I started prepping back in 1980 after my husband and I both lost our jobs due to the recession. With two small children ages 2 & 3 we were not prepared to live on unemployment. I was used to buying groceries every week and if I happened to run out of something in the middle of the week a quick run to the store and I had it plus something else I saw that we would like. I never managed to buy just the item I had gone to the store to get. I might come back with a package of cookies, a box of ice cream, a bag of chips or two, there was always something extra in the bag that I had no intention of buying when I left to go to the store.
Once I saw just how much money we would have coming in on unemployment, I realized real quick we (mostly me) would have to change our spending habits. Working a full time job, caring for two kids under the age of 4 and a house I had gotten into the habit of buying convience foods and buying take out to make my life a little easier. It's not like I could not cook from scratch. I had been cooking for years starting when I was only 5 years old. My mom and grandma had started teaching me early in life how to do the things that they did for their families.
They taught me to sew, quilt, can, cook and more. My mom was an okay cook but nothing like my grandmother. Now my grandmother was a cook! She was a woman who could walk into a kitchen and make a huge meal out of the nothings that others said were in the kitchen. It would not be a fancy meal but it would be a wholesome and healthy meal that tasted like a slice of heaven. Through her I gained a love of cooking. By the time I was 10 I was pouring over cookbooks, finding recipes and trying theothers on was working second shift in a factory by this time and my step dad tried to teach me to cook. Let me tell you he was a worse cook then my mother. The first thing he showed me how to cook was burned pork chops. I learned real quick that if I didn't learn to cook more I was going to starve to death with in a few months.
My mom only had one cookbook at that time. The American Woman Cookbook 1947 edition. I pulled it out and started reading. Since I got home from school each day just before my mom left for her job I was taking care of my little brother who was 6 months old until my step dad got home from work two hours later. I would hurry and do my homework and then turn my attention to the cookbook while my brother either napped or played in his playpen. I could not do like my friends did after school, playing outside and hanging around together and I didn't really care for watching tv after school.
After a week spent reading the cookbook from front to back I decided to cook a meal after my mom left for work. I looked in the refrigerator and found a package of hamburger. In the pantry I found some potatoes and I had my choice between corn, green beans or sweet peas. I knew with out looking that there would be things to make a salad in the refrigerator. So I pulled out the cookbook and looked at the ground beef recipes and found one for meatloaf that sounded good and I knew we would all eat everything in it. So I very carefully followed the recipe, got out all the ingredients it called for and put together the meatloaf. I already knew how to use the stove because mom had taught me how to heat something up like a can of soup or a bottle for my brother. She didn't know that my grandmother had taught me how to use the oven and that she used to let me bake the cookies she would make.
After I put the meatloaf in the oven I turned my attention to the potatoes. I decided to make mashed potatoes because they were my favorite. I had never made them before but I had watched my grandmother make them many times so I figured I could do them. It took me a couple of minutes to get the hang of peeling them and using a sharp knife ( no one had ever let me use one before) and a few minor cuts on the fingers later I had a bowl of peeled and cut potatoes ready to rinse and put on the stove to boil. I was not sure how long they needed to cook so I turned once again to the cookbook. and found a recipe for mashed potatoes. I followed it the rest of the way. Next I opened a can of corn and placed it in a pan ont he stove to heat. I knew my step dad loved gravy with his mashed potatoes but I had no idea how to make it. So once again I turned to the cookbook. I found a recipe for milk gravy and made it.
When my step dad got home as soon as he walked in the door he asked where was my grandma. I told him she was home I guess because I had not seen her in a couple of days. He argued with me that he knew she was there by the smells coming from the kitchen. He said that the house never smelled that good unless my grandma was there cooking. I told him again that she was not there and that I cooked dinner. He looked at me in disbelief and went in the kitchen to look. He looked in the oven and saw the meatloaf and the mashed potatoes that I had sat in there to keep warm while waiting for him to get home. Saw the corn and the gravy on the stove. He couldn't believe his eyes. He said everything looked right but that I should not have done it because I could have gotten hurt or burned the house down. After he was done with his lecture he went to wash up while I put dinner on the table.
