Question asked: “ I was wondering what a homesteaders’ view is regarding preparedness….in terms of the big picture. “
Garnet B responded to the question asked by another reader on our Facebook page with this amazing response……
The main reasons to live a homesteader lifestyle and to have food storage/emergency prep items are, divorce, job loss, job slow down, death of a main wage earner, long term illness, and storms/natural disasters. Those things will hit almost every single person at one time or another. Food storage and emergency prep helps you get through those things that hit your family at a personal level, where national help may not be forthcoming. Then you get into things like pandemics, terrorism, war, financial collapse, and all the other things that could possibly hit the entire nation, or the entire world.
If you really spend enough time talking to any homesteader, or prepper though, it boils down to one simple thing. Independence. Those of us who actually live the lifestyle and walk the walk, want to be independent. We are unwilling to have our daily needs, or survival depend on anyone. So we do things like take low paying jobs, move into crappy houses, with great land. Produce our own drinking water, grow our own food, milk our own goats, make cheese, butter and yogurt. We learn to shoot, fish, and butcher our livestock. We grow herbs, and learn about them, then begin to shun Western medicine as it becomes less and less needed as our food and lifestyle becomes healthier. We install wood stoves, and plant 12,000 native trees to be our woodlot. We research wind and solar, and move away from being dependent on electricity. The independence of our lifestyle means we are truly free. We don’t depend on any government provided serviced (like water, heat, electric). We produce our own food. Government actually hates and fears people like us. Why? Because we are completely free to vote exactly how we want. There’s nothing we can be bribed with. Our independence makes our families safer. In any short or long term emergency, our family is going to eat, drink, bathe, have a flush toilet, have heat, and lights. It also means we are the first to be able to help our neighbors in an emergency, with snow plowing, sawing up fallen trees, or what-ever needs to happen. Independence….once it gets in your blood, there’s no going back.