Frugal Self Reliance is the Goal

Being raised in the 60’s by frugal parents created a somewhat frugal ME. I had no idea that I was a prepper, though.  That label feels a bit weird, even though I have stepped up my home food store tremendously.  I’ve just always done what I felt best financially, buying food and necessities ahead as sales came up, making Christmas presents, buying from thrift stores, any way to save money.

Around 1998 the big Y2K preparedness thing came into my view, and I stepped up the food purchases, just in case.  I was still buying local food, and would almost go into a panic if I had less than a dozen cans of tuna in my pantry, as well as the cream of mushroom soup and noodles to go with it.  I guess I figured the family could survive on tuna noodle casserole forever, HA!

I also discovered dehydrated foods in a #10 can.  I did purchase some and use them, but I wasn’t so excited about some of them. (Please note I said dehydrated, not freeze dried, which I have now come to love!)  And, I did not even think about buying a year’s supply of  “basics”, and here is why: baking and cooking have never been my strong points.  If it didn’t come from a can or a box, it probably wasn’t cooked in my kitchen.  That was then…

I saw no need for Hard Winter Wheat (whatever that is) or any of those other grain things that you have to mill yourself.  If you’re not gonna use it, why buy it?  It’s that simple.  And if you do buy it and you are not using it now, why do you think you will be able to figure out how to use it in a crisis?  That has never made sense to me, and to read online reviews of foods that say “haven’t used this, it’s going in my food storage” just makes me want to shake some folks!  Ok, off my soapbox.

Preparing for the big Y2K crisis that didn’t happen did prepare me for some pretty tough times, though. Not long after, and in about a six month timeframe, I got a divorce, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and I lost my job.  Whew, a lot of life changes very quickly.   One thing that didn’t change during that crazy time was how to pay for food, or even needing to go to a grocery store.  That was just one thing that pretty much went on the same as always.  Sure saved my energy for the things I actually really needed to worry about, er, concentrate on.

After some recovery time, I started a new job, got the last kiddo out of the house, and moved to a ten acre piece of land and into a very old, very cheap mobile home.   Now, I am not a country girl, raised in the city, used to all the creature comforts a city provides. You know, traffic, neighbors so close you can shake hands out your kitchen windows, noise pollution, great things like that.  No, really, it was only ten miles door to door from my new place to the closest Walmart.  Still close enough to the city, just not so close to the neighbors and traffic.

While living on my land, I learned a great deal of things I was not prepared for, like having no running water inside my home.  And guess what?  I survived! Maybe prepping for the future, who knows.  Anyway, I learned that, no, kitty litter in your five gallon bucket toilet is NOT a good thing!  Kitties don’t pee nearly as much as people do (although it seems like they do when you have to clean the littler box).  I had a cat, had kitty litter, so that is what I used.  So very wrong is so many ways!  Learning very quickly that I could go to the nearest feed store (also about ten miles away) and purchase a huge bag of wood shavings/animal bedding that lasted me, one person, about a year I think, for about three bucks.  So much cheaper and so much easier to use!  Oh, and I found a hospital-type bedside commode at a thrift store, score!  Five gallon bucket under it and the “throne” really was a throne, and comfy!

After my most wonderful brother-in-law came out and laid a water line from the (new) water tap to just outside the mobile home, and dug a lagoon, I could use water to dump flush the toilet.  Pretty exciting times at the old homestead, I can tell you!  It still meant carrying five gallon buckets of water (can you say 40 pounds!) from the front yard to the, wouldn’t you know it, bathroom at the far end of the mobile.  It was the lack of an “approved” septic system that stopped me from attaching that water supply directly to the house, that pesky water company! I was blessed in that most weekends my youngest son would come out and fill as many buckets as I had, and stack them in the bathroom for me. He didn’t want his citified momma to work too hard.  Wonderful having family when you are a fluffy middle-aged city girl living in the country without running water!

I did learn how to take a bath, wash dishes, all those things we take for granted, without running water.  It was an eye-opener, but it showed me that I am so much stronger than I think I am.  And for those that are wondering how much water to store, during that time I used about a hundred gallons of water a week, by myself.  Of course, most of that was flushing the toilet.  If I didn’t have that option, using the wood shavings and the bedside commode would have continued, bringing my water usage to about 30-35 gallons a week. That was cooking and cleaning and drinking for me and two dogs, and knowing I had an “unlimited” supply right outside my door.  Might have used less if that yard hydrant hadn’t been so close and handy.

