Should you be preparing？ ｜ Front Porch Chat

Hey there darlings, welcome to Roots and Refuge. My name is Jess and today I want to talk to you about preparedness. But before we dive into the topic at hand, I have to first say a huge thank you. At the end of last week, I shared the very exciting news that I have written a cookbook. It's called Rooted in the Kitchen. Here it is. And I poured out my heart, really shared the story as to why this was such a big deal to me, why I have waited until I could make this cookbook and make sure that it was as excellent as I had desired for it to be. So this is such a full circle thing. Your reception of that story and of this book were both just amazing. And I have to celebrate today and I had to share with you so that you could celebrate with me. This weekend, I got to know what it feels like, not only to be able to tell you all that I wrote a cookbook, but I got to see on Amazon's best-selling cookbook list, of all cookbooks, I got to see my cookbook on the number one slot. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Pre-orders are important because they tell the world really, like the people who buy books, hey people like this book, they want this book, this is going to be in high demand. And it is going to open a lot of doors and more opportunities for me to get into other places, other stores. So thank you so much for those of you who got behind this, for those of you who called your libraries and requested it, called stores and requested it. That is just Amazing and I just can't tell you how empowering it is to you know be able to dream of doing things and know that I've got people in my corner and so many of you said I'm you know you just you shared so much belief in me. I did wake up uh Sunday morning like 4 50 in the morning and was like oh my goodness thousands of people are gonna cook my food and I proof read the entire cookbook again so you know I'm still working on it the whole belief thing still working on it but thank you thank you thank you I am so excited that so many of you are going to have this in your hands. I will be continuing to mention it as the months go on because pre-orders are going to continue to matter that, um, but this launch was just as good as I could hope for it to be because of you, and so thank you. So on to the topic that I wanted to shoot a video about today. We're actually going to move up to the chair. I was trying to sit down here because I thought this would be really cute. It's terribly uncomfortable. No pumpkins up here, but I will be able to hang a lot longer in this chair. Today I want to talk to you guys about preparedness and this video is actually coming on the heels of a couple of conversations I've had like with my friends the last couple weeks. I've had a couple people call me, ask some questions that led to some kind of deeper talks and it really had me thinking that I wanted to share it with you guys too because I am thankful that I have had people in my life over the years. That when I was concerned or worried or my wheels were turning I was thinking about like what I could do to establish preparedness for my family and resilience and security. I'm 30. I've had people that I could like bounce ideas off of and that's very valuable and as I was considering now that I am that person for a lot of people I was thinking about how many people are probably out there that don't necessarily have somebody that they can talk to. So I just wanted to chat today. This is gonna be one of those chatty videos. You know, I do have the gift of gab, but I think that there will be value. I do invite you to, like, join this conversation in the comment section. I think comment sections these days are such wastelands of, like, slop in a lot of cases. I truly I believe that my comment section is one of the few remaining that I've seen that actually still ends up with just tons of really, really good information. It's so disappointing to me whenever I'm like scrolling and I watch a video or I watch some little clip and I go to the comments because I want to hear other people's thoughts and I want to hear other people's inputs and it's all just, you know, dumb jokes and stuff that people are just trying to get the top comment. I don't know. Anyway, I digress. Please join in in the comment section if you've got something to share, if you have input, if you have advice, if you're a little further down this journey than other people. Take the five or ten minutes to sit down and write out a comment, and if somebody posts something that is valuable to you, interact with it. Tell them thank you, you know, like it. I love... Community, I think that for so long online community has been my, I mean the real lifeline to learning how to homestead for me. I didn't have neighbors that could teach me, I didn't grow up in this. And so, you know, I turned to the internet. I started on Instagram with social media and then in 2018 started making YouTube videos real regularly and this community and like being able to share with you guys and get and get your feedback has It's vastly grown me as far as the resilience I have for my family. It's taught me so much. And it's sad to me now with the internet being so inundated with AI slop how I'm watching that resource really get diluted. And I think we can make a conscious choice to create spaces that are not diluted. My Facebook group, Friends of Roots and Refuge, also has a lot of information. Because it's just a lot of real people on there. It's not tons of bots or AI stuff. So this conversation is really just some thoughts that I have on the topic of preparedness and some practical things that I feel like a person can do. Kind of some of the things that I'm doing and focusing on. I have a few talking points in my head. I don't have any notes. We're just going to chat. This is purely just a chat video, not a presentation. So I've had, I guess, a bent towards preparedness thinking my entire adult life. I became a mom when I was 19 and I think having children dependent on me and another child two years after that that probably is part of why that is. I've also always had this like dream of having a homestead and used to call it that I used to say living off the land. But the desire to grow food and have some sort of, like, self-reliance or sustainability. And then, of course, all of my hobbies sort of converged for the perfect storm of this being the life for me. I mean, things like being a foodie and really loving food. But I also have really historically struggled with fear. If I recognize that, like, stuff I'm consuming is making me feel more fear, I don't want to consume any more. I don't watch scary movies. The last scary movie I watched was the first Saw movie in the theater. I spent the entire movie with a hat over my face and I was like, never again, I'm not doing this anymore. This is not good for me. And I just made a choice. I'm not gonna consume things that feed terror inside of myself. All you folks out there listening to like all the murder podcasts and stuff like