I follow someone who classifies herself as a homesteader. Honestly the term amuses me mostly because everyone I knew lived in that manner when I was growing up and no one considered it homesteading, but country living. Never mind. That's not what prompted the thinking, but it might well prove to be a topic another day!
The girl lives in the U.S. She homeschools and gardens, raises their own meat animals, preserves foods and uses some holistic medicines, etc. I've learned a good deal from her and her posts but yesterday's sort of tossed me for a loop; she'd just purchased multiple bottles of a certain supplement because she was worried about nuclear fallout.
What prompted my thoughts was a compilation of her post and a conversation John and I had on Sunday evening while we were eating supper.
We all know the current world news. I have no educated viewpoint to base an opinion upon. Frankly, I try to keep the daily news at bay which you all know is a struggle in my home. I have a heart view and that is deep and abiding sorrow for everyone who must live through this. Period. That's as far as I'll go with it.
John and I have followed a man on YouTube who travels exclusively in former western European Soviet countries. I like seeing the places he travels, rural and metropolitan alike. I like when he's able to talk with people, usually older men and women who lived through those days and even live in the Chernobyl fall out region.
So, while we were eating supper, we began to speak of how our grandparents survived tough times. They all came up in the depression era. We spoke of the people we'd seen this gentleman meet and speak with in a country ravaged by government. He went into their homes with them. We've seen how much their foods costs and what is available.
As we talked, I told John that having known my grandparents and seen how they managed I felt I could as well. I went on to say that watching those particular videos had made me more hopeful in light of world news. "I see these people who survived a war, and the aftermath of food shortages, and lack of goods. It's true that many of them are poor by our standards still, but they have survived. Some of them survived nuclear fallout. They live still in their homes in that region. They are old people. They continue to live." John agreed that it did give one hope.
Then this girl's post the next day. And a post from another who lamented how rapidly price increases are occurring in her area. And an email from a subscriber list for a home storage mom who was touting the necessity of emergency preparedness, with an insistence that we must be prepared for all possible emergencies....and I felt anxiety slowly rising...
Am I prepared? Can we survive? Should I order this product and a range of supplies for this and that? Could I even afford to be that prepared? What about the prices the other girl reported? Should I run and stock up NOW while I still could?
Do you know what eventually turned the tide of anxiety? Two comments. One of the readers here, Chari, shared what she's paid for cabbage and corned beef and it was half what I paid here. And the other was reading down a list of preparedness items and I knew without a doubt that some of those things were so far out of my ability to afford right away in order to be prepared that I began to feel laughter bubble up. Because at some point you just know you've worried to the point of ridiculousness.
How does one prepare? Patsi at A Working Pantry has done some great posts about stocking a pantry on a budget and being prepared. Her current seasons is "What's that in your hand?" series of posts that encourages each of us to use what we have right now to prepare. No pressure. No anxiety causing urgings to buy things you can't afford.
I have never considered keeping a pantry as 'prepper' work. I saw pantries in the homes of my family as I grew up. They had a repertoire of good recipes that filled tummies and provided nutrition at a lower cost. Because my family lived in rural areas, they kept basic first aid supplies on hand and they drew up water to use when storms were approaching that might knock out power for days. Prior to that, it wasn't necessary because a rope and pail accessed the depths of the well just fine with naught but strength to pull it up again!
As I eyed potatoes and butternut squash and onion, debating what was enough for two and what was too much, I realized too that I'm continually reading about what is required for families that are prepping. I don't have to prep for a whole family. I only need to consider myself and John. Two, That's all. Of course, my thinking also extends to Sam and Katie and their households, but I don't expect to provide everything for them, as I would if they lived with me. Both households are wise in their own ways of stocking and managing for their families.
