Be aware and be prepared

hi friends welcome back to the channel faith and arrow Homestead we're actually not on the homestead today though we are on my parents property my parents little Homestead and we're going to talk about something today that is actually controversial and I'm not going to lie to you I'm really nervous I'm actually like literally shaking a little bit my mouth is dry I've got my water I um I feel led to talk about this and so I will because I am obedient but I am nervous about it okay okay um I had thought about maybe doing an outline for this video but I decided not to because I really want this to flow from the heart and um I just want to see kind of where the Holy Spirit leads us in this conversation so speaking of the Holy Spirit that's where we will start I have been feeling very uncomfy lately um I have been feeling very disturbed very uncomfortable um just kind of in my spirit when it comes to the idea of preparedness now even just right there I know that some of you are probably going to click off of this video that word preparedness is a bit of a buzzword um please hang in there with me just a little bit longer okay please um I am a homesteader and I think naturally with being a homesteader there is a level of preparedness that comes with that because it's just the nature of it you know part of being a homesteader means putting up up food canning dehydrating freeze drying um freezer meals perhaps um raising your own animals if you butcher your own chickens often you have 20 to 50 of them at a time or more those are being stored somewhere um if you're butchering your own beef you've got a Year's plus worth of beef stored somewhere if you have your own fruit trees you're preserving apples through the winter time if you Garden potatoes and onions and garlic through the winter time so there is a measure of preparedness just innately built into homesteading right and and I do I am talking about that but I I do want to go just a Teensy bit beyond that and so what what I'm about to discuss with you is not doomsday prepping it's not hoarding everything that you can buy um for a a a some sort of disaster that's not what I'm talking about but it also just isn't simply homesteading either there's something in the middle here that I want to try to get to here's why okay and this is the part that makes me nervous because this is not a political YouTube channel and it's never going to be a political YouTube channel I am outspokenly a Christian on this YouTube channel however and I don't think necessarily that it's a bad thing to be outspoken sometimes when you have a platform as long as it's thoughtful and well-intentioned and this is I'm not a attacking I'm not trying to cause Strife um I'm not trying to argue I am just simply trying to share something with you my audience that has been weighing on me heavily so please understand that I am not going to get into Political opinions in this video I am just going to say that I am feeling a lot of um tension and um hate I'm literally shaking this is really hard for me literally like I'm feeling like tears well up in my eyes I don't know how to convey to you what I'm feeling in my heart without it coming out controversial so I'm just going to say it I'm feeling a lot of tension and hate and I'm feeling that politically right now it is very personal I I'm feeling that it's very personal and maybe it's my age maybe I've just been naive and ignorant to it in the past and only this election season is my eyes really open to it but it does seem to me that it's beyond just um oh yeah you know I this this sounds good for the country this St we don't like high gas prices and you know this and that about this and that and this rule suits us but this one it it's not just so Cavalier here it's very much if you don't believe this you're racist if you don't believe that you're blank phobic enter anything there phobic if you don't go along with this you're a bigot if you don't go along with that you're small-minded it's becoming very personal and it's becoming very you know if you're not on this side then you're our enemy like it's not just that your ideas aren't as good you are our enemy we are against you and again I'm trying to keep opinions out of this I'm not trying to share political opinions that's not the point of this okay so that's number one cuz I'm going there's lot of different things that's feeding into the way that I'm feeling so that's one thing the other thing is um I'm hearing a lot of and I don't know how true this is and I don't know if it's just fearmongering and rumors but I'm hearing a lot of um you know that perhaps there might be another illness that comes around because it's the election season and that might sway voters one way or the other I'm hearing about like the the bird flu and things like that um or perhaps a Resurgence of covid I don't know if that's something that could happen I'm just hearing it I think the one that's really Weighing on me the heaviest that somehow nobody's talking about that I'm like very inyour face is that the government is cracking down on raising your own food like majorly I went to an Azure pickup today that's what's in front of me and we're going to talk about all this in a moment I I went to an Azure pickup today and one of the women were just telling me how a friend of hers local to me here in New York around here had all of their chickens seized okay and then um just earlier this year a few months ago there was that whole thing with that Dairy being raided and all of their stuff confiscated and not that long ago um processing facilities were being burned to the ground it's still happening and it's just not it's being swept under the it's not being talked about okay well all of these things combined the the tension and the just very clear like hate that's