When the grid goes down, the Amish will not notice. That is not a figure of speech. These communities have spent three centuries building agricultural systems that function entirely without electricity, without fuel deliveries, without internet-connected equipment, and without the supply chains that modern farms depend on to stay operational. They grow food, preserve it, breed their own animals, maintain their own tools, and pass all of that knowledge to the next generation through direct daily practice.
That is exactly what self-sufficiency looks like in practice, and it is exactly what most preppers are working toward. The difference is that the Amish have already solved the problems most of us are still working through. Their farming methods are not romantic throwbacks to a simpler time. They are proven, documented, grid-independent food production systems that work at scale and have worked continuously for generations.
This article breaks down the core Amish farming methods in detail: the draft horse system, soil management, crop strategies, seed saving, hand tools, food preservation, and the community structure that makes it all sustainable. These are lessons you can start applying today, whether you have five acres or fifty.
Why Amish Farming Is the Ultimate Prepper Reference Model
Most prepper food production advice starts from the wrong baseline. It assumes grid power, motorized equipment, a functional seed supply chain, and the ability to buy replacement parts when something breaks. Strip all of that away and most modern homestead setups collapse within a single growing season. The Amish never had those dependencies to begin with.
There are roughly 350,000 Amish people in the United States today, concentrated primarily in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, with significant communities in more than 30 states. The vast majority live on working farms. These are not hobby operations. Amish farms regularly produce enough food to feed extended families, supply local markets, and maintain surpluses for preservation. They do this without tractors, without GPS guidance systems, without synthetic fertilizer delivery schedules, and without power tools.
The USDA Economic Research Service tracks agricultural productivity data across different farming systems in the United States. When you compare the output per acre achieved by horse-powered diversified farming to industrial monoculture, the gap is smaller than most people assume, and the resilience profile is dramatically different. Industrial systems optimize for peak output under ideal conditions. Amish systems optimize for consistent output under any conditions.
For preppers, the relevant question is not whether Amish farming is more productive than industrial agriculture. The relevant question is: which system keeps functioning when fuel, electricity, and supply chains are unavailable? The answer is not complicated.
There are six foundational elements to Amish farming that preppers should study and incorporate wherever possible. Each one addresses a specific vulnerability in modern agricultural systems.
The Draft Horse: A Self-Replicating, Fuel-Free Power System
The single biggest operational difference between Amish farming and modern farming is draft animal power. Where conventional farms run on diesel, Amish farms run on horses and mules. This is not a limitation. It is a resilience feature of the first order.
A draft horse can pull a plow, a cultivator, a hay mower, a grain binder, a disk harrow, and a wagon loaded with produce. It can do all of this on feed that you grow yourself on the same land. It requires no fuel deliveries, no spare parts from a distribution center, no mechanical expertise to keep running, and no grid connection of any kind. When it breaks down, it heals. When it gets old, it produces offspring. No diesel engine has ever done that.
The primary draft breeds used in Amish communities include Belgian Draft horses, Percherons, Clydesdales, and Haflingers for smaller farms. Mules, which are crosses between a horse and a donkey, are also common and are valued for their hardiness and ability to work in heat. A working Amish farm typically keeps two to four draft animals, depending on acreage.
What Draft Animals Can Replace
- Tillage: A horse-drawn walking plow handles primary tillage on most soil types. A team of two can plow an acre in a full working day. Horse-drawn disk harrows and cultivators handle secondary tillage and weed management between crop rows.
- Planting: Horse-drawn corn planters and grain drills plant seeds in precise rows at consistent depth and spacing. These tools are mechanically simple and can be repaired with basic metalworking.
- Cultivation and weed control: The horse-drawn cultivator is one of the most valuable tools in the Amish arsenal. Run between crop rows, it destroys weeds mechanically without herbicides, and can be timed for multiple passes as the crop grows.
- Harvesting: Horse-drawn hay mowers, grain binders, and corn binders handle the major grain and forage crops. Hay wagons and grain wagons move the harvested material.
- Transportation: The farm wagon pulled by a single horse moves everything from compost to harvested crops to market loads. It requires no roads beyond a dirt track.
The Small Farms Program at Penn State Extension has published research and practical guides on draft animal agriculture that are highly relevant for anyone looking to understand and implement horse-powered farming. Their documentation covers hitch configurations, implement selection, and the economics of draft animal systems compared to small tractor operations.
