May 12th, 2017: In today’s show I talk about the need for Preparedness For Mother Nature as well as living a life of preparedness. I also give some examples of how our level of preparedness has helped us in some pretty scary situations.
For those of you that are unable to stream podcasts or would rather have the opportunity to read, below you will find the transcription of today's podcast:
Welcome to Mountain Woman radio show which can be found on our website at trayerwilderness.com and also on iTunes.
Welcome to the Mountain Woman radio show, where we are homesteading traditionally 100% off grid today and offering preparedness and survival tips for tomorrow here's your host Tammy Trayer.
Tammy: Hello everyone, Tammy Trayer, Mountain Woman radio. It is so good to have you joining me today, it is a beautiful day, I’m out and about and I wanted to share some things with you today, we talked about it last week about Mother Nature and how the panhandle of Idaho has been getting pummeled with rain and snow this winter in the spring and you know the Texas and Oklahoma had so many wildfires it was just awful same time, so it's so diverse and so crazy how much Mother Nature really affects everyone.
So let's talk today about ways that you can be a little more prepared for emergencies and for Mother Nature. First and foremost, one of the most important things I feel is educating our children. Let's just look at something simple; but it starts at home. So if you have a fire or a need to evacuate your home, have you sat down and discussed with your family where you would meet if you had to evacuate the home for whatever reason? Having a meeting place outside of the home is important and if that meeting place is say impaired in some way have another, have a backup. Oftentimes in our home we have three backup measures for something, just because it just seems to be a good number and a good way to roll so that you are well protected and well covered. So if you don't have that place I encourage you to sit with your family and discuss these things up and they'll be more things to discuss as we go here because I'm going to cover a bunch of different topics. Another thing is okay, let's say your children are small and God forbid you did have a fire that night they're in bed, they hear the smoke alarms go off they need to evacuate, you happen to be downstairs can't get back up to them, they need to know what they need to do and what the next step is. For starters, a lot of people with two story buildings don't have little ladders to get out of the second story. So these are things you need to think about and have in place and also go over them with your children, don't just let it be assumed that because it's there they're going to know what to do; practice. Practice these things, the more you practice them the more they become ingrained and the more it becomes like a routine that when you really do need to put these things in place they'll work out. Well for you in a troubled time, I can tell you that from experience. I'll share a little story with you toward the end then.
Another thing you need to have it's on your refrigerator or somewhere that's accessible to the whole family, is a list of all the emergency phone numbers including grandma and grandpa and someone else to reach if they can't reach you and if your kids do have cell phones make sure all these numbers are in their cell phones. It's really important because you never know those extra seconds that it could save from hitting a speed dial versus dialing the number can make a really big difference trust me I've experienced it. But that is so huge, so many people don't have that in place: you know the fire department, 9-1-1, explain to them what to do. Make sure your address is written down. If you have young children and they need the address, keep going over the address, keep going over the phone number, keep going over these emergency numbers and the importance of them. The ambulance, Poison control, you know put these numbers down that they're accessible for the family because I know in my home, I tend to take care of all that kind of stuff. I take care of all the-a lot of the phone calling, take care of all the paperwork you know so I know these numbers. Well my guys don't so much and if something were to happen to me and I didn't have those things in place, I'd be sunk. So you know if–I know the same pertains in your family and children are young and don't really think of these things but this is something we need to educate in our homes also being prepared for the unexpected with Mother Nature is really really important. Every area of the country has different effects of Mother Nature down south you get a lot of tornadoes and hurricanes on the coast and wildfires can be all over the place, floods, all kinds of things and you know what directly affects your area and you need to be prepared for those things. One thing that I feel is really important when it comes to preparedness, in general, is not having a part-time attitude for preparedness that yeah, I wrote the numbers down, yeah stocked up a little water, stocked up a little food. you know good, good to go. Don't have that mindset, that mindset will cause you so much trouble I feel that the mindset people should have today with the way our country and our society is, is to have a mindset where you're prepared as a lifestyle that every day you are doing something new to improve the next day or your future. And that is how we roll that's how we live even if what we're doing today is directly going to affect tomorrow, whatever it is that we're doing will also affect us in the long run. So having that mindset really will help you and fully embrace a preparedness lifestyle and thought process. So keep that going as we talked today just on preparedness for Mother Nature I think you'll gain a lot of ideas and tips that may not be something that you would normally think of.
I want to share two stories with you today: one is last year we went six and a half months without an income due to my illness in 2016 and had we not had the preparedness mindset that we do and had a food pantry and harvested our meat that was in the freezer and in our pantry, while my men were caring for me for the six and a half months they would have also had been foraging from the wild because we had $9.99 to our name and I kid you not. And it was a really rough time in some ways and in other ways it was really awing to see God's hand at work in our lives and in our day to day but I'm so thankful for our lifestyle, our mindset and the way we embrace life and I want to encourage people to do that because that was a really rough time and it could have been so much more awful had we not live the way we do. So I want to encourage that-I want to encourage you to elongate your thinking and continue your preparedness thinking in life, make it a journey for yourself.
