I’ve heard it said that you can make a small fortune in horse breeding, if you start with a large fortune. Prepping is a lot like that, too. You can be ready for almost anything if you throw enough money at the problem set that is prepping.
But what do you do if you don’t have much money? What can you do if you live on a quarter acre lot, and you have no chance of ever upgrading? About fifteen years ago, I met somebody like that who has given me some answers to these questions.
C.L. was the first prepper I ever met. She is a CERT team instructor, which is how we met. We have a shared faith in Jesus, and a shared interest in amateur radio, which led to a discussion of prepping. She was the first person I met who used the terms “prepping” and “bugging out”. Given my upbringing by frugal immigrant parents who grew up during the Great Depression, much of what she talked about resonated with me, and caught my interest.
We didn’t agree one hundred percent, though there was plenty of common ground. When she talked about bugging out, I was struggling to find a diplomatic way to say “you’re out of your mind”. In the end, I didn’t say anything, but later, I invited her to go camping for two days for an amateur radio activity. While she did a great job on the radio stuff, it was pretty obvious that camping was difficult for her, and not something she enjoyed. In a subsequent discussion, she recognized that bugging out probably isn’t the best idea if she finds camping difficult and stressful.
C.L. is a very fast learner. Once she realized that bugging out should be the last resort for her instead of the first resort, she threw herself into prepping for staying in place. I will share some of what she has learned and applied.
A CERT course (Community Emergency Response Team) is a great place to start. It can be started online by using the following link: https://emilms.fema.gov/IS-0317a/curriculum/1.html (copy and paste that link into your browser). It’s a free class, developed by FEMA, on how people in a community can respond to a disaster. (To those of you who think anything connected to FEMA is anathema, I have two things to say: First, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and second, if you’re okay with a Baofeng radio, which is manufactured in a hostile country using slave labor, then you should have no problem with FEMA.) The class teaches very practical stuff, including basic fire suppression and hazmat, triage and first aid in a disaster, basic urban search and rescue, communication in a disaster, and psychology of disasters. The class emphasizes working as a team. There is a version of the class that is tailored to teenagers, too.
C.L. teaches CERT courses to anyone who will take them. She meets a lot of people in the course of these classes, and she’s become good at figuring out which ones might be good candidates to join a prepping group that she started more than ten years ago.
Prepping as a group is a fantastic idea, because nobody can have everything or know everything needed. If you think of each person in the group bringing in one essential skill and one essential piece of equipment, the value of a group starts to be apparent. What C.L. has found is that most people bring in more than one essential skill and piece of equipment, which means that the group doesn’t have to be as large.
Trust is an important component in a prepping group. If you can’t trust or work with someone in good times, things won’t improve in tough times. A shared faith helps, but it’s not a silver bullet. As a beloved pastor once told me, “Wherever two or more of you are gathered together, there’s the potential for a really good fight.”
I asked C.L. how she finds people who fit in the prepping group, apart from CERT classes. Her response was like I’d asked her how to breathe; she never thought about describing to someone else how to do something that’s more or less automatic for her. When I pressed her, she mentioned talking to people at church, going door to door, and Facebook posts. She observed that the most effective way to find people is face-to-face. In her small town, almost everyone knows her, and those people will hear her out because they’ve seen her help their neighbors with everything from their kids’ homework to a ride to a medical appointment.
The prepping group is a loose group, and it isn’t a commune. The members don’t live together, as is described in some books about prepping. They have their own homes and land, and their own assets. They also have a well-developed communications network that is independent of infrastructure (which, to safeguard their privacy and security, I will not describe). The group is like a cooperative.
What kind of skills does the prepping group look for? The list is long, but she started with what CERT teaches, and looks for people who can take it to the next level. For example, she found a military veteran who was a medic. That’s a twofer, because he brings both medical knowledge and tactical skill. She looks for people knowledgeable about farming and ranching. These people have land and other assets, but stand to benefit by having people can help with labor when SHTF. She looks for career homemakers, who know how to do things like preserve food and make clothing and other needed articles. Any prepper group can set its own priorities on skills and knowledge, and those priorities may change over time.
The prepper group that C.L. started years ago has grown and matured. It includes some people holding local public offices, who, in their official capacities, see the group as an asset that can be used in different types of disaster. Where it’s possible and where there’s a shared goal of public safety, working with local government officials can be a very good thing, but be cautious.