I thought about how impossible it is to be prepared for all eventualities. We prepare best for what we've experienced first-hand. I can tell you how to prep for hurricane bugout guests, how to be prepared to live without electricity for a week in the midst of extreme heat or cold without a generator. I can tell you how to brush your teeth, wash your hair and bathe with just one quart of warm water and a small plastic basin. Where did I learn that skill? In a rehab hospital when I was unable to go into the bathroom and desperately needed a good old-fashioned bath and the evening shift was shorthanded. Years later, when we were waiting on electricity to be restored in the aftermath of a hurricane and all the bugout guests were gone back home, John asked one morning what I was doing in the kitchen. "I'm taking a bath." "What?! How?" I showed him. He took a nice bath himself afterwards.
I'd never seen empty store shelves for long periods or experienced a pandemic until recently. I learned from both those experiences. I learned how well stocked my pantry was/wasn't. I learned how to substitute for what wasn't available. I learned what wasn't a necessity.
I say, do what you can with what you have. Don't worry about every possible scenario. Haven't we any of us learned yet that in life it's never the things we are totally prepared for that occur, anyway? You can carry all you need to change a flat tire, but it doesn't do much good if the battery is what goes flat. Be sensible. Be calm. Stop listening to fear. Listen to what a pastor recently called "the knowing in the knowing place", that God given instinct that urges you to buy an extra can or keep the car full. Maybe the homesteader heard from God and she's done just what he meant her to do, too. But it wasn't a word for me. It's not a knowing I was given. And that's an area where I can only trust that I'm doing exactly what I'm meant to be doing.
We go on.
10 comments:
Wise words.
I try to approach preparedness with an eye to not wasting. If I buy something to stock my pantry, I make sure it is something we will actually eat and I try to rotate stock. So those emergency meal kits full of freeze-dried foods don't appeal to me because it's not something I feel fits in our everyday meals. Same thing with buying medications I have never needed in the past 'just in case.' I keep the basics, for sure, but it's wasteful to buy things we won't use, only to have to turn around and throw them out when they expire. If some unforeseen disaster occurs, I will not be alone in not having some specialized item.
I think that fear mongering is a trigger that piques people's interest. I saw a you tuber filming in Walmart showing some less than jam packed shelves and suggesting that this is a dire situation and there are shortages. There was still plenty of product, just not hundreds of each. How much is enough?
There are several you tubers making their living by promoting fear and panic.
Last week the panic was rising gas prices. Today the price of oil is down considerably. Gas prices will follow. There are fluctuations in the market under the best of times. I suppose we talk about inflation instead of talking about the weather. We can control neither so why worry? You and I have probably been living frugally most of our lives and those habits will continue to serve us no matter what comes. Our ability to adapt will be the deciding factor in living well in hard times.
Relatively speaking, we've never been better off.
Absolutely! Once again I talked to our son about nuclear war and he said if nukes are launched at us we will retaliate the same and we will all be dead so don't worry about it, Mom. And that is true as I see it. If one nation ever releases the first atomic bomb it is all over because there will be no stopping the mass destruction. We have a nuclear arsenal to prevent such an attack. Absent from the body, present with the Lord!
My big concern is the well if the power grid went down but the neighbors two doors down with whom we are great friends have a pond and I can's see them prohibiting people from drawing water from there since it is fed by a creek and is constantly resupplied. We pretty much have everything else covered. One prep item we bought was a battery powered fan and I am so glad to know we can at least move some air if the power is out in the summer. I can't watch those doomsday preppers. For one thing they always go to Walmart on Sunday when the store has been wiped out over the weekend. And then the sky is falling because they cannot find silly things like juice boxes and brownie mixes. People need to get some common sense! We have been really stocking our house over the last few weeks but a lot of that is because we had let many food items run quite low because we had to search for them. I fixed that with an order from Walmart.
I do enjoy Patara at Appalachian Homestead because she is tough love common sense just like me.
Why no shopping at Aldi anymore? I saw that some prices are actually down there when we went yesterday. Our gas is down 6 cents this week, too.
Cindi, I agree with you about the freeze dried meals. My parents bought a year's worth of that stuff at quite a hefty premium because it was being sold by a televangelist. My dad died in December and my mom is now looking for someone to give it to. I think she now realizes she won't ever use this.
Rita, I've seen a lot of those YouTube channels that are promoting fear in order to gain viewers. Even though I don't buy into that, I have to admit they somewhat compelling to watch. Which is exactly what they hope to accomplish.