He sat down and put a tiny bit of everything on his plate, used his fork to pick up a bite of the meatloaf, raised it slowly to his mouth and then with what looked like a grimace of pain he put it in his mouth and slowly chewed it. He didn't say a word. Next he tried the mashed potatoes and gravy, slowly putting them in his mouth just like he did with the meatloaf. Then he said "What I am about to say, if you ever repeat it, I am going to call you a liar, but you have cooked a better meal than your mother ever has." then he proceeded to help himself to big helpings of everything. From then on I cooked dinner every night that my mom worked. Of course she was not happy that I had cooked with out an adult around but since I did not burn the house down and I only had a few minor cuts from peeling the potatoes she agreed that I could continue teaching myself to cook. Within a few months my step dad bought me a small collection of cookbooks and with in a year I was making anything I wanted to make and things my own mother had never had the nerve to try.
Sorry for the little detour down memory lane but I thought it might help you understand my mind set a little when we had to start living on just unemployment when we both were laid off in 1980.
When the recession hit and we lost our jobs I knew I had to do something in order to make sure our kids were fed well. Relying on my past and my own cooking skills, the memories of what my grandma and mom taught me about being frugal, and the other skills they taught me I started cooking from scratch again, making clothes for our kids, washing diapers by hand and anything else I could do to save money.
In order for us to cut down on our heating bill my step dad loaned us an extra wood stove he had. We put it in the kitchen since that was the biggest room in the house. It was just a little potbelly stove that had just enough room on the top to sit one pot. I decided to learn how to cook on the stove to cut down on the gas bill even more. I started making more one pot meals like soups, stews and beans.
I still had to use to stove to cook biscuits and cornbread but soon I figured out how to cook them under the little pot belly stove. I even learned to cook fried potatoes in a cast iron skillet on top and foil wrapped baked potatoes below.
From then on I became a prepper, only I didn't call myself a prepper. No one was using that term at that point in time that I know of.
As soon as we went back to work I started building up at least a 6 months supply of food in case we ever had to go through job losses again. From there I went to stocking up on oil lamps, candles, matches, first aid supplies, flash lights and batteries. By the time Y2K was coming on the scene the only thing I was worried about was if the banks would still be open once it happened so I started putting back cash about 5 months before. We made it through Y2K with no problems at all.
Then only thing I was not fully prepared for was long term power outages due to storms. But I was not really worried about that because I did have candles, oil lamps, flash lights, batteries, kerosene heater and a wood heater. While still not considering myself a prepper, still hadn't heard anyone use that word yet, I was feeling better prepared for what ever life might throw at us.
Then in 2009 I think it was I started hearing the word "Prepper" and I heard about the Hardcore Preppers group through the owner and joined. With in a few days I realized I had been a prepper for a long time so I started calling myself one.
But lately I don't think that term fits me any more.
In the last couple of years I have come to realize that I can have 5 years of everything I need for me and my family to survive but if we don't have the knowledge and the means to provide for ourselves beyond that 5 years and a SHTF event lasts longer than 5 years we won't make it. I am slowly turning over a new leaf and wanting to become more self sufficient. I have almost always had a garden in the last 20 years but now I am wanting to learn more. I want to be able to grow our own meat, make our own soaps and other health and beauty aids. I want to learn herbal remedies, how to make my own candles from scratch and not rely on a bunch of store bought materials. I want to learn more of the skills our grandparents, great grandparents and others before them that they used to live life. I want to become a pioneer and a homesteader. I no longer just want to be a prepper. I want to be like my ancestors and depend on myself and not a government or the tax payers. I want to be free to live my life my way and not have the government tell me when to to sleep, when to work, how to spend my money or who I have to give it to. I want the true freedom my ancestors had. Not the ghost of what is left of their life times.
I want to be a homesteading pioneer first and a prepper second. I know it's kind of late starting off on this road at my age but every step I can take is one step closer to giving me a chance to live the true hardworking, honest, free life with out too much government intervention. Please wish me luck on my new path in life. I am even looking forward to the speed bumps I know I will hit but I will take them with a grain of salt and look at them as a learning experience. :)
Prepping Granny