Buying the Best for Your Preparedness Is Better than Buying a Lot

Ever Had a Prepper Shovel?

I recently planted some blackberry and raspberry bushes in our front yard.  It was HARD work.  Once you get down below about 3-4 inches of topsoil, our ground is clay.  I was using an old shovel to plant the majority of our bushes.  Even just getting a corner of the shovel below the grass line was arduous work.  Then the handle wasn’t tight and creaked all over the place and felt really loose.  It took me between 20 to 30 minutes to dig a two-foot-wide by one-foot-deep hole for each of those bushes.

Then I proceeded to dig a trench around each of the bushes.  Some critter had gotten into our backyard garden even though it had a fence around it. It burrowed down just under the fence and ate all of our blossoms off our plants and then stole our lone tomato!

So I decided that I was going to get ahead of these critters in our front yard.  Digging a one-foot-wide by six-inch-deep trench around these bushes also proved very challenging with this old shovel.

Last week, several days after I purchased my bushes, I realized that I needed more chicken wire and more stakes to which I could fasten the wire.  I headed to Menards as they usually have the best price, at least around here.  When I was there, I saw a shovel.

Now we already have at least two shovels, but this one said, “Fiskars – World’s Best Shovel” on it.  Nothing like a shameless plug, but I thought about my ordeal in digging the holes for those plants and the trenches around them and how HARD they were to do.  So, I spent a whopping $25 on this “World’s Best Shovel,” and may I just tell you, it is!  I had purchased one more blackberry bush that I planned to NOT fence in to see if the critters would eat it to death or if I could get away with not fencing in the runners that these plants sent out each year.

So this morning, I headed out to put the last of the fencing around the third bush to get the fence.  It took awhile, and I finally got it done, but I still had one more blackberry bush to plant.  I got my new shovel.  It sliced through the ground like a warm knife through butter!  What had taken me 20-30 minutes with my old shovel took me less than five with this one.  It was worth the $25.  The area where you can step on it is large.  The point on the shovel is at just the right angle to cut easily into the ground.  This one shovel is worth more than all our other shovels combined.  Buying the best shovel actually saved us money.

Buying The Best Blackberry Bushes

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve planted berry bush rootstock.  Probably at least 4 times.  I apparently have a black thumb!  No matter what I do, I lose them.  Sometimes, perhaps a critter gets them.  Maybe I water them too much.  Maybe I don’t water them enough?  Fertilizer, what’s that?

Yea, you can see my problem.  Well, I figured out a way around this.  Instead of buying berry bush rootstock at Aldi for $7 a pop, I finally realized that paying $25/per plant is a much better way of ensuring that my investment does well!   I traveled to a local nursery and purchased a total of three blackberry bushes and a raspberry bush.  Not only do I get a one-year money back guarantee this way, but I also get bushes that are bigger – and therefore harder to kill!

Prepper Pencils? – Maybe Not.

But this isn’t just true when it comes to shovels.  I homeschool my kids, so as I’m sure you can imagine, we go through a LOT of pencils!  Sometimes it feels like we go through a gazillion of them.  I found out a couple of years ago that one reason why we went through such a lot of pencils was that the leads kept breaking.  I got fed up with my kids each going through almost a box of 12 pencils a week, so I started to do some looking.  Dixon Ticonderoga advertised their pencils the same way, “The World’s Best Pencils.”  Well, let me just tell you how much money I SAVED by spending $3 MORE per box on the Dixon Ticonderoga pencils.  My children would only use 1 pencil each week or every two weeks.  Again, buying the best pencils actually saved us money.

Be willing to spend a little more on something that is going to last longer, make your work easier, and make your life a little brighter.

What about you?

Is there something that you spent a little extra money on, but it was worth it?  Have you found something that you spent extra on, but it saved you money in the long run?  I’d love to hear.  Leave a comment and let us know.