Humility--The Most Important Trait for Preppers

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, a popular TV show that ran from 2007 through 2019, featured adults being quizzed about basic knowledge from elementary school textbooks—things that all kids were expected to know.  Now I have to admit, I never actually sat through an entire show.  I couldn’t handle more than a couple of minutes while channel surfing.  Inherent in the inquiry, however, is the question of whether we as adults know everything we think we know, at least as far as the basics are concerned.  As preppers, we can look at those around us and proclaim that people out there don’t know or have near enough to survive what is coming.  Hold that thought.

One of the things I love about younger children—elementary school age (those that haven’t been jaded by social media and an endless diet of video games and corrupted by public education), is their desire to learn.  They are a little more humble and open to learning.  They recognize that they don’t know everything and they possess a natural desire to learn.  That already makes them smarter than many adults.

Younger kids are also more open to teaching others what they have learned, and most of the time they are a lot more patient.  Learning a new skill from a child can be a lot of fun.  My daughter Becky had the opportunity to learn about installing sprinkler systems from a ten-year-old this past summer—that kid has a great work ethic.  Max was the best manager/trainer she’s ever had.

As this country rushes headlong into economic collapse, war, and societal upheaval, I recognize more and more how much I still have to learn and do.  While hopefully most of the big things have been covered, there are still so many little things that will make life easier and more enjoyable when times are tough.  It’s why I keep researching and writing and reading what others are doing.  I think that quality of humility is essential to survival, especially to preppers.  

Several years ago, as my husband and sons were discussing who they’d like to be in a group with in the event of collapse, my husband mentioned a certain individual and all the reasons why he’d want this person.  And many other groups would want this person for the very same reason—s/he possesses a lot of desirable traits and skills.  Unfortunately, this person was at the top of my list of people not to join with, for the simple reasons that s/he isn’t humble.  S/he already knows it all.  S/he routinely dismisses valuable information because it doesn’t fit with what s/he “knows”.  And someone like that is more of a liability than an asset to any group.  As I pointed this out to my husband and sons (with specific examples to support my argument that I cannot share here lest someone close to me realize who I’m writing about), they all recognized the truth of my words. 

One of my stops each day is PrepperWebsite.com.  Todd Sepulveda selects seven articles each day that address various aspects of preparedness ranging from very beginner to advanced.  I don’t read all of them.  Some are just outside my fields of responsibility—I don’t do anything with firearms around here for the simple fact that I lack the finger and hand strength to hold the gun and pull the trigger.  Others just don’t pertain at all, like no one here drinks coffee so we don’t really need to know how to store it or get the most from every package.  But I do try to read or at least skim most of the others, even if I think I will disagree with the information presented.  It’s important to be able to look at other sides to an argument or consider preserving a food I’d never given much thought to.  Honestly, I’d never thought about canning cranberries, but an article earlier this month addressed just that idea.  Now, I’m not sure I’ll run out and stock up on fresh cranberries to can, but if I came across a screaming deal on them, I’d probably pick some up to make juice and maybe a batch of jam. 

At the same time, be discerning.  It’s critical to seek sources.  Don’t be gullible, and don’t just accept information because it’s presented on the internet, including this blog.  And practice!  The easiest articles to write for any blogger are the ones that don’t require (or perform) research.  Like this article today.  They’re also the easiest to read because not much is demanded of the reader.  There is no investment of time to learn or prepare. 

When it comes to food, that practice is especially critical.  I read at least once a month of someone’s recommendation to substitute beans for oil on baking.  I’m pretty sure those advocating the practice either haven’t actually tried it or they are pretty bad cooks or they’re vegan wackos (and the last two may not be mutually exclusive).  In my experience, the results are edible, but only barely so.  Of course, that could be a factor of the recipe used.  Your mileage may vary.  But I think substituting coconut oil for butter in baking works extremely well.  Again, though, that is my experience.  Before readers rush to stock up on coconut oil, it would be best to try it out in several recipes first. 

Experimenting—being humble and inquisitive—is so critical to learning.  An urban myth circulating around 18^th century England suggested the unbelievable—that milkmaids had beautiful skin and didn’t get smallpox.  How could that be true?  And yet, Edward Jenner started doing some research and experimenting, and wow, he learns something new for the world.  And then he goes on to develop smallpox inoculation.  (Is anyone else noticing an increasing number of references to smallpox in the media?  It’s giving me the willies.  I’d rather they go back to screaming about Ebola.)

