The Preparedness and Survival Site

I know that I have written about it before, when mainstream news articles have appeared that actually look at the idea of preparedness in a neutral or positive light. It only goes to show that there is progress being made in the idea that citizens should be able to take care of themselves in times of hardship or adverse conditions.

It seems now that Costco has jumped on the wagon in not such a small way. Don’t take this as sarcasm, because it certainly was not meant to be. It just goes to show that the ideals that many people that have been stereotyped and demonized over the years are right in their thoughts towards preparedness.

Costco has thoughtfully offered a full range of preparedness products on their website, the offerings range from 72hr kits and other basics all the way up to cases of long life freeze dried foods and storage systems for them. This is a good thing!

It seems that the rest of society is finally catching on to what many of us have been saying for years, “prepare for the worst and hope for the best”. It makes sense, and I really hope that moves like this by a nationwide retailer/wholesaler are recognized and adopted by the public willingly.

I for one am happy to see this change. Consumerism, for all of the pitfalls that it contains as a whole, can be a powerful tool in also getting the general public to do the right thing.

For several years the folks on this site have pressed the point of preparedness, maybe it is the fact that sites like this and others like it are finally having an impact (or maybe it is wishful thinking on my part). Either way, I’ll take it.

The most likely driver for all this is the fact that H1N1 has actually been declared a pandemic, and the realities that surround the consequences are finally becoming real to a lot of folks. If that’s the case, I’m good with that too. Anything that gets the word out to folks that they really need to prepare whether it’s for a pandemic or for a snow storm.

When the storm comes, in whatever form, will you be ready? Or will you be a victim?

Recently we have become painfully aware of the changing times that the downturn in the economy brings, one of the major side effects is a rise in property crime.

This is one thing that most rural dwellers don’t really like to advertise, but is a fact of life when you live in the boonies. Usually it is something that can stay “out of sight and out of mind” like the meth cookers that the police can never seem to catch in the act, abandoned stolen cars and the like, etc.

But now, the lines have moved to a point where everything is getting up close and personal for many rural residents. The main issue is thefts of opportunity. Just this month I have heard of two separate incidents in my neighborhood where tools and other property has been stolen during the day, sometimes when the residents were home!

The economy has sunk to a point where this kind of activity becomes commonplace, most unfortunately, but is a reality to dealt with. As the times get harder people will range further out to target homes and properties that have the least risk for the most gain, and from what I am seeing that means rural properties.

Seeing what we have seen, we are to a point that we are not willing to leave anything of any real value exposed to where it can be easily stolen. Living in a rural area we have been accustomed to being able to leave tools and implements out on the property without fear of having them stolen like we would have in the city. Property theft was one of the reasons that we left to begin with.

Word to the wise, if you live in a rural area and think that you are safe from this kind of thing, think again!

The following is an interesting article in the fact that it is the same trend that has been discussed here before. It shows that more and more people are starting to figure out that not everything is as stable as they assumed that it was.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) – Six months ago, Jim Wiseman didn’t even have a spare nutrition bar in his kitchen cabinet.

Now, the 54-year-old businessman and father of five has a backup generator, a water filter, a grain mill and a 4-foot-tall pile of emergency food tucked in his home in the expensive San Diego suburb of La Jolla.

Wiseman isn’t alone. Emergency supply retailers and military surplus stores nationwide have seen business boom in the past few months as an increasing number of Americans spooked by the economy rush to stock up on gear that was once the domain of hardcore survivalists.

These people snapping up everything from water purification tablets to thermal blankets shatter the survivalist stereotype: they are mostly urban professionals with mortgages, SUVs, solid jobs and a twinge of embarrassment about their newfound hobby.

From teachers to real estate agents, these budding emergency gurus say the dismal economy has made them prepare for financial collapse as if it were an oncoming Category 5 hurricane. They worry about rampant inflation, runs on banks, bare grocery shelves and widespread power failures that could make taps run dry.

