Looking back at survival preps.

In the last few months we have lost some very good people from the forum. Grit being the last. Not going to kick the bucket in next few days, but 83 and with cancer, I am deeply aware that our time on earth is measured, we just don't know the numbers. If it wouldn't bother others, I would like to talk about the things I have done over the last 50 years to prepare for the SHTF event that hasn't happened and how they have interacted with my every day life.

My first priority I guess is to have some form of security in what is going to happen next. I have a strong faith in God and a trust in the Lord and that serves me well. If you believe that it is all science and that when you die it will all end, so be it. Not my point to argue and all I can hope is that you find some thing that comforts you as I have seen too many pass in total panic as to what comes next.

Took a second try, but the first and most important aspect of any survival plan is have a wife or husband that participates in it with you. If they think a 6 bedroom, 6 bathroom house, in the right suburb is the only way to live, and that a new car to replace the one you bought last year is more important than that older mechanical diesel tractor, you might as well give up on any major prepping unless you have Bill Gates money and just buy a small country. I might sound a little old school in my use of marriage, but the older I get, the more I find a long term commitment, I think lifetime, is one of the major factors in prepping. We haven't used the buckets of wheat, etc, but I am in bed, she is 81, brings me my apple sauce, pills, coffee, etc. God knows it isn't because of the money or the beauty, but that is what she does, and when she had open heart surgery, that is what I did. Being very independent and totally your own person may well be nice at 30, but at some point in life we are all going to need the help and comfort of someone else. It is very hard to create a better commitment than 40 years of sharing life, good times and bad. That does include grand dad's statement that every time you have an argument, solve it, give in or work it out, if you both didn't think you were right, you wouldn't be fighting. Almost all relationships break up over the last straw, the final act only reflects all the previous events.


Select a way of making a living that you are comfortable doing and that allows you to live where you wish. I have been a power tool mechanic for the last 35 years, fix jackhammers, drills, gensets, air compressors, etc and a machinist for a period before that. Before that I taught college, was a medical economist working in civil service and went to college. In my lifetime my choice of what I do lead to a lot less income, loss of my first wife, and a complete loss of high blood pressure and ulcers. It also allowed me to move to a rural area, buy some land, build a place, and remarry.

I bought a piece of land out in the sticks on a dirt road with 2 chicken farms, a lot of woods and fields, and about 6 other houses. Dug a well, put in a septic, moved a trailer onto the land and built a wood shed. Small, old, cold, the works, but never had a mortgage and the banks have not been paid twice what the house costs. Can't do that most places anymore, the banks have closed that loop hole in making it thru life. Over time we put in a basement, added on to the place, put on a second floor, a deep well, garage, green house, it is warm and comfortable, at least to us. 40 years later the farms are gone, the road is paved, and there are 50 houses, none of which I could afford to buy, on the road. Is it any longer a bug out site, no, but I have lived here very well for over 40 years and had my gardens, woods, the whole 9 yards.

When we put in the basement and the addition on, about 35 years ago, we started to heat with wood. We have dyed diesel for backup oil heat. Last 275 gal tank lasted 7 years, thank you PRI-D, and once you have chain saws, splitter, small tractor, etc, cost of wood is minimal. Have 2 cords on deck for this winter, additional 10 cord of 2 to 4 year old cut and split in wood shed and 10 cord from this and last year on skids and tarped waiting to get into woodshed. When we had ice storm and power was for 10 days, as far as heating goes, never noticed it. While you can, buy the best wood stove you can and the best double piped stainless steel chimney you can. Paid $2,000 for the best stove Pacific Energy makes about 10 to 15 years ago. Burns half as much wood as a barrel, with hard woods, when I clean the chimney, from the bottom with flex pipes and a drill, a couple coffee cans of ashes come down and the pipe has no coating. Next hook up stove draft to outside air for burning. Cuts out 90 % of drafts as you aren't pulling 10 below air in around your windows and doors to run thru your house and into the stove to burn and go up pipe. You will find that if your house is tight, you will need plants and outside air to keep humidity and oxygen level where you want. Stove is no longer pumping air thru house. The stove is a hot air machine, it takes air and carbon from the wood and converts it to heat and gasses. To run the machine you need air and fuel, the chimney furnishes the pump that runs the whole thing. Hot air rises, to keep chimney safe, it should be at above about 300 degrees until it goes out the top. Less than that and liquids and tars condense and run back down the pipe, a stinking dirty mess that if it contains the wood tars, can build up and catch fire and burn your hose down. Now that beautiful stone chimney fireplace you saw in the middle of that old house with the fireplace burning in the hearth was designed to catch the heat, over 90% of the fireplace heat goes up the chimney, and radiate it into the house, put the chimney on the outside of the house, and it heats the outside unless you use an insulated chimney insert in it. You can try, but you can't out wit mother nature. In my humble opinion, a good modern metal chimney, good modern air tight stove that reburns the smoke, with outside air, can cut your wood use by at least 60 % in our experience. In addition it will burn 12 hours on a filling and keep the house an even temp.