Of course, we can’t do it all.  Most of us can’t become masters in every subject.  But we can become a jack of most trades and masters of something.  View each new day as an opportunity to learn, whether it’s going outside and identifying edible and medicinal plants, testing out whether wood ash actually works as snow melt (I'm getting skeptical about that), or trying out a new-to-you way of using powdered milk. 

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  The old dog is set in his ways.  If we want to prepare well and survive and thrive during the challenges ahead, we can’t be the old dog.  If we want to be smarter and better prepared than a 5th grader, we have to be humble and willing to learn.

 1.13.22

What a Week!

I don't normally post family pictures or too many details about the family.  It's not why I'm here and it's not why you're here.  But I can't help being absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity and well-wishes you all shared with Lydia and Keaton.  Never in a million years could I have anticipated that you would have gotten such a tremendous and valuable wedding gift for my daughter and her husband.  You don't even know any of us.  Some of you didn't even leave addresses on the Amazon registry, so they can't send you a proper thank-you.  (Which due to the private nature of the type of people we are, I understand.  But you know, we've all been raised to send thank-you notes and you're kinda messing with proper upbringing right now.) And some names don't match those of regular posters here, so I can't even hazard a guess as to who you really are. (Well, I can guess, but I can't be sure I'm right.)

Thank you so much.

I wanted to post these earlier in the week, but Aaron didn't get these photos to me until a few minutes ago.  These are just a few he took with his cell phone.  I'm afraid it will be a few weeks before we see the professional photos, and I didn't want to wait that long.  

I used to be able to put a caption under photos, but I have apparently lost that skill.  Anyway, for people who want a face to put with the names, QOTPE is just to the right of Lydia, and Becky is next to her.  

Lydia has found everything she of dreamed of and more in her sweetheart.  She realized a few years back that even though being married to a rancher and living in a remote area was the dream, what she really wanted was a righteous young man with strong family values, a hard worker who shared her goal of raising a large family with lots of love and centered in Christ, even if lacking in material goods.  Well, in Keaton she's gotten everything.

As you might gather from the pictures, he's a rancher, through and through, a 4th generation rancher at that.  He sold a colt (and training for another horse) to buy his diesel truck.  He'll continue to learn welding as a trade while he supports Lydia as she finishes up her degree in agriculture economics.  Their plan is to return to this area and work with local ranchers until they can acquire their own property.

The Paper Clip Challenge

Earlier this month I started a class on starting or growing a business, partly for myself and partly to see what Becky and Luke would be learning and how I might support them.  One of our first assignments was incredibly eye-opening, and I think if I never learned another thing, this one lesson from the first class makes it all worthwhile.

The Paper Clip Challenge serves two functions.  First, it moves you out of your comfort zone and prompts you to talk to people.  Secondly, it teaches a little about bartering.  We made some good trades and some not so good, and it was interesting to learn from each other’s experiences.

The Paper Clip Challenge gets its name from, you guessed it, the paper clip, which is the suggested item to begin the bartering adventure. 

Luke began with his paper clip, and perhaps because he esteemed it of little value, traded it to his wife for a single Barbie shoe.  While he did accomplish his first trade, no one else wanted to trade with him.  So that was a bummer for him.

We have a dearth of paper clips at our house.  I needed one the previous week so that Aaron could perform some kind of functionality test on the freeze dryer, and it took forever to find one then.  So rather than spending an hour looking for another paper clip, I elected to begin my challenge with a single starlight peppermint, the kind that restaurants give out after your dinner.  I traded that to Becky for a brand new bottle of nail polish that originally retailed for $10, but had been discounted to $1 when she bought it.  But she had decided that she didn’t like the color, so she was happy to trade it away.  I then traded that nail polish to Lydia for a brand new bottle of Liquid Bandage. 

I thought that was a screaming deal, but then I had difficulties getting my next trade.  Keaton refused to trade away any of the food storage that he and Lydia had just received as their wedding gift and which was still occupying our entryway.  Not for one of the five 1-pound bricks of instant yeast.  He vastly prefers sourdough, and I pointed out that the yeast would need to be stored in their likely very small apartment-sized fridge freezer.  No go.  Ugh.  So I moved on.

