!Thoughts on prepping for hard times --- agk's diary 19 April 2025 @ 18:37 UTC --- written on Evy's GPD MicroPC while daughter sleeps and Evy studies --- Gopher writer gallowsgryph wrote about concern that financial hard times were coming due to a family member's health scare. I especially enjoyed the realism of this paragraph: Solar power is great when you can get it, but we live in stormy Tornado Alley. Rainwater collection is great, as long as you know how to use and filter it properly. Growing food is awesome, as long as you take care of your garden. Repairing things is great, so long as you can do it right. I'd squabble a little with the rainwater part. One of the places I lived in without running water in my youth had a nice sloped roof, so we caught rain in a collection of scavenged buckets, and used it without filtration to flush toilets, wash dishes, wash clothes, and mop. The thing is to keep the mosquito larvae out. Pooping in a bucket and covering it with sawdust is also not a bad way to live at all, especially if you get your hands on an invalid's bedside commode or build a nice support for your toilet seat. I'm not living that way right now, but we do compost, which keeps our trash from stinking and decreases how much must be hauled away. I noticed solar power on gallowsgryph's list, and find it's often a top concern of geeks I know. Some friends moved to old hunting land, spent a small fortune on solar stuff, chainsawed down a lot of pine trees to get sun in, and lived in an un- insulated carport. They don't live there anymore. Don't your things have batteries? Don't they charge pretty fast? What do you need? A light, music, a fan, a clock, maybe periodic use of a PDA, phone, or general-purpose computer? The big one may be some way to keep food from spoiling. Learning to pickle stuff and make yogurt is way cheaper than a DC refrigerator. Solar makes a lot of sense for people with a wood shop or machine shop if they set it up "daylight drive," like they do at Living Energy Farm in Virginia, USA. No batteries, no inverters. DC motors that can run only when the sun's out. That system will pay for itself with just a few of the shop's jobs. Either way, rural poverty is harder than poverty in town or a city. Maybe less police, but you can't walk everywhere you need to go. During some of my poorest years my biggest annual purchase was a new pair of 100 USD New Balance walking shoes. I wore out a pair every year, and you have to take care of your feet. I mostly wear boots now, but I don't walk five hours round trip to meet any of my needs. I make more money now than I ever did in my life, about 60,000 USD between me and Evy for our family of three, while rent and utilities are split with our roommate. But most of my life was hard poverty. I can't help but assume it will come back, and when it does, I've prepared in the last few years for the poverty to be more comfortable. First, we've stayed in the same place for long enough and "paid our dues" enough in several mostly disjunct associational groups to have a robust, redundant social network. Cavers, church members, Palestine solidarity activists, families of pre- school math club members, Evy's artsy friends---we see these people several times a month, do things together, are honest with each other, lend and borrow, watch each others' kids. When was very poor, I couldn't stay in one place this long, and couldn't maintain as many relation- ships. My social network was smaller, more brittle, less reliable. I often had to face tragedy alone. There are of course other things. I like ways of preparing for hard times that make my life better in regular times. There's usually a lot in our pantry, but we eat our way through it every few years. None of it is freeze-dried expensive fantasy food, or gigantic bins of motheaten winter wheat. We cook or prepare most of what we eat. Most of what I cook has few ingredients and most of the ingredients have long shelf lives. In my kitchen cabinets are big jars of brown and white rice, steel-cut oats, mung and aduki and black and navy and red beans, blackeyed peas, lentils, flaxseeds. None get bugs. They get soaked overnight and cooked often, with onions sauteed in olive oil or butter, bay leaves, dried kombu seaweed, dried mushrooms, a can of coconut milk or tomatoes, dried nettles, parsley, a few spices and salt. I love canned sardines or oysters with butter on toast. We eat a loaf weekly. You can do a lot with potatoes and cheese, which store well. Eggs don't need refrigeration. Mine