For Wiseman, a fire protection contractor, that’s meant spending roughly $20,000 since September on survival gear—and trying to persuade others to do the same.

“The UPS guy drops things off and he sees my 4-by-8-by-6-foot pile of food and I say ‘What are you doing to prepare, buddy?’” he said. “Because there won’t be a thing left on any shelf of any supermarket in the country if people’s confidence wavers.”

The surge in interest in emergency stockpiling has been a bonanza for camping supply companies and military surplus vendors, some of whom report sales spikes of up to 50 percent. These companies usually cater to people preparing for earthquakes or hurricanes, but informal customer surveys now indicate the bump is from first-time shoppers who cite financial, not natural, disaster as their primary concern, they say.

Top sellers include 55-gallon water jugs, waterproof containers, freeze-dried foods, water filters, water purification tablets, glow sticks, lamp oil, thermal blankets, dust masks, first-aid kits and inexpensive tents.

Joe Branin, owner of the online emergency supply store Living Fresh, said he’s seen a 700 percent increase in orders for water purification tablets in the past month and a similar increase in orders for sterile water pouches.

He is shipping meals ready to eat and food bars by the case to residential addresses nationwide.

“You’re hearing from the people you will always hear from, who will build their own bunkers and stuff,” he said. “But then you’re hearing from people who usually wouldn’t think about this, but now it’s in their heads: ‘What if something comes to the worst?’”

Online interest in survivalism has increased too. The niche Web site SurvivalBlog.com has seen its page views triple in the past 14 months to nearly 137,000 unique visitors a week. Jim Rawles, a self-described survivalist who runs the site, calls the newcomers “11th hour believers.” He charges $100 an hour for phone consulting on emergency preparedness and says that business also has tripled.

“There’s so many people who are concerned about the economy that there’s a huge interest in preparedness, and it pretty much crosses all lines, social, economic, political and religious,” he said. “There’s a steep learning curve going on right now.”

Art Markman, a cognitive psychologist, said he’s not surprised by the reaction to the nation’s financial woes—even though it may seem irrational. In an increasingly global and automated society, most people are dependent on strangers and systems they don’t understand—and the human brain isn’t programmed to work that way.

“We have no real causal understanding of the way our world works at all,” said Markman, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. “When times are good, you trust that things are working, but when times are bad you realize you don’t have a clue what you would do if the supermarket didn’t have goods on the shelves and that if the banks disappear, you have no idea where your money is.”

Those preparing for the worst echo those thoughts and say learning to be self sufficient makes them feel more in control amid mounting uncertainty—even if it seems crazy to their friends and families.

Chris Macera, a 29-year-old IT systems administrator, said he started buying extra food to take advantage of sales after he lost his job and he was rehired elsewhere for $30,000 less.

But Macera, who works in suburban Orange County, said that over several months his mentality began to shift from saving money to preparing for possible financial mayhem. He is motivated, too, by memories of the government paralysis that followed Hurricane Katrina.

He now buys 15 pounds of meat at a time and freezes it, and buys wheat in 50-pound bags, mills it into flour and uses it to bake bread. He checks survivalist Web sites for advice at least once a day and listens to survival podcasts.

“You kind of have to sift through the people with their hats on a little bit too tight,” said Macera, who said his colleagues tease him about the grain mill. “But I see a lot of things (on the Web) and they’re real common sense-type things.”

“I don’t want to be a slave to anybody,” he said. “The more systems you’re dependent on, the more likely things are going to go bad for you.”

That’s a philosophy shared by Vincent Springer, a newcomer to emergency preparedness from the Chicago area.

Springer, a high school social studies teacher, says he’s most worried about energy shortages and an economic breakdown that could paralyze the just-in-time supply chain that grocery stores rely on.

In the past few months, Springer has stockpiled enough freeze-dried food for three months and bought 72-hour emergency supply kits for himself, his wife and two young children. The 39-year-old is also teaching himself to can food.

