Chickens Help Us Cope in Scary World

[Buff Hooligans]

This is sort of related in a way to Justusnak's thread called "For Those of Us in the Booney's". She writes about preparing her household stores for winter blizzards and electrical outages, etc.
It's a really informative thread.

I had never stocked food before September 11, 2001. But after that day, the world felt so unsafe and unpredictable. Like we had enemies we didn't even know who hated us so MUCH.

I started stocking the basement with emergency supplies, water, batteries, and food and stuff for the cats. Then we got a gasoline generator and started devoting more of our yard space to growing food.

I suppose subconsciously, my interest in getting chickens this past spring grew from that. Of having a source of food in case everything went to Heck in a nuclear handbasket. Or if oil supplies ceased and trucks couldn't haul food to stores, or there were big electrical interruptions. Our food industries would collapse.

Have you guys ever thought that? I'm sure serious off-the-grid homesteaders have. Even if you haven't, having chookies running around our yards does indeed help our spirits daily!

 

[eggcetra_farms]

I've thought plenty about the need to be self sufficient. I grow lots of veggies, have my chickens and generally try to do for myself as much as possible.

When 11 SEP happened, all I kept hearing about was how San Antonio (where I live) was such a PERFECT target for terrorists since it's "Military City, USA" and if the terrorists wanted to really do us in they'd bomb the crap out of us. Yeah, that made sleeping REAL easy. Of course nothings ever happened, but if it did......

 

[V Chic Chick]

TBH . . . it's incredibly unlikely that anything like that would ever happen, and even if it did, we'd cope, even if it was by food aid etc. from other countries.

Being scared of terrorist attacks is exactly what the terrorists want . . . and I refuse to pander to that. For that reason, I will go about my daily life, I will use buses, and the underground when I go to London and fly for both holiday and recreational purposes etc. I won't be letting some tin-pot terrorists change my life

 

[kelly]

I keep a good stock of food, buy meat on sale and can it, next year will be a garden again (I've worked the last 8 yrs. and slacked on things). We have 2 generators, coleman stove and oven for on top, crank radio, just finished getting my clothes line back up and hanging out clothes and I got chickens for pets, eggs and if I needed food I guess then I could butcher them. I prepare for torndos, hurricanes, terrorist attacks what ever. I would never want to have to depend on the government or other countries for help. All that I stock up on will be used and helps when food prices keep going up.

Kelly in AL
------------------
4 RIR's

 

[Omeletta]

I'm not scared of terrorist attacks, (but my spelling is atrocious!) but am learning to do it cuz it's just plain wise to be able to provide for myself. When I rely on absolutely everyone else for my sustainance, I'm not being very wise. I agree about going about our lives, but I don't know if the original post had much fear in it, or just an awakening to the idea that life can change in a heartbeat, and being prepared is smart. I don't have a generater or anything like that (YET

) but I found myself complaining about the food I was buying at the grocery store. So, I thought I would do something about it. I know what's in my food, and I enjoy knowing that alot (during summer anyways ) has come from my yard, or a neighbors yard.

Yeah, the world is scary, the Bible promises bad stuff will happen (not because of God, but because of human choice) and we need to be prepared. But there is hope and joy, even in dark times... and a chook just plain makes me laugh when it's fighting with it's mates over a peanut shell!

Blessings

 

[PeiTheCelt]

For me it's not so much a 9/11 terrorism thing so much as a "God this country has gone to heck in a handbasket" thing. My family is from the Jersey shore, and as much as I love them, they really fit all the stereotypes that phrase creates in someones head (selfish, stuff-obsessed, completely cut off from what it takes to live the life they have chosen to live).. And when my husband and I bought this house, one of the key things we wanted was the ability to take care of ourselves, no matter what. To eat *real food* and try to grown and buy more of our food locally (there is a great farmers market in town) and so on..

And there is a little bit of "if all hell breaks loose, I'll be able to survive" there too.. But not so much derived from 9/11, just in general.

 

[wegotchickens]

Every autumn I have an urge to stock up food in the pantry, jugs of water, and lots of firewood. Been that way since living on a farm where the power could out for a week at a time if there was an ice storm. Doesn't take a bomb to screw life up.