Getting Started with Draft Animals
If you are serious about grid-independent farming, draft animal training is a skill worth acquiring before you need it. The learning curve is real. A green horse and a green handler is a dangerous combination. The practical path is to find a mentor in an Amish or traditional farming community, attend a draft horse event, or apprentice on a working horse-powered farm. The knowledge does not transfer well from books alone.
If full draft horse ownership is not currently realistic, start with the equipment. Antique horse-drawn implements in good condition are available at farm auctions throughout the Midwest and Pennsylvania for prices that would surprise most people. Building a collection of serviceable horse-drawn implements now, before you need them, is sound prepper strategy regardless of your current tractor situation.
Soil Building Without Synthetic Inputs
Amish farming does not use synthetic fertilizers. It never has. Their soil management system is built entirely on organic matter cycling, animal manure, cover cropping, and rotation, and it works. Amish farms in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, have been continuously cultivated for over 200 years and are among the most productive agricultural soils in the state.
That outcome is not an accident. It is the result of a disciplined, generation-spanning approach to returning organic matter to the soil. Understanding this system is critical for any prepper who plans to grow food long-term, because synthetic fertilizer supply chains are among the most vulnerable links in modern food production.
The Four Pillars of Amish Soil Management
- Manure management: Every animal on an Amish farm produces manure, and every bit of it goes back to the fields. Dairy manure, horse manure, chicken manure, and hog manure are composted separately or together, then spread on fields in rotation. The timing, application rate, and incorporation method are all managed carefully to maximize nutrient retention and minimize runoff. A mature dairy operation produces enough manure to maintain soil fertility on the entire farm without any purchased inputs.
- Cover cropping: Amish farmers plant cover crops aggressively in every gap in the rotation. Legumes, including red clover, hairy vetch, and field peas, fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil. Small grain covers like winter rye and oats suppress weeds and protect soil structure over winter. These crops are terminated in spring and incorporated into the soil before planting, releasing their stored nutrients directly to the following cash crop.
- Crop rotation: A typical Amish rotation runs corn, followed by a small grain such as wheat or oats with a legume underseeded, followed by one or two years of hay and pasture, then back to corn. This four to five year rotation breaks pest and disease cycles, builds organic matter through the perennial phase, and distributes soil nutrient demand across different crop types. It is the antithesis of the continuous corn monoculture that dominates industrial agriculture and mines soil health relentlessly.
- Composting: Amish households compost all food scraps, garden waste, and bedding material from animal pens. The resulting material feeds kitchen gardens and high-value vegetable beds. Nothing leaves the farm that could return as fertility.
The Rodale Institute has conducted a long-running Farming Systems Trial comparing organic and conventional cropping systems since 1981. Their data consistently shows that well-managed organic systems using cover crops and manure achieve yields comparable to synthetic fertilizer-based systems after a transition period, with dramatically better soil health indicators and no input dependency. This data is directly relevant to understanding why Amish soil management works at the level it does.
What This Means for Your Prepper Farm
The practical takeaway is this: if your current soil fertility plan depends on bagged fertilizer from a garden center or a delivered load of synthetic inputs, you have a supply chain vulnerability. Transition now toward manure-based fertility, cover cropping, and rotation. Keep animals on your property even at small scale. A flock of chickens and a pair of goats generate meaningful fertility for a kitchen garden. The system scales up from there.
Start a serious compost operation. Not a bin in the corner of the yard, but a managed pile that gets regular additions of carbon and nitrogen materials, gets turned, and gets applied strategically to your most productive beds. Compost is the one soil amendment that is completely grid-independent, costs nothing to produce, and improves soil biology in ways that synthetic fertilizers actively undermine.
Crop Selection and Planting Strategy
Amish farmers grow for complete nutrition, not for maximum yield of a single commodity. Walk through an Amish kitchen garden and you will find a diversity of crops that would satisfy a trained nutritionist: root vegetables, leafy greens, legumes, corn, potatoes, squash, melons, herbs, and fruit trees. The field crops include corn, wheat, oats, hay, and sorghum. Together, these provide carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and animal feed in a fully integrated system.
For preppers, diversity is not just a culinary preference. It is a risk management strategy. A diversified farm is not wiped out by a single pest, a single disease, or a single bad weather event in the same way a monoculture operation is. When the corn blight comes through, the wheat is still standing. When the potatoes get late blight, the beans are still producing. Diversity is built-in insurance.
