I'm a homesteader/prepper ask me anything

[Evo]

nope, they are going down in the fall, they are great animals, I will miss them

NOOOOO! They're babies! I'll trade you twice their weight in fine preserved natural acorn fed pork. The stuff costs over $80 a pound and is said to be the finest in the world.

Ok, I'm kidding, but I wish I could afford to trade you for them.

 

[Ftheog]

No, we have a member that is european and is currently in Argentina (or is it Venezuela), anyway both are backwards and much, much, much more violent than europe. Europe is less violent than the US.

Statistics can be construed many ways, what makes me chuckle when people blame violence in america because of gun ownership, I ask them if they can explain switzerland, they usually look confused,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nf1OgV449g

 

[Ftheog]

NOOOOO! They're babies! I'll trade you twice their weight in fine preserved natural acorn fed pork. The stuff costs over $80 a pound and is said to be the finest in the world.

Ok, I'm kidding, but I wish I could afford to trade you for them.

they aren't babies

that probably wasn't the right picture to post, was it

 

[Evo]

Statistics can be construed many ways, what makes me chuckle when people blame violence in america because of gun ownership, I ask them if they can explain switzerland, they usually look confused,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nf1OgV449g

Shhhh, a large portion of our members are gun owners and experts. I don't want this to become another pro-gun thread.

Anyway, it's because military service is mandatory in Switzerland and the men must keep their guns after they finish service.

 

[Evo]

they aren't babies

that probably wasn't the right picture to post, was it

Wilbur!

They're all babies to me. <sniff>

 

[Ftheog]

Shhhh, a large portion of our members are gun owners and experts. I don't want this to become another pro-gun thread.

Anyway, it's because military service is mandatory in Switzerland and the men must keep their guns after they finish service.

exactly, it's the culture, not gun ownership that creates the violence, I won't mention it again


(unless someone asks me what my preferred weapon of choice is :) )

 

[Ftheog]

oh and I just want to put a disclaimer, I am not talking for everyone in the homesteading/prepper/survivalist lifestyle. I am just giving my experience and opinion

 

[Evo]

oh and I just want to put a disclaimer, I am not talking for everyone in the homesteading/prepper/survivalist lifestyle. I am just giving my experience and opinion

Funny, a lot of people here know how to live off the land, have all of the basic survival skills, and then some. We've been this way all of our lives and could probably teach a trick or two to people that have been trying to learn what we already know.

Did you know that you don't have to add yeast to bread? There is enough natural yeast spores in the air that if you let the dough mix set out exposed to open air for a few days days that it will collect enough yeast to make yeast bread?

But I get the feeling that preppers are mainly into gathering and storing rather than knowing how to live off the land.

 

[Ftheog]

yep, also can make great lambic the same way

 

[Ftheog]

But I get the feeling that preppers are mainly into gathering and storing rather than knowing how to live off the land.

not at all, there two groups, people who try and buy their experience and people that build their experience, usually you start off as a buyer and slowly move into a builder, but for people that live in urban areas, they are usually stuck in the buying phase

 

[DaveC426913]

Funny, a lot of people here know how to live off the land, have all of the basic survival skills, and then some.

I confess, I am astonished at how many people here seem to live very close to the land.

I'd bet the folks over on that prepper board would be quite surprised.

 

[Evo]

yep, also can make great lambic the same way

Have you seen our homemade beer thread?

 

[Ftheog]

I confess, I am astonished at how many people here seem to live very close to the land.

I'd bet the folks over on that prepper board would be quite surprised.

I conveyed that to a lot of the other forums that linked to the original thread

 

[Evo]

I confess, I am astonished at how many people here seem to live very close to the land.

I'd bet the folks over on that prepper board would be quite surprised.

Yeah, I was surprised too. We're a very well rounded group. Maybe it's our interest in science that makes us appreciate what is around us.

 

[Ftheog]

Have you seen our homemade beer thread?

I perused some of it, I use to brew beer, but with all our strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, grapes, apples, cherries, plums and peaches, I moved onto wines and meads, I made a killer strawberry/blackberry last summer.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I confess, I am astonished at how many people here seem to live very close to the land.

