We recently reached our official one year mark for prepping and, like Trace & family, I decided to do our year in review to see where we stand and in which direction we need to focus for the future.
A few months after we first began “prepping” I went back to work, and I have to say that my lack of free time has seriously affected our prepping. Many of my smaller projects took a back seat to the more routine things like food storage. While we did do some amazing stuff, it was only a fraction of what we could have done had I not been working.
Overall our big successes were:
- learning to garden
- canning
- food storage in general
- building good BOB’s
- building emergency evacuation kits (2 boxed kits with tents, camp stoves, etc)
- some basic skills training for the kids
Of all our successes this past year, gardening has been the most rewarding because my husband got so excited by the results. I simply could not grow enough tomatoes to keep him in salsa and he is anxiously awaiting this year’s crop! The big disappointments for me are that I still have not begun a food storage/surplus for my pet foods, I did not have enough free time to read and pursue prepping topics, the HAM radio course was a disaster (no license for me!), and we have currently postponed stock piling firearms/ammo (an intensely personal family decision).
Looking forward, we have a pretty clear idea of our priorities. The good news is that I am quitting my job because our family size is increasing (we are adopting)! I will be staying home, learning to be a mom to a larger family! Of course increasing our food storage this year continues to be the top priority, adding bulk food purchases (Costco) to our regular food preps. We will begin our pet food storage as well. We will be getting a bigger vehicle (in addition to the full size truck we already own), and possibly a small trailer. I will also have more time to focus on our garden this year and go back to working with the dogs on backpacking and maybe carting. I also received HAM Radio for Dummies book (thanks mom!) and will attempt to master that. As an alternative to the firearms we are also looking into archery classes for the whole family.
Although there were as many ups as downs last year, the future is looking fine for us! How did your year of prepping turn out?
Just to clarify: we are NOT anti-gun in any way. We are adopting through social services which means that these future kids may come from a myriad of bad situations, and that we are under some pretty intense scrutiny. We felt that for the time being, until the children are legally adopted and become stable, beginning to stockpile guns is not in our best interest at this time. The decision to adopt has definitely delayed or changed some of our plans, but we’ll get there eventually.
Congratulations on the One Year Mark. The most important aspect is that you did start the process. I am happy to hear you had good results in gardening. I personal believe gardening is vital to learn. Good luck with this year.
I honestly don’t think I can grow enough tomatoes to store as many as we eat in salsa (not to mention cooking tomatoes or ketchup)! We are going to augment the tomatoes this year with ones from the farmers market that we can buy by the case.