“I’m not looking for a retreat in northern Idaho or any of that stuff, but I think there’s more people like me out there and I think those numbers are growing,” he said.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98DCLJG0&show_article=1

There are many misnomers floating around out there regarding what “survivalism” really is. For years the mass media and movie industry has always painted a picture of someone hiding in their personal bunker on their stockpile of food and guns secretly hoping that the world will end, or even worse that they are anti-government, camo clad mercenaries that would rather shoot you than say hello.

This is the biggest bunch of garbage that I have ever heard! Yeah, it makes for a  mediocre plot-line in a movie, and like the news has proven over and over again, panic sells. But, it just doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the truth. And yes, unfortunately there are some out there that fit the movie/media descriptions, fortunately they are a very small minority.

The core fundamental of the survivalist/preparedness lifestyle is the fact that the individuals living it realize that they are the only one’s that are ultimately responsible for their own safety and well being when the chips are down. The added benefit to the lifestyle is that when times are good, the people that live this type of lifestyle tend to live better in many aspects.

The true survivalists that are out there are ordinary people who have chosen to take prudent steps to protect themselves and their families. This is something that the US government fully supports, and even tells us directly to do! Here is a good example from Pandemicflu.gov:

Store a two week supply of water and food. During a pandemic, if you cannot get to a store, or if stores are out of supplies, it will be important for you to have extra supplies on hand. This can be useful in other types of emergencies, such as power outages and disasters.

Periodically check your regular prescription drugs to ensure a continuous supply in your home.

Have any nonprescription drugs and other health supplies on hand, including pain relievers, stomach remedies, cough and cold medicines, fluids with electrolytes, and vitamins.

Why not expand on this? In all reality if/when another pandemic comes along there is a chance that quarantines could be enforced, what happens when you can’t leave home to go shopping? Its not hard to add to the two-week supply and make it two months, six months, etc.

Doesn’t sound so insane does it? No, because its based on common sense and the very publicly stated fact that yes, the Government will do everything in its power to help the people in a time of need, but they may not be able to get to you quickly in the event of a large scale disaster or pandemic disease.

Preparedness has always been a mysterious subject that is speculated on by the public, a lot of this speculation comes from the fact that a lot of people that actively maintain plans to take care of themselves and their families to one degree or another do not willingly share this information with others.  In part I guess it can be blamed on the stigma that the media and the movies have placed on the title of “survivalist” as some whack job hiding in a bunker, or militia groups that have more than questionable motives. This is not what the preparedness lifestyle is about!

The simple truth is that the real “survivalists” that are out there are normal, everyday, people that are looking ahead to themselves to deal with a disasterous situation. And, its not always a large scale disaster that is the problem, its the individual ones like loosing your job. Responsible planning ahead can save the house from going into foreclosure, and you from starving trying to hold onto it in the event of job loss.

If you are reading this you are someone who lives a preparedness lifestyle, are someone that is curious and ready to take the next step or are someone that landed here from a search engine link when you were looking for all the folks hiding in bunkers praying for the end to come. For the latter sorry to disappoint, but maybe you will come away with a different picture of what the lifestyle is really about.

For those that are curious, and are checking things out, we hope that the information on this site will push you over the line where you will start preparing. The information here is free, and we hope that you find it useful.

Quote Source: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/individual/checklist.html

Everybody is feeling the pinch, the cost of food basics has risen dramatically in the last year and a half. And if you’re like me, you are also noticing that the cost of food is rising faster than your annual wage increases.

For many years the US enjoyed a fairly slow inflation rate for the cost of food, but in the last year and a half it has been racing to make up lost time. There are several things that you can do to combat this and eat better at the same time.

Don’t Eat Out If You Can Avoid It
Quickest way to drop your food costs quickly, stop eating out. Americans as a whole have a really bad habit of eating out too often, much of that being fast food. Not only is this expensive, it is downright unhealthy.

