Budget Prepping & More with Author Millie Copper - Ep25

Today's guest is an episode not to miss. I talked with author, mother, and prepper for over fifteen years, Millie Copper. Millie Copper writes fiction and non-fiction and is the author of the series Havoc in Wyoming. We talked about creative storage in small spaces, being off-grid, budget prepping, finding community as a prepper, her books, and so much more!

You can find more about Millie's books at https://milliecopper.com/
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the This Prepared Life podcast. This Prepared Life is all about homesteading and preparedness. It is about going back to our roots and doing things in a different way. It is about women reclaiming skills and lost arts. It is about slow and steady preparedness. It's about being prepared, not scared. And most of all, it is about you finding education and encouragement. I am so excited to have another guest on the podcast for you today. Guest episodes are my favorite, and it is just so much fun to hear the stories and journeys of other women who prep. We get the honor of hearing from Millie Copper today. Millie is a wife, mom, grandmother, and homestead prepper living in Wyoming. She's also an author, a blogger, and I know that we can all learn a lot from her. Welcome, Millie. Thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm I've been really looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Me too. I've been just so excited. So I first came across to you at um a proper expo, and uh I saw your your table of books, and I was like, what is cozy apocalyptic fiction? And I went over there and I talked to the person who was manning your table, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'm gonna try it out. So, and I have just absolutely loved your books, and I know a lot of my Instagram followers have heard that you were gonna be a guest, and they are so incredibly excited because they love your books. And I just can't wait to hear more of your story today. So, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your family, whatever you want to share?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Sure. Okay, great. So so the person that was manning my table was is is my daughter. She, I have four daughters. Uh, she's the second to the oldest. Um, so uh four daughters and a son who's still at home. All the girls are all grown up, off on their own. I even have three grandchildren with another one due in August. Um, my daughter that was at the booth is she's like the brains behind this whole book operation. Honestly, if it wasn't for her, I don't think those books would have would have seen the light of day. So she's really been a huge help for me as far as the book business and just you know, bouncing off ideas, uh, the expo that we went to. I was like, I don't know. And she's like, oh mom, it'll be so much fun. And she was right, we had such a good time. I think uh when you met met my daughter, I was actually at another table giving a demonstration on sprouting, how to sprout seeds, beans, uh, grains, uh for for fruit, for food storage, because the the expo was a preparedness expo. So it was all about you know different um different preparedness things. So that that expo and teaching that class, it's a class I taught quite a few times. I ended up writing a book based on that class that just came out last month, too. So it was a it was a really productive expo for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And yeah, you were. I saw you over there uh doing your demonstration um after I had talked to your daughter. So um tell us where you live. Are you homesteader, prepper? Define yourself. Oh, define myself. Put yourself in a box. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Uh I live in Wyoming. Um, and boy, it's uh not yet spring here. It's trying to be spring. It's raining this morning, but I think we're getting snow this afternoon. So, but you know, it's only April 22nd, so we expect we expect snow still. Uh I am a homesteader. I have we have 20 acres, and right now we only have chickens. We did have goats, uh, but just chickens now. And and actually right now we live pretty easy for three and a half years. We lived off the grid. We didn't have running water. Uh, the house had walls, but it wasn't finished. It was it was quite the adventure. We moved in when it was not much more than a shell. Uh, that first winter was interesting. It gets chilly here. And one morning we came downstairs and the dog's water dish had frozen. The there was ice on it. So uh we really focused on insulation after that. And now it's pretty much our house is pretty much finished and it's easy living with no longer off the grid. We do still have a small solar system that's independent. So if the power goes out, which happens fairly often here, we still have lights and a few outlets that work when the power's out. Um, and we do have running water, which is, you know, great luxury after not having it for so long. I I don't know. I I guess homesteading it in some ways it was like the old little house on the prairie ways. My children, my adult children kind of made fun of me a little bit uh that we were so so rustic. But I don't know, it was a great adventure, and I really used a lot of that time in my fiction series because I knew what it was like to live without power. And in my in my fiction books, they end up not having any power. So I was able to draw on my own experiences to a point. I mean, obviously, we had it pretty easy. The grocery stores are still running, and not like in post-apocalyptic fiction books where there's usually not grocery stores.