Braided Rug

 I made these a while back.  

Honestly, it couldn't have been easier.  The hardest part was cutting the tee-shirts into strips, and once I enlisted the help of Deus Ex Machina for cutting, the rest was easy.  

We have two, round, tee-shirt rugs in the bathroom.  They are washable and so far have been incredibly durable.  

I love DIY :).

Things I Learned about Prepping from Working in a Theater

I have been working as a manager at a local community theater for almost three years, and before that, my family and I volunteered at that same theater for over half a decade.  The Theater was and is as much a part of our lives as our homestead.

One day, I realized that the two activities were actually a lot more similar than one might think.  In fact, working at the Theater has, in a lot of ways, made me a better prepper.  

Here's how:

1. It is not hoarding if you're going to use it someday.
   
   There's a joke in Theater that The Phantom of the Opera couldn't possibly be real, because any director/theater manager worth his salt would find that hidden cavern and use it for prop storage.
   
   At the Theater where I work, we have a huge prop room with floor to ceiling shelves, and it's so packed with everything from fake flowers and baskets to old books and teapots that there's just a three-foot wide path from one door to the other.  That's just what's at the Theater.  We also have a separate storage space for additional props and set pieces.   Our costume storage is three times the size of our prop storage, and we try to keep everything from custom-made vests worn by the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz production we did to the donated mink "scarves" complete with faces.
   
   In Theater, we never know what we will use, because we don't have a crystal ball telling us what shows we might do in five years, or even next fall, which is why we keep everything we can find a place for, and why we are shy about turning down donations.  Sometimes what someone else might discard can be incredibly useful for us.   
   
   The same is true of prepping. We never know what we might need, which is why we preppers often get mislabeled hoarders, but here's the thing.  I have (probably too many) boxes of old clothes.  I save t-shirts and jeans that are too stained or ripped, or sometimes if they were from a personal, very specific event (like a t-shirt from a dance show my daughters performed in).  I also keep things, like, elastic from panties and boxer shorts.   Every now and then, I will go through my stash and clean things out, but I almost always regret it.
   
   Recently, two things happened.  We ended up in a pandemic that resulted in a statewide mandate to wear a mask in public places.  I work very hard to avoid disposable products in my home.  For instance, we don't use paper towels or napkins.  Instead we have a bunch of cloth napkins, for when we use them, and I have old towels and t-shirts cut into rags to replace paper towels.  So, using a disposable face mask was also not happening.  Not to mention that at the beginning of the Pandemic, we couldn't even buy disposable masks.
   
   We also couldn't buy elastic, which means if I hadn't been a hoarder of strange things, like old underwear, I wouldn't have been able to make masks.  Deus Ex Machina wears his masks with the elastic that says, "Victoria's Secret", and he gets a few chuckles and sideways glances from his co-workers.
   
   The second thing was that in the middle of the lockdown period, my daughter had a birthday, and I decided to make her a quilt for her birthday using old shirts from her dance days.  I had enough shirts that I was able to make a large couch throw.  I even had enough material hoarded … er, stored … to give the quilt a back and some batting in between the two layers.
   
   Sometimes, trying to find something in my house can be frustrating, because I have so much stuff, but those times when I need what I've saved, I am incredibly thankful.

2. Skills can really make the difference.
   
   In Theater we often have to customize things.  For example, we did a show and was having trouble finding a costume that was the right size for the actress.  We needed a costume for her that was from the late 1800s, and we were doing a "Steampunk" inspired version of the show set during that time period.   Having someone on staff who could actually sew was invaluable.  Our costumer/seamstress made a custom dress for this actress in less than a day.
   
   For that same show, we also needed aprons – not just any apron, but a very specific design, because it theater, it is all about making things LOOK a certain way.  So, it's not enough to just put an apron on the actress.  It has to fit the overall theme and style of the story.
   
   But it also has to fit.  So, we made three aprons, all custom fit to the actresses who wore them.  A custom dress from the Victorian Era can run over $300 and the aprons that we made would have been over $30 each, if we had purchased them, and then, they might not have fit properly.
   
   Sets are also custom made for the shows.  Finding a piano that is ornate enough to sit in Mr. Laurence's parlor in Little Women, but that can also be moved off and on the stage by just one or two people would be impossible.  Having someone custom make a piano (not one that actually works, but that's another topic) is what we do here.  Fake furniture can't look fake, and having a talented set designer who is also a finish carpenter is incredibly valuable.
   
   But it's not just the stuff that happens before the curtain goes up.  There are often little mishaps during the run of the show that need attention – like a zipper breaking during a costume change or a button popping off.  Those things do happen, and having someone back stage who can fix them on the fly is incredibly useful.  Maybe it doesn't save the show, but it certainly makes it less worrisome for the people on the stage to know that their zipper is fixed.
   
   Skill building – especially those basic skills that allow us to customize – is essential in prepping.  Above I mention making masks.  Because I can sew, I can repair and make clothes.  I can make quilts.  I can make feminine hygiene products and diapers that are as good as (comfort-wise and absorbency-wise) as the high-tech disposables.
   
   The hallmark of a successful prepper is someone who can be self-sufficient.  Having carpentry skills, sewing skills, cooking skills, and other DIY skills means not having to pay someone to do little projects, and that, alone, is incredibly valuable. 

3.  Most people won't look too close, if what they see at a glance looks real enough

There's this common understanding in Theater that if a thing looks good from ten feet away, then it will be fine.  For instance, stage make-up close up can be startling, but from the audience, it can actually make the actor look better.  It's all about the façade.

