Post by patience on Oct 3, 2011 7:54:04 GMT -6
Wife and I are 65, and been at this a while. We got the message in 1974, during the Arab Oil Embargo, when I was an engineer at Delco Electronics in Kokomo, IN. Car sales plummetted to nothing and unemployment hit 25% in that county for the summer. Gas prices almost doubled, terrifying everyone. Delco had over 10,000 employees when this began. I watched 2,200 of them clock out ONE Friday, never to return. When the carnage was over, there was one guy who had less seniority than I did, but we both kept our jobs. Too close for comfort. I vowed that wouldn't happen to me again, while carrying a mortgage and raising kids.
Three years later we were in southern Indiana on a 45 acre homestead. Within a year we had beef, hogs, chickens and were logging and farming with horses while we raised our kids. We sold that place as we got older and now live on a one acre rural lot.
When the auto industry began to contract in 2003, we started a farm repair shop, welding, machining, and sheet metal work. I retired last Fall, and now use the shop for OUR stuff, like the wood stove I built for us last winter.
We have rebuilt the cistern that came with the home, originally built in the late 1970's. That has assured our home water supply, with a year of use now. I also put in a 2,500 gallon irrigation tank for the garden that collects water from some outbuildings. That isn't a lot for the purpose, but it keeps our 3 big gardens going in dry spells.
Over a period of 4 years, I finally finished building a sunroom that provides a place to start garden seedlings, can food on a dedicated LP range, operate the food dryer, and is home to the wood stove. I still need to build a wood shed. Wood is plentiful here, and I still have the logging stuff from the farm.
We are working on improving our food storage pantry and in general getting better organized. There are a lot of unfinished projects, the most important of which is to get the solar PV system up and running. We have all the parts and hardware, and have a lot of 12 volt wiring completed that will power everything except the fridge and freezer that will be inverted to AC. Hope to permanently mount the panels soon.
That addresses food, water, heat, and electricity, but there is more to do. One important project this year has been seed saving. Another was doing more harvesting and drying of our herb garden.
So many projects, and I don't go as fast as I once did...
What preps do you have finished, or are making progress on? Are you ready for a power outage? Dollar collapse? Serious inflation? What other things are you prepping for?
Three years later we were in southern Indiana on a 45 acre homestead. Within a year we had beef, hogs, chickens and were logging and farming with horses while we raised our kids. We sold that place as we got older and now live on a one acre rural lot.
When the auto industry began to contract in 2003, we started a farm repair shop, welding, machining, and sheet metal work. I retired last Fall, and now use the shop for OUR stuff, like the wood stove I built for us last winter.
We have rebuilt the cistern that came with the home, originally built in the late 1970's. That has assured our home water supply, with a year of use now. I also put in a 2,500 gallon irrigation tank for the garden that collects water from some outbuildings. That isn't a lot for the purpose, but it keeps our 3 big gardens going in dry spells.
Over a period of 4 years, I finally finished building a sunroom that provides a place to start garden seedlings, can food on a dedicated LP range, operate the food dryer, and is home to the wood stove. I still need to build a wood shed. Wood is plentiful here, and I still have the logging stuff from the farm.
We are working on improving our food storage pantry and in general getting better organized. There are a lot of unfinished projects, the most important of which is to get the solar PV system up and running. We have all the parts and hardware, and have a lot of 12 volt wiring completed that will power everything except the fridge and freezer that will be inverted to AC. Hope to permanently mount the panels soon.
That addresses food, water, heat, and electricity, but there is more to do. One important project this year has been seed saving. Another was doing more harvesting and drying of our herb garden.
So many projects, and I don't go as fast as I once did...
What preps do you have finished, or are making progress on? Are you ready for a power outage? Dollar collapse? Serious inflation? What other things are you prepping for?
Once when we built the 8" x 22" sunroom (which would have connected to the basement!), and again when we built the 24' x 28' welding shop. That last one has a 12 ft. high footing on 2 sides. It's on this really steep bank... Okay, now I feel really stupid. The place under the sunroom could have had gravity flow water from the cistern, no less. 
, got serious about it Y2K and then really serious after 9/11.