Core Crops for a Self-Sufficient Amish-Inspired Operation
- Dry corn (field corn): This is the foundational caloric crop. Dried field corn stores for years, feeds humans and animals, and can be ground into cornmeal without electricity using a hand mill. Amish farms grow open-pollinated varieties that can be saved and replanted year after year without purchasing new seed.
- Winter wheat and rye: Cool-season grains planted in fall, harvested in early summer, and stored for grinding. Winter wheat is the primary bread grain. Winter rye is hardier and does better on marginal soils. Both are excellent cover crops when used in rotation.
- Dried beans and peas: Protein calories that store indefinitely when properly dried. Amish gardens grow a wide range of shell beans, soup beans, and field peas. These also fix nitrogen, making them productive additions to any rotation.
- Potatoes: Among the most calorie-dense vegetables per square foot of garden space. Amish potato plantings are extensive because potatoes serve as both a family food crop and an animal feed supplement. Save seed potatoes from each harvest.
- Winter squash and pumpkins: High-calorie storage crops that cure on the vine and hold for months in a cool root cellar. Pumpkins also serve as hog feed in late fall. Easy to save seed from.
- Hay and pasture: Not food for people, but the foundation of the animal husbandry system that provides protein, fat, and fertility. Without adequate hay production, the draft animals and dairy animals cannot be maintained. Most diversified Amish farms dedicate a significant portion of their acreage to perennial hay.
The USDA Agricultural Research Service maintains research programs on open-pollinated variety performance, dry bean breeding, and small grain agronomy that provide scientific context for the crop choices that Amish farmers have refined through generations of practical selection. Their publications are free and accessible online.
Seed Saving: The Most Critical Prepper Farm Skill
Seed saving is where Amish farming philosophy and prepper philosophy converge most directly. The Amish save seed because it is the economically sound and self-reliant thing to do. Preppers need to save seed because in a genuine grid-down scenario, the commercial seed supply chain will fail along with everything else.
The fundamental rule is straightforward: to save seed successfully, you must grow open-pollinated or heirloom varieties, not hybrids. Hybrid seeds, including most of what is sold in commercial seed catalogs and all of what is used in industrial agriculture, do not breed true from saved seed. The second generation is genetically unpredictable and often significantly lower yielding. Buy hybrid seed once and you have to buy it again every year. Grow open-pollinated seed and you have a seed supply that is, in principle, perpetual.
Seed Saving by Crop Category
- Self-pollinating crops (easiest to save): Tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, and peppers self-pollinate before the flower opens, which means cross-contamination from neighboring plants is minimal. These are the easiest crops for beginner seed savers. Select seed from your most vigorous, most productive, disease-free plants each season. Allow the fruit to fully mature before harvesting seed.
- Cross-pollinating vegetables (requires isolation): Corn, squash, cucumbers, melons, and brassicas are wind or insect pollinated and will cross-contaminate with other varieties of the same species grown nearby. Maintain variety integrity by growing only one variety of each species at a time, by separating varieties with a significant distance buffer, or by hand-pollinating and bagging flowers.
- Biennials (two-year commitment): Carrots, parsnips, onions, beets, and most brassicas do not produce seed in their first year. They must be overwintered and allowed to bolt and set seed in year two. In cold climates this requires either mulching them heavily in place or storing roots through winter and replanting in spring.
- Grain crops: Corn, wheat, oats, and rye are straightforward to save but require sufficient quantity to maintain genetic diversity and planting stock for the following year. As a baseline, save at least 10 percent more than you plan to plant. Store in cool, dry, pest-proof containers.
The Seed Savers Exchange maintains one of the most comprehensive open-pollinated seed libraries in North America and publishes detailed practical guides on seed saving technique by crop type. Their resources are the practical reference standard for anyone building a serious seed saving program.
Storage
Seeds must be stored at low temperature and low humidity to maintain viability. The practical standard for a prepper seed bank is airtight glass jars or metal tins with oxygen absorbers or silica gel desiccant packets, stored in a cool basement or root cellar. Most vegetable seeds stored this way will remain viable for three to five years minimum, with many lasting much longer. Test viability each spring by germinating a small sample before committing to planting.