Does stealing my neighbor's avocados count?

 

[Evo]

I perused some of it, I use to brew beer, but with all our strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, grapes, apples, cherries, plums and peaches, I moved onto wines and meads, I made a killer strawberry/blackberry last summer.

Sounds awesome, i remember making my first homemade wine when I was 12. I put a baloon over the bottle opening to capture the gas. My older girl friend was to blame. :p

Does stealing my neighbor's avocados count?

I hate you. I love avocados, but a $1-3 dollars each, I won't buy them. I want to go back to Sicily, even at christamas the lemon tress were loaded, anything you could imagine wanting was there for the taking.

 

[Ftheog]

I'm hitting the hay, I just want to leave you guys with this comment from someone in the survivalist community, he sums up pretty well what a lot of us think, he also has a great blog for any Canadians on here, peace

"I don't mean to be so presumptious to think that I could as elegantly say what CH has said. There was something...I don't know...transcendent about that post. It just reverberates.

However, I would like to add my reasons for following a preparedness philosophy in my life. Maybe someone new to this way of thinking may find motivation in it. The stereotypical motivations of fighting the NWO or other things like that are so emotion based as to not be sustainable. But having a goal is sustaining. Well, without further ado...

Preparedness as a Retirement Plan

The concept of retirement is a relatively new one. Not so long ago, when we were a more agrarian based society, few people ever retired. Their daily duties just changed. As we grew older, we would take over running the farm, and then we would maybe step back and let our kids do that. Maybe we would take over maintenance of the equipment or something little less physically demanding, but required experience. Maybe we would help out more inside the home. But flat out retirement to travel south or play golf all day was the domain of the ultra rich. Even then, most tycoons were still wheeling and dealing well into their 60’s and beyond.

Nowadays. with retirement plans tanking and pension funds bleeding out, we may find ourselves without the ability to retire once again. However, this time, we won’t have the farm to feed us and the multi-generational home to keep us occupied and close to our loved ones. If we’re very fortunate, we may be able to find a spot in a retirement home and sell our current homes to pay for it.

Me, I have a different plan. My plan depends on me getting prepared to take care of myself and my wife for as long as we are physically able. If my plan works, we’ll also be able to ‘retire’ early. That plan is preparedness.

When you think about it, if you can provide most of your own food, utilities, and medicine and your shelter is bought and paid for, how much money do you really need? Enough to pay the property taxes, run your vehicle, and take care of emergencies. Maybe you need some money for a bit of travel as well. But not as much money as two people working for more than 40 hours a week each generate.

It’s not hard to imagine a household income of around $100,000 a year or about $73,000 after taxes. (Remember, I'm in Canada. Our dollars are about 80% of the USD.) Now, we know a lot of people are going to have mortgage payments around $1400 a month, utilities of at least $400 a month, TV and Internet for another $200 a month, $500 for food, $400 for various insurances, $200 for gas for the vehicles…it goes on and on.

So just the cost of living consumes $3100 of your after-tax income. Yearly, that’s about half of your income. If you can pay off your home, produce half of your utilities, drop the fancy TV package and step down a notch on the Internet access (that’s a tough one for me) and produce half of your food, you cut that outlay to about $1100 dollars a month. At that point, one of you can effectively retire. Or, the two of you can work half as much.

So what do you do with the extra 20-30 hours a week? Do the soul-building things like work your garden, love your spouse, split some wood, read books, start a business, whatever! Now, you are working for you. And should everything go for a poop, you are completely prepared to live comfortably and well with little to no income.

I find the thought of retiring to my homestead around the age of 50 to be a much more motivating and positive thought, than to think of prepping to cope with worldwide disaster. Disaster may never come, but time always marches on."

 

[turbo]

Does stealing my neighbor's avocados count?

Poaching your neighbors' crows would count... Poaching them with glazed avocados and baby carrots with an orange-lemon glaze would bring you into the Maine need-to-marry-club. You might not even need an Evinrude Lightwin Three. I could get you hitched even without that, though most city-girls can't get over that bar.

 

[HowlerMonkey]

If any major country suffers an event that destabilizes it to the point that people abandon their stations at the nuke plants and oil platforms, there won't be any place on Earth to hide.

