THE EARLIEST LATTER-DAY PREPPERS

I love reading stories like this - makes me see how connected we are to our past and know that it will not be much different in a short while, no matter how many of our our own stick their proverbial heads in the sand.  I have ancestors who made this trek.  These people were real men and women.  Today?  We are all wusses compared.....  Thanks for sending this, Jennifer:

Prophetic Statements on Food Storage for Latter Day Saints written by Neil H. Leash Chapter 5 pages 43-45 excerpts:

There are lessons to be learned from the experiences of the early Mormon pioneers. Consider the heart-wrenching experiences of the Saints who were expelled from Nauvoo, Illinois by anti-Mormon mobs in the frigid temperatures of mid-winter, 1846. For months they had known that expulsion was coming in the spring, and they have been given detailed instructions from the Brethren as to what food supplies and other equipment they were to accumulate in preparation for the departure.

Elder Willard Richards: the evening was very cold, which caused much suffering in the camp, for there were many who had no tents or any comfortable place to lodge: many tents were blown down; some of them were unfinished and had no ends.

Friday it became even colder.  Ice formed on the edges of the Mississippi River and considerable ice floated on the river.  The apostles voted to buy 300 bushels of corn to feed the hungry in the camp as many Saints left Nauvoo without taking enough food as they had been instructed.  Already the corn, potatoes, turns and other vegetables and grain had been part of the tithing had been consumed by the camp.  Food shortages became a pressing concern (church news, March 2, 2996, p.11)

The following is what each family had been instructed to acquire, as an 18 month supply of food for five people...

One good strong wagon well covered with a light box; two or three good yoke of oxen between the age of 4 and 10 years; two or more milch cows; one or more good beefs; three sheep if they can be obtained; one thousand pounds of flour or other bread stuffs in good sacks; one good musket or rifle to each male over the age of twelve years; one pound powder, four pounds lead; one pound tea; five pounds coffee; one hundred pounds of sugar, one pound cayenne pepper; two pounds black pepper; one-half pound mustard; ten pounds rice for each family; one pound cinnamon; one-half pound cloves; one dozen nutmegs; twenty-five pounds salt; five pounds of bacon; five pounds dried peaches; twenty pounds dried pumpkin; twenty-five pounds of seed grain; one gallon alcohol; twenty pounds of soap for each family; four or five fish hooks and lines; fifteen pounds of iron and steel; a few pounds of wrought nails; one or more sets of saw or grist mill irons to a company of one hundred families; one good seine and hooks for each company; two sets of pulley blocks and ropes to each company for crossing rivers; from twenty-five to one hundred pounds of farming and mechanical tools; cooking utensils to consist of bake kettle, frying pan…plates, knives, forks, spoons and pans as [few] as will do; a good tent and furniture to each two families; clothing and bedding to each family, not to exceed five hundred pounds; ten extra teams for each company of one hundred families (Ensign to the Nations, p.7)

Brigham Young describes what those late-departing Saints had to endure, saying, “There remained behind a few of the very poor, the sick and the aged, who suffered again from the violence of the mob; they were whipped and beaten and had their houses burned (Discourses of Brigham Young, pp. 473-474)

Surviving in the Salt Lake Valley, 1848

The last part of the journey and settling into the Valley itself was a pure exercise in faith since there was no external access to food – they either had sufficient with them or, of necessity, grew it if they were to starve off starvation.  President Brigham Young made this observation as he commented on the status of the Saints as the entered the Great Salt Lake Valley:

[When] we arrived here…we found a few…Indians, a few wolves and rabbits and any amount of crickets; but as for a green tree or a fruit tree, or any green field, we found nothing of the kind, with the exceptions of a few cottonwoods and willows on the edge of City Creek.  For some 1200 to 1300 miles we carried every particle of provision we had when we arrived here.  When we left our homes we picked up what the mob did not steal of our horses, oxen and calves, and some women drove their own teams here.  Instead of 365 pounds of breadstuff when they started from the Missouri river, there was not half of them had half of it.

