March madness begins and although I wrote this post back in December, I believe this reminder of Being Prepared is especially relevant this month.
One of the things I’ve learned over the past decade is that you should always be prepared for anything, but this was not something I always knew. Growing up in a big city, I found that people relied blindly on services such as electricity and water, assuming stores would always have a continuous supply of everything and anything one could need. And more importantly right now, you should have enough cash on hand in the event you can’t access money from your bank account.
Even in the ’70s, my parents did not stock up. Instead, they shopped for groceries every week with nothing ever in reserve because modern times meant store shelves were always stocked with imports from all over the world, and truckers were always delivering almost anything you wanted to stores every day. A home had electricity and heat, and no one ever thought the power might go out. Power grids and governments just handled all of that. You never talked about what might happen if it suddenly wasn’t there one day.
Only right now with everything going on, you need to stock up and be prepared. I’m not saying to panic, but there is a saying that is relevant: Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
· Stock up on non-perishable foods, and especially things you are not prepared to do without. (Me, I have enough coffee to last until July.)
· Have enough drinking water put aside
· Do you have a generator? If not and if it’s not feasible, do you at least have a camping stove with fuel that you can use outside if you needed to cook?
· Fuel–you’ve been warned a while ago the prices will go through the roof. (Maybe get a bike.)
· Now that we’re in March, did you start the seeds for your garden? If you’ve never had a garden and always relied on the store, you need to start thinking about growing some greens in pots or digging up a part of your grass to start a garden. Another good idea is to connect with local farmers in your area and buy local.
· Have enough spare cash on hand.
· Batteries, flashlight, first aid kit, vitamins, and if you are taking medication, make sure you have what you need.
· If you have pets, make sure you have enough pet food and supplies for your animals.
· Anything else that you would need if there was a shutdown.
Now, having lived on an island, I can tell you how imperative it is to be prepared for anything. You know the saying: Plan for the worst, but hope for the best. People some have called conspiracy theorists have been warning everyone about supply chain breakdowns for nearly a year. This is kind of tongue in cheek, but when someone tells you to be prepared and that having at least a running thirty-day supply is smart, you want to listen to them. We have a lot of crazy-ass stuff going on and one thing you do not want to be doing is depending on any government right now to look after you and your family’s needs.
Let’s get back to your necessities again. What do you really need? Water is so important, and I cannot stress this enough: it’s a good idea to have some extra gallon jugs of water stored. Have a good thirty-day running supply of staple foods. A lot of people I know started canning again this year, and I was one of them, having learned from my grandmother. I actually spent some time this fall canning up veggies, jams, and relishes from my garden. Make sure you have candles and a secondary heat source. Just think of all those people with a woodstove or fireplace. Some of you may also have a generator, but you also need spare fuel to operate it and a place to store it. Think about it this way. If the power were taken out for a week and you couldn’t go to the store, what would you need? If you’re on a well, a well doesn’t operate without power. This brings me to the septic, which you need water to flush. You don’t have to go all total prepper, like the world is coming to an end, but you want to be prepared for anything uncertain as we come into winter. If you’re in the city and on city water, have you ever thought about what you’d do if the water was shut off?
Now I have been through a scenario of power breakdown a few times. The last was Christmas three years ago when a big windstorm wiped out power on the islands for six days. We had no community officials or emergency personnel coming to check on us. I need to be really clear on this because so many people still do not understand that the only ones you can depend on are yourself and your neighbors. Because that Christmas there were no community leaders who showed up to open warming centers at the library or rec center for people who had no woodstoves to keep warm. We were on our own. What we had were our neighbors, a woodstove, a big water tank, and several five-gallon jugs of drinking water. Everything takes longer when you don’t have power, but we were well-stocked, and our neighbor had prepped a decade earlier with solar panels and a rainwater collection system. If you’re not on speaking terms with your neighbor because of the pandemic and you or they said hateful words to the other because of the government propaganda, then maybe it’s time to be the bigger person and apologize.
In some places, people are talking about empty shelves in the grocery stores, but if you can, buy local. Many farms around me sell produce, eggs, milk, bread, and meat. Someone in the community started a local co-op online where all the farms list their weekly food items. They deliver once a week, and there isn’t much I can’t get locally. If I can’t get it locally, I really don’t need it. All those processed foods on the shelf have zero nutrition and in fact you should be asking yourself if you should be eating it. Think back to your parents or grandparents, depending on how old you are, who may have shared stories about growing up during the Depression and how they survived. Many went hungry in the cities, but my mother was young then, and my grandparents had a farm with a garden, chickens, and turkeys. My grandfather raised pigs, and they had a cow for milk and butter. My grandmother canned everything. I remember that even after they sold the farm and moved to a small town, she still canned everything, even when she was in her eighties. She had a cold storage room with an abundance of jams, jellies, pickles, and vegetables. She even canned meat.
They bought local, and they were always prepared, because they lived through the Depression. At the same time, depending on where you live, it’s a good idea to look at what you would need if you had to go a week without power or a stocked grocery store that you could drive to and pick up anything, or what if the gas prices got so high that you couldn’t afford to fill your vehicle? And then there is your money that, when sitting in the bank, belongs to someone else. Take a second to make sure you have everything you need, make a list, go through your day. And one more thing–when you walk out your door and see your neighbor, say hello, good-morning, or if you don’t know who they are, introduce yourself. Because we’ve just lived through two years of governments doing their very best to destroy our humanity, and now it’s time we take it back.
Catch up with The Wilde Brothers