“Roll Your Own”
The second fastest place to cut your food bill is to avoid pre-prepared meals as much as practical. Prepared foods that can just be popped in the microwave or “just add water” tend to not only cost more, but they are usually loaded with soduim and preservitives. This is also unhealthy.

While I am not advocating that everyone run out and buy a grain mill and make your own flour and other staples, but buying the ingredients to make your own bread for example (flour, salt, etc.) is maybe a third of the cost of buying a loaf of bread from the supermarket shelf. The other benefit to doing it this way is that you are guarnteed a fresh product that you know exactly what went into making it.

Preparing your own meals at home is a much healthier way to go for you and your family, also by doing so it becomes a communal experience for you and your family. Home cooked meals are not only inexpensive compared to pre-prepared foods and eating out, they also get the family together around the dinner table in the evenings.

Preparing your own meals at home does not take as much time as many people imagine it does, for the larger part American society has just forgotten how to do it.

Buy In Bulk
Buying in bulk is a mojor way to save money on groceries. The key is to target items that are of high use in your household, for us shredded cheese is a good example. At the supermarket a 1lb bag of shredded cheese costs around $3.00, while at the local Cash and Carry (restaurant supply) I can get a 5lb bag for $8.00. That is almost a 50% savings! We just repackage the shredded cheese into 1lb bags and freeze 4 out of the 5 pounds of cheese.

Beans are another good example. Why spend $1.50 – $2.00 a can for 15oz of beans? Buying them dry and soaking them overnight on the counter can save you more than 80% of the cost. All it requires is a little bit of pre-planning for what is on the menu the following day.

Pasta, rice, flour, sugar and salt can be bought in the same manner with similar savings. A 50lb bag of rice at the Cash and Carry costs twice as much as a 5lb bag at the grocery store thus dragging the price/lb down in a big way.

For dried goods that you purchase in bulk, mason jars are a wonderful way to go for portioning it out and storing it away in the cupboards or the pantry. Since they are reusable it is another piece of plastic that is not going to make its way to the landfill.

Plan Your Meals
Having a meal plan for the week makes it a lot easier to stay on task when you are at the grocery store for the items that you do need from there, it also allows you to maximize your savings by buying larger packages of food. Meats and poultry are a good example of this, there are always those mongo sized packages of chicken or beef advertised as the “Value Pack”. Even if you don’t need 10lbs of chicken breasts for the next weeks worth of meals, you will use it eventually. Just as easy to save the extra money by buying in bulk, then wrap the surplus breasts individually in waxed paper and freeze them.

Grow Your Own
While this is not a viable option for everyone, a small vegetable garden can supplement the dinner table nicely. Even urban dwellers can enjoy fresh tomatoes from a small container garden placed on a balcony of even in the front window of an apartment. There is some excellent information on container gardening at containergardeningtips.com

If you have the room for a medium sized garden in your yard, concertrate on things that you and your family eat on a regular basis and tailor your garden around that. Another thing that you will probably want to do is to grow heirloom varieties that you can collect the seeds from and plant the following year. While you may get seeds from a hybrid, they are not going to grow the same variety of plant that you collected them from.

A garden can also wind up being therapy too. After a long day at work, quiet time in the garden helps to drive away the effects of stress and tension from the days work. Personally I have to say that a long, hard, day in the garden is better than a good day at work.

Forage Locally
80% of the contents found in that last $6.00 dinner salad that you had can be found for free growing in the front yard. Yep, good old dandelions. People spend thousands and thousands of dollars a year collectively to remove these from their lawns rather than using them for what they are, food.

Although, this comes with the usual caveat.. Know what you are picking to eat! If you don’t, you can easilly find yourself in the hospital or dead. There are several guides out there that can point you in the right, and safe, direction for urban foraging.

Also, if you have the time and the inlclination, local fishing and hunting can also bring low cost food to the dinner table. Nothing beats a few hardwood smoked trout fresh from the lake, all for the low cost of bait and some time relaxing.

Conclusion
There are many outside the box solutions that you can use to help cut your grocery bills, as the economy continues to be the slowmotion train wreck that it is more people just may start thinking outside the box from pure need rather than want.