I started to call this item something about camouflage, because that's what it's about.  It's about showing one thing, when that thing is actually something else.  In Theater, we have real working doors on our sets that go nowhere.  Well, they go behind the set, and the room into which the character disappears is implied.  A lot of stuff is implied in Theater, but that's okay, because the audience is willing to fill in the blanks and make whatever isn't there, appear.

In prepping, sometimes we have things that look like one thing, but are actually something else.  Hollowed out books for storing valuables.  Pretty flowers that are actually food.  Bean bags filled with dried beans that are actually edible.  Storing supplies right where they can be seen, but in such a way that it's over looked, is a fantastic prepper technique.

4. What's happening behind the scenes is as important as what's being shown.

In Theater the folks on the stage are only a piece of the show. There are about a million things happening in the background that the audience never sees.  When Roger Debris runs off stage after accepting the fact that he's going to have to perform the lead in the play-within-a-play in the musical The Producers, the actor (not the character) has less than 5 minutes to become the next character.  As an audience member, what you will never see is that person who is standing in the wings, holding a wig, a mustache, and a bottle of water, and while the actor is chugging the cold water, that person is tucking pants in boots and fixing wigs.  That person is a "dresser", and for really fast changes, they are an essential piece of the success of the show.  There often isn't enough time for a full costume change without someone to help zip zippers and remember hats, gloves, and scarves, but when the music starts, the actor, fully changed, needs to be on the stage to sing those opening notes.  It's all about timing and stealth.  We can't let the audience know that we're back there holding the wig.  The actor just needs to magically appear on the stage with the wig on.  It's magic. 

There's a kind of magic in prepping, too.  It's not the "show the world this" and "hide this from the world" kind of magic that happens in Theater, but it is the kind of magic that happens when everyone is working toward the same goal and we all know that we can depend on each other.  In Theater, the actors need the stage crew to keep things running smoothly.  The crew assists with costume changes and set changes, keeps track of props, makes sure there is water or other needs met, and keeps the chaos that is backstage in the middle of a play from erupting. 

Every day preps – ordering the seeds, weeding the garden, canning the harvest, darning a sock, tending the flock of chickens, setting up the rain barrels in the spring and emptying them before it gets cold enough for them to freeze.  It's those little things, those unsexy tasks that someone has to do, and for which there is no spotlight and applause, but it has to be done, and when it is all working in sync, when the backstage crew is doing its job, no one, sometimes not even the actors, know they are there.  And that's the magic.

5. Stay calm.

Live Theater isn't like film.  There are no second takes if mistakes are made or mishaps occur.  What happens on the stage, happens.  Live theater is kind of like life, in that respect.  We can practice our lines until saying them sounds like we're talking to an old friend rather than reciting words someone else wrote.  We can sing the songs until the lyrics become our daily soundtrack.  We can sew beautiful costumes and have sets that are so realistic, we want to move into that living room.   And then, it's opening night, and there are people clapping and laughing (we hope), and something happens.  A shoe breaks.  A zipper gets stuck.  A china cup gets dropped and smashes on the stage. Someone forgets the words to the song or the next line.  Things happen.  The key is to stay calm and just do the next thing.

In the decade that I have been involved in the Theater, I have never seen anything so bad happen on the stage that it ruined the show.  One time, in the middle of the show, the actor's guitar string broke.  He and the other actors on the stage stayed calm.  They ad-libbed while he tried to fix the string, but as soon as he got that one fixed, another one broke.  Finally, he says to the pianist (who was also the music director, and so obviously knew the score), "Hey, man, how would you like to accompany me on this next song?"  It worked!  The audience was none the wiser, and the show went on.    

That is absolutely the best ever advice for Preppers, but also just for life.  Things happen, and even after we've made as many solid and sound plans as we can, things happen, and we just have to take a deep breath and get to the next thing.   Improvise, be flexible, but most of all, stay calm. 

 

 

It's funny how much being a prepper has made my work in the Theater so much easier.  Or maybe working in the Theater has made me a better prepper.  Either way, it was fun to realize that these two, seemingly contradictory activities that dominate my life, are actually complimentary.

 

How has your job complemented your prepper lifestyle?

 

 

The Future We Were Promised?

I have been doing some freelancing for a non-profit.  The job is to make a one to three minute video each week using a prompt, and the goal is to flood the Internet with something other than poison politics.

A couple of weeks ago, the prompt I chose asked me to respond to the question:  Where is the future we were promised?  The question has to do with the Jetson-style future many of us grew up believing we would inherit, and the intent of the prompt seemed to be asking us to lament the fact that we don't have flying cars and robot maids.  Where is that amazing high tech future we were promised?  It implied.

Me, being me, I put a twist on it.  I actually explored the notion that we ARE living in the future we were promised.

I mean, compared to MY youth, the youth today have things pretty high tech.  Little computers in their pockets, for one.  I didn't have all of the knowledge of the world available to me with the swipe of a screen small enough to fit into my hand.  I couldn't connect in real-time with my friend, Donna, when I moved to Kentucky and she still lived in Alabama, or my friend, Gregor, when he moved back to Germany.  I couldn't place an order at 8:00AM on Monday morning, get a confirmation of that order by 8:10AM on Monday morning, and be opening the package and enjoying my stuff by Wednesday.  Back in those days, we were conditioned to expect a four to six week wait for anything we ordered.  

We didn't have voice activated computers that could tell us the weather or play our favorite song, or even help us figure out the artist and title of a song of which we could only remember a snippet of a line. 

We couldn't watch movies on demand.

Our cars didn't talk to us, and if we needed "route guidance", it meant we either stopped and asked directions, or we learned how to read a map.