If the prepping is for a lesser event, best advice is to leave the population centers because, 15 minutes after the last delivery truck brings it's last load of egg mcmuffins or fuel, all bets are off.

 

[Ftheog]

If the prepping is for a lesser event, best advice is to leave the population centers because, 15 minutes after the last delivery truck brings it's last load of egg mcmuffins or fuel, all bets are off.

true, society only has a thin veneer of civilization on it, sometimes I think it's getting thinner and thinner. I can't watch the news anymore, it's to negative and it's not even news, it's entertainment.

 

[Ms Music]

Hi Ftheog. This was an interesting read this morning. Welcome to the forum.

I have now read the entire thread, but one thing that still puzzles me, is what do you see the difference between you and your "group", and us? Many here have stated they live the life currently, have lived that way in the past, or are working towards a life of what I want to call self sustainability. Why do you label yourselves as "preppers?" Why do you feel the NEED for the label? I find it very curious. I would like to understand the difference between you and your wife and community, and turbo and his wife and local community.

(also, dumb question - what is og?)

 

[turbo]

Hi Ftheog. This was an interesting read this morning. Welcome to the forum.

I have now read the entire thread, but one thing that still puzzles me, is what do you see the difference between you and your "group", and us? Many here have stated they live the life currently, have lived that way in the past, or are working towards a life of what I want to call self sustainability. Why do you label yourselves as "preppers?" Why do you feel the NEED for the label? I find it very curious. I would like to understand the difference between you and your wife and community, and turbo and his wife and local community.

(also, dumb question - what is og?)

I have a similar confusion. Why is raising most of your food, hunting for game, catching fish, etc somehow worthy of a name or category? I am of French-Catholic-Canadian-Indian heritage on my mother's side and Hessian-Irish-Indian heritage on my father's side (the Irish emigrated during the potato famine), and I have lived this way all my life. Pick fiddleheads, wild berries in season, apples from long-abandoned farms, and grow as much food as possible. Make preserves, can foods, and freeze what can't be canned easily. This is not a survivalist mentality - it is a pretty sustainable life-style with minimal impact on the land and environment. I like to burn wood for heat because it's carbon-neutral (negative, actually), with trees on my 10 acres sequestering carbon faster than I can burn it. I love living this way, but never thought it would end up being a fad, wrapped up with a defensive (stay away or I'll shoot you) mentality.

My wife and I are both pretty competent with our pistols, not just because we want to be able to defend against home-invasions and burglary, but because that's the responsible thing to do. If you are a gun-owner, and you are not keeping up with your range-time to keep your skills up, that is irresponsible IMO. She doesn't like to practice with the 10mm Glock (recoil!), but you sure don't want to be downrange if she's got the P38 in her hands. Still, we regard our neighbors as partners, not threats, and if things went to hell we'd be teaming up with them to stretch out our resources and make sure everybody got fair shares of support.

 

[Ms Music]

For the record turbo, I envy what you and your wife have!

While I haven't canned in many many years, I dream of getting back to that point in my life, where I have a pantry, and time to can. I grew up canning. My parents had a small vegetable garden at our house, and big gardens at two of my brother's houses, plus fruit trees. What we couldn't grow locally, we would go to Eastern Washington every summer and pick from the fields. Then can it (or freeze) all over the next few days. I was so spoiled on home grown and fresh picked orchard fruit and veggies, that I can not stand fruits and vegetables from the grocery store. I would love to get back to the point where I have enough to can for winter. Right now, we only grow enough food to barely make it. There were many times last winter that I bought kale from the store, because it just didn't grow quick enough to quench our craving for winter greens. But hey, I live in the city. We have doubled garden space this year, and should be able to live a little more off winter greens and squash. But I don't do this for armageddon, I do this because it is more nutritious and better tasting than store bought stuff. But I do know that my gardening skills and my survival skills would mean I will be fine if armageddon DOES happen. But I am not holding my breath waiting for anything to happen. And I keep praying that SOME day I get to live on my 5 acres!

 

[turbo]

For the record turbo, I envy what you and your wife have!