Wood costs here go from $300 a cord, 128 cubic feet, to free but labor of getting it. Have an old 1941 9N ford tractor, gets into woods well, a good 4 wheeler will do the same. The modern timber harvesting equipment is heavy, they want to take all the wood, and they leave a mess. Up until now, don't know with my health, but I have people begging me to come into their woods, cut selected trees, cherry or dead wood, etc, cut it, get rid of the brush, and leave no tracks, in some cases with wet areas etc, they have paid me to remove firewood. In addition the tree service will drop truck load of large logs that they have removed from houses for free. Too big for wood processors and danger of metal in them make them worthless to timber industry.

When I built my house I used a back hoe to go as deep as I could and then hand dug a little deeper. Ended up with a 24 foot hole with about 5 feet of water in it. Used it for house for 20 years and never went dry. With all the new houses, don't know about recharge today, but well is about 500 feet away from flood control pond with sand all the way, and water level is close to that of pond. Still connected to house and works, try it out a few times a year for watering lawns etc. Has 1/2 hp shallow well pump, 110 volt, and operates well on my genset. I also went out to Amish country and bought an old style hand pump and installed it on the well head. It works well and I pump with it for the greenhouse also. I have a 12 V pump connected to the well that I I use on it for my greenhouse watering, battery and solar cell, with ac charger on battery as a backup. With all the new houses going in the wife became upset with the shallow ll and I had a deep well drilled. It has a 220 v pump, is about 250 ft deep with about 230 feet of water in well when not pumped. 20 gal a min pump ran for 30 min pumped the level down about 20 feet, so over 20 gal a min. Water has all the usual New England granite stuff so treat it with chlorine to convert metals etc to solids let sit in 2 250 gal tanks, then filter thru carbon filter that back washes every third day. Over kill, yes, water taste better than store bought, yes, expensive, yes in short run, over 20 years no. I really don't consider 500 gallons of drinking water plus hot water tank and pressure tank a negative in my preps. Since it is "rotated" on a constant basis. When I dug my basement out, did it one summer by hand with the wife's help, I used a post hole digger, screw type, and a block and tackle, had trailer on blocks so I had a good purchase point for block, and dug down an extra 20 feet, found out that the water level was about 10 feet lower than basement floor, very comforting, and that I could put in a well point,6 in screen with close to 10 feet of water, back filled with stone for 10 feet and sealed with clay above that. Now have a hand pump with water in my concrete roofed "root" cellar. Total cost without labor, about $200.

Tractors are addictive around a place. Started out with a huge worn out Case backhoe. Leaked ever where, wasn't worth rebuilding the cylinders, the whole 9 yards. Dug out my well, removed the stumps from the fields, plowed the snow, etc. Replaced it with a 1941 9N tractor that an old man 20 years ago didn't want to see junked, didn't run. Valves were stuck, tore it down, ground the valves, in engine, had head trued up, converted it to 12 volts, put in new gaskets, changed out oil in engine and xmission, rebuilt old carb and cleaned fuel tank. Total cost about $500 and I am still using it. Tires dried out until you can see canvas but as they are loaded, no danger if they do go.I am tempted to go thru it again and put some new tires on it and try to find it a good home, Hate to think of it being scrapped out for metal. Present 2nd tractor is a 2005 MF 52 hp diesel mechanical pump and injectors, and it is an old man's tractor. Cab with radio, heat, and air conditioning, block heater and glow plugs, 3,000 pounds on 3 point, 2,500 on bucket, window in back low so you can see 3 point. Best darn stair climber ever built, up and down into it 2 dozen times a day when using it, legs in better shape than they have been in years. Also the 275 gal of fuel oil stored in the house, now add to as I use it, will run the tractor well as most of the fuel used for heating the rest of the houses around me. Nice to move wood with quick detach forks, inside if it rains or plow snow in winter warm and dry. In fake dollars, it is worth several thousand more than I paid for it and as a bonus all of my Ford 9N 3 point equipment fits it. At 83 to be able to pick up a log on forks, cut chunks off the log, put the bucket on, roll chunks into bucket and onto table of splitter, then pick up shrink wrapped skids of wood with forks and put in line for covering to dry and then take in skids to woodshed is not only a blessing, but about the only way I can do it.

