Editor’s Introductory Note: This is part one of a multi-part article series on retreats written by a Christian farmer who is praying and searching for a wife. Please prayerfully consider all of the topics that he will discuss.
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Preparedness Terminology History
My family preparedness history goes back generations. Before the term “prepper” was used, people who were into preparedness were known as “survivalists” and even before then people were known as “retreaters.” Our survival library is very extensive covering preparedness-related subjects including original civil defense publications from the 1950s until today. I have spent many hours reading the articles and books that have been collected by my family. Recently, I was reading an article written thirty years ago that speculated on what term would be used after “survivalist.” The author had several interesting suggestions, but “prepper” was not one of them.
I consider our family library to be one of our key preparations. I have been told many times and I believe it: “You do not have time, money, energy, or lives to repeat every mistake, so learn from your elders.” Each book represents the voice of a person which is resonating throughout history. Many of these authors are no longer with us, but you can still learn from them.
One set of my grandparents were very active in civil defense and had plans to retreat to a farm owned by an army buddy. The time was October 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis was current news, not history. A scenario similar to what Pat Frank described in Alas, Babylon could have played out. The smart people who are prepared always have had the greatest chance of surviving. The crisis was defused and my grandfather’s retreat plan never needed to be activated. Based on examining his level of preparedness including maps with alternate routes, I do believe that my grandpa would have been able to get his family safely to the retreat, since he already had navigated much more complex combat situations. Now, his grandson and other family members are trying to recruit more quality people to add to our retreat.
As this is being written in November after the election, you may think that having the possibility of going to a retreat is not necessary because conservatives won and our “rights” are currently not in jeopardy. Success is never permanent and neither is failure. Every election is the most important election: Years before ascending to the highest office, Ronald Reagan in 1964 said, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
Remember what Gideon Tucker famously wrote in the 19th Century: “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” Yes, the temperature has slightly lowered: Young men can concern themselves more with finding a wife and having a family instead of having to figure out how to survive World War III. Regulations will probably be reduced, but there is still almost 36 trillion dollars worth of National Debt. And that debt is still increasing. Savor this moment, but remember it is better to have something and not need it than need something and not have it.
As I look on our many storage shelves examining and double-checking our stocking levels, I think about how much work and money was needed to create this level of preparedness. A sufficient amount of land in our area costs over a million dollars, today. I am college educated, so I do have some exposure to economics at the college level, but my grandparents provided me with a real education as to how to do things the old way and some perspective as to what things cost, years ago.
Deep storage in terms of larder and supplies has been one of the foundational principles of our preparedness, for generations. Growing up, I can remember going over to other kids’ houses and my surprise with how little they had on hand. My grandparents had pantries and closets of new items because they always anticipated that supply chains could be disrupted. Family members have given me a real education on the Great Depression and the rationing during World War II. Most of them are no longer with us, but we continue that legacy today.
The easiest way to get invited to our retreat is to join my family through marriage. This is really easy if you have the right qualifications. I am single and the sole heir to our family farm and retreat. I have been told many times that I am a good catch based on my personality, intelligence, physical appearance, the success that I have achieved, and the resources that I have. As a Christian, I do have very high standards. I am specifically looking and praying for a young woman who wants to be a homemaker meaning that she wants to be a stay-at-home wife and mother.
No one else that we know of is even entertaining the idea of potentially inviting a family to their retreat or storing supplies for people they have not even met. You have to write to us about your qualifications. You first need to know that: “No, we are not going to pay you and we have no interest in you paying us.” We are already successful across multiple fields (this is not our first rodeo and the farm is not our only income source.)
Right now, you can move anywhere you want. If you want to move, you are primarily limited by your resources of time and money. It would be great if there were many years left for people to purchase land, develop the land, build a disaster-resistant home, and become established in a small farming community. However, if the retreats of prepared individuals are activated before you have time to build your own and you don’t have anywhere to go, then you need to start thinking about how you could become an invited guest at a retreat.
The Land: Your Base of Operations
The land is your base of operations. For a retreat owner, it is more than a home and a backyard. It is a place to live, a place of crop and livestock production, and recreation. A retreat is a physical place of peace and security where you either prepare to bugout to or where you live, full-time. The best retreats are those that few people know exist and lived in by ordinary-looking people. When we travel into the city no one would even think that we live on a farm as most people have an often incorrect picture as to what typical people who live on farms look like. We are normal-looking conservative people. Our vehicles are clean, well maintained, and are similar to vehicles that are in common usage. Personal demeanor is important to blend in without being conspicuous.
The first step to having a retreat is obvious in that you need land: sufficient and productive land.
You need to have sufficient land. As a minimum, based on experience it is best to have at least 100 acres of productive land and preferably more depending on how many people are in your family and if the soil quality makes it productive land. Land is not just for food production. You need to consider the importance of forest land (trees for firewood and for building projects), permanent pastures for hay and animal pasture during lush months, and surface water such as ponds and lakes. You also need to have a buffer around any potential problems and the easiest way to have that is to own more land.
Consider the saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”. Even more so, a buffer of land that you own and control. An improvement to that is a buffer of productive land. That makes for even better neighbors. The people with 20 acres who have a population density of 32 families per section of land (640 acres) have a very high population density for long-term survival. I believe it is possible that they could survive long term without any outside inputs, but that is a very close case, depending on the number of people and if all of them were intensive farmers. And consider that many of those 32 families in your neighborhood will be having other family members joining them which will further deplete the productive carrying capacity of the land.
I know there will be some who say that you can survive long-term on fewer acres with a family. We have multiple books in our library that detail how to intensively farm such as Bolton Hall’s “Three Acres and Liberty” from 1907, Franklin King’s “Farmers of Forty Centuries” from 1911, and Maurice Kains’ “Five Acres and Independence” from 1935. I will caution in that yes you can raise a lot of food on one acre (with very limited inputs we routinely harvest thousands of pounds of grain per acre), but most readers are not trying to imitate the living standards of a peasant from the 13th Century.
There will be people who say that 20 acres is better than living on a quarter of an acre lot in the city. That is true, but carrying capacity matters! Carrying capacity is the ability of land to be able to continually sustain a population. In general, the more rainfall distributed periodically, the higher the carrying capacity. You do not want to deplete your soil by continually removing more than you put in. Mineral depletion is a real issue that needs to be monitored and addressed as crop production is reduced when mineral imbalances occur. Our land has been in continuous grain production since the 1800s. But with good management, it still has rich topsoil.
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Message from Single Farmer:
My family and I are long-term preppers who currently live on a large farm that produces enough food for hundreds of people. Our farm will be our retreat. It has taken more than three generations of people to achieve this level of preparedness. This article was not sent for the blog’s writing contest. I am trying to provide you with what could be useful information and hopefully to find some family reading these blog articles who would be a good potential candidate for our retreat. Or perhaps a father reading this with a single daughter who is seeking to be a traditional wife. This article series will be useful for those who currently live at their country properties which can be activated into retreats or for those who would like to increase their level of preparedness. Please read my letter that was posted in SurvivalBlog in August with more details about me and what I am praying to find in a wife.
(To be continued tomorrow in Part 2.)