happening in our country right now the if you don't think like me you're the enemy mindset that's going on right now and the potential for more illnesses um covid bird flu whatever paired with the fact that us trying to produce our own food is literally openly under attack it's just all making me feel very nervous not fearful and I actually I'm so upset with myself I forgot to bring my study Bible uh because my study Bible said something that I really loved but I can still find the verse at least so okay I found it it's Isaiah 81 through 13 it says this is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me warning me not to follow the way of this people do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy do not fear what they fear and do not dread it the Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy he is the one you are you are to fear he is the one you are to dread he will be a holy place and I read that not yesterday but the day before knowing full well that I was going to be filming this today so I've just had like little things here and there that I'm like okay nope I am supposed to talk about this um and that verse really stood out to me from the fear standpoint because that's the other thing that makes this controversial I hear so many people talk about um oh that's fear mongering that's fearmongering and I don't want to fearmonger but I also don't want people saying don't fearmonger to be meant as a way to oppress me sharing something that I think I'm supposed to to share so I'm not fearmongering I am simply sharing something that's on my heart and get to where I'm going with this what I'm hoping it will inspire in you as we continue on in this video but before we get to that I just need you to know I'm not afraid I fully trust that our God has this all well in hand he has this entire nation wellin hand this entire world well- in hand he has this election well- in hand I'm Not Afraid more so we serve a God who provides for his children he dresses the lies he clothes us he watches over The Sparrows he loves loves us I'm not worried I know he knows that we have to eat he will provide for us and I truly truly believe that so I am not afraid and I have not felt afraid I you know pray a lot and I read the Bible a lot and I try to be really in tune with the Holy Spirit and so I'm feeling this urging and this discomfort in my spirit but I don't feel afraid I don't feel desperate and we're going to talk about that more as we move on but I just wanted to say that before we get into this I'm not trying to fearmonger I'm not trying to work anybody up into a frenzy I just want to make you aware here's why this is what I think is happening Co has most more or less passed right the fear of it and the urgency of it and the in your- faceness of it has passed and people are going they're reverting back to the way that they were before Co happened how do I know that myself and all of my homesteading gardening friends are seeing massive decreases in the engagement in our channels because people are less interested in this type of content now and farmers are struggling again to sell their products when before they were selling out they were rapidly expanding they're selling less and people are going back to eating fast food they're going back to shopping once a week at the grocery store they're going back to doing all the these things and when I was having this conversation with my parents I told them no now is the time to to push through to continue on this path don't give it up don't be only um cognizant and aware of these principles when something's going wrong this is a lifestyle and to whatever degree it suits you and your family I'm not saying that everybody has to have a milk cow and a massive Garden but to whatever degree it suits you and your family you should still care about where your food is coming from just because covid is more or less behind us does not make our food system any less broken and back to the things that I was trying to introduce to you moments ago I still think there is concern and reason to um care about self- sustainability and um preparedness I know that preparedness is a buzzword but there's really no better word for it preparedness um and I just I worry that there are a whole host of people who are like okay we CO's behind us we can skip the farmers market and go back to Walmart and get our groceries and not worry about tomorrow and I just I'm not feeling that I'm feeling very much that we need to stay the course and we need to continue investing in this way of life we need to continue trying to fix the broken food system investing in our Farmers learning how to cook from scratch growing the gardens having the chickens all of these things preserving the food canning the peaches doing all of the things so that we are not taken by surprise again as we were with Co so many people were not prepared I was not prepared many most I'd say the majority of people were not prepared for the grocery store shelves to go be and so what we just think that that's over that's done that's never going to happen again there's no reason to be prepared for a day when there isn't food on the grocery store shelves that could still happen again you know there's all of these things there's an election coming up people are having their chickens confiscated and their Raw milk operations shut down and farmers are being put out it's still happening processing plants are being burned down it's still happening there are still reasons why we should care about this and so I myself have been getting LAX um in some instances and others not like the garden is doing really well this year and I'm planning on putting up all this food I have a whole food preservation plan and so in that way I am still being prepared but I had definitely gone stagnant in building my food