Our current hot water heater gave up the ghost for the second time. Then came the decision, go tankless or stay with the current system.

Believe it or not, it was a very hard question to answer. Replacing the dead water heater would be around $1,300, but cutting over to a tankless unit will be somewhere in the neighborhood of close to $4,000..

Ok, pro and con time..

Pro’s
- Fed tax rebate of $1,200 – $1,500 (real money, not an income credit)
- 50% realized effiency gain when it comes to propane use
- Unlimited hot water

Con’s
- $4,000 out of pocket expense
- An extra day without hot water
- It takes 120 AC to run it >.< (switching and air induction)
- Did I mention that it takes 120V.. Crap!

Overall I think that it will balance out in the fact that we will see an immediate reduction in propane usage, on demand v.s. keeping 50 gallons hot all the time.

More when the workmen are through tomorrow and the water heater is fully installed.

I keep asking myself why I didn’t just go for the replacement for $2,000 less. Guess we are hoping to see a savings over the long run. Better to pay up front, than after the fact??

Update:

The unit is now installed, and hot water is plentiful. almost all of my doubts have been cast aside at this point. Yes, I am still not happy with the fact that the heater requires 120V AC to function, but it is low enough of a draw (3A) that a car battery and a small inverter could easily supply the needed power.

We are able to pull water from the heater at up to 140F, and if really needed I could install a small control module that will allow up to 185F. Somehow I don’t think that we will need that kind of hot water.

Specs on the installed unit are as follows:

Rinnai R94Lsi Water Heater Specs:

• Natural Gas or Propane Gas Models
• 15,000 to 199,000 Btu for Natural Gas
• 15,000 to 190,000 Btu for Propane Gas (That’s more than a lot of furnaces!)
• 0.7 to 6.0 GPM (55°F rise) / 0.7 to 9.4 GPM (35°F rise)
• Maximum hot water capacity – 9.4 GPM (multiple points of use)
• 98-140° settings; 98-185°F with MCC-91 controller
• 26″H x 14″W x 10″D
• No pilot light – direct electronic ignition
• Newly designed commercial-grade heat exchanger
• New integrated condensate collector
• On-Board diagnostics and safety monitoring
• EZ Connect (connects 2 units together without use of a control board)
• High-altitude operation up to 10,000 feet without additional parts
• Eligible for a 2009 Tax Credit ($1,200 – $1,500)

Perfect solution, no. Best for our current needs, yes. The espresso thermometer shows that we are getting 118F at the tap of the longest pipe run!

We are not going to see the full ruturn from this investment immediately, but the guestimated 50% savings for hot water usage of propane will show itself quickly. Our use before the new tankless install was around 400-500 gallons a year, this included the hot water heater (50 gallon with standing pilot), range (Amish model with standing pilots for the cooktop and oven) and the hot tub (standing pilot).

Hot water is one of our biggest consumers of propane. Yes, you are all thinking “but there is a hot tub”, we leave it shut down a majority of the time, and only the standing pilot is active for some of that time since we totally shut down the tub when we know it is not going to be used.

We are currently learning that it is much better to “pay now” rather than “paying later”. My first $4,000 shower was great, especially after not having hot water for almost four days!

One Final Note:
When it comes to tankless water heaters, you get what you pay for. I have heard many horror stories where folks figured that the $300 – $500 unit at the local home improvement outlet would suit their needs, only to find out that they were sadly mistaken.

We paid the price, and it was steep. But, we can get 250+ gallons of 120F water per hour delivered from the heater that we chose. The cost hurt badly at first, but the benefits are becoming quite apparent.

One thing that I can say about rural living, is that it’s important to choose wisely when standard broadband faire is not available in your area. And, when it comes to satellite communications for internet service, making the right choice is critical.

