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Perspectives on Prepping on a Very Low Income, by Kuraly
I was raised in a missionary family, on nine different mission fields around
the world. At the age of nineteen, I went out to serve the Lord on my own in
the former Soviet Union. I had no formal Theological training, but was accepted
by the missionary societies of my denomination because of my experience under
my father and my willingness to go to dangerous areas.
I married, and my wife and I have now six children. A few years ago, due to
some changes in my theology, I fell out of favor with my denomination and had
to return home to the USA. I was faced with a situation of suddenly having
to feed and care for a large family with: 1. no formal education/training/skills
of any kind and 2. very little understanding of the southern American culture
that I found myself living in. I was forced to take very low-paying jobs and
survive on a low-income.
With our savings we were able to buy a small rural house and 7.5 acres in the
southeast. We were able to pay cash, I wanted it to be ours with no strings
attached, regardless of what the future held. I figured that at the very least
we would have a roof and some plantable land. I bought in the area my parents
lived in to help care for them as they progressed in years.
Our income is very limited. I work at just above minimum wage. I work a full-time
job and another part-time job. I am thankful that the Lord provides.
As I studied current events I became concerned about the possibility of a world-wide
economic and/or societal collapse of some kind, or a societal break-down here
in the USA resulting from any number of possible reasons. I had witnessed the
chaos of the nineties in the former Soviet Union, had watched doctors and physicists
sweep streets and live off of potatoes and bread for months on end, and I was
concerned about my responsibility to feed my family should a similar collapse
happen here.
What can you do when you have very limited means? Actually there is much you
can do. It amounts to setting goals and getting your family on board with you.
The first thing I did was (after my wife and I had many long talks and she
began to see things in a similar way), I gathered the family around and explained
everything to them. I explained about our limited means, exactly how much money
was coming in, how much went to utilities, fuel, etc. I explained what I believed
the dangers were. I explained what we needed to do as a family. Let me interject
here that after being born and growing up on a third-world mission field, they
were far from spoiled children! They were accustomed to living in tight quarters,
washing in cold water, eating cheap, and basically just "roughing it."
My first priority was for two weeks worth of provisions. We began to buy a
few extra cans of food when we went shopping. I set a goal of 20 dollars per
week for prepping. Some weeks ten dollars of canned goods and/or dried foods
like rice, beans or noodles, and ten dollars in ammo or medical supplies. Some
weeks just food, some weeks just extra gasoline. We bought gas cans at thrift
stores and garage sales for a dollar apiece, Large scented candles (better
than nothing) at closeout sales and garage sales for 30 and 50 cents, and just
about anything we could scrounge that might come in handy if the lights went
out. It did not take us long to build up enough supplies to last two weeks
in an emergency. We had enough gasoline to drive to work for two weeks (if
needed), enough food for our family plus a little extra, and candles, radios,
batteries and other odds and ends to get by.
I had also along the way added
to my ammunition stocks for my Winchester .30-30, and my bolt-action .22 LR.
After we reached the point where we felt we had enough for a two-week catastrophe,
we began to focus on the six-month time frame. This opened up many entirely
new possibilities. since the food required for this amount of time was such
a major expense, we had to make sure that it would last for several years.
This raised the issue of long-term storage in buckets, mylar bags and oxygen-absorbers.
We had to save for months to buy an order of oxygen-absorbers and mylar bags
on e-bay! We found low-cost buckets and began to fill them with rice, feed
corn, corn meal, noodles, beans etc. Anything that was inexpensive. We taught
the children to like corn-meal mush and grits since they might get quite a
bit of it one day!
Gradually we worked our way up to 30 buckets. At this point I made a strategic
decision. I decided that we needed to invest our extra funds in gardening.
Not entirely stopping the food storage, but reducing it in favor of procuring
means and experience in growing and canning our own food. We began to buy canning
jars and lids to put away in the attic for the future. My father gave us a
tiller with a blown engine which we were able to get fixed, and we began to
garden. The first garden was not very well thought-out. Some things grew, some
did not. But we learned. We learned first-hand what pollination means and about
soil fertility. We learned about bugs and blight. We gained valuable experience.
We also invested in chickens, and watched some of them die, some of them be
eaten by neighbor's dogs, some get eaten by our dogs, and the hardy survivors
begin to lay eggs. We watched them eat their own eggs and learned to give them
calcium. We let half of them free range and half range in portable pens that
we built which have an open floor that we could move each day to fresh grass.
We learned how to make them roost and lay where they were supposed to.