Mom still lives on that farm and she thinks anyone anywhere that doesn't keep a week's worth of supplies AT A MINIMUM is being foolish. "Stuff happens." She was a girls scout leader and a boy scout leader and we had 'Be prepared' and 'Be ready to help others' drilled into us from an early age.

I live with a retired Army supply sergeant, though, who totally does NOT want to stock up on ANYTHING. Drives me nuts. We have an ongoing argument about this because he feels that since we live 10 minutes from a store we are fine. He thinks this urge to stock up is part of my pack-rat personality. A full pantry drives him nuts. Opposites do attract

 

[rooster-red]

As a 9 year old kid back in 1973 (

) I didn't understand my father.
In the upper third of our pantry were items he kept stocked up that were off limits to me & my brother, things like vienna sausages, deviled ham, crackers, soups, etc, some, like the vienna sausages we rarely ever ate, so why int he world would this crazy parent of mine be keeping this stuff?
He had a coleman camp stove... at that point we as a family had never been camping...

That winter it hit. the infamous 73 ice storm that paralyzed Atlanta and most of North GA for a solid week.
Power lines and tree branches down all over the place, ice several inches deep on the roads, no stores open to buy food, no banks open to get cash to buy food if they were open.

We had electric heat and no power.
My Dad calmly hung blankets at doorways leading down the hall to bedrooms, sealing them off so we wouldn't have to heat them.

He opened the oven door on our gas oven and turned it on to heat the kitchen and living room.

First day we ate perishables that might go bad in the fridge, kept some of it cold on the porch outside.
We continued to eat our meals out of cans, warming soups on the gas stove until day 3, when the gas pressure dropped, rendering our stove useless.
My Dad pulled out his coleman stove and we heated the living room only.

Day 6 the temps rose above freezing and it was over. The gas stove worked again, though it would be 3 more days before we had power again.

Prior to this I thought my Dad was a nut case, crazy.

Yeah... Crazy like a fox!

 

[Queen of the Lilliputians]

I wish I had the courage, dedication, and knowledge to be an off-the grid homesteader, although we are working on it. I don't like the idea that we are completely dependent on invisible people (grocery, truck, other countries for food, etc etc). My goal is to grow the majority of our food.

This absolutely has nothing to do with 9/11, and much to do with the thought that if a.) we were wild animals most of us would starve to death <I know I would... or die from poisonous berries> and b.) who knows what'll happen? Again, having nothing to do with 9/11, I watched a special on Discov channel (or NGC) about a solar flare. It would wipe out everything electrical.

I read a book that I won't bother to give you the title and author of, since I didn't agree with a ton of it, but it was a fictional account of what would happen if there IS a solar flare. Really any odd natural disaster would do. I think we have all gotten very comfortable with the way things are. When an animal does that, it stops evolving. I live here in Maine.. what the heck would I do if I couldn't heat my house in the winter? I'd cut down my beloved oak trees, and then what? (LOL, well... hubby would...)

Anyway.. off my soap box about that! My thinking is anything extra I can do to provide a food source for my family is good. Eggs are great.. in a crisis we could eat the girls, too...or so I say...

I grow my newbie garden every year. Someday it'll produce enough to freeze through the winter. And we'll have a cow for milk. Planning ahead to be self-sustaining seems like common sense to me. My dad thinks that way, too. My sister thinks we are all nuts.

But if there is a disaster, I think we'll all be hunkered down (with the chickens) in my dad's basement. At least we'll have eggs, THE PERFECT FOOD!

-Meghan

 

[NewGuineaChooks]

Similar to rooster-red's post, I was raised with parents that planned ahead 'in case'. In that era, it was the cold war/nuclear disaster that they were worried about.They were working towards off-grid homesteading. We had buckets of grain stored with DE in our basement, heated and cooked with wood stoves, well water, had the flock of chickens, etc.

Life over the last 30 years has changed their perspective, but I've always enjoyed the alternative way of life they showed me....and have always loved the chickens!