For the last five years I have had my service through the leading provider of satellite based internet communications, I’ll not mention their name here directly but I’m sure you all can figure out who they are, for the purposes of this article I’ll just call them Brand X. For those that have the unfortunate pleasure of using this unnamed provider yourselves, there is a better alternative.

My search for an alternate provider happened quite on accident, I had already been accustomed to lousy customer service, never getting the advertised bandwidth rate and mystery outages that nobody in tech support could seem to explain (or was even aware of for that matter). I won’t even get started on what Brand X has for a “Fair Access Policy”, I saw nothing fair about getting throttled after a major update from Microsoft.

When I was cruising the net one day I tripped over WildBlue, after reviewing their site and company policies/customer agreement it was clearly a step up from what I was getting for only a few dollars more a month than I was paying Brand X. So I followed up by calling their sales department and quizzing the rep regarding my concerns and outlined my experiences with Brand X over the years, needless to say the rep was well aware of my situation and had spoken to many others in the same boat. After getting intelligent, informed answers to all of my questions and concerns (and a little bit of homework on my own), I decided to make the switch.

From placing the order to the final installation, everything went very well. With the service now up and running I immediately noticed a dramatic improvement over the service that I was getting from Brand X. While there is still an issue of propagation delay that takes place, once a download starts with the WildBlue service the difference is immediately apparent. There is SPEED involved! Speed test results were showing 1.1Mb/sec download speeds, the absolute most that I ever saw from Brand X was 300Kb/sec (and that was usually in the middle of the night).

In summary, there are probably not as many folks out there that are as demanding for their internet service (I am a computing professional by trade, and thus use a lot of bandwidth), but when it comes down to the value of the money spent (even though it is a little more) WildBlue is clear the winner in my mind after experiencing the service from the two major satellite internet providers.

Take all this for what its worth (my $.02), this is not an official endorsement by this site, it is merely one persons opinion based on real experience. Different people have different experiences, and as always YMMV. Choose wisely!

You may be asking yourself why we have not already posted information on this, the reason is simple. There is already an over saturation of reporting for this in the national media and every other sitte on the internet.

Yes, it is a major issue, and it is something that can go either way (good or bad). Even if it goes bad and the virus gains a better infection rate and and the severity of illness increases, the basic, common sense, practices are the ones that are going to make the most difference.

• Wash your hands often!
• Avoid touching your mouth and nose unless you have just washed your hands.
• Cover your mouth/nose when you cough or sneeze.
• Keep your distance from those that are sick (flu or otherwise).
• If you are sick, make sure that you are properly diagnosed by your physician, but after that STAY HOME!
• If your child or children are sick, keep them home (and consider doing the same yourself).
• Don’t Panic!

There is a lot of different information floating around out there. Some is too “timid” and some is outright “alarmist”. We have reserved from posting on the subject due to its volatility, like what was stated earlier, it can go either way.

If this is declared “Pandemic” and the H5N1 virus finds vectors to spread faster and cause more damage in its wake, you may want to consider the following.

• Be prepared to stay at home for 10 or more days if necessary.
• Have needed food and other supplies to weather the period if you need to stay home.
• Have alternative sources of water and heat if the utilities become unavailable.
• Consider a pneumonia vaccination (most flu deaths are the result of complications and secondary infections).
• Most importantly, consult with your doctor on your best course of action and make sure that you have need prescriptions that will last through any period that you may need to stay home.

When it comes to a new strain of the flu making the rounds, there are too many variables to consider. I am not a professional, nor do I pretend to be one. Keep an eye on the information from the government and public channels, being informed and making rationional decisions is the best thing that all of us can do at this time.

Resources:

CDC

Flu Tracker Map

When the economy started to squeeze the Wojtowicz family, they gave up vacation cruises, restaurant meals, new clothes and high-tech toys to become 21st-century homesteaders.

Now Patrick Wojtowicz, 36, his wife Melissa, 37, and daughter Gabrielle, 15, raise pigs and chickens for food on 40 acres near Alma, Mich. They’re planning a garden and installing a wood furnace. They disconnected the satellite TV and radio, ditched their dishwasher and a big truck and started buying clothes at resale shops.