Hand Tools and Low-Tech Equipment
Amish farms use hand tools extensively, not because power tools are prohibited across the board, but because hand tools are reliable, repairable, and independent of any external input. A well-made hoe, broadfork, scythe, or hand saw can last multiple lifetimes with basic maintenance. It will never fail because of a dead battery, a stripped motor, or an unavailable replacement part.
For preppers, the lesson is to build a comprehensive hand tool inventory now, while good tools are still available, and to develop genuine proficiency with each one. Owning a scythe is useless if you have never learned to swing one correctly. Owning a broadfork accomplishes nothing if you have not built the strength and technique to use it efficiently. These tools require skill, and skill requires practice.
The Core Amish Hand Tool List
- Moldboard plow: The primary tillage tool for new ground and annual field preparation. Horse-drawn, but the walking plow is the foundational implement of traditional agriculture.
- Wheel hoe: A push-cultivator with interchangeable blades for cultivating and weeding between rows. One of the most productive hand tools available for garden-scale vegetable production. A good wheel hoe with a full blade set can maintain a large garden with a fraction of the labor required by hand hoeing.
- Scythe: For cutting hay, grain, and cover crops without power. A properly hung and sharpened scythe is surprisingly efficient in the hands of someone who has learned the technique. The Austrian-style scythe with a lightweight blade is significantly more manageable than the heavy American pattern scythe.
- Broadfork: A two-handled fork with long tines that aerates and loosens soil without inverting it. Used to break up compaction, incorporate amendments, and prepare beds. Preserves soil structure and earthworm populations better than rotary tilling.
- Hand cultivators and hoes: Multiple head types for different weeding and soil cultivation tasks. The collinear hoe, the stirrup hoe, and the traditional garden hoe each have specific applications.
- Grain cradle: A scythe-like tool with wooden fingers attached to catch and lay grain in neat bundles for hand binding. Used for small-scale grain harvesting before threshing.
- Flail: For threshing grain by hand. A hinged two-piece tool that separates grain from straw through repeated striking. Simple, durable, and effective for small-scale grain processing.
- Root cellar tools: Root vegetable washing boards, wooden crates, and storage bins for post-harvest handling.
The Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas program (ATTRA) through the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service publishes detailed practical guides on hand tool selection, small-scale grain production, and low-technology farming systems. Their publications are free, research-backed, and directly applicable to prepper-scale food production operations.
Food Preservation: The Amish Approach to Year-Round Supply
Growing food is half the equation. Storing it is the other half, and it is where most modern homesteaders fall short. The Amish preserve food at a scale and with a completeness that is genuinely impressive. A well-stocked Amish cellar in October contains enough preserved food to feed a family through the following summer with no commercial food purchases required. That is the target.
Root Cellar Storage
The root cellar is the foundation of the Amish preservation system. A properly built root cellar maintains temperatures between 32 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity around 85 to 95 percent, which is ideal for long-term storage of most root vegetables, apples, cabbage, and winter squash. Potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, and celeriac all store for months under these conditions without any processing.
The critical variables are temperature stability, humidity, and ventilation. Root cellars dug into a hillside or located in a basement with direct earth contact on at least two sides naturally maintain the right conditions in most climates. The investment in building or improving a root cellar pays returns every single year and requires no ongoing energy input to operate.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia is the USDA-funded research institution that establishes the scientific baseline for safe home food preservation. Their recommendations for canning, drying, and cold storage are the reference standard in the United States and should be the basis of any serious food preservation program.
Water Bath and Pressure Canning
Amish families can extensively through summer and fall. Tomatoes, applesauce, salsa, pickles, jams, and all high-acid vegetables go into water bath canned jars. Low-acid vegetables, beans, corn, soups, stews, and all meat products require pressure canning to reach the temperatures necessary to destroy botulinum toxin. Both methods produce shelf-stable food that lasts years without refrigeration.
The Amish do not need to think twice about canning technique because they have done it hundreds of times. Most modern households have not. If you are not yet proficient at pressure canning, prioritize learning this skill. It is one of the highest-value food preservation skills for a self-sufficient operation. The equipment is simple, the process is learnable, and the result is a shelf-stable food supply that requires no power to maintain.
Related: Canning Supplies: The Ultimate Guide for Preppers
Fermentation
Lacto-fermentation is one of the oldest and most reliable food preservation methods in human history, and it is a staple of Amish food preservation alongside canning. Sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, fermented green beans (dilly beans), and fermented root vegetables can all be produced with nothing more than vegetables, salt, and a ceramic crock or glass jar. No heat required, no special equipment, no electricity. A fermentation crock in a cool corner of the cellar is a low-effort, high-return preservation system.