that, I could never, like I'll just tell you right now, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I just, I can't do it. With that being the case, it's a weird line to walk to be like a preparedness person. That doesn't want to consume anything that makes, makes me feel afraid. Um, and some people, I think they can think along the lines of like worst case scenarios without feeling it in their body and without like imagining it happening to them. I just don't possess that, that skill. I have like hypothetical situations, every hypothetical situation I think of, like I, if I think about it, I'm feeling it. That's just how... I process information, so anyway, it's been a fine line to walk, to say, okay, I want to grow resilience without falling prey to fearful thinking, catastrophic thinking, and ultimately to not living my life. And I've really grown over the years in being able to think about how do I create the most resilient life without dwelling on... Making the decision to put resilient layers in your life is wise, warranted, it's never wasteful. I think that a lot of times when people talk about being prepared it immediately brings up what would you need to be prepared for and then you start dwelling and ruminating on those kinds of scenarios and it devolves very quickly into a very dark place where there's a ton of you know hypothetical threats I think that a lot of times our nervous system gets involved in that process when you start thinking about what you should be prepared well what for you start imagining The power, the grid going down, you start imagining some catastrophic storm, you start imagining some sort of, you know, societal collapse, zombie apocalypse, however far you want to go with it, and then all of a sudden, you know, your nervous systems responded like you are indeed being chased by a zombie, and the next thing you know, your dinner is not digesting well, and you've failed to sit down and read your kids a bedtime story, and you're so anxious that you're, you know, you're up in the middle of the night purchasing MREs I've never gone that far, but I know, I know that has happened to people. Like, because I recognize in myself, my nervous system comes to the party whenever these conversations come up. When this thought process comes up in me, my nervous system is like, girl, I got you. I will keep us safe. And what I'm really trying to talk about is not that. I'm trying to talk about the wisdom of resilience. From a calm place, from a grounded place, from a sane and wise and settled place. The idea that there's a question, should you be prepared? I think that's probably the first thing. Should you be prepared? Should you be thinking about preparedness? The fact that we're asking that question is a mark of how broken our culture is. The fact that the average American home has three days of food in it, the fact that the average American grocery store has, I don't know what it is, I think it is, I think they say it's about three days of food. I mean, just consider when, you know, a storm is coming and how fast the milk, bread, and eggs all sell out whenever there's going to be a storm. The supply chain to the grocery store is fragile and it can be interrupted and if you are treating the grocery store like your pantry that means the supply chain to your kitchen table and to your family sustenance is fragile and it's very recent within the last hundred years that it has been common for that to be outsourced. For all of time Before this current season, and by season, I mean, since this has become the way people live, it was just a given that you were going to think about, you were going to keep a deep pantry, that you were going to have local food sources, be it your own garden, local farms, at the very least, a grocer that you had a relationship with. I mean, that's just how it was for a very long time So now the systems are all so anonymous and impersonal. And they are so, so fragile. And we are allowing ourselves to also be fragile by being dependent on systems that we know are fragile. Like, you know, the system's fragile, you know, the grocery store is fragile, you see the milk, eggs and bread be gone whenever a storm is coming. The idea that you would want to create resilience to be anti fragile in your life. That to me, it's not even a discussion. It's not even a thing of should you want to do this? Well, of course. Of course you would want to not be fragile. Of course you would want to not be dependent on systems that have proved to you that they break easily. So should you be prepared? That's not a discussion about what's going on in the world, what I think is going to happen. I don't think that we should have to validate that. It shouldn't be like, oh, well, this current event is happening, therefore, yes, you should be prepared. I saw a thing the other day where it was a list of all the other countries that over the last year have been warning their people to prepare. To prepare for emergency, potentially for war. Multiple European countries have sent out documentation, like pamphlets and stuff like that. And, you know, that particular thing I saw was spinning it, saying that, oh, well, the United States is not telling its people to prepare. What's being hidden from us? And it was a spin that truly, like, you can go on, like, FEMA's website. And I think the official... Like, recommendation is you should have, like, a certain amount of time supply of water and a certain amount of time supply of food. Yes, like, our government has a recommendation of what a household should have on hand. But, like. Why do we need a government to tell us that we should have food and water? Our humanity tells us we need food and water. The fact that you can't live without it, to me, is enough of a message that you should have some access to that planned for your family. And I think that one of the tumultuous things that comes up with this particular type of content is there's this need to validate the need. Like, hey, here's why you should be prepared, here's the scary things, here's what other governments are saying, here's this, and here's the boogeyman, and here's what could happen. That's not necessary. Like, hey, you're a human, you have to eat every single day. You have family and people dependent on you, they also have to eat. You also have to drink water. You need to be kept warm when it's cold outside, and it's comfortable to be kept a little cooler when it's hot outside. You need clothes to wear and you need medicine in case you're sick. Yeah. Being able to depend on plants for things and things that grow in your yard is obviously ideal for this because those are resources that are renewable, not just things you have to stockpile. Skills are beneficial for you. And if you have skills, that means that you have things that you don't have to pay other people to do. If you have resources, that means that you have things you don't have to pay other people for. That's enough, like that's, that's enough because all of those things are true. True. That's