Welcome to DK Preppers: A place to discuss practical ways to get through emergencies, both short term and long. Topics may include skills for growing, storing and sharing food, lost and historical skill sets, sustainability issues, living and leaving safely, and growing community. Everyone is welcome, and the comments are open. We have open threads weekly.
I decided to write something very different this week.
I decided to tell you a little bit about myself.
My grandparents were born in the 1880’s, 1890’s and the youngest one in 1901.
That relates to prepping,
because I visited Grandma’s farm many times,
each summer and each Christmas,
during the 1960’s.
So, I got to see, up close, a working farm,
a farm that might be similar in some ways to a prepper bugout farm.
My parents were both born in 1924,
so they each grew up on such a farm.
The farm I visited was the one my mother grew up on.
My parents never preached about it,
but I imagine that by the time they were 3 or 4 years old,
they would,
inspired by a craving for some eggs, say,
“Can I help gather the eggs from the hen house?”
I simply imagine that if you grow up on a farm,
your parents don’t need to force you to do the chores.
If you are cold,
you will feel a desire to split kindling.
If you are hungry for cream on your oatmeal,
you will want to milk the cows.
I presume that my parents’ resulting work ethic led to the following:
My parents always paid the house payment,
always paid the utilities,
always paid the car payment.
And I am one of five children.
And my mother was a stay-at-home mom.
I am talking about the discipline my parents had,
to pay all the bills and buy the groceries for a family of seven.
On one income.
In recent years,
I have met many people who try to steal a place to live,
and squander large paychecks,
in pursuit of some kind of thrills.
I like the “thrills” of a normal, sensible life.
To have a normal, sensible life,
we must maintain a certain level of discipline.
In order to prep like a smart prepper,
we need just a little more discipline.
As an adult,
with the example of my parents’ discipline guiding me,
I married a woman who was born totally disabled, in 1977.
(I apparently thought I had the discipline to support the two of us.)
Her name was Pam.
She had congenital muscular dystrophy.
We both got surgically sterilized before our wedding night,
so we would have no children.
I worked hard, at low paying jobs, for 30 years, to support the two of us.
We had help from Supplemental Security Income paid to Pam,
plus Medicaid paid workers to stay with Pam while I was at work.
Plus Section 8 rent subsidy, for some of those years.
After Pam died, in 2008,
I was the victim of freeloaders,
who asked to move in with me,
in a small apartment,
and then failed to pay me anything.
Stealing a place to live.
Then my second wife, Tonia, moved in,
and she paid a little something, every week.
That is part of the foundation of our marriage:
When I truly needed someone to help me,
she helped me.
She helped me by becoming my close friend,
while paying for all the food she ate, and then some.
If you offer friendship,
while freeloading,
that is not sincere friendship.
Tonia and I got married in 2011, almost seven years ago.
Early in 2012, we moved to a big house that Tonia had lived in before.
For about five years,
we lived in that house, that was meant to be a team effort,
with she and her brothers having each put in parts of the down payment.
It is a big house,
and at various times we had various collections of
brothers,
cousins,
uncles,
and nephews,
living there.
Some of them,
some of the time,
tried to steal a place to stay.
My wife and I paid the bills,
and the others sometimes helped,
sometimes did not.
Almost exactly a year ago,
in order to catch up on late house payments and heating bills,
we set up a Gofundme account,
and begged for money from you, our Daily Kos family.
We asked for $2,000.
We got $2,450.
www.dailykos.com/...
Thank you.
Less than two months later,
in late April of last year,
we moved in to a different house,
a smaller house,
just purchased by the most disciplined of Tonia’s brothers.
This brother and his wife bought the house in November of 2016,
had a wedding ceremony in December of 2016,
and the wife gave birth to a baby girl in late January of 2017.
My wife and I moved in with them in late April of 2017, about a year ago.
I started collecting my Social Security check last September, since I turned 62 in August of 2017.
None too soon,
because I was finding it harder and harder to keep up with the demands of my Walmart job.
I now work only 3 days a week at Walmart.
By the way,
as our Brainwrap has pointed out in his pie chart,
there is only about 5 percent of Americans who truly need the ACA insurance.
I am one of those.
No longer able to work full time, so I lost my insurance thru my employer,
but not yet 65, to qualify for Medicare.
I had to go and buy a medical and dental plan from an insurance salesman,
just like buying car insurance.
So.
The more disciplined brother makes sure all the bills are paid,
by working construction jobs part time,
and taking care of his daughter when between jobs,
never going somewhere else for thrills,
never spending money on just him.
The new mother has a steady job.
I have a steady income.
My wife helps keep us all stable, with her support and advice.
And my wife is the most eager child care worker you have ever seen.
It’s like a grandma and the sweetest granddaughter you have ever seen.
(But it’s auntie and niece.)
My wife will likely get Social Security Disability income soon.
We have plans to buy a few acres of land,
and possibly put a cheap mobile home on it,
and live in the mobile home while we build a nicer house.
Our ambitions include greenhouses and chicken coops,
water wells,
wind and solar and batteries.
So, my message to young people:
The oil shortage that will take place some day,
around 2040 or 2050,
that oil shortage will lead to a shortage of commercially grown food,
since big farms depend on diesel fueled equipment.
So, you need to show discipline:
You need to set up your own bugouot farms.
You need to work hard, like my parents and grandparents did.
You will likely use different farming methods than my grandparents,
since this is the future, not the past.
If it inspires you to do so,
remember the discipline of my grandparents,
as they farmed using horses and mules,
from the 1910’s until the tractors took over in the 1950’s.
Using kerosene lamps for lighting,
until they got electricity in the late 1940’s.
Using wood burning stoves for heating and cooking,
until the 1960’s.
Remember the discipline of my parents,
who supported seven of us on one income.
And made it look easy.
Remember my discipline,
as I worked hard for 30 years,
at low paying jobs,
struggling to support myself and my disabled wife, Pam.
Most of those years,
I had to do most of her personal care work,
transferring her from bed to wheelchair,
from wheelchair to bed,
feeding her bite by bite, when I was hungry myself.
I would give her a bite, me a bite, and so on.
If it helps to do so,
think of the discipline of my sister-in-law:
breast feeding a baby,
working a very demanding job,
that requires her to report at 4 AM, Monday thru Friday.
And she washes most of the dishes.
And she does most of the cooking.
And she runs many other errands.
Think of the discipline of those who make sure to do what it takes,
to make everything work out for the family as a whole.
You will need that discipline for your bugout farm.
Also,
you need that discipline for regular living!
I will close with a poem:
Ask for something
better.
Change the way you
dream.
Every day’s a
fresh new chance to
get your slate wiped clean.
Happiness
is in your power.
Jump into your plans.
Keep your dreams alive; don’t
let them get shit-canned.
Make your plans, start
new each day;
open up your mind: it’s
possible to
question all the
reasons people find to
stop and
take a back seat, when feeling
under pressure.
Verify your place in life,
when you’re feeling lesser.
You are really not required to start a word with
“x.”
Zero is the penalty, if anybody checks.
(I wrote that poem about a year and a half ago, between customers, at the garden center cash register, at Walmart.)
Thanks for reading.