In my opinion, we are living in a pretty high-tech future, even if we don't have flying cars.

We do have self-driving cars, though - like Johnny Cab from Total Recall.  

And we have talking houses - like in Blade Runner.  

As for the real future we're living versus the one movies and books told us we'd get, in my opinion, we're also living out the warnings we failed to heed.  

We have dying oceans, over population, a huge wealth divide (the rich keep getting richer), and genetically engineered foods, like in Soylent Green.  

We have resource scarcity resulting in "water wars" like in Mad Max.

And, like Stephen King's The Stand, we have our own pandemic that has ushered in TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).  I mean, the world as I knew it this time last year did not include shortages of toilet paper, pasta, and tomato sauce; stay-at-home orders; a shuttering of Broadway and most live theater across the world; and government mandated face masks.

I guess the real question is, which future do we think we were promised, and how is that vastly different than what we are living?

As I say in my video, I think we are living the future we were promised, and the more we lean on technology to make our lives better, the more dystopian our future will become.  

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This is an ad-free blog.  I have looked at different ways to monetize this blog, because (obviously) as a writer, I would prefer to get paid for my craft, but I dislike advertising, as I feel it is invasive, and frankly, I gave up my television, because I was tired of feeling like there was something wrong with my life because I lacked A, B, or C product.  I also dislike thinking of my readers as the "product" rather than the "customer" in the way that Facebook users are the product for the paid advertisers.  It changes how we relate to one another.

As such, I have decided against paid links, pop-up ads, and services like Ad Sense.   

That said, if you like what you see, please feel free to donate.  

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Any products mentioned on my blog are things I actually use and find useful.  They are not paid advertisements.  If I'm mentioning it, it's because I want you, my reader, to know about it. 

Prepping at the Party Store

My youngest daughter developed a passion for special effects make-up.  Make-up artistry is not a skillset that I have ever thought to cultivate.  In fact, I barely wear street make-up, I never paint my fingernails, and the first time I ever colored my hair was during the COVID lockdown (and that was because my daughter needed to practice and the only people she had access to who had uncolored hair were me and Deus Ex Machina).

As a homeschooler, I like to encourage my daughters' passions - even if (maybe especially if) they don't align with my own, and what that means is, when she asks if we can go to the Party Store, because she needs a bald cap, I don't say no.  Besides, she has a job and she's spending her own money.  All I'm doing is providing transportation.

Well, that's not entirely true.  When she asked if I could take her there, I immediately thought of the one thing that I know I can always find at the Party Store, and that's really useful - especially during power outages.  

Chem Lights!

From a prepper standpoint, these lights are pretty cool.  The first time I used these during a power outage, I was surprised by how much light they actually put out.  It was plenty of light for brushing my teeth.  

I found the display of chem lights, grabbed a few packages, and continued to wander around the store while she stocked up on her FX make-up.

As I wandered around, I noticed that there were actually quite a few things that are useful for preppers.  I was surprised, and then, I thought, "Of course there are!"  

Because Prepping doesn't have to be about specialized equipment.  It really is about seeing the usefulness in every day items. 

So, I started taking pictures of things that I saw that I knew were incredibly useful "prepper" items.  Here's my list of 9 prepper items I found at the Party Store.

1. Bandanas

Every hiker, survivalist, and prepper knows that bandanas are incredibly useful.  They can be used for all sorts of things, from pressure bandages to water filters.  Today, with the pandemic raging, bandanas are a popular face covering. 

The Party Store has lots of options for bandanas, and what I found particularly aesthetically pleasing was that the bandanas were sorted by color with other fun things that were all the same color.  I'm particularly fond of purple.  

2. Socks.

I love socks.  As a soldier, I learned the value of dry socks, because dry feet are healthy feet.  Later in life, when I moved to New England and quickly figured out that wearing sweaters and socks was cheaper than paying for heating oil, I learned the true value of a good pair of socks.  The best advice for keeping warm in cold weather is to start small - with one's own body.  Layering clothes is the oft given advice in survival circles.  When I'm cold, instead of turning up the heat, I put on socks.  It's amazing what a difference it makes. 

I don't know why I was surprised to find socks at the Party Store.  I'm sure one can find cheaper socks, but if the Party Store is the only option, they have socks, and socks are good.  

3.  Tee Shirts

Right under the socks I found tee-shirts.  Like a bandana, a nice, cotton tee-shirt has dozens of uses - including the fact that it can be worn as, well, a shirt.  In a survival situation, clean, dry clothes can help prevent hypothermia and provide cover from the sun, and *clean* clothes can help prevent body lice.  Body lice are parasites that feed on humans, but they LIVE in clothes.  Changing clothes, frequently, can prevent lice.  Just FYI.  

4.  Hats!

I love hats!  I can't wear hats, because I don't look good in hats, but I still love them, and I dream of someday being a little old lady in a big purple straw hat tending my garden or putting laundry on the line.   I never really appreciated the value of hats, especially for providing shade, until I was in the military.  For keeping the sun off one's head and out of one's eyes, there's not much better than a hat with a wide brim.  

As a prepper, hats are great for sun shade.  They can also be good as a collection basket when foraging.   

5.  Lip balm.

I apologize for the terrible pictures.

Lip  balm is great for its intended purpose - to provide a protective layer on one's lips.  It's good for helping to prevent/sooth lips chapped by the cold or sun.  

6.  Magnifying glasses.

Magnifying glasses can be used as a fire starter.  They can also be used in first aid.  Ever get a stubborn splinter?  That magnifying glass can be very helpful when trying to get it out.  