We bought some rabbits and learned a lot, real fast! We experimented with many
types of portable cages for rabbits which would allow us to move them from
one grassy spot to another without giving them time to dig a burrow. Sometimes
we would wake up and find rabbit carcases torn to shreds, because a neighborhood
cat had gotten to them. My kids handled most of this, and they learned things
the hard way.
If you haven't figured it out yet, We were totally green. I spent my life traveling
and overseeing the translation of Christian literature into foreign languages.
My wife is a musician. We had zero experience at any of this, and no one around
that we knew to advise us. We had to learn everything from scratch. We bought
a goat and promptly saw it attacked and killed by a stray dog. That hurt,
financially as well as emotionally. After sending the dog to join the
goat "on the other side", I bought another goat. and then another.
These have survived. We have learned to care for them.
Gradually I am seeing my children grow confident in their relationship to the
animals under their care. Gradually we are learning the needs of these animals
and how to make them produce for us. If we had had some kind of hands-on training,
it would have saved the lives of a lot of animals, but we didn't. I am happy
to announce a much higher survival rate for animals that we bring home now.
I felt like I needed a greater firearms capability (what man doesn't?). I thought
long and hard. At first I bought a Mosin-Nagant since they were so cheap ($75)
and the ammo was dirt-cheap as well. I then began to consider what type of
semi-automatic I could afford. I looked at the prices of ammo which was very
critical since I would have to train my entire family to shoot. At the time
the best deal for us appeared to be the SKS rifle.
It was cheap (a good quality Yugo[slavian SKS] was less than $200), dependable,
semi-auto and the ammo was
very cheap at the time. I later added a cheap 12 gauge pump, and last but not
least,
a
17 round Bersa Thunder 9mm. After purchasing these guns I began to pick up
ammo for them when I could find it on sale. I have gradually gotten up to about
500 rounds for each of them.
I then turned my attention to our home and it's defense. While we live in the
country, we are close to our neighbors 100 yards +/-, about five miles from
a small town, about 15 miles from a large town, and about 90 miles from Atlanta
(upwind fortunately). My greatest concern is our proximity to the road. The
house is only about 65 feet from the dirt road in front of our house. A looter
or burglar/rapist could be at the door or windows before the dog barked. In
response to this my next expenditure is to be fence posts, fencing, and barbed
wire, along with a row of thorny bushes in front of the wire next to the road.
Our house is a soft target, offering no ballistic protection. My remedy/forlorn
hope is to have plenty of sand and gravel on hand, and to start checking the
thrift stores for pillow cases to buy and store. perhaps we would have time
to bag up sand bags and at least harden up certain corners or rooms of the
house. We also have several large piles of sandstone (we live on top of a mountain)
which could be placed strategically and then perhaps sand bags on top of that.
We could also cut logs and add that to the mix.
Our water supply is a [grid-powered] electric well. This is one of my biggest
worries. We have made it a priority to buy a generator at least strong enough
to run
the
well and freezers for an hour or two a day. I know that this is only a temporary
solution but is about all we can handle right now. I am very thankful for the
non-fiction writing contribution about the siphon pumps for wells such as mine,
that offered up new possibilities which I have not had time to address yet.
We also have a neighbor 1/4 mile away which has an artesian spring on his property,
though it has extremely high iron content. I have purchased two 330 gallon
plastic livestock watering tanks and several drums which I can fill at the
first sign of trouble. I can also load them on my little trailer and pull them
down to the neighbor's to fill up from his well. I just need to check on the
ramifications of the high iron content.
I am also trying to fill up as many containers as possible with gasoline. I
add Sta-Bil and plan to use/rotate it yearly (as long as the price stays low).
I would like to keep at least 250 to 500 gallons on hand at all times. I buy
old gas cans at yard sales and just found a source for cheap 55 gallon drums
with sealed lids ($3). I may start using them instead.
Our immediate plans are to build more pens and raise more chickens and goats,
maybe a pig or two. We also look forward to planting a much bigger garden this
spring and maybe use some of our hard-won experience of last year. We also
want to involve the kids in martial arts classes if we can afford it, as well
as herb-collecting hikes from the local community college field school (which
are free and fun). We want to spend more time with them in the woods and in
the garden so that they feel comfortable there and begin to think about survival
from their own perspective. We also are beginning to exploit the library for
free resources for them to study on various topics.
The future of this country looks grim. As Christians we have "read the
back of the Book" and we know Who wins. Our responsibility is to be good
stewards of the talents we have, perform our duties as husbands and wives,
mothers and fathers, and ultimately, to trust Him for that which is beyond
our vision and power.
