Homesteading Leads to Preparedness

We don’t consider ourselves “Preppers.” We are “Homesteaders.” When you really break it down though, homesteading leads to preparedness. Almost inevitably, the two paths will run parallel and cross over each other. The lines between these two groups are extremely blurry.

Growing up in Southeast Alaska, you learn early on that it is always good to have some extra cans of food and bags of staples tucked back ‘just in case.’ In the last three years, we have gone from being your typical American consumers: mindless, in debt, and eating questionable ‘food products,’ to people trying to be as self-reliant and self-sustainable as is reasonable given where we live. Some parts have been very easy while others took some getting used to. Let me explain.

Homesteading revolves largely around food and providing your needs through your own labor and efforts (rather than buying everything you need). It requires planning for the future while taking care of the now. It demands time and considerable thought to ensure you will be successful and even then, there really is no ‘guarantee.’ That’s life, right? None of us are guaranteed a darn thing….except maybe paying taxes. That is pretty much a universal truth, but I digress. Homesteading forces you to think about the next growing season while you are harvesting this year. It makes you learn how to adapt to situations and challenges in unique ways. Your skill set demands being expanded the deeper you get into it, too. Being able to make bread is all well and good but taking care of a flock of chickens is another thing altogether.

Homesteading Requires:

• The majority of your perceptions to change
• Thinking outside the box
• Putting up extra food in case of a bad crop year (or a bad hunt, loss of job, etc)
• Thinking of the future while taking care of the now
• Securing your stocks and supplies from predators (whether 2 legged or 4 legged)
• Some specialized equipment and skills

Now replace the word “homesteading” with “prepping” and notice how the criteria easily fits both lifestyles. If you homestead, you watch the sales on things like toilet paper and buy cases at a time to save money and stock up. A homesteader may not be able to get to town for shopping more than a few times a year. A prepper wants to make sure they have an emergency supply of TP. A homesteader will trade their time and skills to get the things they need or learn to do without. A prepper, at some point in their journey, will understand and accept they can’t do it all on their own (at least, I hope they get it!) and seek other like minded people to create a stronger unit.

Homesteading leads to preparedness out of necessity and logic.

I joke with people and tell them I am turning into my Grandma. While no pioneer or homesteader, the woman knew how to preserve food and had a hobby garden. She was one heck of a fisherman and a fair shot, too. No matter it was just her and Grandpa, she would still buy a case of green beans when they were on sale and always, always had a walk in pantry/storage area filled with canned food next to the food she processed herself. I cannot ever recall a time when she didn’t have at least 2 cases of salmon (both smoked and not), plus jars of venison and crab meat. Growing up, that was normal. It wasn’t weird or extreme. Just like the homesteaders and pioneers of old, when you have extra, put it up for when you have less. They also weren’t considered weird, food hoarders, or ‘extremist preppers.’

As I said above, I am very used to having some dry staples and canned food hanging around just in case. When I was a kid, sometimes the barge that brought all the supplies for the island (including grocery stores) wouldn’t be able to make it in and a that week would be skipped for deliveries. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in years and now that I am an adult and have a better understanding of the supply chain, I stock up for different reasons. A catastrophic event thousands of miles away can indeed have a ripple effect to us up here, especially if it disrupts the flow of goods and supplies.

Knowing we will be living even more remotely will require us to be more like a ‘prepper’ would be in some aspects. Trips to town for supplies will be limited enough but when you add in the unpredictable weather of Southeast Alaska, it could easily be longer in the winter months. Because of that, when we go to get supplies, we will always need to get extra. Use 1, buy 2. The main difference between homesteading and prepping in this case would be to what length each lifestyle would go to on the shopping front.

Many preppers out there just buy a bucket of food, maybe some ‘survival gear’ and consider themselves covered. A homesteader understands that they need to learn theskills, and practice them often, to produce (rather that simply consume) what they need from raw or whole materials.

Homesteading leads to preparedness out of necessity and logic. If you do not prepare for the next cycle or season on your homestead, the domino effect will threaten to tear everything apart that you have worked so hard for. For a homesteader like myself, I don’t prepare for some huge, catastrophic event per se. I prepare for LIFE and for what it can throw at you. It is more likely to have a medical issue or lose a job than it is to have nuclear fallout. I am not saying nuclear fallout isn’t possible, I’m just saying the other events have a higher probability of happening.

The further we get into this life, as much as we are able to now anyway, the more I realize that what people call ‘prepping’ is the way our great grandparents lived. Both preppers and homesteaders seek to be self reliant. They both strive for being able to provide for themselves when the chips are down. Homesteaders, however, live the cycle every single day and are always building on it with eyes to the future growth and prosperity. Prepping is more geared toward making it through a disaster relatively unscathed and rebuild afterward. Both are honorable goals but when you really shake off the media hype and the dust….there isn’t much difference.

http://www.homesteaddreamer.com/2015/05/06/homesteading-leads-to-preparedness/