In addition, for those of us with "old" eyes, a magnifying glass could be very useful if something happens to our glasses.  

6.  A whistle.

For those of you who haven't seen Titanic, spoiler alert!

In the film, Rose is lying on a piece of a door in the frigid north Atlantic waters.  She is suffering from hypothermia and likely to pass out and die at any moment, when she hears rescuers slowly moving through the debris of the shipwreck looking for survivors.  She tries to call out, but she can not speak.  Then, she sees a whistle around the neck of a floating corpse.  That whistle saves her life.  

Survival manuals recommend a whistle in one's gear for that reason.  We can't always count on the ability to call out if we're in danger, but blowing a whistle - we can do that.  

7.  Hand Sanitizer

Hand sanitizer may not be a usual offering at the Party Store, but it was there (along with face masks, which I am not including in this list).   While I don't, under normal circumstances, like using hand sanitizer, in a survival scenario, it can be useful.  Keeping clean without soap and water can be difficult.  Hand sanitizer is also made mostly of alcohol.  It could be used as an accelerant for fire starting. 

8.  Carving tools.

Pumpkin carving tools are likely seasonal, and for survival purposes, there are probably better cutting tool options, but if one only has the Party Store as a resource, this cutting tool could be useful.  

9.  Lights.

For the same reason that I like to stock-up on chem lights, I also look for lights, like these.  They are safer to use than candles, but provide enough light for basic tasks.  In a powered down scenario, I would love to have these lights under my kitchen cabinets or running down my hallway.  

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One of the most useful attributes of preppers is our ability to look at every day items and see their value in extraordinary circumstances.  As I walked around the Party Store, I found a lot of great prepper supplies.  There are definitely other things I missed or didn't include, because they were no brainers (like all of the napkins, plastic spoons, and paper plates).  

What prepper items have you found in unusual places?

How to Make an Herbal Tincture

Herbs are highly valued for both their nutritive and medicinal value. Adding herbs to foods can enhance the flavor and make what might be a blah meal a wowza!

In addition, herbal medicine has been used for centuries to treat health issues. Herbs as medicine can be prepared as infusions (like a tea), salves, or tinctures. There are different qualities for each of the preparations. For instance, infusions are often considered to be more nutritutional than medicinal, in that they will be used as a tonic or immune-boosting supplement, rather than to treat an illness, although they can be used in both ways.

A tincture is most often considered a medicine and should be used with great care, as the process of making a tincture involves the extracting and concentrating the medicinal qualities of the herb. In short, a tincture is like a turbo-charged version of the herb. A tincture is made by steeping herbs in alcohol, usually vodka or rum. According to Susan Weed, the process of making a tincture leeches the nutritional value out of the herbs, but it enhances the herb’s medicinal value.

As a Prepper, I wanted to learn to use herbs both in my kitchen and in my medicine cabinet. It's not so much that I think herbs are inherently better than pharmaceuticals (although I do believe that herbs are a more gentle and more natural remedy for most non-life threatening ailments), but as a Prepper, I am keenly aware that things happen. Systems break down. Resources become scarce or depleted. And things that we take for granted, may not always be so readily available. In the event that finding a doctor or getting OTC rash cream, becomes problematic, I wanted alternatives.

When we first bought our property, Deus Ex Machina and I resolved to only grow plants that were medical or edible. What we found is that they are often both. For instance, everyone knows that Oregano is wonderful when added to Mediterranean/Italian cuisine. Oregano oil (which is extracted from the oregano plant using a distillation process) is also a powerful immune booster. Cloves are fantastic in pumpkin pie, but the clove oil can be used for dental issues, like a toothache. It's these multi-purpose plants that found a home in my garden. Jewel weed is a wonderful pot herb when its young, but it's a really good treatment for poison ivy.

Of course, growing the plant is only a portion of the process. Once I figured out what and how to grow it, then, I needed to figure out how to use it. The following are the steps to make a tincture out of herbs in your garden.

Step 1

Gather 1 oz of dried herb or enough fresh herb to fill a pint-sized glass container 1/3 full with the herb. Chop into pieces and place into the jar.

Step 2

Fill the jar to the top with rum or vodka. Susan Weed advises using 100 proof alcohol. She states that lower proof alcohols don’t work as well and higher proof can cause damage to liver and kidneys.

Step 3

Cover the jar and allow to steep for six weeks.

Step 4

Strain the herb out of the alcohol through a cheesecloth or paper filter. Discard used herb.

Step 5

Using the funnel, pour the strained tincture into a dark colored bottle. Label bottle with type of tincture and the date, and store the tincture tightly closed in a cool, dark place.

Skill

• Moderately Easy

Things You'll Need

• 1 oz dried herb or enough fresh herb to fill a pint-sized jar 1/3 full

• Alcohol = vodka or rum

• Pint-sized glass jar

• Cheesecloth

• Colored glass jar with a lid

• Funnel

Tips

• Properly stored a tincture will keep for as long as five years.

Warnings

• Herbal tinctures should be treated like all other medications. Before using any herbal remedy, consult a physician or certified herbalist.

References

• Healing Wise: Be Your Own Herbal Expert

• About Herbal Tinctures

Returning.

If I had to look back on the last six months and pinpoint the things that wildly deviated from our normal lifestyle, I couldn't.  

There have been little things that were different.

In July, I called my butcher.  We have been raising meat chickens for just about as long as my youngest daughter (who will be an adult this year) can remember.  I asked her before I wrote that, and she verified that she doesn't really remember not having chickens in our yard.  She was five when we got our first three hens.  That was the year that everything got all shook up, we started seriously looking into homesteading our quarter acre, and I started finding ways to transition us from a typical American diet to a mostly local diet.  

