“To be prepared is half the victory.” – Miguel de Cervantes

Prepper : noun/North American     A person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.

I know that there are those of you who think we are crazy.  Personally I think it is the difference between eating and starving.  It is no different than having a savings account set aside for an emergency that might arise.  The mainstream media has given the term “prepping” a bad name.  They tend to make us out to be lunatics wearing tin foil hats, Doomsday idiots and other things.  There are different types of prepping dependent on what one is trying to accomplish and an estimated three million participants in the US.

I was pretty much raised a country boy.  Learned to hunt, plant garden, fish and how to cook and can.  In the spring we would head into the woods looking for polk.   We would pick blackberries, dewberries, mulberries, muscadines and gooseberries and my mom would make jelly from them.  My grandparents and parents were preppers.  They didn’t know that they were and neither did I.  Every year they put out a big garden and canned what could be canned.  I remember us getting together and canning sausage one year. That was quite a learning experience.  My Grandma White canned a lot of meat including fish.  She had a root cellar where she kept what she canned, onions to dry, potatoes and herbs.

My mom canned a lot also.  Some years she would can up to 100 pints of green beans. She canned beets, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, salsa, etc..  My mom had shelves in the basement where she stored the stuff she canned.  I can’t remember a year she didn’t do any canning.

I don’t know how you feel about preppers.  There are those that like them and others that think their elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top.  We aren’t hurting anyone.  I have seen some people who seem to be afraid of us.  Why?, I don’t know.

I prep because I live close to the New Madrid fault in Missouri.  In 63 years I have also been in 3 tornadoes.  In one of them I was without power for 10 days and during the day the high temps were in the upper 90s.  I have seen many different scenarios of what life would be like here in this area if an earthquake occurred along the New Madrid fault and none of them were very promising.  It would be devastating and would tax the local food suppliers.  Think about it.  They call for a snowstorm and bread and milk are cleaned out of the local stores in a matter of minutes.

I realize prepping isn’t for everyone but I will be a prepper until the day I die.  Thanks for reading my blog.  Means a lot.  Be kind to one another.  Share the love and remember, don’t squat with your spurs on.  God Bless you one and all.