enough. If you are looking for some reason to validate the urge within yourself to become prepared, like why? Like your human needs are enough to validate preparedness. And I think I'm using the word preparedness because that's the word people use, but to me it's an op. preparedness. It's really just living. I have said this analogy many times. If you've been here, you heard me say it. But like for me, when I think of resilience, I think of if I hold up a single piece of printer paper and I say, push your hand through this, I mean, it would Take nothing for you to do that. If I hold up 10 pieces, you'd have to work harder. If I hold up a whole ream of paper, you probably would be hesitant to punch your hand at it because you know it's going to hurt your hand and you're not getting through it. That's what resilience is. And building a life that is resilient is just layering those papers on where you have more and more places where you are not dependent on fragility, where you are not yourself fragile because you have layered on resources and skills living and ways of thinking that provide the ability for you to stretch in times of struggle, struggle, what resilience is, is the ability for a thing to hold its shape even when it's stretched so like elastic is resilient, so it put you can push elastic but it can come back to its shape, it can stretch without breaking and the amount by which you can stretch without breaking is the amount of resilience you have It's been actually two years ago, like right now, I think it was this week, two years ago, that Hurricane Helene hit our area. And it was, it wasn't the worst here, but it was a pretty catastrophic storm here. It was pretty overshadowed, obviously, by the travesty of what happened up in North Carolina. I mean, they had it so much worse than what we did in South Carolina, but I think they said, like, for our area, it was the equivalent of, like, an EF3 tornado that lasted for 90 minutes. Like, our area was wrecked. Like, there were trees down everywhere. We went without power here at our house for eight days. Some people had less time without power. Some people had more. We couldn't get off our road. Jeremiah took our equipment, like, cleared our road a mile this direction and, like, half a mile that direction to try to make where the neighbors could get out. It was intense and it was eye-opening to us because, I mean, we are pretty resilient people and we have put a lot into growing our own food and having systems where we weren't dependent on the fragile, you know, world systems. And it was eye-opening because we were like, oh my gosh, we are so not ready. It was hard. We had some big holes in our Big holes in our systems, and we have addressed some of those. Some of those, we still have them, and it's on the list, and it's stuff that we're working towards, but during that time, it was pretty eye-opening. Our local police force had to make a post on Facebook telling people, please stop calling us and telling us that you are without power. Unless you have a medical emergency that your power being out may cause, you know, a death. Please stop calling us. We're aware. Oh, I mean, North Carolina, northeast Georgia, I mean, was just completely wrecked. There were millions and millions and millions of people without power. But people were so debilitated by the fact that they didn't have their power that they're calling the police, like expecting the police to do something about it whenever there are millions of people without power. It was wild. And it, I mean, even in this area, there were some situations that devolved, like there was some violence at gas stations and some different things of people panicking because they were thinking, I've got to get my basic needs covered. Thing is, is a lot of them, maybe somebody was desperate because they were worried about their basic needs and it actually was a medical emergency, but a lot of them were worried about their comforts, not their basic needs. And a lot of people were completely freaking out because they had lost their comforts because they didn't have resilience. And so When we're posing the questions within ourselves, should I be more prepared? I don't think looking for the validation to that is necessarily the answer because then that does allow you to get worked up. It's really just the thing of how could I add more resilience to my life? And the beautiful thing is, is that if you then see something online that makes you feel scared, you see a headline that makes you feel scared, you can at that point turn inward and say, how could I add more resilience to my life? And I I keep a running list on my phone of things that I want to do to add resilience to my life. And some of these things are like, um... Like tools, like for instance, I have the plan saved to make a little outdoor rocket stove, which is a thing that you can build and use biomass, like pine cones and sticks and stuff like that, to cook food outside. Of course, I have lots of outside cooking options. I've got my Blackstone, I've got a grill, things like that, but those use charcoal, those use propane, And having the ability to build a rocket stove. Well, that would allow me to use all these twigs and the branches I have, and that would be really important if I live somewhere like in town where I didn't have 80 acres of forest next to my house. Um... I also have on that list a rocket stove that I can purchase, you know, that's like 150 bucks. Like, those kinds of things, I just keep a list so that... When I come to that place and I feel that desire of like, I need more resilience in my life, I can go and look and say, hmm, what's something that I could do? What's something in the price range that I can currently meet? What's something in the time commitments I can currently make that I can just add a little bit more resilience? I keep a running list of skills that I want to learn. Like it used to be on my list to learn how to knit. Is knitting adding a ton of resilience Resilience to my life, eh, you know. Probably not, like it's definitely a peaceful thing to do. It definitely adds a lot of peace to my life. I, it's cool to be able to make clothes. It's definitely not cheaper to be able to make clothes, but being able to make things, I think that adds resilience. Being able to mend things, I think that adds resilience. I, one of my skills that I want to learn how to do right now is make soap. That's something I've been looking into a lot lately and it's something I've just never come around to, but I have goats. that you know we'll be in milk again and lard and tallow from raising animals so it just makes sense like hey i can use what i have here and i can add another layer of resilience of something that i can make and it's just another layer of paper on the stack if you are in the place that you're feeling really stuck and you're like what can i do the first thing that i think is Most important for people right now is learn how to prepare food from scratch first and then also learn how to preserve food. For most