I needed something from my husband that would be an upgrade I could then trade to Luke or Keaton.  I suggested he must have some tools in the garage that he no longer needed.  You’d have thought I was asking for a kidney.  He finally begrudgingly yielded a package of blueberry banana trail mix that he had just picked up at the pharmacy, with the promise that I would buy some for him the next time I stopped in there.  Keaton finally agreed to cough up a quart jar of twelve-year-old commercially dehydrated carrots for the trail mix.  But then he and Lydia forgot and packed up all their food to take to their future apartment.  So it was back to the drawing board.

Luke offered a ball of cotton garden twine in exchange for the trail mix, not quite the upgrade I was hoping for, but probably the best I was going to do with a guy who got burned with a Barbie shoe earlier in the week. 

Becky also started with a starlight mint and traded that to a coworker for an almost new box of 24 crayons made in China.  She then traded that to her sister-in-law for a package of thank-you notes.   

I posted an article last year about a gentleman who built his family’s wealth during the Depression and post-WWII with his own paper clip challenge, using eggs and chickens as his beginning currency.  What stood out to me from the trades he made and which his grandson shared with the acquaintances on that internet forum, was that his grandfather always had the better end of the deal. 

What I didn’t pick up on was more along the lines of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” 

And so I got to thinking about my food storage and items that I would gladly trade away, things that might have value to others, but that I might currently regard as highly as a paper clip:

Butter powder.  I think I still have two cases of this.  When I learned that coconut oil makes an almost perfect butter substitute, I was ready to dump the butter powder.  But I didn’t, hoping some practical was of using it would come up.  I eventually realized that it can be used to make Magic Mix. 

Rancid oil can be used to make oil lamps.

Orange Jell-o.  It was 5 or 10 cents per large box, so I bought a lot. 

Old beans or powdered milk. 

Those canned peaches from the Eisenhower administration. 

Granulated sugar from sugar beets.  I had quit buying this about 15 years ago, opting just for pure cane sugar for my family.  But it’s gotten so expensive!  Fortunately, we eat a whole lot less of it now, but still.  So Aaron and I have started buying sugar beet sugar again, ostensibly just for feeding the myriad of hummingbirds that spend the summers in our area. 

I recall hearing the account related by Ezra Taft Benson, secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower administration, of a German woman left destitute from the ravages of WWII.  He brought oranges or tangerines for the people he was speaking to.  And she traded her orange, her precious orange, away for a spool of thread to mend her threadbare clothes. 

Of course, we strive to prepare well so that when the collapse happens, we aren’t forced into difficult decisions or circumstances.  It’s a useful exercise to practice your own paper clip challenge with family and friends.  You might be surprised at the trades they make, now and in the future.  And while we don't want to be the kind of people that take advantage of another's ignorance or misfortune (it's one of the reasons our society is so messed up), it's important to keep in mind that people have different tastes or uses for items we might consider worthless. 

Links to related posts:

More on Chickens and Eggs 

 

Great Little Gadgets for the Medical Kits

As Christmas is just around the corner, every preparedness and survival blog will have their list of gifts to buy, along with handy links.  And, oh yeah, if you buy whatever it is they're hawking, they get a little percentage of the deal.  So do those guys really like and use the products they're recommending, or does it just happen to be a way to bring in some cash?  I don't know.

What I do know is that I like and use what I recommend here.  I don't get any benefit from Amazon or anybody else, everything is pretty inexpensive, and there's something for everyone's budget.

Sugar packets.  These are a super convenient way of carrying sugar to sprinkle on nasty abrasions.  And super cheap!

There are dozens of choices on Amazon.  Just put compressed washcloth in the search box.

Compressed washcloths.  I really love these.  They're so cute!  About the size of a Life Saver.  We put a few in each medical kit, depending on the size of the kit.  They rehydrate quickly, and they take a lot less space than a package of baby wipes.

Credit card magnifier.  Instead of a bulky magnifying glass, put one of these in your kits.  They run about $5 each if you get one with an LED light in it, which I highly recommend.  These are great for finding tiny slivers and debris in wounds, as well as reading the fine print on pill bottles.

Penlights.  When you need strong light for examining a wound, you don't want a big flashlight.  Streamlight makes some very nice penlights, and you have a lot of options.  We chose one that recharges with a USB, since we have a little rocket stove that is also a USB charger. However, do not use a strong light to check pupils.  You need something much less intense for that.

