!Thoughts on prepping for hard times
---
agk's diary
19 April 2025 @ 18:37 UTC
---
written on Evy's GPD MicroPC
while daughter sleeps and Evy studies
---
Gopher writer gallowsgryph wrote about concern that
financial hard times were coming due to a family
member's health scare. I especially enjoyed the
realism of this paragraph:
Solar power is great when you can get it, but we
live in stormy Tornado Alley. Rainwater collection
is great, as long as you know how to use and
filter it properly. Growing food is awesome, as
long as you take care of your garden. Repairing
things is great, so long as you can do it right.
I'd squabble a little with the rainwater part. One
of the places I lived in without running water in
my youth had a nice sloped roof, so we caught rain
in a collection of scavenged buckets, and used it
without filtration to flush toilets, wash dishes,
wash clothes, and mop. The thing is to keep the
mosquito larvae out.
Pooping in a bucket and covering it with sawdust
is also not a bad way to live at all, especially if
you get your hands on an invalid's bedside commode
or build a nice support for your toilet seat. I'm
not living that way right now, but we do compost,
which keeps our trash from stinking and decreases
how much must be hauled away.
I noticed solar power on gallowsgryph's list, and
find it's often a top concern of geeks I know.
Some friends moved to old hunting land, spent a
small fortune on solar stuff, chainsawed down a lot
of pine trees to get sun in, and lived in an un-
insulated carport. They don't live there anymore.
Don't your things have batteries? Don't they charge
pretty fast? What do you need? A light, music, a
fan, a clock, maybe periodic use of a PDA, phone,
or general-purpose computer? The big one may be
some way to keep food from spoiling. Learning to
pickle stuff and make yogurt is way cheaper than a
DC refrigerator.
Solar makes a lot of sense for people with a wood
shop or machine shop if they set it up "daylight
drive," like they do at Living Energy Farm in
Virginia, USA. No batteries, no inverters. DC
motors that can run only when the sun's out. That
system will pay for itself with just a few of the
shop's jobs.
Either way, rural poverty is harder than poverty in
town or a city. Maybe less police, but you can't
walk everywhere you need to go. During some of my
poorest years my biggest annual purchase was a new
pair of 100 USD New Balance walking shoes. I wore
out a pair every year, and you have to take care of
your feet. I mostly wear boots now, but I don't
walk five hours round trip to meet any of my needs.
I make more money now than I ever did in my life,
about 60,000 USD between me and Evy for our family
of three, while rent and utilities are split with
our roommate. But most of my life was hard poverty.
I can't help but assume it will come back, and when
it does, I've prepared in the last few years for
the poverty to be more comfortable.
First, we've stayed in the same place for long
enough and "paid our dues" enough in several mostly
disjunct associational groups to have a robust,
redundant social network. Cavers, church members,
Palestine solidarity activists, families of pre-
school math club members, Evy's artsy friends---we
see these people several times a month, do things
together, are honest with each other, lend and
borrow, watch each others' kids.
When was very poor, I couldn't stay in one place
this long, and couldn't maintain as many relation-
ships. My social network was smaller, more brittle,
less reliable. I often had to face tragedy alone.
There are of course other things. I like ways of
preparing for hard times that make my life better
in regular times. There's usually a lot in our
pantry, but we eat our way through it every few
years. None of it is freeze-dried expensive fantasy
food, or gigantic bins of motheaten winter wheat.
We cook or prepare most of what we eat. Most of
what I cook has few ingredients and most of the
ingredients have long shelf lives. In my kitchen
cabinets are big jars of brown and white rice,
steel-cut oats, mung and aduki and black and navy
and red beans, blackeyed peas, lentils, flaxseeds.
None get bugs. They get soaked overnight and cooked
often, with onions sauteed in olive oil or butter,
bay leaves, dried kombu seaweed, dried mushrooms, a
can of coconut milk or tomatoes, dried nettles,
parsley, a few spices and salt.
I love canned sardines or oysters with butter on
toast. We eat a loaf weekly. You can do a lot with
potatoes and cheese, which store well. Eggs don't
need refrigeration. Mine sit on the counter.
