So, I final­ly had time to sit down and read M.D. Creek­more’s book, “Dirt-Cheap Sur­vival Retreat, One Man’s Solu­tion.”  I’ve actu­al­ly had the book for some­time, but have been so busy just have not had the time to read it.  The book itself is short, and not full of fluff once you start dig­ging into it.  The first thing I noticed when I start­ed read­ing is that this was not the­o­ry.  M.D. moved to his trav­el trail­er out of neces­si­ty.  In fact read­ing though the book he makes a lot of points that res­onat­ed with me while I look for a piece of my own prop­er­ty for a Bug Out Location/Weekend Retreat.

What I found is that this book was no non­sense.  Because M.D. moved into his trav­el trail­er out of neces­si­ty with lit­tle cash to spend on lux­u­ries, he set out to build a lifestyle that kept him warm, dry, fed, and for all intents and pur­pos­es, com­fort­able.  

When most peo­ple think sur­vival retreat, they think an expen­sive well defend­ed com­pound in Ida­ho, and then real­ize it is quick­ly out of reach finan­cial­ly.  By read­ing M.D.‘s book, you will quick­ly find that this is not so.  He dis­cuss­es every­thing from your search for “junk land,” to your shelter/trailer, to pow­er­ing it, stor­ing food and more.  He has writ­ten it to help oth­ers to com­fort­ably have a plan for set­ting up their own retreat off grid.

I read through the book eager­ly.  I noticed that M.D. and I par­al­lel ideas on what to look for in a piece of prop­er­ty.  I also got sev­er­al great ideas on tap­ping a spring, some prac­ti­cal off grid solar advice, secur­ing the prop­er­ty as best you can, food stor­age advice, and even advice on a den­tal first aid kit, which I had not even giv­en much thought, but now will, hygiene and san­i­ta­tion meth­ods… He even men­tions a chain­saw, and it is some­thing I real­ized that I need­ed to take into con­sid­er­a­tion when look­ing at the prop­er­ty I had looked at a cou­ple week­ends ago.

M.D. cov­ers a LOT of ground in the 75 pages.  But keep in mind, it cov­ers a lot of the basics that you need to live a basi­cal­ly com­fort­able life pri­or to your dai­ly chores of rais­ing your live­stock, gar­den, etc.

So if you are think­ing about pur­chas­ing a sur­vival retreat, I urge you to spend the 12.00 dol­lars on this book and edu­cate your­self about what you might need at your sur­vival retreat.  You might just be swayed to do things on the cheap to keep life sim­pli­fied…