A Place to Start
Doing something when you're feeling powerless
When I was first married, I was radicalized by Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I think that’s what started my dream of homesteading. At the time, we were living in a 100-year-old farmhouse, but not on a sprawling countryside, instead on a busy road in the “downtown” of my little town. Our yard could be measured in feet, not acres and our bank account measured in dozens, not hundreds. Still, we joined a CSA, and I began dreaming of our next house - of a large yard, a garden, and chickens.
Our second house was, in fact, on two acres and our neighbor was a retiree who had a beautiful garden and also liked to can and preserve food. I was so lucky to spend many evenings in the backyard talking with him about how to preserve and grow food. He shared his tips, but also his supplies, his harvest, and even his tractor with us.
We put in a huge garden, raised chickens and turkeys and also started beekeeping. I attended workshops about beekeeping, cheesemaking, and canning. I was teaching then, so I had all summer to attend to this hobby and dream that, maybe, someday this could be my full-time job.
At the time, when I attended these workshops, I often connected with families who were much more conservative than I was. In fact, I used to joke that if you went far enough to the left and far enough to the right, you met up again. That political ideas were really a circle, not a spectrum. That was a time when you could be friends with someone with different political beliefs. When we were united by what we had in common, rather than constantly reminded of how far we are apart.
Over the years, my dedication to this hobby has ebbed and flowed. Our current house sits on 4 acres and once housed chickens, ducks, turkeys, sheep, a mini horse, and bees. As our kids got older, and we began spending more of our summer vacations away from home camping and traveling, we let a lot of things go. I still can, but usually produce from the farmer’s market, not anything I grow myself. We still eat local meat and honey, but we now purchase them from an area farmer.
This past summer, my husband and I began talking again about rebuilding the chicken coop. We also both miss beekeeping. I was starting to get the itch again. That itch to slow down, pull back, and dwell within.
And then, last week, I was given a shove.
The election of Donald Trump for another term, one that he’s promised will be a revenge tour, has me concerned about the future in more ways than I can control. It’s gotten me thinking about the prepping we did all those years ago. At that time, preparing for a natural disaster or zombie apocalypse was a fun hobby. Now, however, I feel that preparations must begin for a dramatic shift to the society we thought we knew so well.
Honestly, I don’t know what that shift will look like. I’ve spent the last week zig-zagging between playing out worst-case scenarios in my while simultaneously wondering if I’m being dramatic. When he won in 2016, I was sure the old guard in Washington would keep him in check. I took for granted the many pieces of our democracy that only exist because of unspoken agreements that uphold tradition and civility. But I now know, no one will hold him accountable - neither Democrats nor Republicans.
And so we may very well need to be prepared for something new.
If you spend any time with preppers or researching preppers, you’ll find that everyone is preparing for a different eventuality. Some prepare for food shortages, some civil war, some for natural disasters, and others for economic collapse. I’m not exactly sure WHAT I’m preparing for, but I decided that I do need to use the next few months to start thinking about some ways things around me might change.
My goal with this blog is to document some of these things. And also to document ways to make change that don’t require 100 acres, a giant garden, or a team of oxen. Realistic things that anyone can do, regardless of where they live. I’d like to explore what other people are thinking about our future (books and podcasts) and provide a place to share ideas and build community.
My goal for living this is not to do anything that wouldn’t benefit me anyway - nothing drastic. For example, I work for the teacher’s union. If Trump makes good on his promise to defund the Department of Education, I might not have a job in a few years. One way to start preparing for this now is to start saving any extra money I can. If I’m wrong and the world carries on as it always has, I’m none the worse for it. The impetus for this blog was my daily wondering, How can we thoughtfully, and without alarm, begin to quietly put some things in place just in case?
Of course, I hope to be wrong. I hope that the Project 2025 rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, and that none of it comes to fruition. If that’s the case, then I’ll just be that girl you know who spends too much of her time over a pressure canner and reading books about fascism. At the very least, this feels like something I can do at a time when I’m feeling incredibly powerless.
So join me in this venture if you’d like. Let’s build a community that is prepared for any outcome and willing to persevere through this bump in American history.