Thanks! We love living here and sharing with the neighbors. My first greenhouse planting of sweet peppers didn't "take" this spring, but a neighbor planted all kinds of extras in his greenhouse so we got all kinds of plants. When we had both planted enough plants for ourselves, he decided to give away the excess, and I alerted our new neighbors (recently purchased the place on a road across from us) and Amy rode down on her 4-wheeler and picked up an entire flat of plants. I tilled up their garden spot this spring, and expected mediocre yields for the first year, but those pepper plants are looking fantastic. Welcome, new neighbors from Weymouth, MA! I think they'll fit right in.

 

[Ftheog]

I have now read the entire thread, but one thing that still puzzles me, is what do you see the difference between you and your "group", and us? Many here have stated they live the life currently, have lived that way in the past, or are working towards a life of what I want to call self sustainability. Why do you label yourselves as "preppers?" Why do you feel the NEED for the label? I find it very curious. I would like to understand the difference between you and your wife and community, and turbo and his wife and local community.

Unfortunately anything outside of the mainstream is given a label, it is not normal for people in society to do what was considered normal just a generation ago. I don't consider what turbo does and what I do any different. We have different reasons why we do certain things but the outcome is the same. Like I said earlier in the thread, I'm not preparing for 2012, CME, invasion of aliens from planet x, ect. I am preparing for my own personal shtf moment. Loss of spouse, job, pension, ect. Since I prepare for different things that I feel will personally impact the well being of my loved ones and myself, I am a prepper. I assume most people here study physics or science, would they not be a physicist or scientist? Everyone has a label.

Let's be real though, most people in society live paycheck to paycheck and their idea of prepping is planning friday nights visit to olive garden. A IRA is nothing but a 3 letter word because the government is going to give me social security and medicaid. Do you get the projected social security statements that they send out based on your contributions? The last one I received said on the bottom that based on projected funding they expect only a 75% payment. What a Racket! Didn't Bernie Madoff just get convicted of a ponzi scheme? Yet we are forced to contribute into the biggest on in history perpetuated by our Government.

In 2007 my wife and I moved our IRA contributions into cd's that were giving us 3% and my accountant laughed at me and said we were leaving money on the table. When the market crashed in 2008, he wasn't laughing then.

My father in law retired and had his pension wiped out after the market crash in 2001. It was rebuilding and then 2008 happened, He's now back to working at the age of 70, I don't want that story to be mine.

As a child I loved Aesop's Fable, the ant and the grasshopper, I knew I was going to be a ant, unfortunately there a huge amount of grasshoppers in the world.

So since I try and prepare to minimize any hardships that can potentially harm the well being of myself and loved ones, I assume the mantle of prepper.

But hey, if things happen as they do in films and SHTF on a global scale, the crazy survivalist/prepper is the first one to die, and the smart brainy scientist comes and saves the day, at least you guys have that
going for you! :)

Seriously though I am quite impressed with the amount of people here with the same mindset.

Have a safe and happy independence day all!

 

[Ftheog]

Thanks! We love living here and sharing with the neighbors. My first greenhouse planting of sweet peppers didn't "take" this spring, but a neighbor planted all kinds of extras in his greenhouse so we got all kinds of plants. When we had both planted enough plants for ourselves, he decided to give away the excess, and I alerted our new neighbors (recently purchased the place on a road across from us) and Amy rode down on her 4-wheeler and picked up an entire flat of plants. I tilled up their garden spot this spring, and expected mediocre yields for the first year, but those pepper plants are looking fantastic. Welcome, new neighbors from Weymouth, MA! I think they'll fit right in.

it's been a weird spring with rain and cold, but all my warm crops took right off, while my cold crops I had to replant, but strawberries have been of biblical proportions, blackberries look they will be great in august as well

 

[Ftheog]

When I think back to WWII and all of the people that lost their lives to take in and protect complete strangers, it brings tears to my eyes. I don't know if I would ever have that much courage.

I meant to comment on this. I think the biggest difference is a sense of community and self reliance. There is none today. Look how many people today live in cookie cutter sub-divisions and don't even know their neighbors 3 house down.