Could Your Homestead Keep Going If the Power Stayed Out? 🧑‍🌾🐄

Are you actually prepared if something serious happens?

I do not mean losing power for a few hours. What if a major storm, an extended power outage or even an electromagnetic pulse left us without electricity for weeks or months?

Could you remain in your home? Could you cook, find safe water and keep your family fed? If you have animals, could you continue caring for them without being able to run to the feed store whenever you needed something?

These are uncomfortable questions, but they are worth asking.

Our main goal over the years has been to make our family and farm more self sufficient. We are not completely self sufficient, and I do not know if anyone truly is. We still depend on electricity, fuel, animal feed, medicine, equipment and supplies brought in from somewhere else.

Start With Water

Food is usually the first thing people think about, but safe drinking water would become an immediate concern during a long power outage.

If you have a private well, you may not be able to pump water without electricity. Municipal water can also be interrupted or become unsafe during certain emergencies.

Every household should have some drinking water stored and a plan for obtaining and safely treating more. That might include water storage containers, a quality filtration system, rainwater collection for appropriate uses and a safe way to boil water.

Animals also require an enormous amount of water, especially during hot weather. Having livestock makes a homestead productive, but it also makes a reliable water plan even more important.

Animals That Continue to Produce

Animals are a huge part of our preparedness plan.

Quail are small, mature quickly and can provide eggs and meat. Goats can produce milk, have babies and provide meat when necessary. Pigs provide a substantial amount of food, and we have now added cows to the farm as well.

Productive animals can help turn grass, hay, garden extras and other resources into food for a family.

However, simply owning animals does not automatically make a farm self sufficient.

Those animals still need water, shelter, medical care and feed. If deliveries stopped, how long would the feed we have actually last? Could we grow or source more locally? Do we have the tools and knowledge to care for an injured or sick animal when professional help is delayed?

Those questions are part of preparedness too.

The animals are valuable, but the knowledge required to care for them is even more valuable.

Learn to Preserve Food Before You Need To

Pressure canning and water bath canning are two of the most important skills I have learned.

Being able to preserve food safely for long term storage is an amazing feeling. It means that at least part of our harvest does not depend on a freezer continuing to run.

Water bath canning is used for high acid foods and properly acidified recipes, including many jams, fruits and pickles. Low acid foods such as plain vegetables, meat and poultry require pressure canning.

Preserving Meat Without a Freezer

One skill I am slowly learning is preserving meat with salt.

Our first attempt was prosciutto. I recently got a meat grinder, and I plan to begin learning how to make salami and other cured sausages.

This is not something I expect to master overnight. Safely curing meat requires the correct amount of salt, proper temperatures, controlled humidity and an understanding of the entire process.

That is exactly why I want to learn now.

The more ways we know how to preserve food, the less dependent we are on a single freezer, appliance or source of electricity. These traditional skills existed long before modern refrigeration, but they need to be learned and practiced correctly.

Keep Basic Foods You Will Actually Use

A sensible pantry is another important part of our plan.

Salt is especially valuable because it is used for cooking, fermenting and certain forms of food preservation.

Wheat berries are another food I make sure we have. Whole wheat berries can remain usable for many years when protected from moisture, heat, insects and oxygen. If flour were unavailable, the berries could be ground in a grain mill as needed.

Of course, storing wheat berries only helps if you also own a mill that works without electricity and know how to use the flour.

That is true of nearly every preparedness item. Supplies are helpful, but supplies combined with knowledge are much more useful.

It is also important to store foods your family already eats. An emergency is not the ideal time to discover that nobody likes the fifty pounds of food sitting in the basement.

Rotate what you store, use the oldest items first and replace them as you go.

Do Not Forget Cooking and Sanitation

A pantry full of food is not very helpful if you have no safe way to prepare it.

Think about how you would cook without your normal stove or microwave. Whatever method you choose must be safe for the location where you plan to use it. Grills, camp stoves and fuel burning equipment can produce deadly carbon monoxide and should never be used inside the house unless the equipment is specifically designed and approved for indoor use.

Sanitation is another subject people do not like to consider.

What happens if toilets cannot flush, trash collection stops or you cannot easily wash dishes and clothing? Soap, buckets, heavy trash bags, bleach and basic cleaning supplies may become just as important as food.

Preparedness is often less exciting than people imagine. A lot of it comes down to clean water, safe food, sanitation and knowing how to complete ordinary tasks without the systems we normally depend on.

Make a Plan With Your Neighbors

Your relationship with your neighbors matters.

Do you know who lives around you? Is there an older person who might need help? Does someone nearby have medical training, mechanical knowledge, farming experience or equipment that could be useful?

One household cannot possess every skill or store every possible supply. A neighborhood that communicates and works together will have more options than a collection of families who have never spoken to one another.

The goal should be cooperation and safety, not panic or confrontation.

You do not need to agree with your neighbors about everything to recognize that you may need one another someday.

Preparedness Is Useful Even When the World Does Not End

A massive emergency may never happen, and I sincerely hope it does not.

But the work is not wasted.

Stored food helps during a winter storm. A stocked pantry helps when someone in the family is sick or unable to work. Preserved meals help when you are too exhausted to cook. A backup way to heat food helps during an ordinary power outage.

Gardening, raising animals, preserving food, baking, repairing things and knowing your neighbors are not only survival skills. They are everyday homesteading skills.

That is why I continue learning them.

I am not trying to prepare for every possible disaster. I am trying to make sure our family is a little more capable, a little more resourceful and a little less dependent on everything working perfectly all the time.

Two Fiction Series That Make You Think

If you enjoy fiction that explores what could happen after a widespread power failure, here are two interesting reads.

One Second After by William R. Forstchen begins after an electromagnetic pulse disables much of the country’s electrical infrastructure. The book was cited on the floor of Congress as something Americans should read, but I could not verify the stronger claim that every member of Congress was required to read it. It is the first book in the John Matherson series.

Neighborhood Watch: After the EMP by E. E. Isherwood follows residents attempting to keep their community together after the power grid fails. It is a ten book fictional series about preparedness, cooperation and survival.

These are novels, not instruction manuals, but they raise interesting questions about how dependent we are on electricity, transportation and modern supply chains.

What Is Your Most Valuable Skill?

If the power stayed out and supplies stopped coming in, what skill would be most valuable to your family?

Would it be gardening, preserving food, caring for animals, repairing equipment, cooking without electricity or organizing your neighborhood?

And what is one skill you still want to learn?

For me, preparedness is not about expecting the worst every morning. It is about looking honestly at what we depend on and gradually learning how to do more for ourselves.

That has always been one of the biggest reasons we chose this homesteading life.