Yesterday, Dawn and I gleaned about a hundred lb. of just-dug russet spuds. Put about 60 lb. in boxes on layers of straw down in the basement and took the rest to two of our neighbors, one with seven kids, the other with four plus a high school-aged foreign exchange student. I'm sure they'll be eaten (the spuds, not the kids) within a week or so. We grow our own Pontiac Reds and Yukon Golds, but why bother raising russet potatoes? We do live in Idaho, amirite?
Kyle is the Bishop of the 5th Ward and also the ophthalmologist who did my cataracts and a double blepharoplasty (shortened up my eyelids so I could see). He's a great guy and lets me use his front-loader/backhoe and then borrows my woodworking tools. The other next-door neighbor, a dentist, (they're both almost a quarter-mile away, given the size of the fields here) was the leader of a gang of thugs who showed up two days after we moved in, and unloaded the moving van for us.
*BEGIN RANT* This is why Dawn and I are anti-bugout, and anti-attempt to have some sort of super-hideaway where no one knows where we are. At our age and level of expertise (old, and still kind of n00bie), We need to be tied to others -- friends and neighbors -- because we feel that our chance of surviving and prospering in any sort of post- SHTF simply won't be possible with just the two of us.
And -- if I may be so bold -- I doubt if more than 10-20 percent of the people in the "prepper community" would be able to actually move to an isolated area and make a go of it (like being able to actually survive a year) without taking advantage of the fact that there are lots of other folks nearby who would be more than glad to help you, as long as they know you're willing to help them back if the need arose.*END RANT*
I know that lots of you are already homesteaders -- many of you are better at it than we are and that's cool. But I'm talking about the keyboard warriors who are basing their plans on magically exiting the city without being caught up in a twenty-mile parking lot with not the faintest idea of where to go and how to get there. Sounds like a bad plan all around!
After Dawn turned 62 and finally reached retirement age, we knew that both of us are older and, although we're still pretty spry and in good health, it's not always going to be easy living isolated from everyone else.
When we finally decided in 2018 to relocate and begin homesteading (at ages 74 and 62) we took our ages (and ignorance of farming) into consideration and built that issue into our plan. We checked out weather/climate conditions, USDA growing seasons a more laissez-faire state and local government, and a mindset which involve neighbors helping neighbors. Back in Mesa AZ, I realized that most of my friends were family-oriented folks, building a year's supply of food for when SHTF, and most were friendly and pretty well armed... and most of those friends were Mormons.
Today, most of our other neighbors are LDS, too; but completely cool with our faith and/or beliefs -- which are definitely not Mormon -- and we're completely cool with theirs.
I believe my esteemed colleague, Ms. Amish Heart, understands quite well that a religious outlook or structure can certainly pay dividends, and I'm hoping that this will only get better if-and-when the infrastructure is degraded, whether by a Government failure, an EMP, or any other mishaps in the future.