberally to the regrowth: Did you know, too much of that can actually scorch leaves? And apparently my deer like their salads spicy.
Food on the Fin Part 1: Building a pond as a fresh food & water larder – If you’ve never built a pond in a draw, it can be quite intimidating. Let me share our experience in planning, building, finishing and stocking one.
Food on the Fin Part 2: Erosion control & fish/wildlife habitat – Since the pond filled basically overnight, our biggest priority was to get the area seeded down with a very fast growing cover. We went with perennial rye grass, as it has a reputation for tolerating bad soil (with the topsoil scraped off, what it was going to get was clay) and being dry (water would drain off the steep hillsides rapidly), and develops good root systems.
Podcast: Food on the Fin, Audio Edition – Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You – Spice & Salty talk about how they designed, built and have maintained & stocked a preppers fish pond. Today we present the audio companion to our “Food on the Fin†series. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful!
There will come a dry spell… – Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You – If you get a dry year when everything else is going fine, with well-stocked grocery stores and you in funds to make use of them, drought is not that big of a deal for most people. It’s worth watering perennials enough to keep them healthy, but a missed crop isn’t catastrophic.
The Tippy Tap: Keeping it clean when water’s tight – Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You – 1) Getting clean water can take a lot of work if it’s not flowing out of a tap, making it valuable, and 2) Hygiene is perhaps the most underrated aspect of long-term well being, well, ever.