Called on account of rain. Oh well.
Here are some things our MAG (Mutual Assistance Group) has learned as we got to this point. As I wrote in the previous post, You have to be willing to fail 100 times. One of the times we failed, we lost one new family from the group that I didn't communicate the importance of showing up for events. Because distance and busy lives is a problem for us, we eventually had to institute that there are Two weekend group get togethers a year and they are mandatory attendance. If a person doesn't rearrange there personal life to show up, it means they wont rearrange their social life to show up when you actually need them. Other dinners, meetings or helping someone with a job happen regularly but those two mandatory meets are essential for pulling everyone together to just celebrate...us...and that there is an us.

Next mistake. During the internet dating faze while sorting or vetting candidates, we wasted too much on the bug out bag crew, flash in the pan preppers and those that thought they were preppers just because they had a lot of guns. As soon as we added that new potential applicants must have a minimum 3 months food storage, with plans to increase that to a year, before even contacting us, all the others dropped off leaving us with better people and less people we had to tell no.

As someone wrote in a previous post, "If you plan to be eating 5 years from now, you're already behind. Building soil takes years, a food forest many more years."
Same with building a group. There is a learning curve where you learn from your mistakes. A common thing I heard was that the applicants had watched me for over a year before deciding to contact me. If you want a group 5 or ten years from now, you are already behind.

Next, Its exhausting going through the internet dating faze. Emotional Highs and Lows. Someone Contacted Me. Does she really Like me? (LOL) Why doesn't he call? Was I just dumped? How do I tell them...we can still be friends. 😆 Its a roller coaster ride. I eventually told my group I couldn't do it any more. It had burnt me out, frazzled my nerves and was affecting how I relate to others. I was becoming a dick. I told them it was like being stuck in an emotional state of perpetual dating. They would have to take over vetting people.

Speaking of which, this is a good point to take a break from two finger typing. More later.

One of our MAG members, after reading part one, sent me a note. It read, "Nice posts. Makes us sound like a band of merry men and women. Those sort of post ward off the nut jobs looking for other crazies for a firearms circle jerk." How could I not chuckle?

Which brings up a point. Present a vision that is appealing. We got more than our fair share of medical professionals that have an insiders look at our presently failing health care system, so, My grand vision was to be able to provide limited medical services as things tank, while training the next gen of medics, to supplement our food production, protected by enough security. Self reinforcing civilisation on a local scale. This would attract more people that could grow more food and provide more security and civility on a self reinforcing loop. When I told this to whoever would listen, another member told me, That was the moment that he decided he was all in. It was a forward thinking plan instead of just a reacting plan.

Next would be presentation. People contacted me and said there was talk in the prepper world. I was building prepper Cred. Truth is, I fear that it is Me that is holding our group back. I'm an over the top, fringe personality. My life experience is not most peoples. I'ld prefer to go back into hiding . The only reason I have been the main pusher is because no one else was picking up the torch. A more, socially competent front man, Might have got us further. 😳

Still, Im onto the next big push. My next goal is to get phase 2 going, bringing people in to buy into this land and community. If it took that long to establish our MAG, this should take even longer. To do this, we are reaching out beyond just preppers, to permaculturist, Transitionists and the Resilience folks. In many ways, it will be far easier attracting these sister groups of prepping, than actual preppers, because they are more conducive this type of social arrangement. See the C5 rule of survival I mentioned above.

I told the group, when they were asking about a shared ideology, Nope. Peoples ideologies change over a life time. I've been through several. The goal is to build family. Family is the only way that holds a group together when rough times would tempt people to compromise values based on expediency.

Dmitry Orlov wrote in The Five Stages Of Collapse, "Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost." I believe we are already there in our culture. That's why so many people are asking, how can I join other preppers? How can we make prepper community? Im hoping to reverse this on a micro, local level. Building intentional extended family.

Well. I will take one more shot. If I get one more member from IPN, I will consider this a grand success. This is a little out of date and onto Phase Two of getting people to live on our property... but here is the original MAG ad. http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4352

We are not perfect and that is perfect. We have met a few preppers and we are pretty sure that you wont be perfect. LOL.