people, you likely have access to a kitchen and you've got to eat anyway. So being able to learn to cook from scratch and then being able to preserve food, that adds a ton of resilience, especially if you are looking at You know, the potential for even worse inflation. I mean, I know a lot of people are struggling with food costs right now. But let's say that the pressure increases there. Being able to cook a pot of dry beans and make it taste good, that's adding resilience. Being able to can food so that you can keep your eye out for deals. Being able to buy things in bulk and put some of them up, if you're growing food, being able to grow food and having your harvest come in and being able to do something with it. I mean, that is, in my opinion, being able to cook from scratch and being able to preserve food is probably the number one skill I can think of right now that everybody should be able to have. I think just going in the grocery store. Convenience costs so much money. I do occasionally will do like a grocery store challenge and of course we grow a lot of food so we can do this but I'll just challenge myself to not go to the grocery store for like two three months something like that and I have a very stocked pantry I don't stop stocking my pantry during that time I still order from places like Azure my bulk food because I don't want to run my pantry down but I just will say no grocery store and what it does is it Highlights to me all the convenience areas that I have leaned into like buying salad dressings. Like there is not a reason in the world to buy a bottle of salad dressing. I'm just going to tell you right now. Salad dressings are the easiest things to make and they taste so much better. And you can just use what you have on hand. I mean like take the last bits, dregs of your jelly jar and add some olive oil and some vinegar and... If you got some herbs, throw it in there and shake that up, some salt and pepper. You have a great salad dressing, like strawberry vinaigrette, if it was strawberry jelly. Shelly. And it's just using, it's making the most of what you have. It's being resourceful. And then you're not paying $5 for a bottle at the grocery store. And, you know, at the grocery store, most of those... Some salad dressings you're going to purchase at the store have inflammatory oils on it in them. If you're going to be buying the one that doesn't have inflammatory oils, it's going to cost so much money. You just make it yourself with what you've got. That's a layer of resilience. Things like I would buy tortillas. I'm like, yeah, I know how to make tortillas, but it's just kind of a hassle. So I would just buy them. Well, as costs went up, I kind of got to the point that I'm like, man, I'm trying to buy the organic stuff and buy stuff that's good. And here I am paying top dollar for flour, salt, and water. That's dumb. And so I started making it myself. Add a layer of resilience. If you change your mindset to realize that a lot of what you're paying for at the grocery store is convenience, you can just say to yourself, I'm trying to save money and I don't, you know, I don't have to outsource popping my popcorn. I can take care of that myself. I will DIY popping my popcorn. And if you start looking at prepared products in the store as if you have paid a person or a company to, you've hired out the service of preparing that thing for you, it really frames it in a different way. And like while grocery costs are rising and people are really feeling that crunch, being like, oh, I can't afford to buy that. I can't afford to buy that. I can't afford to buy that. That can really wear you down mentally. To live in a place where you feel like you can't have everything. You can't have anything. And truly that is how poverty mindsets So, uh... bind us, and I'm saying this as a person who just lived in poverty for a lot of my life my mindset to abundance came before I ever had abundance and it came with instead of the subtraction and restriction thinking feeling like oh that's out of my reach If only I could afford the good salad dressing, but instead I've got to have the one with the you know, the bad ingredients Well, what if I just was like, well, how could I? make the most of what I had left over and I could actually have the most the most superior product. I could actually have the the best thing that's actually within my reach but it requires me reframing the way I'm thinking about stuff. So yeah I really think that looking at your skill level on preparing food, preserving food, and stretching a little into a lot is a very good place for you to direct your energy right now if you're feeling that urge for more resilience for preparedness. With that, you know, people talk about putting up food and storing food. And this is the conversation I've been having with a lot of friends. They call and say, where do I begin with this? And I started writing some stuff down because this is, I think this is too much information for me to try to sit down and just say. And so I think I'm going to try I'm trying to come up with a resource that I can just give away to people that Kind of lines up what you actually need to put up. Here's the, here's the thing. If you can put up grains, beans, things that store for a long time, I do think storing those things is good. Starting to buy some of those, taking a little bit of margin and pouring it into that. But it doesn't actually really serve you unless you start cooking dry beans. Now, um, because just putting that stuff in your pantry and letting it turn into dinosaur dried out beans over the course of 10 years, because you didn't need them. Um, you're actually wasting your money when you do that. And yes, it is something of an insurance plan to have dried food. And if you've got the resources to go buy, you know, a shed's worth of dry beans and rice and grains to provide for your family. And that's what you want to do with your money. I mean, I mean, like more power to you, but for. For the average person who's trying to come out of the three days of food mentality, I think the leap from having three days of food in your house to having a shed where the years were the dry beans is a big leap, and I don't think it's necessary. Very. Really, I think what you should be doing. If possible, is start assessing all the areas where you can make things from scratch instead of purchasing them conveniently prepared for you. You know, you don't have to outsource someone to bake your bread and pop your popcorn. Flatten your tortillas and mix up your salad dressings and all that stuff. You can do a lot of that yourself and you will save a lot of money. And as you can start saving money on some of those things, it can provide more margin in your budget, which that margin can then be rolled into deepening your pantry. And there are there are some practical things like for instance if you want to put rice up uh long grain white rice stores the longest. Jasmine rice is also stores because it is a long grain white rice it's got a little bit more oil in