Prepping has captured a lot of press lately.
Between Nat-Geos show, the whole zombie thing, and numerous blogs and podcasts covering the subject, it seems that everyone has started digging their own bunker in the backyard.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being prepared. I just feel that farming is the better way to spend ones time when it comes to a life of preparedness.
Here’s 5 reasons you should stop prepping and start farming.
1. Get skills not stuff…
Lots of emphasis is put on stocking up, but just having a closet filled with bottled water and bullets isn’t going to make you a true survivor in every circumstance.
Chances are your more likely to experience a flat tire or a bad weather event before you find yourself in a zombie apocalypse. A farmer learns how to fix structures, vehicles, and tools. He learns to grow veggies and handles animals.
Sometimes the only skill a Prepper learns is how to shop.
When the tire goes flat, be the guy who can fix it. When the tree comes down on the road, have the tools and strength to take care of the problem.
2. No shelf life
A basement full of MREs isn’t a bad thing. Unfortunately lots of the food we enjoy has a shelf life. If a truly dire situation arose that meant you were relying on your preps, would you want to only have just add water beef stroganoff?
Avoid the problem of shelf life. A farmer has a constant supply of fresh food. Sure, the veggies need to be harvested before winter, but animals don’t need refrigeration to keep their meat good. The farmer had the option to harvest what needs harvested, eat what will spoil, and leave alive what is still growing. Have a flock of chickens? As long as you have a rooster, you have a never ending supply of meat that will never need refrigeration. Just keep feeding it until dinner time. You cant say that about Spam!
And don’t forget, the farmer has veggies that will go to seed! That means a constant supply of food that replaces itself…
3. Learn wile it’s easy
Oh but I have the emergency seed bank… I will be able to open up my Mylar bags and grow a garden when teotwawki happens!
Any gardener can tell you that jumping in the deep end of growing all your own food can be impossible! Just growing tomatoes you first year can be enough of a challenge to take up all your time.
Acquiring a seed bank doesn’t equal food, and if you don’t know how to grow anything, the apocalypse isn’t the time to learn.
Farmers learn better ways to grow everyday. Every year we get more efficient. Be a master when hard times happen, not a newbie with a bag of old seeds.
4. Make mistakes now
Let’s say something happened, a grid down situation, and you really needed to provide for yourself. That would mean every vegetable you grew you would need to save seeds from. You couldn’t afford to loose meat animals to predators. Fruit trees would need to be protected from wildlife… So many things could go wrong.
The first year I raised chickens I lost them all to predation. I’ve never successfully saved a seed. And all the fruit trees I ever bought we’re killed in their first year by my goats.
Sure, all those mistakes are really frustrating. But I can order more chickens online, buy new seeds, and plant new trees. If this were a survival situation, I’d be dead!
A new farmer can afford to make all the newbie mistakes. A survivor can’t. Make them now, because you will make them.
5. Enjoy preparedness… now
This is by far the biggest reason to stop prepping and start farming.
Sometimes it seems as though preppers are almost fantasizing about the grid going down, or zombies taking over the planet. They dream of a time when their strength, skills and preparation will lead them toward a life of fulfillment brought by their own two hands.
But the reality is that everyone can experience a life full of self sufficiency now, and the awesome sense of fulfillment that comes with it.
You don’t need zombies to learn how to protect your animals from predation.
You don’t need an EMP to learn how to grow your own groceries.
And you don’t need TEOTWAWKI to provide for yourself.
Do that now. Start farming. And expirencen the fun, exciting and fulfilling life of a person who is living a sustainable life, without the zombies breaking down the door.
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment… Do you think I’m crazy? Is your money on the preppers?
I imagine a truly civilization-ending catastrophe and wonder why preppers are satisfied with canned food and bottled water and a supply of fuel. That’s not nearly enough if we expect humanity to survive and retain most of our current level of knowledge and technological capability.
And it doesn’t take much for food scarcity to take hold; once trucks stop running most people are in big trouble. It makes sense to recycle waste and for farms to produce their own fertilizer so they can keep growing perpetually.
Prepping seems to be a short-term solution, but if we want to save humanity through an extinction-level event then we need many larger communities that are self-sustaining and locally resilient. One family alone in their homestead would not be sufficient to repopulate. I think we need to think bigger when it comes to prepping.
I hear you, but in the event of social unrest, people would just kill you and take your farm. Also, some preppers prep for extreme weather conditions, which would take out any crops entirely. From what I gather, a lot of them do actually have farming and mechanical skills, and most do not rely solely on dehydrated food. There are farmers that are also preppers. But it’s not really intended as a long-term solution; just to survive the initial hit of whatever they think is coming. Prepping is probably a waste of time, and seems more like a hobby than anything, but at the end of the day, we’re all going to die anyway.
Good post Aust, you have solid points in regards to farmers.
I think when it comes down to it, both sides have their plus and minuses.
It’s safe to say that the ultimate solution here is to be a hybrid, both a darn good prepper and a darn good farmer.
As for those who are just preppers…. farming is a crucial skill, I know because at one point I was that guy who was just a savvy shopper (haha).
Keep up the good posts!
-Ray H.
Hi, im a industrial design student from Mexico, a teacher told us that we had to design a product related to preppers, and I think that a good prepper should know everything about farming, so i decided to design a kind of a intelligent seedbed That help preppers to start growing their own food and stimulate their interest on farming, this post helped me a lot to justify my project and start with the design process. Thank you.
It’s good to know that living on a farm can help you develop the skills needed to survive a natural disaster. My wife and I want to stay safe as we move to a hurricane-prone area. We’ll be sure to keep these facts in mind as we research more about country living.