Fast forward to a few years ago, and I met and married the most wonderful man.  It took me 50ish years and some pretty hard times to find him, but we are so like-minded it is like we are twins, except he is a few years older and was born half the country away from where I was bornJ.  When we got married, he was all about the stopping at the grocery almost every day on his way home from work, or at a restaurant.  That was the one area that we could have argued about, if we were into arguing, which we haven’t actually done in almost four years.

Needless to say, food storage was not in his life or even his vocabulary at that time. This was a challenge, but I have my ways, laugh laugh, wink wink.  We did frequent a local Whole Foods store, so on one of our trips we bought some freeze dried corn, peas, onions, and pineapple in little tiny containers, like small sour cream size, and paid a fortune for them!  We discovered that we liked the corn and peas right out of the container, dry, as a snack.  This got pretty expensive, so I searched online for the company I used to buy my dehydrated foods from.  Guess they aren’t in business any more.  Anyway, found another company and showed him the pricing differences.  He agreed to try just what we had been buying in the tiny containers.  See, I told you I had my ways!  We bought freeze dried corn and peas, and dehydrated onions and pineapple.  Well, we haven’t slowed down since.  We now have a good home store of freeze dried meats, fruits, veggies, dairy, and yes, grains. Oh, and cheese, love the freeze dried cheese!

The funny thing is, he does 99% of the cooking, so he is the one using it all!  I love it! He is very inventive and tries to stretch himself a few times a week to make only food storage meals.  Keeps the food rotated, saves us money and time, and we are both learning how to use everything we store.  He is so happy with the sour cream powder that I think we will have to start buying it by the case!  Since we don’t have to make sure it is in the fridge (and not geriatric and spoiled) he adds the powder to just about everything. Yum!

So now this city girl is married to an L.A. boy, living kind of between suburbia and rural country on one acre of heaven, surrounded by pastures of cows, sheep, and pigs.  None are ours, but we get to enjoy the babies as they play, and the scenery is lovely.  We still don’t have any Hard Wheat, or some of the other “basics”, because we don’t buy flour or sugar or milk now, and don’t feel the need to store it (except maybe for barter, but that comes later). We use almond milk (which might be a challenge if we couldn’t get it regularly), don’t eat bread or cake or cookies, and use Stevia in our coffee.  We are big rice eaters and have stocked up on that as a basic, and pasta (remember those noodles with the tuna *grin*) in our own self-made year’s supply.  Not that we are at a year’s supply yet, but working steadily on it.  And you never know, we might add some of the regular basic things as our skills change.  I have really wanted to try baking bread lately.  Probably we would eat bread if I made it?

Christmas presents are still handmade, only now the two of us knit for both families.  After our first Christmas together he asked me to teach him so he could take a sock making class with me, too sweet!, We now both have a skill that could come in handy as a barter or extra income, and we both love it!  And yes, we are like any other hard-core knitters, we have a small yarn shop worth of stash, but that’s another story.

We both love thrift store shopping, and have found several of our prepping items at local charity shops.  To me buying from a charity-run shop is a win for everyone, and we enjoy it as a together outing.   What cheap, I mean frugal,  dates we are!

We are just now preparing to garden, in containers, a couple of tomato plants and some chives.  Oh, and lemon balm.  That will probably be it for this year, but we are figuring out where to put a garden next year so we can start working on the beds now.  Working on lots of other little prepping things together, slowly, like replacing electric things with their old non-electric ancestors, and making lists of things we feel we need, things we think we want, and things that would be nice after the first two lists are complete.  We both are avid readers, and have incorporated reading self reliance type books (and blogs) into our daily lives.

Turning city folks into self reliant ones is a process, but a process we are now working on diligently.  Coming from frugal parents (both of us) has helped, in that prepping is just more of the same, only quicker and with a focus on self-reliance with the money saving strategies we already possessed.

I thank Kellene for her wonderful non-scary blog of preparedness insight and wisdom.  Without this blog, we would be nowhere near the level of preparedness that we are now. I know there are a lot of scary things out there and probably even scarier things to come, but knowing I can come to this blog for sanity in all of it is just a wonderful thing.

J. H. OK

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