We had to bring our seed grain, our farming utensils, bureaus, secretaries [desks], sideboards, sofas, pianos, large looking glasses, fine chairs, carpets, nice shovels and tongs and other fine furniture, with all the parlor, cook stoves, etc., and we had to bring these things piled together with some women and children, helter skelter, topsy-turvy, with broken-down horses,…oxen with three legs, and cows with one teat.  This was our only means of transportation, and if we had not brought our goods in this manner we would not have had them, for there was nothing here (Discourse of Brigham Young, p 480)

President Young later continued:

[The Saints] picked up a few buckskins, antelope skins, sheep skins, buffalo skins, and made leggings and moccasins of them, and wrapped the buffalo robes around them.  Some had blankets and some had not; some had shirts, and I guess some had not.  One man told me that he had not a shirt for himself or family.  I will venture to say that not one in four out of my family had shoes to their feet when we came into the valley (Discourses of Brigham Young, pp. 475-476)

The season was so far advanced when the pioneers arrived in the summer of 1847 that little resulted from the planting, except to obtain some seed potatoes.  Their salvation depended on the success of their crops in 1848.  They had built three saw mills in the mountains and one grist mill.  Their planted fields consisted of five thousand one hundred and thirty-three acres, of which nearly nine hundred acres were planted in winter wheat (Essentials in Church History, p. 467)

When all seemed lost, and the Saints were giving up in despair, the heavens became clouded with gulls, which hovered over the fields, uttering their plaintive scream.  Was this a new evil come upon them?  Such were the thoughts of some who expected that what the crickets left the gulls would destroy; but not so, the gulls in countless battalions descended and begin to devour the crickets, waging a battle for the preservation of the crops.  They ate, they gorged upon the pest, and then flying to the streams would drink and vomit and again return to the battle front.  This took place day by day until the crickets were destroyed (Essentials in Church History, p. 468).

President Brigham young taught, While we have rich soil in this valley, and seed to put in the ground, we need not ask God to feed us, nor follow us round with a loaf of bread begging us to eat it. He will not do it, neither would I, were I the Lord.  We can feed ourselves here; and if we are ever placed in circumstances where we cannot, it will then be time enough for the Lord to work a miracle to sustain us (Discourse of Brigham Young, p. 294)

Extra words page 49: Eggs and butter were the chief currency of the country.  There was no such thing as money.  I don’t think we saw a dollar in money in the first two years we were in the Cache Valley.  Wheat was $2.00 a bushel and it was considered that a bushel of wheat was payment for a good day’s work.

I recollect that the very first days after we arrived and got our camp permanently pitched, my mother…took me with her into the adjoining field to glean wheat…. We two gleaned close to one-half bushel of wheat a day. 

Our breakfasts were of the scantiest kind, a little wheat porridge without much milk and a little of the brown or black bread without butter.  In the morning I was furnished a piece of bread for my dinner, as I would start off on the hills with the cows, but my dinner was devoured before I got half a mile away from our camp and I had to go hungry until evening…I can remember that I was very hungry at dinner time, about the only thing I could do to help my stomach was to tighten my rope [his belt].

There was not a window of any kind whatever in our house.  Neither was there a door.  My mother hung up an old quilt or piece of an old quilt, which served as a door for the first winter. 

President Brigham Young said, “we never ought to be without three to five years provisions on hand.  But when you see men run to hell to sell a bushel of wheat for sixty cents, instead of laying it up in their granaries for a day of scarcity, you are forced to conclude that they would trade with the very devil, to get his coat and shoes in exchange for their wheat.  I hope they will learn wisdom in the future (Journal of Discourses, vol 3, p. 196

On April 6, 1857 President Brigham Young gave this counsel to the members attending conference:  I will now present a subject which will be a text for the brethren to preach upon from this stand, viz., the necessity of building store houses in which to preserve our grain…until they [the members] have enough to last them seven years.  You can figure at that, and learn how much grain you ought to lay up.  If we have, as I believe we shall, a few seasons fruitful in grain, the staple article that we can cure and preserve, it is our indispensable duty to safely store it for a time to come (Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, p. 307)

Heber C Kimball in the April 6, 1857 conference said…When we have stored away our grain we are safe, independent of the world, in case of famine, are we not?  Yes, we are; for, in that case, we will have the means of subsistence in our hands.  When the famines begin upon the earth, we shall be very apt to feel them first.

If judgment must need begin at the house of God, and if the righteous scarcely are saved, how will it be with the wicked?  Am I looking for famines? Yes, the most terrible and severe that has ever come upon the nations of the earth.  These things are right before us, and some of this people are not thinking about them; they do not enter their hearts.

There are a great many things that we can save and take care of, as well, as we can wheat, barley, and oats.  We can dry pumpkins, squashes, currants, apples, peaches, etc. and save them; we can also save beans, peas, and like articles, and keep them for seven years.  And if you will take the right care of your wheat, you can save it just as long as you may wish to (Journal of Discourses, vol 5. pp. 20-21)