stores and continuing to um uh uh broaden my infrastructure in terms of being self sustainable and an operating Homestead I was getting LAX I was like okay you know I'm I'm happy with where we are you know I I I get some things bulk I do some cooking from scratch we've been eating out more we've been going to the grocery store more it's just been it's just I get it I understand why it's happening because you don't have that push that urgency to do any other they alternative so I mean I I get it but guys we really really have to stay the course okay so there's my defense into why I feel so much better I literally already feel better that that those words are out of me because I've been so stressed about sharing that with you because I I I know I know it's controversial nobody wants to hear about the election nobody wants to hear the word preparedness like I get it I understand um okay so with this being said I shared this with my mom my dad too but I had like hour and a half long conversation about this with my mom and she agreed and she understood where I was coming from and so her and I have kind of come up with a plan it's really nice when you've got friends or family members that you can do this with because then not all of the um pressure is on you so they're kind of doing their own thing and there's a couple things that we're going to do together I'm going to start by sharing with you a food storage list that I've made these are items that to me are essential to have prepared in my food storage ready to go um and those are flour SL wheat berries meat mason jars and Lids sugar salt peanut butter which peanut butter is the luxury item I always buy a lot of peanut butter dried beans pasta rice oats water and first aid kit those are the things that I think are essential we absolutely have to have them and I am going to go out of my way to keep them always stocked so I have kind of arbitrarily in my mind set a deadline for this for the election now that's not to say that once that date has passed I'm just going to stop thinking about this it's just that it's given me a goal so between now and basically the end of the year I want to really focus my efforts into beefing up this and so I had my very first Azure order um and I waited until today to film this so I could have some things in front of me here I'm going to be placing an Azure order every single month between now and the end of the year because what I don't want anybody to have to do is go rush out and spend a grand on buying all of these things because it's last minute and you can start to see that shiz is hitting the fan like that's not what I want to do I want to be able to space this out I want to take my time I want to be at peace about it I don't want to fear feel fearful or desperate and so I I am releasing this now even though I think that perhaps things could flare up months from now because I think it's important that we kind of get started on this now so in this order I have a bag of a 25lb bag of cane sugar and a 25 lb bag of hard white wheat berries I have decided that every month every Azure order I am going to purchase at least two large bags of of something flour sugar wheat berries salt oats rice I'm going to get big old bags of something every month two two every month and if I do that between now and the end of the year that is potentially 12ish bags of something and that's great for a family of just me and Tom and then sharing with my parents and my siblings if needed that is not bad and it's spread out so I'm not trying to buy 12 25 or 50 lb bags of something all at once it's spread out over nearly half a year um so there's that also I got this big block of cheese um cheese to me is a luxury item but it is also a um protein SL dairy product and it's something that I definitely want to keep stocked we have a deep freezer we are very fortunate to have a deep freezer and so I will be purchasing a big block of cheese one of these every single month and the uh since I'm not home I can't show you what I'm what I would do but I'm going to cut this into four uh separate pieces and I'm going to keep one Chunk in the fridge at a time and the rest I will keep in the freezer because um learn from my previous mistake this does not stay unless you have a humongous family this does not stay good in the fridge long enough to go through it my husband and I it's just the two of us in the house and um this went moldy before I could get through it when I bought the last time I bought one um so learn from my mistake uh separate it take what you're going to use put the rest in the freezer um I have butter I we go through a lot of butter um I do make butter using the cream skimmed off of the raw milk that I get from a local farm so I am constantly adding butter and that is the butter that I actively use however um butter and cheese I know were hard to come by during the pandemic and they're expensive um so I like the idea of adding butter and cheese a little at a time every month and just building up my stores so these three blocks of of butter I'm not I'm going to put them in my deep freeze and I'm not going to use them unless I absolutely have to but I like I said I pretty much keep the butter moving in my house pretty well by making my own every two weeks using the cream off my raw milk so this should be able to just go right into my food stores and not be messed with and I'll be adding to that every month um and then I've just been shopping the sale area of azure and they had their whole wheat organic spaghetti uh pasta noodles on sale and so I was able to get three boxes of these but I did it because it's a really good example of um because pasta was on pasta and rice were on the list and so I will be adding either pasta or rice some um something that falls under that category into my my Azure cart every