Related: Cherokee Food – Ancient Survival Foods, Preservation Methods, and Foraging Skills You Need to Know
Smoking and Curing Meat
Amish farms keep pigs, cattle, and poultry, and they process their own animals. Pork gets cured with salt and smoke into hams and bacon that store without refrigeration for months. Beef and venison get dried into jerky. Lard is rendered and stored as a cooking fat and calorie source. The ability to slaughter, process, preserve, and store meat without external infrastructure is a critical skill gap in most prepper operations and one the Amish have kept well-practiced across generations.
Related: Canned Meat – The Complete Prepper’s Guide to Storing, Choosing, and Using It
Water Management Without Pumps and Electricity
Amish farms manage water for crop irrigation, animal watering, and household use without electric pumps in the majority of traditional operations. The methods they use are reliable, low-maintenance, and directly applicable to any prepper property.
- Hand-dug and drilled wells with hand pumps: The cast iron hand pump is one of the most useful pieces of equipment you can install on a prepper property. It requires no power, has minimal moving parts, and can draw water from depths practical for most rural wells. Many Amish properties maintain a hand pump as either primary or backup water access.
- Gravity-fed systems: Where terrain allows, Amish farms route water from an uphill spring or elevated storage tank through gravity-fed pipes to troughs, gardens, and even household fixtures. Gravity systems require no pump and no power. The investment is in properly locating and protecting the source and running appropriately sized pipe.
- Rain catchment: Barn roofs and outbuilding roofs route rainwater into cisterns for livestock watering. A large barn roof in a region with 35 inches of annual rainfall can collect tens of thousands of gallons per year. This water is suitable for animals and garden irrigation without treatment.
- Pond management: Many Amish farms maintain small farm ponds for livestock watering and fish production. A well-designed farm pond with a gravity outlet can supply water to multiple locations without any mechanical input.
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service provides technical and financial assistance for farm pond construction, spring development, and water system planning through their Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Their field offices have engineers who can assess water resources on your property and help design gravity-fed or passive water systems.
The Community System: The Part Most Preppers Overlook
Here is the piece of Amish farming that does not get enough attention in prepper circles: no Amish farm family operates as an isolated unit. The community is the operational structure. Barn raisings, community harvests, shared equipment, cooperative labor on major tasks, and a web of mutual aid relationships are fundamental to how Amish agriculture actually functions.
A single family cannot operate a diversified horse-powered farm, maintain all the equipment, preserve enough food for winter, and handle every emergency that arises in an agricultural year. The Amish do not try to. They operate within a community of families where labor, equipment, knowledge, and risk are all shared.
This is not a soft lesson about the value of friendship. It is a hard operational reality. The farms that survive long-term disruptions are not solo operations. They are networks. The prepper who has spent years stocking supplies but zero time building mutual aid relationships with neighbors and like-minded people in their area has a critical vulnerability that no amount of stored food can fix.
Research published by the USDA Economic Research Service on agricultural community resilience consistently identifies community social capital as one of the most significant predictors of farm survival through economic shocks, natural disasters, and market disruptions. The Amish have institutionalized this insight into every aspect of their agricultural system.
Related: Can You Join the Amish?
Practical Community-Building for Preppers
- Identify the neighbors within a reasonable distance who have complementary skills and resources. A neighbor with a tractor, a neighbor with medical training, a neighbor with an established orchard, and a neighbor with a large livestock operation are all strategic relationships worth cultivating now.
- Participate in local agricultural events, farmers markets, and county extension programs. These are the natural gathering points for people with practical land and food skills.
- Start or join a seed saving network, a food preservation group, or a local preparedness organization. Shared knowledge and shared resources are the practical product of these connections.
- Consider formalized mutual aid agreements with nearby families or properties for labor exchange, shared equipment use, and emergency response.
Starting Points: How to Begin Applying Amish Farming Methods
You do not need to overhaul your entire operation at once. The Amish farming system is a body of knowledge and practice that you can adopt incrementally, starting with the elements that are most relevant to your current situation and current vulnerabilities.
If You Have Less Than One Acre
- Build intensive kitchen garden beds using broadfork tillage and deep compost application. Eliminate synthetic fertilizer inputs entirely and replace with compost and animal manure.
