After discovering Fieldcraft Survival in 2021, I’ve been using their free resources and survival gear to become more prepared. I recently listened to this episode of Fieldcraft Survival’s podcast with Amber Elle. I realized that while we have many things in place we don’t actually have a PACE preparedness plan for everything.

For us, this is would be the next level of planning.

PACE is an acronym that stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency

Many Fieldcraft Survival staff are former military so I believe that’s where the use comes from. The PACE acronym is actually used in communication planning but can apply to preparedness plans.

This year I’ll build out our food, water, and shelter PACE plans.

Typical Emergency Scenario Requiring a PACE Preparedness Plan

Since we live in Ottawa, Ontario our city has fallen prey to several kinds of natural disasters from Tornadoes to Ice Storms. With many of these weather scenarios, parts of the city could be out of power for hours, days, or weeks at a time. So for this blog post, I’ll use a multiple-day power outage example to map out our PACE plan for 3 key areas of survival.

Food PACE Plan

Primary: Our primary way to nourish ourselves is farm to table. This includes acquiring foods from farms during harvest seasons and learning how to store them. From packing freezers to shelf-stable canning.

Alternate: If we were to lose power, we have a generator to keep our freezers cold. We have quite enough food stored on hand to last us a while. And depending on the weather if it’s winter our lovely Canadian climate lends itself well to having an outdoor fridge/freezer. For primary and alternate, you may also want to think about how much food you want on hand to feed your family from 1 week, to 3 months to a year. The amount of food you have on hand will be different for everyone’s comfort levels.

Contingency: We purchased several freeze-dried buckets of food that have at least a 10-year shelf life so I’ll put this in the contingency bucket. And if we don’t end up using them to survive they are perfect to take on future canoe trips (so we can use them up before the expiry date).

Emergency: My wanting to garden and learning how to grow our own food is definitely not a primary or alternative way of feeding our family (yet). So I’ll put that in the emergency bucket for now. This would be based on an emergency that halted all food supply changes in addition to our local farmers who I currently source food from.

Water PACE Plan

According to this blog, on average we need at least 1 gallon per day per individual. 1/2 of this gallon is used for drinking, 1/4 for cooking, and 1/4 for washing. A recommendation is to keep at least 3 days of water on hand in the house. So that means I need at least 12 gallons on hand for our family of four.

So if the power goes out we only have a bit of time before we don’t have access to water from the taps in our house. Here are the things we already have in place and what else we need to do to have a PACE plan when it comes to water.

Primary: Our primary water source is the water that runs through our reverse osmosis system in our house. There is a reservoir, so we would have access to what is in there at the beginning of a power outage. It actually isn’t a lot so we’d move to our alternate plans quite quickly.

Alternate: We have water stored in glass containers in our pantry. We currently have 1 large carboy which is 5 gallons and then 3 1-gallon glass containers which used to have apple cider vinegar in them. That means I still need to add 4 gallons to my storage shelves.

Contingency: We have a water filter that we bring camping with us. While this is a great contingency solution it takes quite a while to pump one Nalgene of water with this filter. I’ve been thinking about buying a Berkey for large filtration at home. We will just need something to carry the water into the house. Whether it’s catching rain or sourcing it from nearby rivers. I’ll be looking at purchasing something like Water Bricks, a WaterBOB for filling a bathtub, and a collapsible rainwater barrel.

Emergency: Boiling water can be an emergency solution. If the emergency lasted longer than a few days we might choose to move locations. Our bug-out location is on a lake. I also have several supplies in my mobility bag in my vehicle for purifying water such as Life Straws and AquaTabs while traveling to an alternate location.

Shelter PACE Plan

Primary: Our primary shelter is obviously our house. As previously mentioned we have a mobile generator to keep our fridge, freezer, X, and a few lights working in a power outage.

Alternate: As part of my self-reliant challenge for the year, I do want to upgrade the mobile generator to a propane one that isn’t reliant on gas. We’ll purchase and install it later this year after the snow melts.

Contingency: We actually have two friends who live nearby in the country with generators. We could always go and stay with them if our house wasn’t safe anymore.

Emergency: If our two friends’ houses are not available we also have our emergency bug-out location.

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Do you have PACE plans in place for food, water, or shelter? Let me know if I should add anything to ours.