single month so that I can continue to work on my stores because if if push comes to shove I've got noodles butter and cheese that is a meal and then um it's not on the list but I am just going to get some sort of cleaning supply this is um a fragrance-free dishwasher gel I like this stuff from Azure um as well as their hand soap and things like that so I will just be adding one to the cart every month just to kind of keep that growing and keep that moving do you see how the point is to just have some sort of plan what works for your family what does your family consume um and just start building on that and I want you to to realize that this is not doomsday prepping that's not what this is and that's what I mean when I say we're somewhere in the middle here because I didn't grow any of this um and I'm also not putting it away for the apocalypse my family is going to consume these things bird flu or not uh election gone aai or not like we're going to use these items so I am just really really really trying to share with everybody don't stop now just because Co is behind us does not mean that we can just okay well we we go to the grocery store once a week we have 3 days worth of food in our house and nothing else please don't go back to that that was never a good idea even preco that is not a good idea that is not a good way to keep a functioning kitchen pantry that's not a good it's just that's not good don't do that please build up your stores don't get LAX now come up with a plan what are items that you can buy in bulk that you will actually go through I have 25 lbs of sugar I won't buy another 25 lb bag of sugar for probably 3 months and will have opened this by the time I buy another one but I'll slowly be building on it so that okay you know I'm going through my first 25 lb bag of sugar and by that time I'm purchasing another one so that's probably like three months four months worth of sugar that I'll have on hand that we will use we'll use it it's not going to just sit and go bad somewhere and so come up with a plan what do you guys actually use what are you actually going to go through and take it in nice little bite-sized pieces because this can get really expensive if I tried to buy everything on this list and one Fell Swoop considering there's meat in here so let's take the meat out cuz that's a separate conversation this would easily be $500 to $1,000 depending on the quantity I mean that's just unreasonable and so if you can do it just a little at a time of course I'm talking about Azure here if you don't have access to Azure there's BJs there's Costco there's Sam's Club there's all sorts of different ways that you could be shopping for these things bulk and just being prepared my M it was my mom's idea to put the first aid kit on there but that's a good idea like make sure you've got rubbing alcohol alol Band-Aids Neosporin you know whatever it is that you guys would suit you whatever you need I keep um I did this even before this happened but I like to keep Stitch the stuff to do stitches um up you can buy that online the needle and the dissolvable stitches and everything that you need to be able to administer stitches I learned how I I know I'm familiar with that I used to work at the hospital so I've assisted in in stitches before um and then I don't know if you've not been following me that long you may not know I had a chicken with an impacted crop and so I had to cut open her crop take everything out of it and then you better believe I stitched her back up it was super profesh and I was so proud of myself but I had all the stuff to do it I was able to disinfect it properly and keep it all really nice and clean I was able to stitch her back up I was able to cover it properly and take really good care of the wound and that chicken is still alive and is laying me eggs okay so there's something to be said about having first aid stuff on hand and it not be doomsday you know material like we're not trying to prepare for the zombie apocalypse but real life things can still happen it's still worth having you know can you disinfect a wound can you do can you administer stitches can you or do you even have those little um uh the sticky stitches that you just the tape the really sticky tape that you can use to close a wound and just put the tape like do you even have are you able to take care of of small things like that so a tourniquet do you have tourniquet Band-Aids yeah like I said so it's not a bad idea the last thing on the list that I want to talk about is meat my parents and I are planning on going in together on half a cow um we don't have the ability to raise our own meat yet we're working on it hopefully someday we'll get there so in the meantime um now is the time to support your local farmers let me say that again for the people in the back now is the time to support your local farmers because they are on the other side of the covid rush of everybody trying to purchase everything up and so now they're like okay well we've expanded our operation to try and meet the need and now we have half the client base because nobody cares about buying local raised chickens beef pork milk whatever anymore they've gone back to Walmart Wegman's Kroger tops and they're buying all of their stuff from the big conglomerates again so they're feeling the sting of losing all of that business that they had by necessity through the pandemic now is the time to support your local farmer show them that you care about them not just when things are hard but all the time make it a priority not just during a pandemic or some sort of Crisis but all the time make it a moral standard in your family that no actually we don't purchase kfo beef from the grocery store we purchase pasture raised beef from the local Farm family who is just trying to put food on their own table as well