During those early days, it was a challenge to have even one item in a meal that was local.  Creating a meal with ALL local foods was a huge and blog-worthy (with pictures) accomplishment.  Last night for dinner, we had pork chops (from the pig share) with cheesy baked potatoes (from our garden with cheese from a local creamery).  The night before that, we had tacos.  The only thing that wasn't local were the shells and the seasonings.  Everything else, including the homemade salsa, was Maine grown.  Last week we had chicken (we raised), cole slaw (cabbage from my garden), boiled eggs (from our hens), and buttered potatoes (from our garden with butter from a local creamery).  It was all local, except the dressings, and most of it was from my own yard.  In "locavore", we call that the 100 foot diet ;).  As the saying goes, "We've come a long way, baby."

So, when I called my butcher in July, and he hesitated before scheduling me that was a new thing for me.  In the decade - or more - that we have been raising meat birds, he has never hesitated to put me on the schedule.  This year, though, so many people, worried about the future, worried about their finances, worried about getting food from the grocery store, started to raise their own.  

In March, just as I always have, I filled out my chick order forms at the local feed store.  I had my birds on order, just as I always have.  

Then, I started hearing stories about people trying to find laying hens and/or meat birds, and there just not being any available.  All of the usual places where baby chicks are sold were completely out-of-stock.  I was lucky, I guess, that I have always pre-ordered mine.

As with all years past, we split up the meat birds into a couple of different groups.  We only have a quarter of an acre, and so we can't really raise 50 birds at a time, like most folks do.  We place two to three orders of 10 to 15 birds each, to be received at intervals throughout the summer.  

This year was no different.  I placed an order for hens in early April, for my first set of meat birds to arrive mid-May, and for the last set of meat birds to arrive mid-June.  

The first group of 15 meat birds were ready to go to the butcher in early July, and so I called on a Friday to schedule for Monday, because my butcher only does chickens on Mondays.  He told me that the summer is usually their down time.  Not this year.  This year, they were full out, every Monday, butchering chickens, because so many people had decided that now was a good time to start learning to raise their own.

While it makes me happy (really, it does) that so many people are finally getting bitten by the self-sufficiency bug, it's also a little sad, to me, that it took this emergency to spur people in this direction.  It's also a little ... annoying isn't exactly the right word, but it fits ... to come up against shortages for things that I have always done, because suddenly everyone else wants to do them, too.  But worse are the people who, then, act as if it's some new and great idea that they came up with.  Um ....  Yeah.   

So, I scheduled my first set of 15, and my butcher asked if I would have more later.  See?  He knows that I raise meat birds, 10 to 15 at a time, over the whole summer.  I told him that I would.  He advised me to schedule to bring them in and gave me a date in the middle of August.  "If they start to get too big," he told me (because Cornish-cross, which is the breed of meat chicken I raise, and he knows it, tend to grow really big, really fast.  It's exactly the reason I, and so many other people, raise them for meat), "give us a call and we can see about fitting you in sooner."

I didn't call.  

The average meat chicken in the grocery store is around 3 lbs.  It's the same breed of chicken that I raise, but those birds are butchered at between five and eight weeks.  My chickens were probably ten to twelve weeks old when I took them to "See Ken" - our family's euphemism for taking the chickens to the butcher.  The largest was over 8 lbs fully dressed.

It's not unusual for us to have such large chickens.  We've done it before. What is unusual is for us to have such large chickens, because the butcher was too busy to take my birds. 

Because I was home more, I had the best garden I have had in years.  I was able to do things this year that I have always wanted to do, but just didn't have the time - like successive plantings.  I planted lettuce in the spring.  We ate salads for a month.  Then, the lettuce started to bolt, because it got too warm.  I recently replanted lettuce for the fall.  I've never done that before.

I also planted more potatoes.  I plant my potatoes in old feed sacks.  My first crop was planted in May.  I planted a second set of bags in June.  In July, I started harvesting potatoes from the bags I had planted in May, and because I had empty bags, I planted more potatoes.

For seed, I used potatoes that were sprouting in my kitchen.  If I were a commercial potato farmer, I probably wouldn't want to plant those potatoes, because the crop is unreliable, and the potatoes are often small, but for my home garden, food grown from free seed is no small potatoes.  

Also in the garden, I was able to really nurture a few of the volunteers.  I ended up with yellow squash that was growing from seeds thrown into my compost pile.  

And my tomatoes, which were planted in buckets this year, THRIVED, because I was home more and was able to water them more regularly.

Spending more time at home, I have been doing a lot more cooking.  Between not wanting to be out in public anyway, and there just not being any really good choices for take-out for us, because of some dietary restrictions (we are, by doctor recommendation, gluten-free), I've really had driven home the fact that my home cooking is just better than restaurant fare.  Not that I'm such a great chef, but mostly because when we eat at home, I have total control over what we consume.  So, locally sourced, organic, or home-grown ingredients were on the menu almost every day this summer.  

The real benefit to my being home more was to our pocketbook.  Cooking at home saves us a lot of money.   Limiting trips to the store and/or shopping with a grocery delivery service eliminated most of those impulse purchases, which saved us a lot.  

We also had time, this summer (usually we are really busy with work and volunteer stuff) to think about later in the year.  For the first time, in a long time, we have all the wood we need for the winter ... and then, some.   We heat, exclusively, with wood, which means a lot of wood.  We had five cords delivered, and it's stacked and ready for this winter.  We have a full freezer.  We have plenty of toilet paper.  