it so the flavor of it may go off soon but you still got like a year to two in storage. Brown rice is going to go rancid sooner because it has more oil in it. All of this stuff you can just if if you come across something and think I really want to put Uh, rice. You can just Google what's the best rice for long storage and you'll get that information. You know, one of our big moves into, uh, fresh milled flour, using fresh milled flour, which is a learning curve. I mean, I basically have had to relearn how to cook like all the things I used to know off the top of my head. By using fresh milled flour, I have all of these grains and I'm able to store them because whole wheat berries are so dry And everything is intact and the bran and the germ and all that stuff has not been broke down and the oil released. Therefore, they store for like, I think they say like 20 plus years if you're keeping them cool and dry, which is awesome. That means that I can store a large amount of grains. Now I'm still rotating those. I'm still going and grabbing the oldest ones and pulling those out to cook with now. And it wouldn't do good for me to store. Lots and lots of wheat berries if I didn't know how to cook with them. Part of the resilience is having it and the other part of the resilience is knowing how to use it. But there are you know if you're if you're looking at trying to like deepen your pantry and store food, If you don't know how to cook from scratch, focus on cooking from scratch simultaneously because learning how to cook is going to make that make more sense and it's going to help you logically work through what you actually need. I think I grew up hearing stories about my pappy's family during the Depression and I remember there was a family picture of him and all his several siblings and his parents and none of the kids had shoes on. And I remember saying, Pappy, why didn't you have any shoes on? Because that was hard for me to fathom as a child. And he said, oh, well, it was the Depression. Nobody had shoes. And I was like, what? And he said, but here's the trick. He said, we were poor before. We didn't have shoes then, so we didn't mind when we didn't have shoes during the Depression. It wasn't a big deal. But my Pappy's family got through the Depression because they were country. And they raised food, and they raised rabbits and stuff. And so a lot of the people from the town came to them. They did a lot of bartering and trading. And they actually thrived during the Depression because they had the ability to provide food for people. And so they actually didn't feel the crunch as much as a lot of people did. They'd been poor before. Anyway, growing up and hearing those stories has developed this real fascination with me and then of course the Victory Garden movement and wartime and rationing and one of the things that they talk about in that is how fat was one of the first things rationed and if you get any sort of like Um, depression era cookbook, if you get any sort of wartime victory garden type cookbook, all of the recipes used very little like butter or oil because that was scarce during that time. So if you are like building a pantry and trying to come up with food storage, like one of the things you really should consider also is putting up some fat. Fats that store at solid, in a solid It's in a solid state, lasts longer, so tallow and lard are good. Coconut oil is a good one. Things that are liquid like olive oil keep them dark and sealed but they have less of a shelf life. But I want to say for coconut oil you've got like I think it's like four or five years. Anyway, I started writing all this stuff down. I'd love your questions on that. Questions help direct me when I'm trying to develop something and write something because it just, it triggers the information. The information's here. I just have to, I have to get it out or know how to research it. So if you have any questions about that, I will continue working on like how to really build a resilient pantry. I mean I think having and this goes back to my first point it's it's really it's really not that you need to identify yes yes it's valid for you to want to prepare. Just having a stocked pantry makes eating seasonally easier. It makes growing a garden easier. With my garden, the garden does not let me know exactly when everything is going to be coming in and the amounts that's going to be coming in. Obviously, I plant it. I have a plan. Usually, that is not as solid as you think in knowing what to expect. But, um... You know you have all these staples in your pantry and then it doesn't really matter what's in your harvest basket that day. You can do something with it because you have all your staples. So again I just think that it is a better and more secure more stable way to live to have basic things that you are always going to keep stocked in your home. And when you buy them in bulk. To have them stocked in your home, you're typically paying less per ounce or per unit than if you're just going to the store every single week and buying the smallest bottle of something to get you into the next week. And I know for a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I do understand that. But again, this is how poverty becomes so systemic because once you're in it, it's really, really hard to get out of it. But the first thing that makes a difference And I'm speaking to you as somebody who has been in it and learned this lesson in it is how you're approaching. If you're thinking that you need to buy that smallest bottle because it's cheapest, look at the cost per ounce. You are paying more per ounce for the thing than if you figure out how to have a little bit of margin to buy the big bottle because then next week you don't have to buy that small bottle. Next week you can roll that margin into something else. I did a... Pretty extensive video, it's been several months ago, over on my Farmer's Table cooking channel, talking about how to like save money on groceries and ways to think and ways to approach it. I'll put a link to that because it would be, it would be, that was, it was like 45 minutes of tips and it was, it was very thorough. So if you are in the place that you're like, Oh, I really want to create resilience. I really want to prepare what really want to be able to buy bulk, but there's no way that I can do that right now. Um, that video had a lot of tips in it and things that you can do, Because it really is when you can break out of that week to week. way of being that's how you get the margin and the more margin you get the more resilience you get the more preparedness you get the deeper your pantry gets and then you have more power to make moves to bulk it up like if you're not having to spend you know every dollar you have buying the smallest container every week to get through then you've got the extra 30 bucks to buy the big bag of beans and then you get to start cooking those a couple times a week which frees You know, when I was talking to my friend about... food, I was saying, well, it's