Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The "elderly" and prepping...

depends on your definition of "elderly."

A few weeks ago one of my co-workers used the word "elderly" and sort of included me in the definition.

 I started to laugh and said, "Whoa, did you just call me elderly?"

He's 59, but looks much younger.  I'll soon to be 69 and look much younger.  So exactly how did I qualify as "elderly."

Way too often we see people referred to as elderly who certainly don't qualify because when all is said and done, "elderly", in my opinion, is a state of mind, not a chronological age.

I see people in the store where I work who are in their nineties and don't yet qualify for elderly.  I also see people who are in their fifties or sixties who, if you looked up the word "elderly", you would see their picture next to the definition.

The following article was submitted to the Survivalist Blog's non-fiction writing contest by a young lady in her middle sixties.  She refers to herself as elderly.  Really?  She has more spunk than even I can conjure up - and I'm pretty spunky.

I wish she was my next door neighbor.


 “Being Elderly and Living Alone Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Be A Good Prepper! ” 
As a woman in her middle sixties, I’ve always been frugal. We baby boomers were raised to be frugal by parents who were born and raised during the depression era. Our mothers taught us early how to cook with what we had, usually fresh from the farm. If we didn’t live on a farm, we had a relative who owned one and we visited them often, learning the ways of that kind of life style.

We were taught how to can the food we raised and we were taught how to make butter, milk cows, ring a chicken’s neck and prepare it for eating or freezing. We were taught how to plant gardens, how to control insects and what to eat for any illness that came our way.

Our mothers also taught us to sew and mend our clothing. They also taught us the value of wearing things until they couldn’t be mended anymore. Even then, we used them for rags for cleaning one thing or another or cut them up to make warm quilts. We were taught to reuse and re-purpose just about everything we had.

As each new day brings another threat to our survival, I have begun to accept the possibility that we who are currently in our sixties could possibly live another twenty or twenty five years. Some of us will live even longer. With the threat of some kind of disaster taking place in our lifetime or in the future, we, as older adults can utilize what our mothers taught us all those years ago. It got me thinking about how much we really do know about survival.  read the rest

More:

Preppers Checklist : 10 Things To Do Now! (be sure and read the comments)

also

Preppers Survival Gear List : Ten MORE Things To Do Now

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