This is going to be a continuation from my last post. The last post, Emergency Preparedness, was about the food that our family stores and why. This post is about a lot of the other things we do at our house to prepare. Just remember as I go along, these are the things we find most needful and that work for our area. Everyone needs to look at their own situation and prepare in the way that best fits their family, but we should all be looking at the future, and possibilities that might occur. I don’t look ahead because I’m a conspiracy theorist, but because I watch what’s going on in the world and I see all the natural disasters, and I lived through 2020 just like everyone else. How well did you do? Were you frantic because of needs that popped up that you could fulfill because everything was closed?

Last post I talked about food, but I didn’t talk about the supply chain and why having food on hand is such an important part of being prepared. Alaska is on the outskirts, so to speak, of the shipping chain. Anchorage is a worldwide hub for cargo, but it’s a stop, not a destination. Most of our food is trucked up here through Canada, or barged up from Seattle. There have been times when we have been cut off from the rest of the United States and shipping hasn’t been super reliable. Consequently, having food on hand is extremely important. While grocery stores have food, the State of Alaska’s emergency plan indicates that there is only 2 weeks worth of food in the grocery stores and warehouses combined for the population at any given moment. That won’t last long, if we can even get to the store.

That brings me to my next area of preparedness, growing a garden. While we can’t grow a lot of the same things that people in most other parts of the world can, because of the cold soil, we can grow a fair amount of cold weather vegetables, berries, and even some hardy fruit trees. Greenhouses are nice to extend the growing season and increases the variety of food items that can be grown. We are in the process of building a permanent greenhouse to assist in our own food production but even plastic tented over a regular garden will work. Having a cool storage area is also a must if you’re saving those veggies for the winter. We have a root cellar, but a cold basement or crawl space that doesn’t freeze works just as well.

Here in Alaska we have to think about heat, and I think a lot of other places should think about how they could heat their homes without electricity. We only burn wood, so that’s nonelectric, but we also use a boiler system that requires electricity to distribute that heat. But we also have wood stoves in all our buildings that don’t require electricity. Because we burn wood, we always have a winter’s supply of wood on hand for whichever heat source we need to use.

We did not have electricity here on our property for 7 years after my husband and I got married, so we used generators. That was extremely good preparation for emergencies, and we have always maintained a generator on the property since. Because of all that time without electricity, we learned a lot about generators and the size needed to run everything in a house, the refrigerator, freezers, well pump, dishwasher, washer and dryer, the boiler pumps for heat, lights, etc. Generators are a great emergency item, just make sure it’s big enough to do what you want it to do.

We store fuel of various kinds. We need diesel for the generator as well as much of our equipment, so we store fuel for those. We need gasoline for our chainsaws, so we store some for that. We usually don’t use our stored gas in our cars unless it’s starting to get old and needs to be replaced. But it can be used for that as well in an emergency. We also have a large propane tank for our range, dryer, and, in the summer, for our water heater (in the winter the boiler heats the water).

Having some cash on hand is super important as the bank may be closed in emergency situations. Also having a savings of several months worth of bills is a really good idea in case your emergency is a lack of employment. That way you have time to find work without worrying about paying bills at the same time. I don’t have a store of gold or precious metals. I guess I figure that if the economy collapses, food is a great bartering item as people need food before they need precious metals. But to each his own in that area.

I can’t remember if I mentioned water in the last post. Water is essential to survival. We have a well and a generator to pump that water out, but our generator is in a different building, so if we can’t go outside we need water in our house. I have a large 100 gallon tank full of water for longer term storage. But I also buy cases of water for shorter term storage. These are easy to grab and go in a case where we have to evacuate our home. We rotate them quite regularly by using them for car trips, camping trips, and when we go hiking. The 100 gallon tank needs to be rotated once in a while as well.

These are just some ideas of how you can be prepared for the future, so that your mind can be at ease and so that you can then look beyond yourself and your own survival and see others and look for ways to help those around you.