good to fill your pantry, but really fill it with things and then learn how to use them. And I use the example then about how if you're buying breakfast cereal for your kids or I don't know, name off any convenient packaged breakfast, uh, you know, Pop-Tarts or whatever those things are, those things. They're expensive. If you've got more than a couple kids, you go through them fast. And that's taking up, you know, what is it, if it's taking up $15, $20 a week just to have an easy breakfast covered. You know, I went to the farmer's market this last week, just the state farmer's market, and I bought a 45-pound box of apples for... $30. Not everybody's going to have access to that. It really depends on where you live in the country, but there are things like that that you can find. If you have Amish stores close by, LDS stores, if you have a restaurant supply store, a lot of times you can go in. Those are open to the public. When I say farmer's markets, a lot of times people think of little like niche farmer's markets where you're going. It's just all small growers. That's probably not where you're going to get your like bulk deals. Yes, you will get good food, and yes, it is good to support locals. You have local resources available. But trying to find growers in places that you can buy, like, bushel boxes is the best. And I can't tell you where that is for you. I can tell you, if you live in the Midlands of South Carolina, I can tell you where to go. Go to the South Carolina State Farmer's Market. Go to U.S. Food Chef's store and go to these local farms that set up stands and talk to them about bulk options because a lot of them will have that available if you contact them. But I can take my big box of apples and I'm going to use, let's say, a third of it and I'm going to make several jars of apple butter. Now, at this point, I'm in a dollar for a jar of apple butter. I can then take 50 cents worth of flour. And maybe like a $1.50 worth of butter. And I can make a whole pan of biscuits. So for just a couple of dollars, my kids are eating these biscuits with apple butter for breakfast. And, you know, I might throw in a couple eggs or I might add some yogurt or whatever to round it out. But those biscuits and apple butter is costing less for all. My three sons, my three preteen teenage sons, they can completely smash a box of Pop-Tarts in one sitting. And those biscuits and the apple butter cost less than that box of Pop-Tarts. And taking that kind of decision and replicating it all over is where you can really get that margin. And it's really hard at first. And I remember this whenever I first started trying to cook from scratch. It felt really hard because I felt like I wasn't replacing anything. I'd be like, oh, I'm going to learn to can. I'm going to can all these pickles. But the problem was is that we weren't just like... Tearing through pickles and so here I've got a pantry full of pickles and my grocery budget has not gone down at all because Yeah, I bought one one jar of pickles every maybe Month or something like that. We weren't eating a lot of pickles And so even after I was making them from scratch and from home, we still weren't eating a lot of pickles But if you make PB&Js for your family, your kids regularly, you don't have to grow everything. You don't even have to go to the farmer's market. You can make jelly with a single jug of grape juice, sugar, and pectin. And make several jars of jelly for what it would cost to buy one or two at the store. And now you're not buying jelly again for months. And now your jelly budget is now moved over into something else and you've created margin. I'm going to start with collagen. So really focus on what do we actually eat? What can we actually use? How can I obtain these things for less so that I can then roll that in to obtaining other things that we need? And with that, you're just layering on the pieces of paper. You're layering on the resilience. Once you establish the mindset that you're not like living in The fear of what could go wrong and trying to prepare for any, you know, whatever scenario you're imagining. Instead, you just build a life where you're thriving on the day to day and you're, you know, you're living, considering your human needs on a day to day. Beyond that, continuing down that vein, really like searching out your mindsets and saying, okay, where are, where is the way that I'm thinking costing me resilience in my life? You know, I mentioned like poverty mentalities and things like that. For me, addressing my mindsets, like really, really changed. I mean, it changed my life in a huge way. Like recognizing that. By living like I was always going to be in lack, I was kind of teeing myself up to always be in lack. You know, I was not stewarding what I had well because I was constantly expecting it to go away. Addressing your consumption can add a ton of resilience to your life and actually add a ton of preparedness. Like, here's an example I saw this recently. I'm in a lot of like preparedness groups and they're wild. I do not recommend them in a lot of ways. Like a lot of like prepper groups are just terrifying slices of humanity you can look at because a lot of people are just super fearful. But you know, someone had posted a picture of their like food preps, their food storage, and it was all sodas and snack cakes and candy. There was so much junk food in it. And of course, that comment section on that was rough. But But your health. It's one of the greatest resources that you have and you don't need there to be a catastrophic situation for you to address it like you can address your health now. That is something that I mean it's just been a big focus for us over the last handful of years just really just focusing on health and I say that as a person who has a you know autoimmune disorder and for a long time I felt really sorry for myself that I had to work so hard to just be reasonably well. Because I do have, you know, I have a condition called interstitial cystitis that causes a tremendous amount of pain in my body sometimes. And it makes me feel just completely dysfunctional. And honestly, I can't eat much food that's inflammatory. And I have to stay relatively active. And if I allow myself to get super stressed or if I don't sleep enough, like, my body just flares up. And then I'm in excruciating pain. It's hard. And for a long time, I really did. I felt a little sorry for myself because it was like, It stinks to have to do all this stuff, but again, how I viewed it, now I kind of look at it like I'm bowling with the bumpers in, you know, when you go to the bowling alley and they put those things in for toddlers to come up and roll the ball down and they're going to make it to the pins. You know, I'm 40 and my blood work's immaculate. Like, other than this one issue, I'm actually perfectly healthy. I don't have any other issues in my body, which is great. And I know a lot of people who kind of get to this point in life and they start having things pop up, dysfunction pop up. And thankfully, because