A couple of projects that needed doing, but weren't a priority, got done, too.

And, because we are uncertain of what this winter will hold, we've already started talking about holiday gift-giving, and we have some ideas of what we want to do.  For certain, we know that we will be shopping early for things we plan to buy, and starting earlier than usual with things we plan to make.  

For me, this year has been a reminder of why we started doing things the way we do, and I have been given the opportunity to return to the lifestyle that makes me feel fulfilled.  

 

Flashback - I'm a Prepper

The following is an essay that appeared on Surviving the Suburbs blog (my original blog) in 2017.  Given the current COVID-19 pandemic with the shortages in so many surprising and not surprising resources, I felt that highlighting those of us who've been doing this for a long time was appropriate.

Enjoy the flashback ... and feel free to comment ... and invite your friends to comment ;).

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I'm a Prepper.

I'm accustomed to that suspicious, sideways glance from people who learn that I'm a Prepper.  I'm accustomed to being judged for writing about the very real possibility that some catastrophic, life-changing event will happen in my lifetime - what we preppers like to call TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) or when the SHTF (shit hits the fan).

What I haven't gotten used to, however, is being openly ridiculed, called names like "mouth breather", labeled a luddite, or accused of having only a 5th grade education, simply because of my certainty that our way of life is neither sustainable nor non-negotiable, and because I refuse to become a victim, but rather choose to be proactive, and yes, prepared.  

In 2015, Canadian writer, Leslie Anthony, who clearly believes himself to be of a superior stock, wrote exactly those things about the Prepper community.  In what was little more than a insult-laced, lazily researched essay full of nothing more than degrading epithets meant to characterize anyone who believes that things might be going to shit, Mr. Anthony derided an entire group of people - people who run the gamut from, as he calls them "meth-fueled, neo-Christian, anarchist bow-hunters" to professionals in all fields from accountants and teachers to doctors and engineers.  I'd also like to point out that some of the folks in the latter group are also bow-hunters ... and some in the former are also college-educated professionals.  

Former President G.W. Bush owns an off-grid ranch in Texas that includes a 25,000 gallon cistern for storing water.  I'd call him a prepper.  

Yours truly is just shy of a graduate degree (significantly more than a 5th grade education) and is married to an engineer with a degree from an Ivy League college.  I feel like Mr. Anthony doesn't really know what a prepper is, in spite of his insistence that he has a full understanding of what that term means and the kinds of people who wear the label. 

So, let's discuss who preppers really are, and why more people should strive to be like us. 

First let's start with the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, which Mr. Anthony refers to as "that most authoritative tome."  The definition of a prepper, as published by Mr. Anthony, from the OED is:  "a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency [edited to add: *cough* COVID-19 *cough] is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies." 

I don't disagree with that definition, and I would also like to point out that no where, in that definition, is a prepper defined as someone with no education who hopes for disaster.  Rather, by definition, a prepper is someone who is pretty sure that something bad is going to happen, and strives to be ready for it ... whatever the *it* is. 

So, let's talk about some of the "its" that have occurred recently.

Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas causing severe flooding and massive damage, and Hurricane Irma, after thoroughly thrashing all of the islands in that area of the world where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean meet, descended on southern Florida with a fury only matched by a little league parent who is certain the referee has slighted his little star.

Both of those events could be described as "catastrophic disasters."  Prepping in the sense of stockpiling goods might not have done many people in the path of those hurricanes a lot of good, but Mr. Anthony also pokes fun at the "Bug-Out Bag", which is, usually a backpack filled with provisions and ready to be grabbed as one runs out the door.  

There were many areas in Florida that were under mandatory evacuation.  So, you tell me, when is it better to plan for an evacuation - when you're being shouted at by the police to leave the area, or now, when you're sitting, calmly, in your living room reading this article?  When are you more likely to be able to think, rationally, about what you might need in the event of an emergency?

When I was in college, the university provided low-cost housing to students who were married and/or had children.  It was a trailer park, and I lived there.  One evening when I was home alone with my two children, the police rolled through my neighborhood telling all of us that we needed to get out ... now!  A tornado had touched down nearby.  We were being evacuated.   I grabbed my kids, shoved a couple of diapers and a quick snack in my purse, and snatched up a ball - as something for my kids to play with.  It was a warm late spring day when we evacuated to the basement of a nearby building. Inside the bowels of that building, sitting on the marble floors, it was cold.  My children and I weren't dressed for the chill of the cold floor in the air conditioned building.  I didn't have a blanket.  I didn't have extra clothes for any of us.  Heck, my daughter didn't even have on shoes or socks (she was still a baby).  I didn't have water.  I didn't have any money.  

The list of what I didn't have was pretty long, and thankfully, after two hours, we were sent back to our homes.  Nothing happened.  We were fine.  The house was still intact.  I hadn't lost anything except two hours of study time.  

It could have been worse, though.  It could have been a lot worse.  That tornado could have destroyed my home, and I and my children could have been left with nothing more than the clothes on our backs, and the few silly things I hastily grabbed on my way out the door.  I didn't even have any identification for them, and I certainly didn't have any of my important papers.  

If back then, I'd had a bug-out bag, we would have had everything we needed, plus a lot more, and those other people who were stuck in that cold basement would have been really grateful when I pulled out blankets and snacks.    

Later in my life, I experienced other SHTF events.  These, like the tornado evacuation, were always short-lived, but the fact that I was prepared those times made my life a heck of a lot easier.

