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Getting Back to My Roots — Why I am a Prepper, by Chad T.
I was born into a family of preppers. My grandparents were all farmers and lived through the Great Depression in the Midwest. My parents both grew up on farms and came from large families. While my folks would not label themselves today as preppers, they would consider themselves as independent and self-reliable. In order to understand my journey as a prepper, you have to go back a few years. Early into my parents’ marriage, my dad just got out of the navy and worked in various cities and towns, from Texas to Minnesota. The largest town we lived in was Minneapolis, but usually we lived in towns with a population of around 100,000 people. As the family grew, there was a desire for my parents to move to an acreage, to get a large farmhouse, and to raise some animals. By the early 1980s they were able to purchase an acreage that was homesteaded in the late 1800s and was located in rural South Dakota. It was about 8 acres, had a barn, chicken coop, and two-story house. It was located at least 20 miles from any town over 1,000 people. The acreage was situated on a high water table, so we had an outdoor well and had a sand point well for the water in the house.
After my parents purchased the property, they bought a milk cow, laying hens, some sheep, and a dog. My mom planted a large garden (roughly 30 yards by 10 yards) with a variety of vegetables. She canned the extras and created a pantry with shelving all the way to the ceiling with the many jars. All my siblings helped in the process, hauling up the vegetables to the house and cutting them up. Many of our neighbors grew large sections of sweet corn, so we would usually eat corn most days in the summer and then would have a few days devoted to freezing the extra corn (sometimes two pickup loads). My parents went from having a small chest freezer when they were first married to purchasing two large, used chest freezers (these were about 6 feet long). These came in handy when they began butchering their own cows, pigs, and chickens. It was not too long until their freezers and pantry were full of meat and vegetables.
In order to save money on clothing, we would wear hand-me-down clothing, and my mom sewed/repaired our clothes to make them last as long as possible. We attended public school and even in by the late 1980’s and early 1990s, I can remember being bullied because we did not wear “cool” clothes, have neat electronic gadgets, or bring homemade things for show-n-tell/holiday time instead of from a store. I remember these bullies using various names to me and my siblings, ranging from being a loser and hick, to poor and worthless.
It was this time in school that I vowed that I was going to get a great job, make a lot of money and show these classmates just how wrong they were.
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