I have had this illness my whole adult life and I've had to live with this pain and I've had to live with this margin, I've had to bowl with the bumpers in. Thank you, Jen. I'm kind of making it down to the pins and being like, oh, wow, this was actually really good for me because I was forced to, you know, like not abuse alcohol and because I was forced to stay relatively active because I was forced to not not eat a bunch of sugar, drink a bunch of soda and eat a bunch of cake and stuff, you know, like I can't eat all that stuff. It makes me sick. I mean, I can eat it occasionally, but if I, if I were to be living off that stuff, I would be dysfunctionally sick because my body would be in so much inflammation and I would just be flared to the point of not being able to get out of bed. And I used to feel like I was really missing out. It used to be frustrating that I had to work so hard for my baseline of well-being. But now I recognize that, like, everybody actually should be taking care of their body to a certain baseline of well-being. But if we're able to get away with not doing it, then a lot of times we will. When I first started keeping animals... I realized really fast like you have to secure the grain if you're going to have copious amounts of grain around ruminants because a goat will knock over a bin of grain and they will eat it until they die and I'm not exaggerating they will give themselves bloat horses cows they will give themselves bloat eating so much grain that they die and you sit there and go what a dumb animal but then like also I think I would probably be just completely fine I love I love candy. I love sweets. I love things that do not love me back. And I actually think that if it were not for the excruciating pain that I experience in my body whenever I overindulge in those things for too long, I probably would have just made a lifestyle of eating those things a lot. And I probably would have ignored all of the signs my body saying like, hey, this is not good for you. And then where would I be? And so Changing mindsets, I mean, this is something that I feel a lot of gratitude for now. I can look at that and not feel sorry for myself. I can be like, wow, this really actually was used for my good. This was actually a blessing to me that I now have a pretty solid baseline of health, except for this one issue that, you know, I can't make it go away. I But I can care for my body in the presence of this issue. And it turns out that that has been a good thing for me. If you are in a place where you are feeling a sense of urgency and you are feeling a pressure and you're feeling a motivation to prepare, think, how can I care for my body in a way that it is the most strong to face a season of pressure? And it's ironic that with preparedness, a lot of times we think, well, we got to put up. The, you know, we got to get whatever we can because it's really just about survival. It's about putting up whatever calories you can just to get through. And it is true. It's better to eat. processed calories than it is to die. That is true. But is that really actually what's on the table? And that's what survival mentality and that's what survival mode and fight or flight will put us in. It will put us in a place of thinking, well, I got to make the decision that keeps me from dying. And in actuality, most of the time, that's not actually the scenario that Rice and beans together are actually... A perfectly rounded source of nutrition, carbohydrates and protein. It's actually very fueling for your body. Throw in some onions and some garlic, throw in some herbs and some seasonings, and it's also delicious. It's delicious. We don't necessarily have to revert to survival mode immediately because we're feeling the pressure of a hard time. And... Because our culture is what it is, I mean, honestly, the fast food that's available to us, the cheap food that's available to us as convenience, and the idea that we have to be dependent on that, I think it's just such a brainwashing. And it really is. It's the turn over bin of grain that is offered to us. And we're told, come get this. You got to get this while you can. That's why animals eat till they die. They do that because they are are biologically driven to get as much calories as they can. Because in nature, they're not so abundant that they're going to kill them. Like an animal, a ruminant animal, a goat, you know, think about a deer that's wild. I mean, a deer is in most cases not coming upon so much grain that it's going to kill them. So if they were to come upon a patch of grass that had gone to seed and was full of grain, they would gorge themselves. They would eat themselves. Yeah. Until, all that they could because they're trying to put on weight so they can get through the seasons that are sparse. But my friend Dani was here this weekend and she was telling me about Fat Bear Week. Does anybody know about this? It's basically this whole thing where they stream these bears up in Alaska and the bears come out in the spring and they're super skinny, skin and bones, and they spend all year just gorging themselves, eating all the fish they can, all the fruit they can, so that when they go back in to hibernate, they're as fat as possible, they put on as much energy, they stored as much energy as possible, and now this week everybody's voting on what they think the fattest bear is, and we're just animals, like our body is just animals, now We are enlightened. I mean, we have a spirit. There's more to us than that. I mean, I believe we're made in the image of God. We have an ability to emote and think that animals do not have the same as us. They can emote and they can think, but it's not the same as us. But our body is an animal, and we are responsible for taking care of the animal of our body. And I'm just as responsible for For making sure that my body does not make itself sick by being driven by just the desire for what's in front of me and what's available. As I am for making sure that my goats don't do that and that's been a very freeing way to look at it for me. That mindset has really set me free of a lot of the shame and condemnation that I had around food. It's such a it's such a hard thing especially with body image issue. Growing up in the early 2000s as a woman was very very difficult to feel okay about just having a normal body that wasn't like real thin. You know, you have to get through all that, but to just realize, like, oh, my body's an animal that's just trying to, like, get whatever readily available fat and carbs it can so that it can survive lean times. And I am responsible for putting a lid on the trash can, putting the bumpers in, and being like, no, we're going to get down to the pens. We're actually going to maintain health rather than just being driven by those impulses. All of that to say, I think that it can be really dangerous if you're trying to come into a place of adding preparedness and resilience in your life without recognizing that actual animal drive that's in you. I don't personally think