I shared in my 2023 Goals & Intentions post that I wanted to complete a monthly resilience challenge in 2023. This is in addition to my 2023 self-reliance challenge that I’m repeating this year.

Because I’m a big word fan, I normally start blogs out like this by looking at the definition of the word.

I’ve noticed since the twins were born that I haven’t been able to adjust or recover well from stressful situations. My stress response has been difficult to manage and I’ve found myself battling depression. I want to turn things around for myself before it gets worse. I want to consciously work on building my physical and emotional resilience through monthly challenges.

So every month this year I’m going to focus on one thing. The frequency might be daily, a few times a week, or weekly each month.

My 2023 Monthly Resilience Challenge

• January – cold water plunges (3 x a week)
• February – Wim Hof breathing (daily)
• March – 10 pull-ups (daily)
• April – 15 mins of daily sun gazing
• May – weekly friendship dates
• June – do 1 thing a week that scares me
• July – reduce phone time by 50%
• August – no TV (for a month)
• September – no sugar (for a month)
• October – daily prayer
• November – daily time in silence
• December – 10 push-ups (daily)

Similar to my self-reliance challenge, I’m trialing a new platform to document both challenges over on substack. There will be free and paid content if you’d like to read more about this year’s challenge you can subscribe to the newsletter.

I started a self-reliance challenge for myself in 2022. And I’m continuing it this year!

I really loved learning 1 new skill a month. It was enough to challenge myself but not too overwhelming.

Here’s a recap of what skills I wanted to learn and which ones I was able to tackle. The checkmarks are skills I started tackling and have learned a bit about. I’m obviously not an expert in any single one. The circles are ones that I just didn’t get to this year, or wasn’t successful in (that one is reserved for hunting).

A 2022 Self-Reliance Challenge Recap

So how did last year’s challenge actually go? Well according to the checkmarks, I would say it was a 75% success 🙂 I learned a ton of new skills, ones that I’ll continue to improve upon this year and create space to learn even more new ones in 2023.

Sourdough Bread

I taught myself how to make gluten-free sourdough and have just recently started teaching myself how to make a regular sourdough recipe. I’m still learning how to make a regular sourdough but am proud to have stuck to improving upon this skill all year. It’s a lot to feed two starters a day so I’m hoping I’m more successful in regular sourdough recipes and can go down to one. I’m purchasing 1847 flour that does not include added iron so I’ve been able to eat these sourdough loaves of bread without any issues.

Canning & Ferminting

I have successfully canned pickles, beets, peaches, pumpkin, and “nomato” sauce. I use a water bath canning method and that felt very doable for me. I have also successfully fermented sauerkraut and carrots. I’ll continue expanding my food-preserving knowledge but feel very accomplished in this area in such a short amount of time.

Seed Starting

I successfully started seeds in March & April of last year. I was able to grow onions, cauliflower, pumpkin, cucumbers, watermelon, lettuce, squash, zucchini, leeks, kale, and cabbage. Let’s not discuss how many of them survived in the garden but at least I know I can start plants well! I didn’t end up growing microgreens. I just haven’t been eating enough salads to warrant growing these to add on top of them.

Gardening / Weeding / Composting

I had my husband build me 2 gardens. A long rectangular one and a square one with fencing around to keep our dogs and the squirrels out. We miscalculated the placement of the gardens this year and they just didn’t receive enough sunlight to provide the plants with enough to grow. We’ll keep going next year but move the gardens to a more sunny spot. My husband was saying he’d like to put them on the roof but I’m not keen on hauling buckets of soil up there to move them there. We considered even putting them in the front yard but have to look up by-law regulations first.

In regards to composting, I had wanted to organize a back area of our yard but just never got to it so I’m adding it to the list for this year.

Foraging

I took a really great workshop last year on foraging and identifying edible plants. With new book resources in my possession, I’m excited to continue learning in this area.

Volunteer on a Farm

I actually managed to do this earlier in the year while I was between jobs. I volunteered on a farm called Alpenblick Farm. My job was to move cow feed from the shed to the barn, make the feed buckets for the cows, feed the sheep hay, and muck sheep, goats, or cow pens. I learned a lot while I was there. I loved getting to know the owners and asking lots of questions. I was only there for a few short months but am grateful for the experience.

