Prepping has a distinct vein that runs through each choice my family has made to better prepare ourselves for the possibility of the social upheaval that seems to be inching nearer each and every day. Our preps are portable. They have to be, due to the uncertainty of where my family will be in the near future. Over the last six years my family has moved six times, as my jobs changed and the family grew. Due to this movement, the rising price of houses in our area, and being at the very beginning of my earning curve made buying a house an impossibility. We have rented or lived in a parsonage without the long term assurance of owning property that most preppers and non-preppers crave. By default and without really thinking ahead, my wife and I have developed a lifestyle that is heavy on skills and light on infrastructure. If we need to move again (God willing the next move will be the last) the life skills we are developing are the lightest things we own and don’t require cardboard boxes, moving trucks or obliging friends and family. Though I long for an off-grid home and farm I am inspired by this page on SurvivalBlog.
As JWR says, “Survival isn’t about stuff, it’s about skills.”
Below are some of the skills that my wife and I have been developing over that last few years that will be with us for the rest of our lives. The journey has been bumpy but I know that each time I finish a new project the feeling of confidence and competence is worth every ounce of sweat and failure along the way.
Gardening
I love it. Nothing says self sufficiency like producing your own food. However, after five years of gardens I’ve learned that just because you can grow it doesn’t mean you’ll want to eat it. Everyone says “grow open pollinating heirlooms” and rightfully so. They are sustainable in the sense that you can save the seeds and they will grow true. That doesn’t always mean that they will taste the same as what you are use to from the store. Sometimes this is a boon to the taste buds, ala heirloom tomatoes, while on the other hand we have yet to come up with an open pollinating variety of sweet corn that we found even to be palatable. One other lesson I’ve taken to heart, spread your rows wide enough to get the tiller through. Your back, knees, wrists, ankles and moral will thank you.
Always be trying new things. This year we tried Ground Cherries (which were a hit) and Sweet Potatoes (jury is still out). This fall we are planting winter wheat. Focus the bulk of your efforts though on what you like to eat, stores well and grows well in your area.
Meat Chickens
We just completed an eight week adventure of raising 24 Cornish Cross meat chickens in a bottomless movable cage called a chicken tractor. They came in the mail chirping away, weighing a couple of ounces and now grace our freezer dressed out around four pounds apiece. Raising our own meat birds was an exercise in getting real about our food. Gardening is great but a parsnip doesn’t look you in the eye before you kill it. Introducing our kids to the idea that an animal lives with the purpose of dying and being used for our sustenance was eye opening not just for our little girls but for their dad as well. It was a small glimpse into how far we have isolated ourselves from the fact that death truly is a part of life. Practically speaking I can tell you that I learned a lot on butchering day.
- If you’re working in the sun use sun block. (Obviously.) The first chicken to get cooked was me.
- Killing 24 living, breathing sentient beings takes a toll emotionally. We didn’t actually eat any of our chicken for two weeks.
- Make sure the table on which you are gutting and breaking down your birds is tall enough so that you don’t have to stoop.
- Just do it. Gutting and killing is gross but necessary. I focused on technique to take my mind off of what I was doing. By the way, there are excellent how-to videos on Youtube.
Maple Syrup
One of the handiest tools I’ve ever purchased is a Turkey Fryer I bought at Target for half price. I’ve used it to scald chickens, parboil large amounts of corn for freezing and this spring made maple syrup for the first time with it. Though it’s not super efficient for making large amounts of syrup I did produce almost a gallon of the sweet stuff and learned that there are things that can’t be learned from a book. Finishing maple syrup to the proper consistence is something I have to put more time into but fortunately the “golden delicious” is pretty forgiving and can be boiled down further should it be too thin or thinned out with water should it be too thick. It also is the sort of food stuff that can be produced with nothing more than a wood fire and a pot and can be saved in canning jars without even a water bath as long as the jars have been cleaned and sterilized. Should the syrup mold it’s relatively easy to skim the mold off and re-boil the syrup for edibility. I am convinced mankind will never reach a total and complete TEOTWAWKI scenario as long as we still have maple syrup to hold us together.
Pressing Cider
Wild apples abound in our neck of the woods and my kids love cider. Pick it, squash it and drink it sums up our experience. For the best taste, in my humble opinion, mix a sweet purchased apple with plenty of wild apples. Make sure you only use apples off the tree to eliminate the risk of bacteria they can pick up on the ground. Only grind and press apples that do not have bad spots on them. Most people who have wild apple trees on their property are more than happy to let you harvest them, but ask first. Relationships are more important than free fruit.
Using a Chainsaw
Instead of purchasing cut and split wood last winter my wife and I opted to buy a load of logs and with the help of a couple of family members who are exceptionally competent with chainsaws we sawed nearly the entire load up in a single day. Never having used a chainsaw before I must say that I was somewhat intimidated by the snarling beast but seven hours of cutting left me feeling like I had a basic understanding of how to safely use this enormously efficient tool. I can only imagine a world where white collar people like myself are thrust into situations where they feel forced to use a tool like a chainsaw without proper instruction and supervision while they get their feet under themselves. Recently I was introduced to the reality that with a lack of antibiotics in a SHTF scenario would greatly increase the risk of dying of infection. This had never occurred to me. How many people (even preppers) will needlessly suffer and die from horrible self inflicted wounds and subsequent infections due to using powerful tools that they are not prepared to use? Not my preferred way to go…
There are a bunch of other things we’ve been working on worth mentioning but due to space I will just summarize: Preserving food via drying and canning, raising chickens for eggs, using a rifle to scare woodchucks away from my garden (someday I’ll hit one, I’m working on this) and identifying, preparing, and consuming wild edibles on the property we are renting has kept us busy over the last 12 months. We also plan on trying beekeeping and perhaps micro fish farming (a tiny farm, not tiny fish) though the infrastructure requirements may be too expensive for us right now.
We rarely get everything we want in life. If I could have a retreat, a 1968 Ford Bronco, 40 acres and an arsenal of cool firearms then I’d be happy as a clam but that’s not where my wife and I are in our life. Instead we have substituted a willing heart to try new things and to fail if we must, an eye for projects that expand our repertoire of skills and a network of friends and family members who we regularly mine for information about what’s worked for them. We trust that will be enough to tackle the challenges life has for us until the day we can add the infrastructure we aspire to.