that it is the best thing to just try to say, well, I'm going to put up whatever calories I can because food is food. Um, if, if there... Let's just go what if. If there was some sort of collapse in our society where you could not get food, a very good chance you also could not get medicine and so it's very important that if you are trying to prepare for breakdown of supply that you are considering what is the food you are putting up going to do to you and is it going to have your immune system strong and resilient building resilience is not just for survival it is for that you can maintain thriving no matter what For what is going on externally. Um, with that, like considering mindsets, consumption is just one of the biggest weaknesses I think that we have. And this is just coming from being a, a, a modern American that has just had. There's so much available all the time and one of the big things is how mentally okay would you be if all your entertainment was turned off in an instant? Like how mentally okay, like how mentally strong are you to just exist in your actual life and your actual body and your actual home with your actual family? Because that's a huge point of resilience that we can start building, we should build. Now, because it comes, again, to thrive, I think really having that addressed to the highest capacity we can just is so important. You know, one of the things that we have started doing and have been talking about doing more, especially coming into the winter, it's getting dark earlier, makes it a little easier. We spend more time inside. We've been just, like, unplugging just everything and just... Sitting down as a family and just working on like puzzles or, you know, sometimes we'll do it with an audio book playing or just put some music on or whatever. But like sitting down and just working on handicrafts and puzzles and working on things that are just completely low tech. Changing those mindsets of consumption to the most you can. And I know somebody's going to come back and be like, well, in my situation, that doesn't really apply. That's fine. Only you know whether that applies to your situation. But in all of these things, when I start talking about, hey, start growing your food, it'll add resilience, start storing things up, build a deep pantry, build resilience, grow in skills, network with neighbors, build community, like all of these things. And the people are like, well, not everybody can do that. I know that's why it's so important for the people that who can that they do, because. Every society and every culture is going to have the weak people. It's going to have the people that truly are in a place that they cannot do these things. But the society does not need to be... Aligning to the weakest parts. It needs to be becoming stronger to cover the weakest parts if if you can't that's okay Let's figure out what you can do I do believe that there is something that everybody can do just because you're looking at a person that's on this level able to Do this thing and maybe you're here able to do this thing and you can't be like why I can't do that So I should do nothing. That's not true You can do something and only you can really figure out what it is that you can do And this is coming from the person who went to the library to read the cookbooks and borrowed them from the library to learn how to cook so that I could have a little bit more skill and resilience and learn how to forage so I could have a little more skill and resilience. I'm coming to you as a person that started on this level and you may look at me here and be like, why can't I be like you? Actually, maybe you could. Maybe you really could. You're not going to be like me today, but if you'll be like you today, maybe you could be to the level where I'm doing all this stuff, where I do have a deep pantry, where I do all this stuff, and maybe you could be here in a couple of years, and maybe that's the exact timing that you need to be there. I'm going to stop there. I think that it is our nature to try to avoid discomfort, and when a challenge arises to us that makes us feel small or helpless, to be like, ah, not me, not responsible. But that comes back to the people who are calling the police when the power goes out. Like, you don't want to be that person. Like, you don't want to be the person who made excuses when you could do something, and then you find yourself in a situation where you are truly, genuinely helpless, and you're looking for somebody to help you, and then there's not somebody to help you. Be the person that does what you can. And then the people who really genuinely are in the weakest place, maybe there will be something excess to help cover them. I don't want to be that person, if I can help it. I might not be able to help it. That's the thing. That's really one of the mindsets you really have to come to is just surrender and trust. Like, I mean, for me, it's really a thing. It's a place of growing faith. I've done all of this. It could get completely, it could burn down. It could get washed away, get sucked up by a tornado. Like, I mean, things can happen in an instant that make your security go away. So where does your security really lie? Me, it doesn't matter what is actually happening in the world. If my mindset is I'm going to do whatever I can where I am. I mean what else can I do? Like other than just show up in my life and do the best that I can. Show up in my life and just add resilience wherever I can. Anyway, this was long. It was rambly. I don't know if I finished all the points. I had other things that I thought I was going to talk about. I don't know I just wanted to chat about this. I'd love to have more conversations like this. I would love for them to be helpful to you so if you have any questions Thank you. if I don't know the answer maybe I can look it up maybe we can learn together and yeah I will look for resources. I am going to continue working on resources for this because I don't think that we have to be prepared in fear but I do think that we should be prepared for what come what may. I think that we should be resilient. I think we should be strong. Because I think that within that framework, we can actually live our best lives. And this is the time that we're alive. This is our life. Like we're alive right now. You know, yes, maybe that sucks sometimes, but I don't think it's by accident. This is our time, and that means that this is when we get to do our life, like, being like, oh, I wish I, you know, I wish I didn't have to deal with all this, or you don't get another option, you don't get to, like, punch the library card and pick it out a different book, like, this is your life, so what are you going to do with it? Um... And really looking at it like that, I'm going to show up to my life fully. And I'm going to build resilience, and I'm going to look to thrive so that I don't waste a single season wishing that it was different. Anyway, thank you guys for hanging out with me today. All the days you do, I bless you. Until next time.