A Normal Way of Life

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My first ancestor to step on the shores of the American Continent was Dr. James Woodson.  He arrived here in the 1600’s approximately 1 year before the Mayflower.  He was instilled with the hope of religious freedom and property ownership.  His young wife was a Quaker and England had no hopes for land ownership but the New World was a promising future.  I can imagine how much preparation went into that voyage.

Since then my family moved down the eastern seaboard landing in Virginia where they grew tobacco and cotton, face the American Revolution, the Civil War and during that time they lost all.  The men in my family line were all quite restless and always on the move west.  They were always looking for adventure and a place to land on their feet with family at their sides.  The women in my family gave birth to large families, fought both Indians and climates from the Eastern Seaboard to the Texas panhandle.  We are a hardy lot of people.  My great grandfather was killed and scalped by Comanche’s in Texas, my great Uncle was killed my the Mexican Army under Sam Houston.  My great grandmother was left in a one room soddy with 9 children and pregnant with twins.  “Prepping” has been a way of life in my family for generations.  Women had to be ready to follow their husbands on a moments notice in my family.  My father had wanderlust in his blood too, he and my mother followed crops 6 months out of the year and lived out of the car.  My mother had to “prep” for a 6 month trip and do it in a 39′ Plymouth!

When I was school age my mother would leave me with my grandmother while they did this and grandmother lived out in the “sticks” on a deserted but working cattle ranch where my grandpa had work.  Grandma had to “prep” because there was no store within a couple of hours drive.  Heck our nearest neighbor was 15 miles away.  It was however a kids paradise!  Once my grandma went shopping for the months groceries and found a new product…canned biscuits!  Wow, what a deal!  She promptly bought a case of them thinking of all the time she would save.  She brought them home and put them in her large pantry where a few days later in the hot desert heat they exploded biscuits all over the place….lesson learned.

I still live in the country and I still keep a large pantry. When I grocery shop once a month I buy two of everything, one for the pantry and one for storage.  I shop for sundries once a month (two weeks after my grocery shopping) and do the same, a case of toilet paper for the storage and a case for the bathroom.  I use the cheap brands of shampoo like Suave and buy 2 of those or I get them at the dollar store and again buy two.    I have goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese and a couple of llamas.  Oh and the guineas.  We have a large garden every year and I can, freeze and dehydrate the produce.  We put in rotating batches of meat chickens thru the Spring till fall and butcher every 8 weeks.  I only breed my rabbits thru the fall,winter and spring, and butcher at 8 weeks.  All the cold weather skins are kept for tanning and reuse for projects, selling and once made a rabbit skin quilt for a granddaughter.   We sell many of the eggs from our chickens and ducks but I also pickle them, and preserve them for the winter months when the girls aren’t laying and we turn them loose to eat the bugs and clean up the garden.  My husband and I are both blessed to live in an area where there are very large flocks of wild turkeys, deer, pigs, bears and  fishing in abundance.  We take advantage of this bounty whenever possible.

I make lard from the bear fat and you have never tasted a more flaky pie crust than one made with bear lard. It renders out clean and white and tasty. Every fall the local salmon fisheries take the salmon and remove the eggs and sperm for the fish hatchery.  Being Native American all I have to do is show my card and I get as many of the salmon as I can cart away.  I try to get only the firm still red salmon bodies and not the really beat up ones that have already started to deteriorate on their trip up river.  We can them,  dry them and the ones that turn out to be not so fresh due to the trip up river (salmon start dying before they get to their destinations) we can those and label them “pet food”.  They could be eaten by us if things got really bad but they are intended to be food for the cats and dogs and chickens.

There was a time when I lost my job and my husband lost his a few weeks later.  We never ran out of food and our unemployment paid for our utilities and other things like gas for job seeking and our mortgage. Without our way of life that may have been a really shattering experience.

My husband and I have 6 adult children and 20 grand children and 4 great grand children.  Not a bad legacy…LOL!  We are teaching all of them that will listen how to be prepared for the unknown.  We have all had the unknown happen and we have all been surprised by something in our lives that is beyond our control.  With all the lessons I have learned in our history I was still floored a few years ago when a wildfire ripped thru our area and we lost power for several days.  While we had plenty of food, light and gas but we didn’t have water!  We had water stored for personal use but had no water for our livestock…how did I forget or not consider that?  Luckily we live near a large lake and we loaded up the pick up with barrels and hand filled them by bucket!  Then the drive over the dirt road, hills etc to get it back.  We had to do that several times before our power was restored.  We have barrels and a pond now but are working on a cheaper way to make a non electric pump and water filtration.

As many of you have felt in the past months or years, we also feel a sense of urgency.  We feel the Lord has been speaking to us to be prepared for something coming.  We have kicked it up to include some building of bunks in our storage containers we moved to our property.  We installed turbines in them to help remove the heat in them in the summer months and made wood stoves out of old hot water heaters to keep warm in the winter.  We can now sleep up to 20 additional adults and several children if need be.  Our containers will not only hold our food and supplies but our families!

We have also encouraged our adult kids to prep and some have, some haven’t’ but if the worst happens we will be able to care for them all.  We have worked out security watches, kitchen schedules and even put by school supplies in case of long term issues.  I always manage to think of something else we need to do or work on and having joined Kellene’s blog (Preparedness Pro) has given me many new ideas and made the Honey-doo list a bit longer but all for good purpose.

If “something” never happens, our kids will have a blast dividing up all our preps when we’re gone!

S.M. CA

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