Our family got serious about basic preparedness in late 2007, when the first financial shocks hit the market from the subprime/derivatives disaster. We wanted to be able to revert, quickly and efficiently, to a very simple and sustainable lifestyle should we need to. While ours was a long-term preparedness plan, interestingly enough over the last few years there's been an increased effort on the part of civil authorities in North America to encourage families to have a basic short-term emergency kit on-hand for storm power outages, earthquakes or other disasters. So by the time we started prepping, it was becoming pretty mainstream.

Along with the usual basics – emergency food, water, heat and lighting -- we wanted to develop an emergency communications plan. The first book we bought on the subject has proven to be an excellent one: Emergency Survival Communications by Dave Ingram. (Regularly $20, you can buy it now on Christmas special for $4 – a bargain!)

While we got equipped with GMRS/FRS two-way radios and a Sat phone, we also realized that Ham radio was the central pillar of a serious emergency communications plan. When I flip back through the Ingram book, I'm amazed at how much of the material that was totally foreign to me at the time is now very familiar and understandable, thanks to the Ham course and Gary Skett's ability to teach it and 'make it real' for neophytes like myself.

I now encourage everyone interested in preparedness to get into Ham radio – it's as basic and important as storing food, water, and garden seeds. Why wouldn't anyone follow such a sensible course of action?

Speaking of garden seeds, one of the ways we participate in the preparedness community and try to help others get prepared is through a small business we started a few years ago – 4EverSeeds.com. We sell heirloom vegetable seeds and a great line of native 'wild food' perennial seeds you can't find anywhere else, along with a few other homesteader supplies. We use the 4EverSeeds.com venue as a soapbox to preach preparedness, for example, under the section, "Would You Be Ready if TSHTF?":

"Today, people from all walks of life are beginning to take emergency preparedness and survival training more seriously than ever before. Bankers, doctors and lawyers are joining the ranks of the 'greens' and urban naturalists at workshops where they're learning how to plant seeds, filter water, and put up emergency shelter under adverse conditions. Understanding their own diminishing capabilities to care for the population under severe conditions, we now see an increasing number of public service announcements from local, state/provincial and federal government, urging families to have emergency kits and short-term food and water supplies on hand.

Whatever the cause of disaster, nothing could be worse than facing a severe crisis that you're unprepared for. Not being able to protect our children, elderly parents and the sick would be bad enough. Not being able to help them because we simply didn't make the effort to get prepared… that would be devastating.

Start making sensible preparations today, while you still have the time, money, freedom and access to do so. Whatever you're going to need, by the time you actually need it, it will be much too late to go out and find."

Like all websites, 4EverSeeds.com is a work in progress. We'll certainly be adding a section on emergency communications, and you can be sure we'll advocate Ham radio practice as a fundamental element in preparedness. Ham radio represents the all-important segue from 'taking care of me' and the family, to being equipped to help take care of the community in times of need. Preparedness has to extend beyond the four walls of the individual home because when the chips are down, we're all in this together. Of course, Ham radio operators know this well… it's all the rest of us that need to be made aware of it.