Another story I'd like to share with you, as I mentioned that I knew firsthand what it's like one takes extra seconds to make a phone call. My husband last year also while I was not well I had a situation where he chewed a Valerian Root capsule or tablet hoping that it would make him fall asleep faster. Don't ever do that, don’t ever chew pills because pills are meant to end up in your stomach and then be effective in your body. When he chewed that capsule or that tablet, It actually started working and in a very strong way and what the Valerian Root did for him is it started shutting down the part of the brain that tells you to breathe and it was by the grace of God because I don't normally go into the bedroom at the exact same time he does usually come in 10, 15 minutes later, had I done that that night I would be a widow. He laid down and talking to him and he's not responding it's kind of weird and huh! He’s tired, but it was just weird and then I looked at his eyes well actually lights were on he wasn’t answering me, I have put the light switch on and his eyes were really funky, like the pupils were huge and I talked to him again and he’s kind of spacey, I'm like, “Oh my world, what’s going on with you?” And this wasn't acting right and at the time my friend Rhonda from the farmerslamp.com was staying with us and she was a previously a nurse, so I had her come up and was really concerned for him and as mine for her to come up and there it is and he's just breathing heavy and just really acting funny, really out of it and he was you know objecting to me calling 9-1-1 and objecting to things but it got to the point where we just had to make decisions because he was getting to a point where he wasn't breathing. He stopped breathing eight times before we got the ambulance there and in our area I can't dial 9-1-1 because we don't have a landline. So I tried the sheriff's office and the local phone lines are really walkie out here and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't and that night they didn't work and kept coming up telling me that the number is not nonexistent, which I know it isn't because I've called them many times, tried twice as like forget it. There’s a friend of ours who I knew traveled on the ambulance and I knew he'd be sleeping so I made sure he was awake and ask him to please dial 9-1-1, explaining the situation he hung up and called and a friend of ours had to come across the scanner but 9-1-1 didn't have enough information. So she started Facebook messaging me to get information while I’m shaking my husband helping-keeping him breathing and I saw God's hand in the situation because the ambulance driver knew where we live, we're very remote, we're in a weird location very easy to get on the wrong road and get lost and the friend that was Facebook messaging me – her husband is a deputy and also knew where we lived so they got out here but the Mountain Boy had to go unlock our gate we are locked in by the Idaho Department of lands so he had to go unlock the gate because no one else has a key besides us and the state and just thankfully we had enough hands on deck and we've gone over this and honestly I have to say, it was scary but I wasn't freaked out and I wasn't alarmed it was like clockwork, it was like robotic almost because we've gone through this so much and I've gone through it so many times in my head. So it really pays to be able to have a protocol in place: got the dogs in the bathroom and the E.M.T’s just came in and it was cutting it that close at the EMT was just about not able to get an I.V. in him because his body was shutting down. Like I said he had already stopped breathing 8 times. So trust me when I say you have to have these plans in place you have to be able to go over these things and your kids may balk because they have to do it, but if they ever have to use it it is such a saving grace and is going to make life so, so, much easier for you and the situation so much less stressful.
So those are some topics on preparedness that I'm going to share with you today and like I said I want you to write down these lists of the phone numbers, I want you to practice and have protocols in place. Next week we're going to talk about some other things that you can do in preparedness efforts with Mother Nature and I will have some handouts available for you to help you in the process. I know that your loved ones are as important to you as mine are for me and it's a choice to live this life you don't have to live like we do but it's a choice to embrace preparedness no matter where you are. it doesn't matter if you're in an apartment or in a high riser. Where you live in town out of town, you got to think of all the things that can affect you. You know us being out town you just heard some of our struggles we're out of town, we're far away from things people don't know where we are, we're locked back in, we don't have a landline our phones are twisted and don't always work is through the Internet, technology stinks sometimes I'll be the first to admit that as a programmer and web designer and on the Internet all the time with social media and our website every time you needed to work it doesn't so you've got to be prepared you've got to have backups those are today's thoughts and I encourage you to join me next week so we can talk some more about this and I'm going to share some handouts with you next week that will help you on your preparedness efforts. So glad to have you joining me, so glad to be back and so glad to be able to share on this platform so help me reach more people go to trayerwilderness.com/iTunes and leave a review of today's podcast so that I could have the ability to be seen more and to reach more viewers just like you. So thanks so much guys appreciate you, love you all and God bless.
Your listening to the Mountain Woman radio show where you learn something new every week, we hope you enjoyed the show and encourage you to join us at trayerwilderness.com and be sure to connect with us on iTunes, remember your reviews on iTunes are very important to us and help us reach more people just like you.
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