I've always had hard times in a rich country. Even
when I was very poor I could get some kind of fresh
produce, often from far away. Dozens of bananas or
hundreds of berries rescued from dumpsters, the
berries washed, the bananas sliced, all frozen on
baking sheets and bagged to eat slowly out of the
freezer in a house with electricity. I'd miss fresh
year-round produce if I could no longer get it. I
love my collards and kale.
My most-used cookware tolerates our electric stove,
a camp stove, or a fire. Evy and I scavenged old
cast-iron skillets, more than we need. I have a
small hard-anodized Hawkins aluminum pressure cooker
I love. I understand some years ago the government
of India gave away millions of them to families to
decrease pollution and cooking fuel use, and reduce
poverty. The pot cooks my beans quickly and is easy
and cheap to repair, as it should be for 100 USD.
When I'm camping, it means I have to gather less
wood.
I love my cheap plug-in electric rice cooker. I
think it cost 12 USD. It makes rice, steel-cut oat-
meal, quinoa, winter wheat, teff, grits, most days
of the week with little minding. I also love my
Shuttle Chef non-electric slow cooker. It's a pot
you heat on the stove or fire, then drop in a
thermos that keeps it at cooking temperature for 12
hours. It was amazing for rice or soup when I had
no idea when I'd get home from nursing school,
because it can't burn my food, and it's wonderful
for overnight cooking, or camp cooking. Like the
pressure cooker, it also costs 100 USD. I bought it
the year after I got the pressure cooker.
Each of the pricier things that I use in everyday
life but also will make hard times easier (if they
aren't lost in a sudden move or something) I
identify by doing a periodic energy audit in my
head and seeing where I could expend less. Fans and
a spraybottle, heavier blankets and a hot water
bottle significantly decrease our use of central
heating and cooling and let our house breathe more.
A nice place to sit outside. Hobbies that cost
little to no money, an old, maintainable bicycle
with a chariot for daughter for everyday use and
for when the car breaks.
The bicycle is a great example of preparation for
hard times. I started riding again on a bike my old
roommate gave to a neighbor, that sat behind the
neighbor's shed for a few years unused. I asked for
it, cleaned it up, and enjoyed its single speed and
coaster brake. Evy found the chariot for daughter
at the goodwill, and asked her dad for the bike she
rode as a teenager. I wanted a Schwinn Varsity and
asked around until I found someone who sold me one
for 20 USD. When I destroyed daughter's chariot,
another parent who'd aspirationally bought one for
her kid but ended up never biking, gave me hers for
the part I couldn't find, and I fixed it.
By mending things, whether socks, dresses, compu-
ters, bikes, cars, or your house in good times,
you identify the tools you'll need, and you get
your own or get to know people who lend tools or
help you fix stuff. My neighbor across the street
blew all the dust and gunk out of a seized manual
typewriter I found with his compressed air. He also
replaced my car's alternator and modified a bolt in
his shop when the new car battery wouldn't fit. I'm
not handy, but I try to do enough to know what I'll
need when hard times give me more time and greater
imperative to fix things.
I'm satisfied with my 80 USD flip phone with a 20
USD a month plan. I'm not overly dependent on it,
which will be good should I not have one anymore. A
couple friends I routinely visit without calling or
making plans. Phone numbers and addresses are in a
Rolodex. Cheap Casio watch (F-91W or MQ-24) on my
wrist. The alarm on the F91-W wakes me up in the
morning.
My Opinel pocket knife is inexpensive and solid. I
don't have a gun or bow anymore and don't want one.
I have Pa's old fishing pole and tackle box, but
it's been years since I bought a fishing license.
Finally, I can't say enough about books. Abandon me
on an island, at least one of the things I'd ask to
have's a book. One I could read slowly, repeatedly,
like Braudel's *The Mediterranean,* a good Bible
translation, or a complete Shakespeare. I just
finished reading *The Boxcar Children* to daughter.
She loved it, now we're halfway through *Betsy-
Tacy.* Reading and journaling were my best friends
in my hardest times. Dependably.
I came back to edit this after Easter Vigil, mostly
to add the part about shoes. Western and Orthodox
Easter coincide on the same day this year. He's
risen indeed!