- Start a serious compost operation that handles all household and garden organic waste.
- Begin growing open-pollinated varieties of your most important food crops and practice seed saving starting with the easiest crops: beans, tomatoes, and peas.
- Build or improve cold storage for root vegetables, even a simple insulated corner of a basement or an in-ground storage box will extend your storage season significantly.
- Learn water bath canning and then pressure canning. Preserve everything your garden produces beyond immediate consumption.
If You Have One to Five Acres
- Add at least a small livestock component: chickens and rabbits are manageable at this scale and provide manure, protein, and fat without requiring significant land.
- Develop a cover cropping rotation for all vegetable beds and any grain plots.
- Invest in a quality wheel hoe and a full set of hand cultivation tools. Develop proficiency with each one.
- Plant fruit trees now. They take years to reach full production. The best time to plant was ten years ago. The second best time is today.
- Build relationships with neighboring farms and agricultural community members.
If You Have Five or More Acres
- Evaluate draft animal power seriously. Research the implements available in your area and identify a mentor or training opportunity.
- Implement a full crop rotation including a hay or pasture phase. Grow at least one staple caloric crop: corn, wheat, potatoes, or dry beans.
- Build a properly designed root cellar if you do not have one. This is one of the highest-ROI infrastructure investments for a self-sufficient farm.
- Develop a serious seed saving program covering all your major crops. Build a stored seed supply with three to five years of planting stock for each variety.
- Establish a farm pond if your topography and water resources allow.
Equipment Sources and Getting Started
Antique horse-drawn implements are available throughout the agricultural regions of the United States at farm estate auctions, through online classified services, and directly from Amish implement dealers. The Small Farmer’s Journal is the reference publication for horse-powered farming in North America and is an essential resource for anyone learning to work with draft animals and traditional farm equipment. Back issues contain a practical library of information on every aspect of horse-powered agriculture.
New hand tools of appropriate quality for serious farm use are available from a small number of specialty suppliers. Cheap hardware-store tools will not hold up to heavy continuous use. Invest in quality implements with replaceable parts and hardened steel blades. In a genuine self-sufficiency scenario, your tools are your productive capacity. They are worth buying right the first time.
Local Amish communities are often willing to provide guidance, sell seed stock, or allow observation and learning from their operations, particularly when approached respectfully and with genuine interest in the practical knowledge. There is no better classroom for traditional farming methods than an actual working Amish farm.
Learn the Skills That Keep Working When the Grid Doesn’t
The Amish didn’t become self-sufficient by accident. For generations, they’ve relied on practical skills that don’t depend on electricity, supply chains, or modern conveniences. If this article sparked your interest in Amish farming methods, you’ll find even more valuable knowledge inside The Amish Ways.
Discover time-tested techniques for food production, preservation, gardening, livestock care, home maintenance, and everyday self-reliance that have helped Amish families thrive for centuries. Whether you’re building a homestead or simply preparing for uncertain times, these proven skills can help you become less dependent on fragile modern systems and more capable of providing for your family no matter what happens.
Learn more about The Amish Ways HERE!
The Bottom Line on Amish Farming for Preppers
The Amish have not survived and thrived for three centuries by being lucky. They have survived by building food production systems that function regardless of what the outside world is doing. No grid dependency. No supply chain vulnerability. No single points of failure. Knowledge passed directly between generations through practice rather than stored in manuals that may not be available when you need them.
That is the model. You do not need to adopt every element of Amish life to benefit enormously from their agricultural knowledge. What you need is to understand the core principles, identify the biggest vulnerabilities in your current food production setup, and start closing those gaps now, systematically, one season at a time.
The grid will not always be there. The supply chains will not always be there. The farms that keep producing when those systems fail will be the ones that were designed to function without them. The Amish figured that out a long time ago. The rest of us are still catching up.
You may also like:
Join Our Exclusive WhatsApp Community!
The US Army’s Forgotten Food Miracle (VIDEO)
Amish Chicken Coops: The Self-Sufficient Prepper’s Ultimate Guide
Mennonite vs Amish: What’s the Real Difference?
Amish Canning: Myths Debunked
Amish Applesauce Cake Recipe – A Forgotten Homestead Staple Worth Knowing
The post Amish Farming Methods Every Prepper Should Know appeared first on Ask a Prepper.
from Ask a Prepper https://ift.tt/mIUf4Sr