In 2008, much of the northeast was hit with a significant ice storm.  It was the second such storm I'd experienced since I'd moved to Maine a decade earlier.  The worst part of this storm, for my family, was that we were without electricity for a few days.  So, imagine.  It's the middle of winter.  There is no electricity in your house.  Quick!  What do you do?

Can you heat your house?  Can you cook meals?  Do you have candles, flashlights, or oil lamps? Would you even be able to stay in your house for the duration of the event?  Would your pipes freeze? Would you be able to care for your pets or, like too many people did during the recent hurricane emergencies, would you be forced to abandon them?

Some folks ended up in a hotel or a motel ... if they could find one that still had power and vacancies.

We stayed home.

We played games.

We read books.

We even rigged up the FM transmitter that we keep in our car (and is usually powered by the car lighter) so that we could listen to an audiobook through the solar-powered radio.

On day two of our power outage, Deus Ex Machina's nephew came over to our house to spend the day, because there was no school.  He asked us what we did all day with no television, and so my daughters showed him.  They played some games.  They made origami animals.  They colored.  They danced and sang.  

I made lunch on the wood stove.

In the mornings, I heated water on the wood stove.  We had hot baths.  We had coffee.  We were able to wash dishes.

In the evenings, we had plenty of light with my stockpile of candles, oil lamps, and flashlights.  Dinner, including fresh baked bread, was cooked on the wood stove.

On day three of our power outage, Deus Ex Machina went to work in the morning, just like usual, and I hooked my computer and transcriber up to the car jump-starter and did my job, too.

The day the power company crew came to my neighborhood to restore our electric service, I was hanging my freshly laundered clothes on the line outside.

Not much about our lives changed significantly ... because we are prepared.  We don't have a generator, but we know for a fact that we can survive without electricity without any hardship at all.

And without scrambling to buy a generator or running to the store for supplies, because, thanks to our prepper mind-set, we usually have most of what we need.

There are some Prepper-fantasy scenarios that are a little far-fetched - more likely to occur in fiction than in real life.  All sorts of novels cover the possibility of a solar flare or an EMP attack that completely destroys all electronics, or a viral plague that wipes out 90% of the human race. Mostly those events are fiction, but both of them can happen, and have-ish.

To wit:  a solar storm (coronal mass ejection or CME) known as the Carrington Event knocked out telegraph transmissions in 1859.  If a similar event occurred in the US today, it could destroy significant parts of the electrical grid, and knock out power in some parts of the country for months ... maybe longer.  Such an event could happen and would be catastrophic.  It probably won't, though.  And, while an EMP, which would have a similar effect, can be accomplished by detonating a nuclear bomb up in the stratosphere (or, you know, up in the clouds, up there someplace), it probably won't happen, either.  You know, it's not like North Korea has nuclear bombs or anything, or that they don't like us.  Oh ... wait.

As for plagues, those have also happened.  In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague wiped out much of Europe (although some research is also suggesting that it wasn't just the Black Plague, but a combination of pestilence, including bacillus anthracis, or Anthrax).  Of course, that was a very long time ago, and we have a vaccinations these days.  But ...

Ebola is pretty awful.  There's no vaccine.  It probably won't spread to the rest of the world, but from 2014 to 2016, several West African countries fought to keep the disease from spreading. People were ordered to quarantine themselves in their homes.  So, imagine that you can't leave your house.  Can you feed yourself?  Do you have water?  Can you cook your food?  Can you heat your home?  Ebola probably won't happen HERE, where I live, but it did happen somewhere.  The Preppers in West Africa were living well in their quarantined, well-stocked homes.

Let's talk about some other possibilities that are not just crazy, "out there" ideas that are just never going to happen here, but rather some real scenarios that really could happen, over which we would have absolutely NO control, but for which we could be somewhat prepared.

In the 1990s, the USSR collapsed.  The USSR, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a massive entity in Eurasia that was formed just after World War I.   Land wise, it was huge.  We collectively referred to them as the Soviet Union, and most of us here in America thought they were all "Russians", but the USSR was actually made up of 15 different countries with several more countries, sort of, being controlled by the government in Moscow.

So, when the USSR collapsed, it was pretty catastrophic for a lot of people.  The Russians retreated back to Russia where there were shortages of everything.  Dmitry Orlov, who grew up in the US, but visited family in Russia, tells great stories about what he saw during his visits behind the curtain of how the people were dealing with the financial collapse.

Argentina, Cuba, Greece, and Venezuela have all recently experienced their own financial collapses, and lest you think it can't happen here, please note that Venezuela is one of the top oil producing countries in this world.  They should have plenty of money to sustain their economy.  Unlike Venezuela, the US does not have its own supply of oil.  If, by some crazy happenstance (oh, I don't know, like the 1970s OPEC-led oil embargo against the US), we lose our oil suppliers, things would be very bad.

If you want a very small glimpse of how it might look to have less oil available, and at a much higher price, do some research on what happened to Cuba when Russia stopped supplying the Cubans with oil.  

Or, perhaps, just harken back to 2008, right here in the good ole US of A, when the price of gasoline skyrocketed, almost overnight, and everyone freaked out.  Truckers went on strike in protest of the high prices.  Goods weren't delivered.  It wasn't too bad, but it could have been.

Shit happens all of the time, and being prepared for the "it" is not a bad thing.

One of the most popular lists for preppers is the 100 items list.  It was originally compiled by a survivor of the Sarajevo siege.  I'm sure you're thinking, why should I care about Sarajevo?