as feed their Community these things matter not just during a pandemic but all the time and so we have I put a I'm in a like I said a bunch of Facebook groups and one of a few of them are local so I posted in the group and I said okay who's selling um organic beef and I even said in the post I said I'm not NE necessarily looking for USDA like certified organic but if you're organic then I want to support you and I had amazing feedback so I have two farmers that I've been speaking with extensively that were kind of going back and forth between so we'll make that decision soon I'm lucky I have a very large chest freezer that I purchased four years ago now um back when I very first was starting to realize like oh I want to get into you know homesteading and things like that I Tom and I bought bought a chess freezer on a President's Day sale for $250 guess how much chess freezers are going for now in New York anyway because my dad just priced them out $800 so why don't you go ahead and get one now because they're not going to get any cheaper and uh I like I told my parents cuz they need one I said wait for like the 4th of July is coming up um wait for Independence Day Sale wait for you know some sort of sale so that you're not paying full full price for it but it's they're expensive it everything has gone up inflation is awful and I'm just I'm worried about what this election season is going to do I don't want to say that you know I just said worried I'm worried in so much that I recognize that it's a potential thing I'm not going to be fearful because again I trust God but I do think that it would behoove us to be aware and to be prepared there I said it be aware be prepared don't have your head in the sand and don't think oh well you know we had the pandemic that was the traumatic thing that happened in my generation there is still time for more traumatic things to happen in this generation and I just think that we have a gift I think the fact that we were able to see what happened with covid and then to see how poorly it was handled how poorly we as a people were treated and how terrible things still are afterwards the case has already been made I mean it's no surprise like and so I just think it's wise to take what we've already seen and learned and apply it to the now so that we can be prepared for the future I hope that that makes sense I know that this is sort of controversial please understand that this came from a good place I really genuinely just care about you guys guys and it was very much on my heart that I needed to share this because I'm doing this and I don't think it's right for me to I don't want to gatekeep this so to speak like if I'm preparing and I'm trying to be wise and make good decisions and I have a platform I think it's only fair that I share with you guys I'm doing this this is why and I think you should too do with that what you will if you have anything to add I would love to have a discussion about this down in the comments on this video tell me if you think I'm way off base here tell me if you think that I'm on to something and tell me why you think that what are you seeing what evidence do you have to the the idea that perhaps we should still be prepared and should still be caring and paying attention um what are you seeing um let's just be educated together and be aware and keep up with this stuff together and um let's support one another let's support our local farmers and homesteaders let's just do the best we can I'm going to end this by sharing with you something that my mom said because I went my I'm at my parents house and my mom works from home so I I snuck up to her office and I was chatting with her before I came out here and I was like Mom I'm nervous and I was telling her about you know she already knew what it was I wanted to talk about here today but um I told her I was scared because I po I I'm in a a bunch of Facebook groups and in one of them somebody posted a while this was some months ago now and they said so and so YouTuber is starting to get real like Doomsday preppy and I unsubscribed because I don't want to hear about that and hundreds of comments of people agreeing and it kind of took me back I was like oh I I mean I guess but I still think it applies like I still think you can appreciate them as a homesteading channel and let them talk about the preparedness the way that they want to without taking offense to I was just very surprised that they were offended by it and so because of that it took it made me nervous making this video because I'm afraid I'm going to be received the same way but I told her when I was telling her all this I said but you know even outside of a doomsday prepper perspective like it people's chickens are being confiscated and dairy barns are being raided and processing plants are burning down like you can't deny that like that's happening we should still for that reason alone care about you know putting up food food and and raising our own food and being homesteaders the way that everybody's been wanting to be a homesteader for the past 3 years and my mom said something and this is where we're going to end it she said the biggest middle finger you can give the government is raising your own food and I said facts Mama facts and so that's where we're going to leave it support your farmer grow your own food be aware be prepared thanks so much for hanging out with me and for listening to this message I hope that it inspired ired you to try and put up some of your own food be aware to what's going on and I can't wait to see you in my next video have faith and keep moving forward bye

Channel: Faith and Arrow Homestead

Views: 67,348

Keywords: prepper homestead, homesteading videos on youtube

Id: 0gCCwP8k0DU

Length: 31min 48sec (1908 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2024