Garden and greenhouse have been a blessing and a life saver. Can't eat store bought tomatoes any more, almost same for radishes, lettuce, and such. Biggest problem with green house is leaving it on a cold Feb day, wind blowing outside, 30 degrees outside, temp in 70's inside working in shirt sleeves in bright sunny place, who wants to go back into house and sit in living room and watch the idiot box or type on a computer. I have went almost totally to bato buckets for big plants and flood trays for lettuce, kale, etc. Between weather, insects and fungus disease, I have about given up on tomatoes and such outside. Buying cheap plants at the big box stores that don't grow well and come with all the bugs and diseases loaded doesn't work out well, but most of my neighbors buy them, plant them, and then the bee's, wind, etc bring them to my place. Then in the fall when they have put them in poor soil, not watched the water or weeded them well and as could have been foretold, get no real produce, they all admire my plants and talk about my "green" thumb" when I would rather be talking about their "black" thumb. If you are interested in growing your own food, the best comment on that in the forum was recently posted. Animal Manure WARNING !!!!!!! It proves that the best of all intentions by all involved may still end destroying a lot of hard work or killing you. Don't expect your greenhouse and garden or even you animals to be a resource in the short run for survival. I meet total strangers at the garage when I am getting my car fixed, with all the new computer stuff as well as the weight of somethings, I end up there, who say so you are the one with the beautiful garden and greenhouse on ************ road. and if they were hungry, they might not remember my name, but they will remember the garden. Then in the name of keeping the town happy, ASPCA types etc, the town keeps track of dogs, cats chickens, pigs etc, so if TSHTF they will be out to distribute it. I am sure that they will have no interest in my long term storage fertilizes etc however. Like to keep enough for 4 or so years, Instead of buying Miracle Grow at Wally's World, that doesn't work here, not enough calcium and such due to the granite rather than limestone, buy a 50 lb sack of the proper Jacks fertilizer blended with the right micro chemicals and some additives to get the right blends of the nitrogen etc you need for the plants stage of growth. If you wish to go organic in a green house, I have had the best luck with home made compost and a blend of fish concentrate and seaweed concentrate. Had no luck at all with any one of them alone and it is a learning experience as how you blend it as it requires that you watch leaf development, leaf size, leaf color, blossom set, number of blossoms, how the blossoms fall off the fruit, etc. Good luck doing that and depending on the good outcome on your continued survival. If you go for all the high tech organic plant foods, a work of caution, the biggest and best paying customers they have are the most interested in raising the best and most potent bud and although it may well do away with the worries about long term survival, I don't think it would do much to insure that outcome.

Insurance is another of those real questions, I have paid house insurance for 60 years, never filed a claim, car insurance for 65 and filed one claim for 2500, health insurance for 60 and until recently didn't get much out of it. But last month my bills were 42 thousand plus and with insurance, my out of pocket expenses were $4. It's your dice to roll, while I hate paying for insurance, it boils down to a form of blackmail, if you don't play the game, you can and will lose everything. When Morgan and Morgan or the maffia come, you aren't going to win. By the same token, I don't consider spending a couple thousand a year on prepps any less of an expense than car or other insurance. For that is what it boils down, once it is beyond lifestyle, it is insurance.

What you eat, how you fix it, how you store it, how much you exercise are all personal decisions that in the long run determine if you live or die. While it is not likely that you will need your long term food stores, your diet choice can determine if you get heart disease, become diabetic, or just lose the ability to function. I was working down at the local long term care facility helping a friend remove some concrete forms with my tractor. I am 83 and was running the tractor while he set the chains to lift and to move it down to the truck, a lot of the people sitting on the deck watching me were in their 50's and 60"s. Noticed that a lot were very over weight, smoked, drank, a lot of other lifestyles. See a lot of burned out druggies at 35 who managed not to overdose and they aren't doing well. Watch my sodium and find out that I have to cook most of my food from scratch, almost all prepared food is much to high to eat. Before TSHTF one of life's greatest helps is an electric pressure cooker and a hot pot. You can take beans, wheat, rice, millet, lentils, etc and very quickly and with no muss and fuss fix fresh cooked grains and veggies. The grains taste good, they are rotated out of your stores, you could cook them on your survival equipment and should do so once in a while, but beans in a pressure cooker don't take all day to cook and it seems to soften up some of the beans and such better. Everything is individual choice but we have pretty much given up on meat, very hard to buy local sourced and very expensive, no longer raise our own pigs or chickens, and really don't trust mass produced product, don't know if it makes a difference, just personal choice.

