Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
“Wives are instrumental in this work, but they need husbands who lead out in family preparedness. Children need parents who instill in them this righteous tradition. They will then do likewise with their children, and their stores will not fail.”
Keith B. McMullin, ‘Lay Up in Store,’ Ensign May 2007
(This is a cross post from my blog: Adventures in Self Reliance)
I read a post at Preparedness Pro recently about the importance of learning skills. Acquiring useful skills is actually something I’ve thought about a lot in case you couldn’t tell by all the crazy stuff I share with you that I’ve been doing. I believe that having a quiver full of skills and things you’ve actually tried is way better than having a library of books about self sufficiency. Now don’t get me wrong, your resource books are very important. It’s just that having experience with something, even if it didn’t go so well, gives you so much more to work with. Continue reading “Living History to Learn Skills”
(Cross posted from my blog).
In 1624, the English poet John Donne wrote in one of his Meditations that “no man is an island.” His poem explains how our common humanity ties us together in one common thread, and that as individuals we cannot thrive in isolation. Christians have been taught likewise, their common identity as followers of Jesus binding them together into a body focused on one purpose. Whatever the commonality that brings us together, the simple fact is that our spiritual and physical survival depends on our willingness and ability to help one another along our shared path.
This principle is especially important in terms of preparedness. When a catastrophe comes our way, each family will quickly discover a need for things they didn’t think to keep in supply, and only through bartering and buying from others will they be able to obtain those things. Isolated individuals will be easy prey for roving gangs and other desperate groups. Lack of communication will increase frustration, loneliness, and ignorance. Only by becoming part of a trusted network beforehand will we be able to more easily deal with whatever disasters may strike.
With the Swine Flu news is coming talk of possible quarantines.
When I was a kid my family was quarantined by the county health department because my baby sister contracted whooping cough at less than a month old and more than one of the rest of us were carriers. We were pulled out of school in the middle of the day and escorted home.We were not supposed to leave or have anyone over. Homework got deposited in our milk box where we would retrieve it when the deliverer had gone. Thankfully there were medications we could take and the quarantine period was under a week—just until we weren’t contagious anymore. But what about a disease there is not medication for? How would that be dealt with? How long would a quarantine need to be in place to be effective? And what would you do with all that time isolated from society?
Continue reading “On Quarantine and Cabin Fever”
Any minute now, I might become a father. My wife is (very) pregnant with our first child, and the seconds are ticking until our lives change significantly (for the better!). As the months have gone by, we have dedicated a great deal of time to readying, studying, and researching how best to do everything we’re soon going to need to do.
Preparedness has played a large role—indeed, a central role, since what we’ve been doing up until now is preparing for our son’s birth. Having an end result in mind forces us to think in the long term, and purchase things, learn skills, and become well versed in all that will be necessary. Too often we get wrapped up in the here and now, and let our long-term preps take a backseat.
Continue reading “Family Dynamics and Perpetual Preparedness”
One of the most important factors in being able to build up a quality food storage program is to actually store the food that you will eat and find a way to rotate that stored food into your daily diet. The problem many of us face is that while pizza is fast and convenient, and the pizza boxes stack really well, the food sure doesn’t last. I also don’t think that if I ordered an extra meal from the local Chinese delivery place, that I could just throw it onto my food storage shelving and expect it to do any good.
Part of the problem is that most families, especially those of my admittedly younger age group, have grown so accustomed to having cheap, tasteful food at our fingertips that we have lost the skill of actually cooking for ourselves. The family dinner at the table has become a thing of the past as have the requisite skills from planning meals ahead of time to storing for particular meal needs. Fortunately, for the past couple of years my family has participated in a program with several of our neighbors that has helped combat this trend and created an excellent, yet unplanned opportunity for us all to build up our food storage supplies and skills.
How does it work? Let’s look at the basics of our dinner group program.