Homeschooling

While our twins are not school-age, I wanted to create an environment for them to start learning. And at 2 years old it’s super simple with reading, learning the alphabet, numbers, and crafts with their hands. I bought them a few key things that they use with us or their nanny. I also simply created a schedule for crafts so they are doing something different every single day.

• Monday – Playdough
• Tuesday – Messless Painting
• Wednesday – Painting
• Thursday – Colouring
• Friday – Construction Paper Glueing

Seed Saving

I managed to dry and save seeds from cucumbers I grew and from squash I bought from a local organic vegetable farmer.

Knitting

I ordered two kits from We Are Knitters. In December I managed to knit half a blanket. I’ve got a pair of mittens that I’ll try next. Knitting is so calming and such a perfect stress-reduction tool. I’m putting it on the list again this year but specifying that I’ll learn how to knit a hat.

My 2023 Self-Reliance Challenge

So I’ll take the skills I didn’t learn in 2022 and tackle them in 2023.

I’m trialing a new platform to document my self-reliance challenge over on substack. There will be free and paid content if you’d like to read more about this year’s challenge you can subscribe to that newsletter.

This year I decided I wanted to learn one new skill a month to become more self-reliant. For April, I chose seed starting so I could learn to grow a vegetable garden this summer.

I shared in my self-reliance challenge blog post that in 2016, I failed at my first attempt at gardening. We had built a raised bed garden but it didn’t have high enough fences and our dogs loved to dig in them. I had small success with a raised bed garden on our back patio last year, in 2021, so I know I can do it on a slightly larger scale this year.

I bought two of these 72 pod seed starting windowsill kits from Canadian Tire. This way I could get my seedlings ready for planting the moment it’s warm enough outside in Ottawa!

Because I started everything quite early in the process, I’ve already had to re-pot basically everything into larger pots before transplanting outside. Our last frost isn’t supposed to be until early to mid-May so I’ve got a few more weeks to go.

We ended up getting a greenhouse shelf from Canadian Tire so I can put as many plants as possible near our back window. The one thing that I did learn

Here are the plants that I’m going to attempt to grow this year!

Seedling Plants

Plant Directly Outdoors

Garden Plan

So here’s the game plan for the garden. I had thought about doing a u-shaped garden but I’ll be making one long rectangular one instead for our backyard space.

Wish me luck!!

For February I challenged myself to learn how to can. I procrastinated and instead decided to tackle fermenting in March. So I made my first batch of pickles and sauerkraut. Spoiler alert! I’ve already taste-tested and they both turned out amazing!

Supplies for Fermenting

My husband, Mike, and I headed over to Canadian Tire to pick up canning supplies. I grab regular 500 ml jars for pickles and wide-mouth 750 ml jars for sauerkraut. Additionally, I picked up decorative 125 ml jelly or jam jars to weigh the sauerkraut down.

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How To Make Pickles

I used this recipe to make pickles. I grabbed 2 containers of mini cucumbers from Farm Boy and sliced them in half and then into quarters. I cut off the ends so they would fit perfectly into each jar. I put around 12 slices into each jar. I grabbed dill seed and followed the instructions in the recipe. I think the only thing I would change is a put 2 garlic cloves in each jar. However, I used a garlic crusher. If I had to do it over again I would probably just chop the garlic up as this batch was extremely garlicky (which I’m not complaining about) but it was definitely strong.

I was a little scared to pour the hot brine over the cucumbers but it worked. That was just something so new for me to try. While the recipe says wait 48 hours before eating, I kept the jars in the fridge for at least 3 weeks before taste testing!

How To Make Sauerkraut

I used this video to make sauerkraut. I used 1 head of cabbage to make 3 jars. It was a lot of work to massage the cabbage and the salt in a bowl. I ended up using a potato masher to help me work the cabbage. I left the sauerkraut on the counter and opened the containers every 2 days to let some of the CO2 build up out. It was a messy deal so I would recommend always doing it over the sink. After 3 weeks the taste test was amazing so all three containers moved into my fridge and we’re almost done the first jar!

I don’t know why fermenting has always intimidated me but it really was so easy to do. It also felt really good learning a new skill and knowing that we don’t always need to buy store-bought products now.

I think my next skill will be to learn how to make homemade vinegar as I used an entire 2L container of apple cider vinegar for the pickles.