Spring: The Best Time To Get Into Prepping
Kevin Felts 02.19.18
Ever thought about getting into prepping, but not sure where to start? With spring time upon us, now is the best time to jump on the prepping bandwagon.
Not sure where to get started? After all, where would someone go locally to get information on prepping? Go to your favorite search engine and type in “farm supplies.” You may have to click on the map because all of the results may not be listed.
Look for places that sell seeds, plants, and are locally owned. Stay away from the big box mart types of stores. Usually, their only interest is keeping the shelves stocked. With a family owned store, the owners may be on location everyday.
Walk into the store, look around and take note. What is the main focus of the store? Is the store mostly odds and ends, or is it full of livestock supplies, seeds, saddles, or chicks chirping?
For example, there is a store in Beaumont, Texas that advertises itself as a farm supply store. The store sells mostly a hardware, tools and power tools. There is very little farming anything in the store. There are no bags of fertilizer piled up, Nor or there bags of horse, chicken or cattle feed. The place is a clothing and hobby store that calls itself a farm supply store
If the reader walks into a store, and the inventory is mostly clothes, boots, hand tools, and hobby supplies, chances are you are in the wrong place.
The small family owned stores are a depository of local farming information. The owners will know when to plant, what types of spring plants to plant, what grows well, and what does not grow well. Go into the store and talk to people about getting into gardening. Even if it is just a flower bed you want to grow some peppers, beans or onions in, talk to the people at the store.
Do the people at the store want to make a sell? Sure they do. Hopefully, they will give you some good advice to go along with that sell.
Contrast that to the big box marts that sell chicks, and when asked what kind of spring chicks are in stock, all the sells rep can squeeze out is “I don’t know.”
Once you have the peppers, beans or whatever it is you want to grow back home and planted, the next step will be looking into canning. The book I recommend is the “Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving.” Ball is a well known company in the canning and preserving community.
Other books I recommend are ones that cover square foot gardening. Raising your own food does not have to take up a lot of room.
There you go. You are growing and preserving your own food. In other words, the reader has taken their first steps in long term prepping.
