January 25, 2009 My Story

When I was called as Emergency Preparedness Specialist in Relief Society, I wondered why I was called to this position. I was reminded that I had lived through some very trying circumstances in my life which has forced me to develop skills that others may not have. I would like to share a little on some of the difficulties our family has faced, and how we have handled them.

After being married about five years, the recession in the 1970's was pretty devastating to many. It hit our family hard. My husband was totally out of work. We had just purchased a farm and were doing our best to become as self-sufficient as we could, but without an income and with a mortgage payment, it was difficult. We lived on our home-storage and could not pay many bills. My husband sold his truck, paid off that debt and looked for a new job. He was one of 200 men interviewing for a position with Westinghouse and got it. Meanwhile, we looked around the house to see what each of us had to sell. We both sold personal possessions that we treasured and managed to get $600 between us.

I bought all of the canning equipment that we needed and food that was being sold at a local farmers' market at very reasonable prices, and I learned to can from my neighbors. My neighbors also taught me how to get the most from anything that I owned. They were very frugal farmers that "made-do", and I learned a great deal about surviving on one's own. I was taught how to forage for food, barter with neighbors, share my excess, etc. Much of what I have learned on self-sufficiency was learned from the wives of these farmers. They were such a blessing in my life.
The next year I planted a large garden and canned everything that I could.

I bought some old laying hens for a very reasonable price and collected eggs to incubate in a homemade incubator. I raised 19 chicks, and then put them out in the chicken pen that we built. I later learned about chicken predators the hard way. It was hard to lose many of those chicks, but I finally got the problem solved. How I loved eating those eggs from free-ranging chickens.

We got our milk at a dollar a gallon from the local farmer. Each gallon came with about two cups of cream that I skimmed off and saved. Needless to say, I churned all of our butter and made all of our ice cream. We had many Sugar Maple trees on the property, so I tapped some of them and collected the sap. We heated our home with wood upstairs, and downstairs I cooked on a woodstove. I boiled the sap down into syrup, but let it go a little too far, so it turned to maple sugar instead. We enjoyed using the sugar.

My husband found some new friends while waiting in line at the auto-parts store and invited them to our home. The man stated that he really enjoyed fresh buttermilk and hinted at my giving him some. I told him that I would love to share some of it with him. He mentioned that he had nut trees on his property and that I could come over whenever I wanted and pick all that I wanted. This sounded like a good deal to me.

Strawberries, apples and blackberries grew wild on our place. Mostly I picked the blackberries and made jam for bread or a syrup to flavor the vanilla ice cream I would make. We learned from others to pick wild apples and take them to the local cider press where they would be pressed into cider for 25 cents a gallon. We came home with 40 gallons of cider, which my neighbors taught me to can. They also taught me how to made grape juice and cherry juice the easy way. We had a lot of juice that year. No worry, it kept very well.

The commute to work for my husband was quite lengthy so we sold the farm and bought another one closer to where he worked in Binghamton, NY. This was a smaller farm, but it had a better lay-out than the first one. We had hayfields, fenced pasture, ten acres of woods, a pond, barn, spring and a small orchard.

During one summer in the early 1980's there was drought that was one of the worst they had seen in the area for decades. Our spring dried up, and we were without water for 6 weeks. Neighbors that had wells brought us water. We hauled it in from other places, went to the laundramat and showered at the Church. It was not fun, but we managed. We heated this house with wood and had an air-tight woodstove that we lit in early November and kept going 24/7 until the end of March.

Our children had their own horses/ponies; we had a milk cow that we used to feed two calves that were raised for meat, had chickens and two pigs. We share-cropped the hayfield with a neighbor that had haying equipment and put in a field of corn the same way. We continued to get a gallon of milk from a neighbor in this new area, foraged for food again and had wonderful neighbors who shared what they had: blueberries and blackberries. I learned to make jam from elderberries, too. The ground was very fertile, and our huge garden yielded enough produce for me to can 600jars of food while there.

I joined a spinning and weaving group, bought a spinning wheel, and learned how to take a fleece from a sheep, treat it, and card and spin the wool. Money was not plentiful, so I also sewed many of the children's clothes. All of the skills I learned were useful and fun to me, so I didn't see this as a burden.

When a cow was butchered, it was done at our farm with the sides of beef hanging in our unheated basement during the winter for one week. I learned how to render the fat from these animals and use that fat for making homemade candles. The rest of the fat was washed several times and stored in plastic containers. This rendered fat kept very well for many years.

I have continued to learn additional skills along the way over the years. I enjoy making things from scratch and using natural materials. I also enjoy eating food that is not laced with additives and preservatives, although I do eat food containing those things. My children grew up with a good work ethic and always helped with work around the house once we left the farm and moved to the suburbs in NJ. All in all, I loved the skills that I learned from many of these experiences.

Living in the suburbs brought some unexpected hardships as well. We lived in an area where we had our own well and were dependent on electric in order to have water. We experienced a nor'easter and were without power for three days. The temperature in the house dropped to 55 degrees. I learned a lot from this experience. We had water storage so drinking, washing and flushing was not a problem. Bathing was a problem, so we went to the local YMCA. Since it was winter the sun went down by 4:45 p.m., and then the house was dark. There isn't much to do in the dark. I lined up 10 candles so I could read at the kitchen table, but even that amount of candles did not produce good reading light. The oil lanterns were in the bathrooms so that the children could see as they walked around upstairs. I wasn't comfortable leaving candles lit where I couldn't see them, so I used the lanterns. The amount of light from a lantern is sufficient for soft-light, but not really good for much else.

From this experience I needed to get some sort of lighting that wouldn't produce carbon monoxide. So, in the spring I drove to Amish country about two hours away in Pennsylvania and went to a large hardware store that many of them frequented. I went through that store looking at everything the Amish used since they lived without any purchased utilities. I found many items but focused on lighting. They use Aladdin Lamps which have a mantle and use lamp oil to light them.

I bought one lamp and some lamp oil and brought it home to try it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lamp produced light comparable to a 60 watt light bulb and also produced enough heat to warm my bedroom to 70 degrees if I kept the door shut. I loved this lamp so much that I went back out to Amish country and purchased two more.

I am grateful for the hardships my family experienced. We learned how to adapt and look for better ways of doing things. My children benefitted greatly from these experiences as well. They thought they were fun at the time, but now I have seen how some have put into practice much of what they gained from the situations we found ourselves in.

I have learned many things, but the thing that stands out most is to make the best of what we have while times are good. This includes learning new skills that would help me if times become worse economically or even politically. Now is the time to purchase those things I need in case we lose power or water or heat. I need to be able to cook, store food, stay warm, have enough water, etc., and it is so much easier to do when the things I need are available as opposed to being in the midst of a crisis and having to do it in less than optimal conditions.

I hope this has helped any who read this to understand a little more about the skills I have developed and about the need to prepare now for the future. I hope you will consider the skills you may need if you could not get to the grocery store or if food wasn't available or if you needed light or a way to keep warm.

Now is the time to think about this and to get started. Once you are in a crisis, that opportunity has passed. Our Father in Heaven loves us so much that He gives His servants, the prophets, ample warning of the things that we need to know so that our lives won't be as difficult as they could be if we weren't warned. It is my prayer that you will follow the advice of our former prophets and our current one, Thomas S. Monson. Pray about what you should be doing for your family with emergency preparedness, listen carefully to the promptings you receive, and then do it!