PHOTO GALLERY: A survivalist family

“As long as we can keep decreasing our bills, we can keep making less money,” Patrick says. “We’re not saying this is right for everybody, but it’s right for us.”

Hard times are creating economic survivalists such as the Wojtowicz family who are paring expenses by becoming more self-sufficient.

Karen Gulliver, MBA program chair at Argosy University in Eagan, Minn., expects the movement to grow as the sour economy forces people to reassess priorities. People are asking, “Do I really want to be 100% vulnerable with no self-sufficiency skills if something happens?” she says.

Some signs of the trend:

•Stockpiling. When the stock market drops, orders surge for freeze-dried food, survival kits and emergency supplies, says Nitro-Pak president Harry Weyandt. One best seller: a $3,375 food reserve that feeds four people for three months.

•Gardening. Sales of vegetable seeds and transplants are up 30% from 2008 at W. Atlee Burpee, the USA’s largest seed company. The National Gardening Association says 7 million more households will grow food this year than in 2008 — a 19% rise. A book on building root cellars is the top seller at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Winslow, Maine, supervisor Joann Matuzas says.

•Canning. Jarden Corp. says sales of its Ball and Kerr canning and preserving products are up more than 30% from 2008. Sonya Staffan, owner of The Jam and Jelly Lady commercial cannery in Lebanon, Ohio, is offering twice as many classes this year.

•Sewing. More people are learning to sew so they can mend clothes and make home décor, says Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for SVP Worldwide, owner of sewing-products makers Singer and Husqvarna Viking.

•Relocating. Steve Saltman, general manager of LandAndFarm.com, a national real estate company, says more customers want to “live simply in a less-expensive place.” Jonathan Rawles of SurvivalRealty.com says more people moving to rural areas “are specifically worried about economic and social instability.”

Patrick Wojtowicz’s family decided to transform their lives when his paycheck began to shrink last year. A truck driver, he was spending more time on the road, paying his own expenses while waiting for loads. He disliked being away from home for weeks at a time and worried about losing his job. Melissa Wojtowicz is self-employed and works from home.

Their dual paychecks allowed them to live comfortably, but they weren’t satisfied, Patrick says. “We would basically buy stuff to feel good,” he says. “When that stuff stopped filling the voids we had, we started analyzing what it was that we were really missing. We were missing being around each other.”

The Wojtowiczes made a list of the things they could give up if Patrick quit his job and they relied on Melissa’s income. They already lived in a house on property Patrick inherited from his father a few years ago.

Gabrielle “put up enough resistance to qualify as being a teenager,” Patrick says, but soon she was reminding her parents to turn off lights to save electricity.

Steps such as that, and keeping the thermostat set on 63 degrees this winter, cut monthly electric bills from $300 to $150, Patrick says. He hunts deer and turkeys. Instead of buying books and going to movies, they visit the library weekly. For Christmas, they got canning gear so they can preserve the food they grow.

Article from USA TODAY, credit and copyright are their property. No repost restrictions were noted in the article.

It has been quite a while since I have written anything about the state of affairs since we made the change from an urban setting to the rural area that we live now. Many lessons have been learned (more than I can document here), but there are some significant points that have come across loud and clear to us over the years. These are the things that I would like to take the time to share five, well almost six, years after making the change.

First lesson learned: City utilities were too easy to take for granted.
When you move to an area where the electricity and the phone are the only utilities that are available in the area, and are all that are planned to be in the area, there are certain things that you have to get used to.

The biggest one is the fact that the utilities that are available are not nearly as reliable as they are in an urban setting. When you live in a rural area, you are usually the last on the list to have your service restored. Dense urban areas are always first on the list for utility restoration when there is a disruption, they are also the areas that are most prone to further breakdown first if the services are not restored quickly (mostly deaths from those that are totally dependant on the services to heat their homes, medical emergencies from home care equipment failure, etc.)

