Preparedness conference promotes self-reliance
Matt Wilkinson of Yardbird, right, creates a short YouTube video featuring Stacey Dawkins from Frazeysburg, who had raised chickens but never butchered a bird before this event.
The Heartland Self Reliance Conference took place May 2-4 at Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg, where dozens of vendors, plenty of educational seminars and a host of information were available to visitors.
The event focused on homesteading and preparedness, with topics ranging from Utilizing Fibers, Gardening for Subsistence & Resilience, Cast Iron Care & Cooking, Chainsaw, Safety & Maintenance, and Intro to Freeze Drying to Five-point Contingency Plan, Rendering Wild Water Safe, Homesteading from Scratch and Lessons from Hurricane Helene highlighting a host of more than five dozen different seminars throughout the three-day event.
Promoter Jeff Smith said with the disappearance of classes like home-economics and shop class, teaching future generations about many of these types of homesteading activities is critical to keeping them alive in today’s world.
“This is a combination of homesteading, preparedness, and we also wanted to get life skills involved too,” Smith said. “There is a real need to learn how to be prepared for any and all types of situations, and our hope is to prepare people to feed themselves and take care of themselves.”
Smith said “preppers” are taking time to prepare for any type of event. He said while most people think about cataclysmic events, widespread disaster events like floods, tornadoes and fires also present times when people need this type of preparation.
“It’s important to always have backup,” Smith said. “In order to be self-reliant, we are bringing every aspect of what we are presenting here today together. Teaching each other these skills is how we create self-reliant people who can take care of family and friends when the time comes.”
Smith said finding Harvest Ridge to host the event was a godsend because it presented a clean, open area large enough to host this event.
He said Holmes County has everything necessary to provide pretty much every aspect of preparedness and homesteading.
“That is why I felt this was an ideal place to host this event, and with this being our first one, my goal is to make this an annual event that we could see grow a great deal over the next few years,” Smith said.
In order to create an overriding atmosphere that featured every aspect of homesteading and preparedness, Smith brought in professionals from all over the nation and from the local level.
He said the vendors were thrilled with the presentation and atmosphere Harvest Ridge provided, and visitors came from neighboring states to take in the conference.
Angi Shinaver hosted the session the Resilient Apothecary, which focused on herbal medicine.
Shinaver had a plethora of herbal medicines she showcased and talked about their different uses in utilizing them for treatments of illnesses and ailments.
“There’s probably more than 3,000 herbs people use for medicinal purposes,” Shinaver said. “Many people are questioning pharmaceuticals right now and are turning to herbal medicines that are all-natural.”
She spoke about what herbs are used for different aches and pains and what dosages are correct. Most importantly, she said people should always talk to their doctors to find out if certain herbs are compatible with any medications they are taking.
Outside the event center, Matt Wilkinson of Yardbird was busy talking to people about properly processing chickens. Wilkinson, who travels across the U.S., said he, like many people presenting during the weekend, is simply hoping to bring back time-honored traditions that are being lost and forgotten.
“I am bridging the gap from what our great-grandparents and grandparents used to show us about living off the land,” Wilkinson said. “A lot of that knowledge has been forgotten or not passed on through generations, so I am that bridge, showing people different old-time homesteading and agriculture processes.”
In this particular seminar, he was working with Stacey Dawkins from Frazeysburg, who had raised chickens but never butchered a bird before. Having her work hand-in-hand with him helped those attending the seminar see they could do so as well.
Wilkinson said these old-time ways provide glimpses into simple yet important aspects of life that are sustainable in any era.
“This is about individuals who aren’t satisfied with sitting back and being a bystander for our culture and ways to be lost, and I’m going to do something about it,” Wilkinson said.
Jordan Smith was on the loom and said utilizing fiber to create clothing can be an important piece of knowledge for survival.
“I’ve been a fiber enthusiast for quite a while,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed this since I was 7 years old, and using natural fibers gets us away from today’s commercial materials that are made from plastics and are harmful to the skin. There’s a lot of benefits that come from natural fibers that will hold up so much better over time, and clothing and textiles will be needed forever.”
Smith said bringing like-minded people together to promote homesteading and preparedness is something everyone should pursue because one never knows what the future will bring, and preparing oneself and loved ones for times of disaster is an investment worth making.