Need to get busy with life and bag is full. If you read this far, hope I didn't bore you and I would like to hear how some of the others have done as they passed thru this life. When we talk about prepping we should consider what effect it has had our past as well at talking of our future. Some of the best posts on the forum are on what the members are doing or have done.

Just realized that in talking about preps, I never got around to firearms, reloading, etc. So much part of my life that I often forget them. Don't shoot much, reload because it gives me pleasure, have several firearms but still prefer the 06 given to me by the government in 50's for being on school rifle team and ability to reload the cartridges almost forever with neck only resizing and the ability to load down for target shooting, mild recoil. Prefer the 1911, but finding most of my pistol is now P226 as 9 mm is a lot easier to handle than 45. Still love shooting 36 cal ball replica , never have lost the love of the Remington and just wish I had bought a couple extra cylinders 50 years ago. Can't say if guns have made any difference in my life, got a lot of pleasure out of hobby and think they are a basic right.

 

Great post, as usual !

 

Duane, as usual I hang on every word. I really enjoy your posts as they make me stop and think. I love learning from those that have already done it, or know how to do it a little better. You are a treasure to this group Sir!

 

We are only going down this particular road once, the best we can do is to try to chose the right places to turn and to enjoy the scenery. Some people with everything throw life away, others with nothing marvel at the beautiful sunrises and are happy, God gave me the gifts of free will, sometimes a little much of the gift, the ability to enjoy life and be happy, and the ability to think about things. With these gifts, during good times and bad, I have always enjoyed life to the fullest and hope to have the ability when I die, to look forward to the next step rather than fear it. If I can do it, this will have been a long and very fulfilling road indeed..

 

Bless you Duane, You and the wife,Fight the good fight !

 

Godspeed Duane sounds like you have all your ducks in a row. A lot of people are terrified of what is on the other side. I'm glad you have peace in your life.

 

Just to add a few items, never knew I would live this long and escaped some pretty bad events, both in natural disease and man made events. Lived as straight as an arrow, never stole lied or cheated on my two wives or girlfriends or anyone else.

Always felt the Lord has a place for me and work to do and as such I had to prove I was good enough to receive what ever he had planned.

So I'll just keep on keeping on my chosen or maybe planned course until this life plays out.

 

Duane, what an insperation you are. That was a fantastic read. I am surrounded by poeple who are "Products of my generation" some are more interested in buying it and not growing it, Replacing it not fixing it, spending it and not saving it. some of that is how they were raised. they dont know how to grow, fix, save. But I think a lot of it depends on the choices they make with their free will.
I wish there were more people like you to surround myself with. the work ethic of old seems lost on the new generations and they will never experience the joy and peace that it brings into thier lives. building and growing with ones own hands is the best feeling I can think of. I am working hard to be a "New Product of My Generation" or rather an "old Product of a new Generation"?
either way I hope I make to my 80's and when I do I hope to be able to look back as you did and say "well done..."
but for now I will keep working hard and looking for the lucky lady to share it with!
thanks again Duane.

 

Well, when I die someone's gonna' get some cool stuff.

 

Real question in my life, given the choice between leaving behind some real cool toys, other than things I have made, or should I enjoy life to the fullest? Long ago made my choice that beyond security and safety for my continued life style, I don't need a new car, all the other "needs", etc, and I will enjoy my garden, greenhouse, wife and dog, and all of God's other gifts, including this forum, to the best of my abilities.

Enjoyed your post brokor, don't know what will happen and in the long run scheme of things, I will have less effect than a Mayfly on the world, so just try to live my life as best I can. When it gets right down to the end, that is all any of us can do.

 

Or as I've told my wife: "The estate sale will truly be an epic event"

 

Amen Duane.

My life as a prepper started in the early 60's as a Boy Scout (Eagle, 1965). The Scout motto "Be Prepared" was one I took pretty seriously and have carried all my adult life.

We are 39 years living on our homestead, carved out of a hunk of rough East TN mountain side and made into a working, reasonably self sufficient place to live. Like Duane, we've seen it grow from a Jeep-rut of a barely gravel road into our property to a paved road with a lot more folks living on it than in 1982.

The one factor that does limit growth in our little mountain valley is lack of public water.....meaning drilling a well for most, an expense that tends to limit growth. (we use a spring as I've mention in the past, but also have a drilled well for backup).

I wonder sometimes what will become of this place when we're gone (no kids) and if they will have any appreciation for the blood/sweat/tears that went into building this place....or if it even matters....aaaahhhaaa. Been a great life here, and I hope to get another 20 years or so before it's time to exit.