Unemployed Man's Preps

BillT4 sent this to me: "Thanks for your site. I really like the craft and skills stuff. I lost my job five months ago. My girlfriend who lives with me is still working, so basically I'm a stay at home Dad for our five year old son who won't be starting school until the fall. I have started prepping two years ago. If we had to we could live without my girlfriends job for at least nine months. That would eat up all our savings and food supply. My goal is not to use our preps now and to even expand our food stocks. We have been eating a lot of stuff I have been growing in my green house which I built. I just traded some tomatoes and squash to a neighbor for some cinder blocks he had stacked up. He asked me how I was growing (vegetables) in winter. So I told him about my green house. Now he has contracted me to build him one. Then he called and gave me a phone number to another man who wants a greenhouse built. He is also going to place an ad at the American Legion Hall for me. So now I have some income coming in. I think the custom greenhouse thing will be better in the fall going into winter and hopefully this will also lead to some other carpentry or repair jobs. sincerely, Bill."  

UrbanMan replies: Bill, I could not use the pictures you sent as when I tried to enlarge them, the pixilation made them just a blur. But good for you finding a way to make a living your way. I read a book about building businesses and it talked about doing a Personal Asset Inventory to determine what skills a person has across the business spectrum of providing services, products or information in order to grow a business and make a living. It appears you are doing that. Again good for you. Better yet, it is aligned with preparing for bad times and helping others do the same.

You may want to consider the physical location for your green houses or advise others in this thought. Imagine a collapse, hyper-inflation, greatly reduced access to food and wandering hungry people - who then see a green house.....well you get the picture.

You may also want to consider a blog where you discuss green houses, soil prep, composting, watering systems, growing vegetables, canning or preserving the fruit of your labors, etc.  Lots of different ways to take this concept forward, but one thing is for sure,...you can't describe yourself as unemployed anymore,.....you are small business man.  

The second e-mail you sent where you traded some vegetables to an older woman for a bunch of hand tools which you plan on saving for future barter or for the flea market is also a great example of barter and prepping but also of expanding your rapport with the neighbors which will be important in a collapse as it will give you a leg up for team building.

Unless a person has a hardened and prepared site with a dedicated water source, you will be stuck like alot of us relying on our urban or suburban neighbors, and them on us, when the collapse comes. Building those relationships now will help you, helping your neighbors grow some of their own food goes along way. But be advised that being prepared for other threats besides starvation are important as well. Consider your security and protection requirements as well as shelter. Given today's ammunition shortages, it would be great if you could barter for ammunition that you could use!   Anyway, good luck and prepare well.