Tweezerman tweezers or Uncle Bill's Sliver Grippers.  You want tweezers that come to a point, not a slant.  Uncle Bill's has one option that comes with a tube for storage.  These are the best choices for removing slivers and dirt from a wound.

Klever Kutter.  This is marketed as a disposable box cutter, but I find it super handy for removing bandages.  There's no way to accidentally injure the patient.  It's lightweight and thin, perfect for the medical kit. 

Cosmetic Bag Travel Kit organizer.  This is the best thing ever for organizing a large medical kit.  There are probably hundreds of tiny items we like to include in our kits, and this travel cosmetic bag makes it so easy to keep them neat and organized.  I chose this particular one because it folds flat to fit well in my backpack-style medical kit.  And it has a hanger, which we have also found to be quite handy.  It is currently $14.99 on Amazon. 

This is just an example of what I'm talking about.

So there you have it.  I really like all of these.  In fact, even though I have all of them, and some of them in large quantities, I would still like to have more.  Most of them would make great stocking stuffers for the preppers in the family or nice gifts for under the tree.  You've got three weeks!

Links to related posts:
Medicinal Uses of Sugar
Compressed Washcloths
Klever Kutter

Cosmetic Travel Bag for Organizing Medical Kit

 11.28.19

Formulations: Herbal DIY Combo Medications

When I prepare medicine from my herbs, it’s usually with just one herb at a time.  I like to keep things simple.  If I’ve combined usnea with yarrow (just by way of example), I can’t use that formula on anyone allergic to ragweeds, and that would be unfortunate.  If, however, I’ve got a basic tincture or salve with just one herb, it’s easy to then combine with other preparations on an as-needed basis.  So if I have the basic mullein salve for minor scratches and abrasions and then decide I need to improve upon that for a more powerful mullein first aid salve, it’s easy to do.  Or that same basic mullein salve is transformed into a Vicks VapoRub copycat with some eucalyptus and camphor essential oils. 

But usually when I make a combination medication, it is to treat a specific illness in a specific patient.  And that’s because there are many factors to take into account, as listed elsewhere—age, sex, allergies, other medical conditions, any other medications (herbal or allopathic) that the patient is taking. 

Drug companies do this all the time.  Do you have a bad cough or are you in pain and need to sleep?  Combination formula.  Is your patient suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and allergies?  Combination formula. 

Herbalists address this issue frequently, and one thing they all say is that the formulations they develop and which they share in their books are only suggestions, guidelines.^[1]  The very same goes for the herbal recipes on this blog.  Work with what you have and tailor your formula to the patient.  When you concoct a formula, jot it down.  Make notes as to its efficacy.  You don’t want to hit upon a great formula for your patient and be unable to re-create it. 

If I were treating a sore throat that I suspected was due to strep, I would definitely use usnea to kill the bacteria.  But if usnea were a precious commodity, I could also use an echinacea tincture.   Because ginger has a reputation for “carrying” herbs to where they are needed, and because ginger is a fantastic upper respiratory herb, I’d include it in this formula.

Then since neither of those soothes an irritated throat, I would look for some mallow.  However, mallow’s soothing powers are best developed as a cold infusion, so I would not use it in the same cup with ginger and usnea or echinacea.  I’d administer it separately. 

In many skin formulas, patients need something to facilitate healing compromised skin (which calendula is great for) as well as promote restoration of underlying tissues.  Arnica and comfrey are ideal for this, and a combo formula in a salve would help heal in this situation. 

And finally, don’t get overly wrapped up in creating formulas.  Sometimes it’s just easier to administer the herbs separately.  Also, don’t forget that if you’re making a salve, in addition to the herb or herbs, you’re also using coconut or olive oil (or another one) as the carrier.  And those oils are also considered healing substances.  In addition, you’ve got all the “healing virtues” at your disposal as well.  All herbalists recognize that in the words of the esteemed Stephen Harrod Buhner:

“There is perhaps nothing that the ill need more than to know that they are supported in their suffering.  It is very difficult to live without love, and nearly impossible to truly heal without it.”[2]

Links to related posts:

Mullein Salves

Medicinal Uses of Usnea

Medicinal Uses of Arnica

Medicinal Uses of Echinacea

Medicinal Uses of Comfrey

Keep the Commandments for Better Health

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[1] Stephen Harrod Buhner, Herbal Antibiotics, 2012, 46.

[2] Buhner, 47.