Terri, regarding the supplement you referenced, I have mixed feelings about it. I honestly don't think we, in the United States have much to fear regarding nuclear fallout. And my research indicates that people in our age group don't need it anyway. It does have merit for children and young adults who still have many years ahead of them. It helps protect against thyroid cancer, a major health threat from radiation exposure. I've considered buying a bottle for our baby granddaughter but haven't decided. On the one hand, it's a $20 purchase that will likely never be used. But if it WERE needed...
I think the best preparation is a creative mind and the ability to think outside the box. And unfortunately, I've not seen that sold anywhere. ;)
My reaction is the opposite, influenced by the fact that my parents and grandparents lived in the Soviet Union when Stalin was at his worst. They escaped, only to the wrong country: Germany, where Hitler was not quite at his worst but soon was. They ended up in concentration camps and survived, only to be in displaced persons camps for two years before they were allowed to come to the U.S. They had lived on a farm, so were well positioned to survive starvation and the like...only the soviets took their farm and they had to flee. Then, in Germany, they were suddenly dragged off to a camp, leaving behind all the foods and so on that they had rebuilt so that they could survive starvation. All of which is to say, if Civil War breaks out or a nuclear attack happens, all this planning and storing of goods is going to be worthless. We have enough to survive about a year, in terms of food storage, but that is more to be able to ride out price hikes or shortages. But if the worst happens, none of this will matter at all anyway, so why spend a lot of energy obsessing about it.
Deanna, my neighbor was in the same boat after her husband died --a year's worth of freeze dried food she knew she wasn't going to eat. She ended up donating it to some kind of Outward Bound type program, I think.
Mable, What an incredible story. I don't even know what to say but what a family history you have and those life lessons are incredibly valuable. Hugs.
Cindi M., I steadfastly refuse to buy those meals. John approaches me about it now and then and I point out that they are terribly expensive. Usually that's enough to put him off.
Weezie shared an article a couple of years ago about the efficacy of most 'expired' medications. It's not the expiration that concerns me, it's whether or not I NEED it. I'll try to find the link and add it into comments here but it was several years ago so not sure how long it might take to find it. It was a Canadian medical journal article I think. FDA is the one who sets expire dates on the recommendation of the medical labs producing the medications. It's believed by some that those dates are like many others, exploited ways to encourage us to buy MORE rather than use what we have.
Rita, I've noted that supplies vary according to area of the country where someone lives. Agreed as well that often it isnt' the lack of goods but the decreased choices that bother most people. And yes, yes, yes, on fear mongers. Not a fan. I won't watch preppers. I do like to watch this particular homesteader because though her foods aren't pretty she pretty much uses every bit of it from a-z and I have learned to do quite a few things extra thanks to her.
Lana, yes the lack of knowledge on how to use basic foods is a good example.
I am still shopping at Aldi but we have only been going over once a month. If I can't find something there on that one visit, but see it reasonably priced elsewhere or on a really good sale elsewhere I pick it up there. Of those four groceries, I'm in each one about once a month.
I continue to lobby for a non-electric pump off our well. John keeps telling me he's priced them but he means I think that he's seen someone on YouTube pay big bucks for them. I want to get a real quote.
My son went to Nuclear Power Training School and worked with nuclear power He's told me that while it is dangerous, it's a good deal less dangerous than we fear overall.
Deanna, It happens that John has a thyroid condition and takes that particular medication already. It's one drop twice a week. A bottle of it lasts us a bit over a year or more at that rate. I only today noted that it was the same medication.
Thank you for explaining why it might be needed by young adults.
Your last line reminded me of something I read the other day that Common Sense was the least common thing these days.
Mable, good points. It won't matter what skills we have in situations like that! I think you and I are agreed that in the end, it won't matter.
We got a quote for a nonelectric well pump from our well service company. It would be $3000. I sure wish we had Kroger here.
When I was a little we had a hand pump on the well by our barn. I know it wasn't very expensive, but it was also a shallow well that my father dug by hand, so I have no idea if something like that would be practical where you are.
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