It’s been quiet on the blog for a week or two because we’ve been having some interesting adventures on the homestead.

Bare with Me as I Recap

First, The Beekeeper got sick followed by myself and then the baby. High fevers and general malaise, but nothing too serious. The baby’s fever spiked a few times and gave us a fright but thankfully we were able to keep it control, though the “run to the hospital” bag stayed packed and waiting by the door just in case.

Then we got another surprise. This week, we opened up the deep freezer to find that everything had defrosted. It turned out a curious little two year old, who shall remain nameless, found his way to playing with the cold settings and turned them all the way down, allowing for everything to defrost inside. And since we had been down for the count with a cold, no one noticed what had happened until it was too late.

Then to add to the general insanity, we got a call about some donkeys.

Followed by a trip to visit a friend who needed their Bee Hives checked and maintained in trade for a Goat.

Thankfully, the Mimaws (our affectionate name for my mother and my mother-in-law) came to help get the freezer and the house back in order with a Spring Cleaning of Epic Proportions. I’m not sure if it’s just a Hispanic tradition or a general thing but after a household has any kind of illness, EVERYTHING must be cleaned and sanitized! I think it’s an unwritten law! I am grateful that the Mimaws came to help.

Then the Debrief

All this gave The Beekeeper and I a lot to think about and go over as we debriefed in the days that followed.

What if we hadn’t gotten the baby’s fever under control and we needed to pick up and rush the baby to the hospital? It’s a 40 minute drive!

What if instead of the baby turning down the freezer, the melt down was caused by a breakdown or a long term power outage? What would we do then?

And then we saw American Blackout and as we watched I turned to the Beekeeper and asked him “What are we prepping for?”

What’s the difference?

I started by figuring out the difference. There are a lot of different types of Preppers but from what I can figure they mostly fall into four categories.

The Unprepared The Soft Prepper The Hard Prepper The Non Prepper Does not expect any Catastrophic Event will ever happen

Does not store anything, if they need something, the supermarket is 5 minutes away Expects life to go back to normal after the Catastrophic Event

Stores items which will keep life as close to normal as possible.

Has everything they need in their stash Has no expectation that life will return to any semblance of normal

Stores tools/knowledge to facilitate a new lifestyle

Plans to make/grow the raw materials to sustain them Doesn’t care if life will return to any semblance of normal or not

Plans to plunder and steal everything they can find

What kind of Prepper are you?

In the last few weeks, this has become the major question on my mind. We moved out here for a laundry list of reasons and the more time we spend out here the more I am convinced we did the right thing.

But out here being a Prepper is not an fun thing you do on weekends, it’s a requirement. Living out here also comes with a lot of responsibility. You needed to be prepared for the everyday! You can’t be “The Unprepared” and let the baby Tylenol run out, because at 2am when fevers spike there is nothing you can do. You can’t let the only food be in the freezer because “Murphy’s Law” will have a field day with you.

The events of the last few weeks have caused us to refocus and we’ve decided we don’t want to be a Soft Prepper or a Hard Prepper but instead the best of both worlds. We’ve called it a Transition Prepper. We want to learn to do things for yourself, to grow and make from raw materials AND have a stash of some things to get us by until you can get to the next level. Each day adding to out stash of knowledge and reducing our dependence on the things we can’t maintain should something unforeseen happen. We plan to cook more outside and plant more medicinal herbs and cultivate new corps as we continue our journey.

That reminds me, we’re low on Children’s Tylenol. Better get some, just in case.

What kind of Prepper are YOU?

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