Preppers Shunning Lessons From The Past
Kevin Felts 08.01.18
Get on YouTube, or read through various survivalist / prepping websites, and it would seem the way to survive a collapse of society is to stockpile food, gold, guns and ammunition.
A question to the reader, how many of us talked to our grandparents or great grandparents about life in the Great Depression? Did granny and papa get the family through the depression by stockpiling gold in the 1920s? The rich stockpiled gold, but the average person did not.
In general, people got through the Great Depression by farming every piece of land they could. My grandfather grew corn for livestock feed. Then there was the cotton, which was sold. My aunt told me stories of her picking cotton for my grandparents until she was almost 20 years old.
That is how most families got through rough times – they farmed, saved, and sold what they were able to grow. All of that was on top of working when they could find jobs.
Preppers today seem to have forgotten the lessons our great grandparents and grandparents taught us. We have lost sight of canning pears, figs, beans. We do not take the time to raise chickens, or grow potatoes.
A great number of preppers have shunned time honored lessons our ancestors lived by.
For example, awhile back I was looking through grannies old house when I found bags of cloth scraps. These were pieces of cloth of all different sizes. I asked dad about it, he told me granny never threw away anything like cloth. She used it to patch blankets, or to make blankets and rugs.
What do we do today? Chances are we throw away more stuff in a month than our ancestors threw away in a year. We go to buffet bars and gorge ourselves ad nauseam. We buy our children junk food while the backyard grows nothing but grass; and we wonder why the United States faces an obesity problem.
Did papa put meat on the table with an AR-15 or AK-47? Nope. Squirrel and rabbit were brought home with a single shot or bolt action 22 rifle. While papa was hunting rabbits or squirrels, what was granny doing? She was tending the garden, cooking, and canning.
How many of today’s so called preppers even have a pressure canner? They could probably tell you all about it in typical armchair prepper style, but few have actually canned anything.
Just so everyone knows, yes, I have a pressure canner and several books on canning. The most recent addition was canned jalapeno peppers, and a bowl of fresh picked okra ready to be canned.
Final Thoughts
Preppers may want to consider getting back to the basics, which includes learning how to garden and can food. If we use jars why is it called canning? Maybe “jarring” does not sound right?
Stockpiling gold, beans and rice in mylar bags, guns and ammunition is fine and dandy, but what about learning how to grow and preserve food? How many preppers live close to a body of water, yet have never gone fishing?
The obsession with stockpiling seems to have surpassed common sense.