C.L. takes every opportunity to learn useful skills and acquire useful information. A good example of this was when she took a Project Appleseed marksmanship course. C.L. had no exposure to firearms when she was growing up, and when she decided that she needed to embrace her Second Amendment right to bear arms, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, yes, it’s a good idea to know how to handle a firearm properly. On the other hand, the prospect of her with a firearm terrified me. Again, I was faced with a problem of diplomacy, at which I am awful. But she’d asked me for help and advice, and I love my sister in Christ and didn’t want to let her down. The first piece of advice that I gave her was “get a shotgun, not a handgun” (she wanted a handgun). When I explained that a shotgun is easier to use, especially with little or no training; that it’s effective against a group of assailants; and that if you have to use it in a neighborhood, there will be less chance of unintended casualties, she agreed that a shotgun was a good choice.
But being the searching and inquisitive person that she is, C.L. did some looking, and found Project Appleseed. I never heard of it until she asked me if she could borrow a .22 rifle from me to take the marksmanship course. (If you haven’t heard about Project Appleseed, CHECK IT OUT! It’s about much more than marksmanship.) After C.L. completed the Appleseed course, it was like night and day! She is a competent, careful shooter and a responsible gun owner. (And she returned my .22 properly cleaned.)
C.L. has developed a lifestyle of frugality. She doesn’t have much, but she’s learned how to make it count. What money she has, she spends carefully, with a great deal of thought. For example, she bought a small greenhouse kit, and assembled it herself. That allows her to start some plants and extend her growing season.
Several years ago, C.L. bought a small woodstove so that she could heat her home in a grid-down situation, and spend less on her winter heating under normal circumstances. It was a major expenditure for her, but worth it. She and her daughter get wood that other people are looking to throw away, and maintain a woodpile on one side of her lot. Her daughter is the organizer of the woodpile, and does a great job of stacking it neatly.
Knowing that her radios may be most useful when commercial power is unavailable, C.L. bought some small solar panels and some batteries. Again, it was a major expenditure, but she views it as an investment in her own peace of mind. She uses the solar panels to charge the batteries, and the batteries run the radios.
At some point, C.L. bought a Berkey water filter system, including some spare filters. She lives near a river, and ability to purify water makes a big difference in ability to survive a disaster. This was also a major expenditure that required her to plan and save, but she’s good at both. “I’ve built another water filter,” she told me. “I’ll put the river water through the homemade filter to remove the worst of the particulates and stuff, and then I’ll put it through the Berkey. That way, the Berkey will last longer.”
C.L. learned to grow some of her own food and medicinal plants on her small lot, using raised beds that she and her daughter made from scraps of lumber that other people threw away, and from pallets that were available for free. She makes very good use of things that other people throw away. While she can’t grow enough to sustain herself, every bit counts. Every vegetable that she doesn’t have to buy from a store is like more cash in her wallet. Over the years, she has learned to do water bath canning, which allows her to preserve some of what she grows. She also gets together with other people who have more land or fruit trees, and helps them can what they have in exchange for some of the fruit or produce. She has also taught others how to can.
C.L. learned to raise chickens. Her small flock of layers provides her family with fresh eggs and a valuable barter item. The chickens are almost pets. She confines them only as necessary to protect her vegetable plants, and when they start laying eggs in funny places that are hard to find. When possible, the chickens roam happily in her fenced backyard, enjoying any insects they find as well as dropped fruit from a fruit tree. The chickens have a coop and run built from pallets and scrap lumber. Unfortunately, because her town has an ordinance prohibiting keeping roosters, her flock is not self-sustaining.
It’s always fun to visit C.L., because it seems like there’s always a new example of frugal creativity in her yard or home. A few years ago, she showed me a solar food dehydrator that she’d built herself. “I got the idea from a copy of Mother Earth News that I was reading at the library,” she said. She had painted some cans black, and set them in a frame. As the sun heated the air inside the cans, it rose through hoses she’d attached to the cans into a screen-covered box. Inside the box, slices of fruit or vegetables dried in the rising heated air. The screen top kept away yellowjackets and flies. It was really slick! On my last visit, I noticed that it was gone, and I asked her about it. “It finally fell apart,” she said. One of the hazards of building with scrap lumber is that it doesn’t have as long a life span. Will she rebuild it? “I’m not sure,” she said. “I have a lot going on, and I never know what I’ll find to build with.”
The lessons that I’ve learned from C.L. about prepping can be summed up as follows:
Make use of available resources. FEMA CERT training and Project Appleseed are good places to start.
Join a group, even if you have to start one yourself.
Start small and make incremental improvements.
Make good use of what you have. Be generous whenever you can.
Make good use of what other people want to throw away.
Be creative and willing to learn.
Take what you do very seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.