Hey, Ben...

[BowenM]

How's prepper life treating you?  Feeling pretty smug these days? 😏

With all the supply chain nonsense in the news, it kind of made me consider that route... which in turn reminded me of you. At bare minimum I'm thinking of getting solar on my house so I can have water and electricity if something serious were to happen.

[Ben]

Wow.

Looks like it has been months since I checked this forum. I have switched over to a prepper forum since I retired 2 years ago.

Yes being a prepper has served us well. We are still eating steaks we bought before inflation kicked in. We got our first good harvest of pears from the orchard we planted 7 years ago.

I spend my days with that remodel place. Hope to finish it off this year and rent it out.

Thanks for asking. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Ben

[wiebe@CARYA]

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@Ben wrote:

Yes being a prepper has served us well. We are still eating steaks we bought before inflation kicked in. We got our first good harvest of pears from the orchard we planted 7 years ago.

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Nothing like eating fruit from your own garden.

Are you making pear schnapps?

[altenbach]

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@Ben wrote:

We are still eating steaks we bought before inflation kicked in.

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I would imagine that running a large freezer also adds significant cost over time. I wonder where the break-even point is. 😄

Are you generating your own power?

[Ben]

The wife has 4 freezers.

Installing the solar and wind turbine has to wait until after I finish the remodel and get it rented out.

Then the steam engine will get a boiler and a governor to run generator waiting in a crate.

https://youtu.be/Zd-P4E9uLTI

Ben

[jcarmody]

Ben,

You have four freezers.  Do you have a freeze-drier yet?  We've been running one for a few months now.  Food can last for decades if you get all the water out and store it sans oxygen. 😄

Jim

[BowenM]

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@Ben wrote:

Wow.

Looks like it has been months since I checked this forum. I have switched over to a prepper forum since I retired 2 years ago.

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Heh, I was worried I'd offended you with the post. I almost sent you a private message apologizing.

I guess prepping is something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. This pandemic has kind of made me realize just how much total infrastructure goes into keeping me alive.  Grid goes down in the winter and I freeze. Grid goes down in the summer or winter and I don't have any water. Food supply chain breaks down and I don't eat. Gas pipeline goes down and I can't drive to work. And all of this doesn't even go into the whole realm of "pandemic hits and people turn into panicky hoarding idiots and empty stores into their garages"

So, I'm glad to hear it's serving you well. I can only imagine how nice it must be to not be stressed at all about minor fluctuations in things.

[Hooovahh]

Yeah the pandemic has affected people in different ways for sure.  I got to spend several extra months with the people I love the most.  Working from home has been great, with my wife making me lunch instead of eating out, which made me lose weight, and spend less money.  We also got to eat many of the things in our cupboard and deep freezer that we've been pushing aside.  We did get a bidet for less toilet paper usage.  As for the infrastructure, we have a whole house generator, one EV and one PHEV, and now solar while being on well water.  But even so we haven't lost power in the last two years, and the solar is really more of an investment than contingency.  I don't claim to be nearly as self sufficient as Ben, just that we are pretty content and cozy.  For a little while the introverts inherited the earth.

[Jacobson-ni]

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@BowenM wrote:

And all of this doesn't even go into the whole realm of "pandemic hits and people turn into panicky hoarding idiots and empty stores into their garages"

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You don't even need a pandemic for that, just a mild winter storm in Texas.

[crossrulz]

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@BowenM wrote:

I guess prepping is something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. This pandemic has kind of made me realize just how much total infrastructure goes into keeping me alive.  Grid goes down in the winter and I freeze. Grid goes down in the summer or winter and I don't have any water. Food supply chain breaks down and I don't eat. Gas pipeline goes down and I can't drive to work. And all of this doesn't even go into the whole realm of "pandemic hits and people turn into panicky hoarding idiots and empty stores into their garages"

So, I'm glad to hear it's serving you well. I can only imagine how nice it must be to not be stressed at all about minor fluctuations in things.

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Shortly after all the pandemic started, one of the podcasters I like to listen to was driving clear across the country (Virginia to California) and stopped at a small town in the middle of nowhere.  They ate at a diner and asked the waitress how they were dealing with the pandemic and she just laughed at him saying "We're just fine.  We're preppers."  It just made me think of Ben.