The old adage “better to be safe than sorry” rings true today, especially during these times of COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine. As homesteaders, it is better to stock up on the essential things and to be prepared rather than finding yourself at loss to what you will do, or what you could have done. Pandemic preparedness, therefore, is important in this crisis.
So what can you do to prepare for such an outbreak? Check out our pandemic preparedness guide.
RELATED: 26 Homemade Recipes For Cold And Flu Season
A Homesteaders Guide for Pandemic Preparedness
1. Plan
It’s a good thing that we are homesteaders. Everything that we need are already in our homestead – including ingredients that can be made into food, our gardens where we can harvest plants, and coops where we can have chicken meat and eggs. Perhaps the only thing that we need to plan is our mindset. It’s different now because we can’t go out because of the quarantine so we need to be emotionally, mentally and psychologically prepared.
2. Clean and Disinfect Your Homestead
With the number of COVID-19 patients rising, especially some who have been diagnosed as asymptomatic, you’ll definitely want to disinfect your homestead. That’s why many would want to go to the stores to buy some disinfectant products; however, that’s not possible right now. It’s good to know that some household items such as a vinegar cleaning solution can be useful in so many ways to eliminate viruses and germs. You can click on this link to find out the ways in which you can use this solution.
3. Prepare Food
Food can be scarce this time since we really can’t go out to buy food supplies and products. Thankfully, your chickens that you have in your backyard, for instance, can give you more than just meat and eggs. By canning them, you can prolong their shelf life up to a week and you can use this to add more flavor to your pizza, to give you a tasty bite to your taco and to provide more zest to your pasta. If you want to know more about how to can your chickens, you can always click on this link.
4. Save Money
When you are cooped up at home and you don’t have anything to do, sometimes the money just stops coming in, and you are stretched thin. This is the reason why before every pandemic happens or in the cusp of happening, we should always learn how to save – just in case of emergencies. You get injured, your child gets sick, or an accident brews. Learn some tips and tricks you can do to stretch your money as far as you can take it.
5. Keep All Communication Lines Open and Fast
It’s important that in a time of pandemic, all communication lines such as internet and mobile phones should be open and should work smoothly and easily. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen all the time and there may be some issues that crop up here and there. You can’t call someone to repair your WiFi, however, but you can do the repairs yourself. In some cases, you need to shell out some minimal fee. Here is what you can do to work this out.
6. Keep Your Family Safe and Secure
You can’t really control people around you and if you are quarantined in your homestead, there might be one or two people who intrude in your property. Thus, it’s essential to consider self-defense strategies to protect yourself in a time of danger, and in a time of crisis. One way is to arm yourself with peppers and since we are on a lock down, we can’t go out and buy them in the stores. Fortunately we can make them at home. Here is the procedure.
7. Secure Your Animals
This pandemic is not just about yourself but about your animals too. Your goats, chickens, cows – they all need to be prepared as well not just from the environment but from predators as well. For instance, when taking care of your chickens, you also need to protect them from the weather and from wolves and other predators who have a different agenda. You can never tell who can come across your land, especially when the world these days are spinning out of control. You can learn how to build a chicken run here.
8. Learn To Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
When you are on a quarantine and lock down, cutting down on waste is also a high priority. Reusing, recycling, and reducing is, of course, vital on the homestead, especially in this time of uncertainty when food needs to be stretched. Here are ways to implement the three Rs on your homestead.
9. Take Care Of Your Health
It is also important that during this time, we need to take care of ourselves, especially that the virus can attack us at any time of day, and in an instant. One of the ways to ensure that we can ward off this virus is to strengthen our immune system. We can do this by being conscious of what we eat and drink. With our homestead filled with vegetables and fruits, and even ingredients to make herbal teas and even medicinal weeds, we are sure that we will always be on the pink of health. Here are ways to make homemade herbal teas.
10. Master Off-The-Grid Lifestyle
Homesteading means that you are far away from your neighbor and far away from the city. Homesteading is made even farther because of this pandemic. In times like this, we need to be self-sufficient. Here are tips and tricks that you can do to sustain yourselves with what you have.
11. Preserve Your Food
Much like canning chickens, we also need to preserve our food. This is so we can have more food in the next coming days. There are actually many more recipes that you can come out with these days, and with the use of a dehydrator, you can make this right in the comfort of your own home. Click here to find out which recipe you’d like to work on.
12. Practice Survival Gardening
If you have limited space outdoors and would want to grow more trees, or herbs and vegetables, you can always grow trees indoors. This is called survival gardening, and you can start by growing fruit trees. Here’s how.
13. Get The Family Involved
Growing up in a homestead gives you the opportunity to teach your children homesteading skills such as being extremely self-reliant. This is important, especially when they grow up and they need to be alone. Besides, children with homesteading skills are proven to survive more in this world, especially during times of crisis such as COVID-19. Here are ways to train your children.
Learn how to be more prepared in this video.
The influenza pandemic that is COVID-19 is not to be taken lightly. You need all the precautionary measures in staying alive during this season and being a homesteader, you do have everything you need already.
We hope this article has helped you in preparing for a flu pandemic! As much as possible, don’t go out of your house.
What other pandemic preparedness tips can you think of? Share them in the comments section below!
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