Ch 6 - Growing Up Prepper - The Icestorm Cometh
Chapter Six of the book I am writing on Substack called Growing Up Prepper
Previous Chapters
Chapter One - Upside Down Peanut Butter
Chapter Two - Mama Mouse in the 72 hour kit
Chapter Three - Sing your baby earthside
Chapter Five - Mom Haircut
Chapter Six - The Ice Storm Cometh
Dad looked up from his mess in the kitchen and asked, “Do you want some peaches with your pancakes Jen?”
I looked at the disgusting clump of reanimated peaches that had been freeze dried and stored in our basement for the past sixteen years and said, “I think I’ll pass Dad.”
He was so excited to be able to have an excuse to pull all of these supplies out of our crawl space and crank up his self reliance persona to feed the fam.
So much money had been spent on whole wheat, dried fruits and vegetables, powdered milk. pinto beans, and the various home production efforts to make jams, jellies, and bottled fruit, it seemed like such a waste to let it sit any longer and a Michigan ice storm was the perfect excuse to pull it all out of the crawl space in our basement.
I felt a bit guilty when we all took off to McDonalds to get some pancakes.
The power was still off and we had been holed up for a couple of days wrapped in quilts and gathered around the fireplace for warmth. The roads had melted enough to get the car out and grandma had invited us to come sleep at her house in Detroit where the power was still on.
I felt like I was abandoning a sinking ship when we bailed on Dads freeze dried peaches. They were black around the edges and smelled really gross. I would have had to be truly starving to even think about eating them.
The helpless look in his eyes as all five of us kids who still lived at home trooped out to the car to get some restaurant food still troubles me today.
I get that look.
The parent who worked so hard to provide, who budgeted and saved, and stored and hoisted those fifty pound sacks of wheat as we moved from home to home during my youth, who wanted to be READY for anything.
That was my Dad.
And he did not want one morsel of food to be wasted. He did not want to even think about all of those thousands of pounds of food going to the dump.
Yet as reality kicked in on that frigid morning and he realized that his spawn would rather eat pancakes from McDonalds than the whole wheat ones he had sizzling on our Coleman stove with the aforementioned peaches as topping, I witnessed the slump of his shoulders.
I have thought about that demoralization of my Father quite a bit these past 40 years.
It is truly a tightrope we travel on when attempting to be prudent.
How much to invest in terms of resources, time, materials, money?
It never stops.
A man from my church congregation dropped his son off at our home for cub scouts one day and asked if he could hang out for the hour that my husband Paul was working with the eleven year old scouts.
Paul took the boys outside to do a scavenger hunt and Aaron was intently working on his laptop at my kitchen table. I asked him what he was writing and he said that he was proofreading his new book.
I asked him to tell me about it.
Over the next 45 minutes I had a personal tutorial from one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered. Because of my Prepper background I was able to immediately grasp the simple beauty of what he was writing.
The ideas in his book are encapsulated in this short video.
And his book was titled How to Prepare for Everything.
Since our conversation that fateful day, I have really internalized his message and it has helped me to mitigate several situations in our life that have calmed my heart and helped me to wisely purchase the supplies we need, particularly for the fires that are always lurking in our neck of the woods.
I truly encourage you to do a bit of a dive on his message and then some prepping. Once you overcome the initial paralysis that ALL of us struggle with, you might be shocked to realize how truly simple it all is.
Jenny Marie Hatch
There are an endless number of disasters to worry about. Preparing for every possible disaster leaves you with a long, disorganized list of things to buy or do, which may not match personal needs.
Preparation can seem unattainable.
We check off the first few items from our list, give up, and hope the zombies eat us first.
It's time to start preparing with one simple change: Prepare for disruptions, not disasters.
It doesn't matter whether a power outage was caused by a flood, backhoe, or grandma backing into a pole.
Just prepare for the power outage! Preparing for a few disruptions will prepare you for any disaster.
You really can prepare for everything.
We prepare better when we prepare together.
How to Prepare for Everything gives you a simple, step-by-step approach to prepare yourself and your neighbors for emergencies, accidents, adventures, and life's ups and downs.
This book will give you:
More hope for the future.
A personalized preparation plan, gap analysis, and 72-hour kit plan.
A healthy way to talk about preparation, without fear.
Stronger relationships and a list of people in your support system.
Plans to not just survive, but to help your neighbors.
Training to share a community preparation workshop.
Prepare for disruptions.
Prepare together.
Prepare for everything.