Should we worry about how unsettled things are in our world? If we listen to enough of the news it could make us sick with worry. How do we cope with this unsettled time?
We start at home taking care of our family or ourselves if we live alone.
The year before last we had a very bad storm. It knocked down trees, power lines, phone lines, destroyed houses, roofs and we had a lot of destruction in our community. We were plunged into darkness.
In a matter of hours people started coming to help. They had chain saws and combined muscles to pull debris away so some could get out of their houses. Even the grocery stores were out of power and had their own problems. A local church had members to come with heavy equipment and tarps because they had planned for emergencies such as this. But the damage was widespread and many were without power for a long time.
We cannot plan for everything but if we have a plan for basic needs, should something happen, then we can go on with our life knowing that is done.
Do you know how to purify water? Knowledge is power.
Things do happen such as an illness, accident, job loss, storm or catastrophic event. Some do plan but many do not. Do we know where all our important papers are? Do we have our spouse or partners passwords should something happen to them? Do we have a grab and go bag packed in case we need to leave home quickly due to an evacuation? It could be a gas line, a chemical spill, a flash flood or most anything. Do we keep bottled water and food in our car in case we are stranded for a period of time?
Many of you know that read my blog I believe in keeping a stocked pantry. There are many things that can happen to where we need to use that stock, it can be most anything from a storm, sickness or some catastrophic event. I do not think we should stockpile but we should keep a stock which is different. Stockpiling can cause waste because we cannot use it all before it goes bad. Keeping a good stock would mean keeping extra foods that you normally eat and then eat what you normally stock.
A fallen limb from a tree after a storm shows that even the squirrels keep a pantry.
In the past people kept stock in their pantries, cupboards or shelves. If we do not keep a stock we are constantly running back and forth to the store or worse eating out all the time because there is nothing at home to cook.
Could you cook a warm meal if your utilities went out? What do you use to cook on when there is an outage?
If your town had a serious disaster could you feed yourself for two weeks or longer from your pantry? Or would you be one of many standing in lines waiting for food and water? I have said in another post, if your home was damaged and you lost your stock then you would have no choice but to stand in line for help and that is what the help is for, the ones that lost their stock. But sadly the lines are filled with people that simply lost their power and they never had a stock in the first place. There are those that are struggling to feed their families just one meal at a time and there are those exceptions too.
I have a post about oil lamps and how to trim wicks which is very important so your lamp will give you the best light.
Can you wash your clothes or cook during an extended outage? These are the things that we should all know how to do, people in the past knew how to take care of themselves much better than most people do now. Here on my blog I have articles how to wash clothes by hand to cooking without electricity.
We live in a world so dependent on electronics that if we had even the most simple outage such as no cell phone use people may go into hysterics! So while all the crazy is going on all around us in today's mixed up world why don't we learn how to live less dependent on convenient foods, televisions, cell phones, and electricity and learn how to help ourselves and then others if there is a need.
We need to keep matches on hand and lighters for emergencies.
Keeping a supply of fresh water is important but very difficult to keep a lot of water on hand unless you have very large containers. Do you know where your closest water source if there is a serious event?
We saved up for a good water filter and are happy that we did because we can filter our city water, rain water or even pond water with this berkey filter.
Wheat Berries that can be ground into flour and it last a very long time.
But we keep stored bags of flour as well and since we make our own breads this gets rotated properly.
Many years ago in our country folks traveled west to find places to build a home and have a bit of land. They loaded up their wagons with dry goods so they had food for their journey. Flour, sugar, coffee, tea, beans, jerky, dehydrated foods such as fruits and some vegetables. They hunted and fished along the way and that was more food sources. They carried other dry goods such as fabrics, threads, yarn. We may not be traveling in a covered wagon but we can take from their experience how to prepare wisely.
Fresh pulled carrot...
Here at our house we try to keep some type of food growing in our yard such as carrots, greens, herbs, fruits. We have trees and bushes that make fruit at different times of the year. There are some fruits that can be grown in containers such as citrus, blueberries and more. But we have such a small area to grow we have to purchase most of what we eat.
We keep canned goods and dried goods. We keep extra pet food, soap and keep our first aid cabinet stocked as well as our emergency supplies such as batteries for fans because we live in the very hot, humid deep south. We have oil lamps, solar lights and a solar charger.
We have had reasons to use many of these things stocked and so we just continue on no matter what the situation. We are comfortable in knowing that we don't have to rush out to try and find supplies during some type of event or setback.
Turning apples into dehydrated air sealed apples...
We try our best to live with purpose, we keep working our small lot here in the city that we have and our goal is to keep trying to simplify but be a sustainable as we can.
At this time we are starting a new project that I will be posting about later. We are making an outdoor wash area to bathe and wash clothes. It will come in handy when we have family visiting since we have only one bathroom to bathe and will be helpful if we have an extended power outage during the hot summer months. I hope you consider your supplies, do you have what you need to take care of yourself and family should there be some type of disaster or outage? Do you know how to stretch food? How much water you need per day per person? Do you have a way to cook food if there are no utilities available? Can you bathe, wash and dry clothes without power or water? If you can then you are in good shape and should not worry. Grandma Donna
