What did you do today to prep for the future?

What did you do today to prep for the future?

This isn’t just a generic question, I’m asking it specifically. What did you do, today, to expand/enhance your preps?

Prepping isn’t just a mental exercise. As we wrote before in this article, there’s a lot more to prepping than just thinking that it’s probably a good idea to prep.

The rubber’s got to hit the road.

A quiet field on a sunny spring day

Right now, I’m writing this from “the big clearing” at The Place. I’m sitting in our four-wheel-drive truck and it’s sitting in the middle of the clearing. Spice is finishing up her job for the day, trimming any new trees that don’t belong in the clearing and putting stump killer on the new branches sprouting from the stumps.

This is prepping? Yes, it is.

We are in the process of returning this 5 acre clearing to native tallgrass prairie to enhance the wildlife population of The Place.

I’ve just gotten back from scouting around the area, seeing the conditions of the neighborhood, checking to see if any land around us is for sale (it’s not), the conditions of roads coming in and out of the area (gravel roads & heavy flooding, some are badly  hole, they may be.

What did you do yesterday?

Perhaps you were busy today, what about yesterday? Did you grocery shop for storage food to rotate into your pantry so your family can eat the food that is short time? Or use some rotated food? Practice your shooting?

One task today? Killing autumn olive

It doesn’t take big chunks of time or resources

I get it. You have a life. You can’t afford endless hours and piles of cash spent on prepping. And what would be the wisdom in ignoring life today to prep for a possible tomorrow?

Well, truth is, rainy days do come. You may never see a major cataclysm, but your life, like all of ours, will have situations where being prepped would make it better.

Being ready for these times doesn’t require ignoring the life you’re in now, either. It just takes a commitment to actually doing things, regularly. Staying well is (via exercise) is the most time-intensive part; and it bears plenty of daily, non-prepper benefits.

Most other preps can be broken into small chunks and handled one at a time. Buy a little extra of non-perishables while you’re already shopping. Watch a YouTube on how to do a thing in between episodes of a show you’re watching. When it’s a beautiful day and you don’t Wanna go right back inside, explore a new route to improve your mental map of your surrounding

Bonus: You get a sense of accomplishment. You’re that much better prepped!

Doing the same thing over and over is not prepping

Once you get to liking that sense of accomplishment, there’s a trap. It’s easy to fall into the habit of doing your Favorite prep and ignoring other things that really need done. With Salty, it was buying guns and ammunition. He didn’t keep buying because he really thought we needed so much. He just likes guns as equipment, and he’s good at shopping for them.

If the only prep I work on is gardening, I’m not really a prepper. I’m a gardener. Useful, but not the same thing. So some days I have to put on my big girl panties and do something I like much less. Learning navigation skills was one of these. I put it off for a long time because I’m not naturally good at it. Working on it didn’t make me feel smart.

I was fortunate that my need for navigation skills came in a low-risk situation. It was enough to motivate me without being a disaster. Now I’m a lot better at it. In retrospect, I’m glad I did it. Doing the harder thing is often that way, I find.

An example: How Spice answered “What are You doing?”

So what are we doing? I’m done for today; brush clearing’s a lot like work. This week? Work on the garden. That ups the food supply for the year regardless of what grocery stores do. Dig some holes for new nut trees, a more long-term prep. I’ll get some practice with map navigation as I write the last installment of the compass series. Keeping fitness up is a ‘most days’ job, but there’s no better health prep on the planet.

Here’s the thing. You’re a prepper if you prep, not if you just read about prepping. Learning is good. Collecting new ideas is good. Finding motivation from others is good. But you don’t end up prepped unless you actually do the prepping.