sit on the counter. I've always had hard times in a rich country. Even when I was very poor I could get some kind of fresh produce, often from far away. Dozens of bananas or hundreds of berries rescued from dumpsters, the berries washed, the bananas sliced, all frozen on baking sheets and bagged to eat slowly out of the freezer in a house with electricity. I'd miss fresh year-round produce if I could no longer get it. I love my collards and kale. My most-used cookware tolerates our electric stove, a camp stove, or a fire. Evy and I scavenged old cast-iron skillets, more than we need. I have a small hard-anodized Hawkins aluminum pressure cooker I love. I understand some years ago the government of India gave away millions of them to families to decrease pollution and cooking fuel use, and reduce poverty. The pot cooks my beans quickly and is easy and cheap to repair, as it should be for 100 USD. When I'm camping, it means I have to gather less wood. I love my cheap plug-in electric rice cooker. I think it cost 12 USD. It makes rice, steel-cut oat- meal, quinoa, winter wheat, teff, grits, most days of the week with little minding. I also love my Shuttle Chef non-electric slow cooker. It's a pot you heat on the stove or fire, then drop in a thermos that keeps it at cooking temperature for 12 hours. It was amazing for rice or soup when I had no idea when I'd get home from nursing school, because it can't burn my food, and it's wonderful for overnight cooking, or camp cooking. Like the pressure cooker, it also costs 100 USD. I bought it the year after I got the pressure cooker. Each of the pricier things that I use in everyday life but also will make hard times easier (if they aren't lost in a sudden move or something) I identify by doing a periodic energy audit in my head and seeing where I could expend less. Fans and a spraybottle, heavier blankets and a hot water bottle significantly decrease our use of central heating and cooling and let our house breathe more. A nice place to sit outside. Hobbies that cost little to no money, an old, maintainable bicycle with a chariot for daughter for everyday use and for when the car breaks. The bicycle is a great example of preparation for hard times. I started riding again on a bike my old roommate gave to a neighbor, that sat behind the neighbor's shed for a few years unused. I asked for it, cleaned it up, and enjoyed its single speed and coaster brake. Evy found the chariot for daughter at the goodwill, and asked her dad for the bike she rode as a teenager. I wanted a Schwinn Varsity and asked around until I found someone who sold me one for 20 USD. When I destroyed daughter's chariot, another parent who'd aspirationally bought one for her kid but ended up never biking, gave me hers for the part I couldn't find, and I fixed it. By mending things, whether socks, dresses, compu- ters, bikes, cars, or your house in good times, you identify the tools you'll need, and you get your own or get to know people who lend tools or help you fix stuff. My neighbor across the street blew all the dust and gunk out of a seized manual typewriter I found with his compressed air. He also replaced my car's alternator and modified a bolt in his shop when the new car battery wouldn't fit. I'm not handy, but I try to do enough to know what I'll need when hard times give me more time and greater imperative to fix things. I'm satisfied with my 80 USD flip phone with a 20 USD a month plan. I'm not overly dependent on it, which will be good should I not have one anymore. A couple friends I routinely visit without calling or making plans. Phone numbers and addresses are in a Rolodex. Cheap Casio watch (F-91W or MQ-24) on my wrist. The alarm on the F91-W wakes me up in the morning. My Opinel pocket knife is inexpensive and solid. I don't have a gun or bow anymore and don't want one. I have Pa's old fishing pole and tackle box, but it's been years since I bought a fishing license. Finally, I can't say enough about books. Abandon me on an island, at least one of the things I'd ask to have's a book. One I could read slowly, repeatedly, like Braudel's *The Mediterranean,* a good Bible translation, or a complete Shakespeare. I just finished reading *The Boxcar Children* to daughter. She loved it, now we're halfway through *Betsy- Tacy.* Reading and journaling were my best friends in my hardest times. Dependably. I came back to edit this after Easter Vigil, mostly to add the part about shoes. Western and Orthodox Easter coincide on the same day this year. He's risen indeed!