In 1992, Sarajevo was a beautiful, modern city.  It is the capital of Bosnia and hosted the 1984 Olympics.  That year (1992) opposing military factions laid siege to the city, trapping civilians inside the urban confines. The Siege has the distinction of being the longest in the history of modern warfare and lasted almost four years.

Thirteen years ago, I found this graphic novel, Fax from Sarajevo, at my library.  I had no idea what I was borrowing.   The story was horrifying in its harrowing details.  The civilians who lived in the city were constantly being shot at.  These were just regular people.  A man and his wife and their children, struggling not to get killed as these two opposing armies fought each other.  If that wasn't bad enough, they also needed stuff to stay alive, like food and clean water.  No supplies came in.  No one got out. Those cartoon images have stayed with me.

It is unlikely that southern Maine will end up in a siege.  But ... I'm almost positive that if I found Doc Emmett Brown and bartered a ride in his Delorean back to 1984, and I was able to buy a ticket to the Olympics and visit Sarajevo, and talk to the people who lived there, not one of them would express the belief that their beautiful city would be torn asunder by war in eight years.  They'd probably laugh at me.  Loudly.  And point and jeer.

Kind of like Mr. Anthony did in 2015 in his nasty little anti-prepper diatribe.

But the reality - for a lot of people in this world - is that the shit hits the fan all of the time.  War happens, and usually, it happens in places and to people who aren't thinking it could ever happen to them, like most of us living in the US.  War doesn't happen here, right?  In 1991, that is exactly what they were saying in Sarajevo.

I'm also pretty sure that in 2014 no one in Sierra Leone expected that their country would be home to more than 14,000 cases of a deadly and virulent hemorrhagic fever.

And if I could go back to a 4th of July party in Houston, not one of my fellow party-goers would believe me if I tried to warn them that they would be under a three-day siege from a Hurricane with the same name as some actor from the Carol Burnett comedy show.

Our mantra as humans is "It won't happen to me."

The difference between the Mr. Anthonys of this world and the Preppers he derides is that we, Preppers, DO believe it can (and probably will) happen to us, and instead of throwing up our hands in defeat, we decide to do something about it.

He can laugh, if he wants, but come winter, if Maine experiences another electricity stealing ice storm, I'll be living life, pretty much, as usual.

A final word:

There are a lot of SHTF scenarios.  Some are huge events that are devastating to a lot of people, like most of the ones I mentioned.  All of the ones I mentioned HAVE happened, and millions of people were adversely affected by them.  With the exception of the catastrophic CME, all of them have happened somewhere in the world in MY lifetime.  I've been a witness, peripherally, to most of the catastrophic events that we, preppers, are hedging against.

But there's one more, and every one of us is likely to experience that SHTF scenario.  The last one is a job loss or some significant financially devastating event (like an illness).

Deus Ex Machina and I went through the job loss event this summer.  It wasn't bad for us, because we have a prepper mindset, because we are always aware that this modern way of life is not sustainable and not non-negotiable, and because we know that things can change on a whim, and do.

Deus Ex Machina found a job.   We didn't lose our home.  No one starved.  We didn't have to sell our kidneys ... or our children.   We didn't sell our cars or our furniture or our clothes to make ends meet. We didn't have to rehome our pets because we couldn't feed them.  We didn't have to take out loans or end up with credit card debt.  We're still happily married and happily together.

In fact, with the exception of having an awesome summer together with no one having to get up early every day to go to work, our lives didn't change all that much.

Honestly, the whole tone of Leslie Anthony's article was condescending, and yes, as a Prepper, I was deeply insulted.  I guess, I just think, as a highly educated "scientist" kind of guy, we should expect  more from him than just a nine paragraph rant about a demographic he clearly doesn't care to understand.

Maybe, instead of just trolling through a couple of Prepper websites, Mr. Anthony should have done some real research ... you know, like an actual scientist or journalist should be doing ... and gone out and actually met some of the real people in the Prepper world.  If he had done his due diligence, I'm certain his article would have had a very different tone.

But then, if he'd met some real preppers, he would have had to hop down off his soap box and admit that real-life Preppers are more than a reality show caricature.

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[edited to add]

And now that the world is in the midst of one of those "catastrophic" events, now that billions have been locked down and/or quarantined, millions have lost their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to this disease, I wonder what naysayers, like Mr. Anthony are saying.

To be clear, this isn't my "I told you so" moment, because we aren't done with this.  COVID-19 and its aftermath will be with us for a while.  We still don't know what the overall economic impact will be.  Things are still scarce.  People are still afraid.  At a minimum, we'll have to keep wearing that god-awful mask, and my job, as an office manager at a community theater, is in jeopardy, since we can't have folks congregating in enclosed spaces and theaters are, as a result, closed.  I don't feel "I told you so."  This is not a laughing time.  

It is a time for us to take stock of where we go from here.

For those of you who were preppers before all of this began:  how do you feel about your preparations?   

For those of you who weren't preppers:  what's your plan for the future?

Here at Chez Brown, we were well prepped.  In fact, because I had to come home to work, but Deus Ex Machina was considered an "essential worker" and still went to his job, our lives actually went back to what they were pre-2018, when I owned a home-based business.  It was nice. 

I had more time - and energy - to tend to my space: housekeeping, garden, cooking - all thrived during my lockdown.

We discovered new ways to get what we needed (curbside pick-up for the win!!).  We discovered new businesses (hooray!  Locally caught fish!).  We found a couple of really cool home delivery services for products we would never have considered having home delivered (there's a wine service that home delivers - I didn't subscribe, but how cool is that!). 

We returned to doing things we'd done before, staying home, spending time, doing things. 

For us, it was nice to be reminded of what is important and to return to those activities.