Letter Re: A Decade of Prepping

Hugh,

I absolutely agree with the dedicated wife in what she wrote in ”A Decade of Prepping, Do’s and Dont’s” that women are an integral part of being prepared. Farm women are very hard to find, even for me (a woman) to be friends with. I spent several years living in a city and didn’t understand why I never fit in with my city friends. Then I found a mentor, an older Christian lady who was married to a farmer, who explained to me that I wasn’t wired to be a city girl; I was wired to be a farm girl. I got to thinking after that that she was right. I had wanted to be a farm girl since I was about 10 years old and read The Little House on the Prairie books. I grew up in the city on a small house lot, so we couldn’t have a milk cow, but we always raised a pretty big garden. I always dreamed of being able to grow/raise all our own food. Then I grew up and left home and went to college and got a house in the city, but I was never satisfied. Then I met this farm wife who mentored me and helped me to meet a good Christian, conservative farmer who wanted to be self sufficient. I am not a society woman. My hair isn’t perfect, my nails are torn and dirty, my clothes are generally work clothes with tears, glue, and paint stains from fixing fences, and painting or gluing random things. I’m out working, getting us prepared. I fully embrace homesteading for the sake of being prepared. I absolutely love this dirt. I love my chickens and bees and milk cow and garden. I love having lots of canning jars and having them full. I love sewing and woodworking, finishing, or painting. It’s what I was always wired to do. I got it from my dad, a farm kid who got stuck in the city. He always wanted a farm of his own. He is looking down from heaven now and so proud of my life. It’s true that many women are not into all this. I know I’m weird, but I also know that there are a few other women out there like me who love the dirt and want to be a homemaker and homesteader and get their hands dirty. They are total misfits in today’s society because they are the old school farm wife. Along my journey I met a few of them, including my aunt, who is another farm wife. I was always jealous of her growing up because she had her own raw milk from her own goats and she had lots of room for fruit trees and a garden. She also didn’t wear fancy clothes, and her nails were always short and jagged, but to me, she was so beautiful. There was a strength in her that I always envied. She could cook food so good you’d never want to quit. After I was grown, I was tall and ungraceful like her, and kind of had a complex about it. Then I’d remember her and feel much better. Those are the women who are written about in Proverbs 31. They are the saints who bear the children and raise them to be pillars in our society. They are the ones who will change this world from the inside out. If the men in our world would hold their standards higher to have women that are godly and not concerned about worldly standards, women would naturally seek to please them. Women want to please their men, but you can’t change them very well once you marry them. The man has to know the kind of woman he wants when he is courting. Don’t get me wrong; God works miracles in people’s lives everyday, changing them to be the people He needs them to be, but it’s difficult to change in a relationship. – A.R.