When the phone and electricity are your only utilities that are maintained by someone else, you quickly gain a great respect for the ones that you are responsible for. Those fall into three different categories, heat, water and waste disposal (both poop and garbage).

Heat:
For this area we went with a woodstove as our only source of heating for the entire house. When we moved in the first thing that I did was to shut off the breakers for the in-wall electric heaters that were installed, this was not only for safety reasons, and it was also for electricity savings.

I won’t kid you, heating with a woodstove takes work. Not just in tending the fire and emptying the ashes that are left, but in the planning and stocking of your firewood. The latter is more important because if you don’t have the wood stored, you are going to have difficulty tending a fire with no wood.

We learned quickly that you need to plan well in advance for the coming winter, usually starting the fall before the previous winter. If your wood has not sat and “seasoned” properly for at least a year, it will not burn properly, thus causing problems with creosote buildup that greatly enhances your likelihood of a chimney fire.

Good fire safety practices in the rural home are imperative!

Water:
In most cases the prerequisite for this is electricity, which will also be discussed later, due to the need for a well pump to bring the water to the surface. There is also the aspect of the chance that you will have to treat this water to remove undesirable contents, the most likely is iron.

We have discovered that a good well is essential, even if its not so great it can usually be dealt with. In our case, we have a real iron problem, bad enough that without even the most basic particulate filter the water runs almost blood red due to the concentration of iron in the water. We dealt with this for the first few years only using particulate filters in the 10-20 micron range, this worked well until I bumped into a whole house water softener for $50 at the local Value Village (second hand store).

The water softener is a basic model that only needs 12V dc from a wall transformer to run, since it is self flushing all we have to do is periodically add salt to the reservoir for it to use to clean the filter element with.

Another thing to think about if you are on a well is a holding tank, this is invaluable if the power were to fail for a long period and you need to manually fetch water for the house. In our case, if we had to do that, water for drinking can be processed in something as simple as a Brita gravity filter. Water for bathing and flushing is not going to suffer much from the added iron content.

Waste:
This is an age old problem in more ways than one. First off there is the poop issue, this is one that the modern septic system has overcome for the larger part. But, when you have a septic system in place, you have to make sure that you maintain it and treat it properly. The things that most people don’t even give a second thought about flushing down the toilet in the city are a no-no when it comes to a septic system.

Like it or not, when you are flushing waste down the toilet, you are also feeding a small ecological system that feeds on it, and transforms it into usable organic components that can safely be discharged into the soil. If you do not work to actively maintain the biological soup that thrives in the dark, wet and warm environment of your septic tank, you are going to be looking at expensive repairs down the road. The same goes for maintenance of the drain field that the septic tank discharges its processed contents into.

The other side, is the garbage issue. We have no refuse removal service where we live, so the garbage is sorted accordingly into three categories. Burnable, Compost and Non-Burnable.

Yeah, I can hear the uproar right now, but you know what. In areas like we live it is a fact of life. Burning your trash is normal, and if done responsibly (no plastics or Styrofoam), it is pretty low impact.
All items that cannot be burned or composted are taken to the landfill and recycling once or twice a year. We also make it a habit to buy items in bulk to avoid un-necessary packaging that needs to be disposed of.

Electricity:
Even though this is one of our “utilities”, it is also the most unreliable. I am not going to touch on it in depth here because I have written several other articles on this site that deal with the details of providing your own power when the grid is down, but what I will say is that having a backup generator that will power more than just a few odd small appliances is a must.

There was one winter storm that we experienced that brought family members to stay with us from the city because everything was down due to the storm damage. The whole house generator was one of the best purchases that we could have made!

If you want to know more information on generators, search the site and the forums for the keyword “generator”.

Summary:
While this is not all encompassing, it is a good primer on the things that we have learned in the last five years living rural. The things that have been described may seem like drawbacks in some ways, but they are more than worth it to get away from the city and the multitude of other problems that are synonymous with urban living.