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Tell us a little bit about your journey to preparedness. You know, you you shared a little bit about that with me in our phone call. Um, but can you share with our listeners just like what that looked like for you and then um share about how you and your husband kind of came on that journey together?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, it was uh, and it was an accident. I had no idea. I mean, I I guess I did have a little idea. I'm uh older, not you know, of an age that I remember Y2K and everything that went with Y2K and what we expected it to be like, but I didn't do anything about it. I mean, I had like this little loose plan, but I didn't have any beans, rice, or anything. Um, and then Y2K didn't didn't happen. I didn't give much more thought to anything preparedness related uh until December of 2007. I lived, we lived on the Pacific Coast in Oregon, and we had what they called, um, I think it I can't even remember what it was called, the Great Coastal Gale, maybe it was this huge windstorm, and it knocked down, it knocked out our power, knocked down trees, it blew out windows in town. It was, it was, it was really kind of apocalyptic. So we didn't have any power from Sunday until Saturday. And uh we, you know, we we were in a fully electric house, electric heat. We had a pellet stove, which has to have electricity in order to provide any heat. We had an electric cook stove, just everything was electric. Um, and the whole county was severely affected. The grocery stores were closed, the gas stations, they they didn't have there was no fuel for the first few days, and then there was a line and a limit. You could only get like two gallons. I I think it was two gallons, so it was really a big change. And then after the power came back on, there was a mudslide up the road. So the highway that would where trucks would come in to restock us was closed. So that was it was about a month probably before things went back to normal. And during that time, I really started thinking, what if? What if you know something like this happens again? And I don't want us to, we were fine. I mean, we were really fine, but I wanted to be better than fine. I wanted it to be if if something longer term happened, we would not have been fine. And I knew that we needed to make some changes. So that was that was the beginning of it. And I started researching it. Um, that was in the early days of, I mean, the internet was around, but that was before I was glued to the internet, like it seems I am now. Um, I got stuck on some rabbit holes and I really learned a lot and just sorted out, you know, what is what. Um, and my husband at first was like, I don't know about this, but then eventually it was kind of funny because he heard something on the radio, because around that same time was when the mortgage industry was imploding and we were at the uh the the recession. So he started hearing about preparedness on some radio station. So he comes home one day and he's like, I think we ought to start being prepared. I'm like, really? I think we've been talking about this for a couple of months now. So um he was fully on board after that. And uh we moved during even with the mortgage industry bad, we were able to sell our house and move to Wyoming during that time. It was just it really worked out. Um, we I really saw it work out really well. And once we moved to Wyoming, we we got pretty serious about it. We started raising our own food and uh stocking our cabinets, and we lived in a really tiny house then and got really creative with where we were gonna store things. So it was a it was a really good good experience. Um, it was also tough because I had we had a young son, he was he was born during that time, and my husband worked as a janitor at a school, and I only worked part-time, so we really had to make the dollar stretch to not only meet our everyday needs, but to put things aside for an unknown future.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I would love uh to hear a little bit more about um your creative storage. So that is a question I get a lot, and I am blessed too. We have this basement in our 1927 farmhouse that you know we have ample storage in, but um a lot of people send me questions about, you know, how can I think outside of the box in my storage? I'm in a condo or you know, just a smaller space. Can you share some of your creative storage solutions?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Um, yeah, and you know, it I think some of them don't wouldn't work for everybody. We lived uh a couple miles out of town, out of a small, a small town. All the towns in Wyoming are smaller, largest city is only 53,000 or something. So um it's you know, it maybe living rurally, it's we had lower expectations for what our house needed to look like. So um keep that in mind. But we used under-the-bed storage, of course, which is very common. Uh, every closet what we weren't using for clothing space, we added shelves at the ends of the closets to to be able to tuck things in. I had a I did a lot of lactofermentation during that time, and my closet was perfect because it was cold, like a root cellar. So that was the closet where all of our lactofermentation um went. Uh bookshelves. So I have a book problem. I have had a lot of bookshelves, but my books don't go all the way to the back of the bookshelves. So behind the books, we lined up cans. So all of our canned goods were lined up behind the books. Um let's see. Oh, I had a I had freestanding shelves that you can buy the metal freestanding shelves and can adjust the size on the shelves for a five-gallon buckets, and we just put curtains, curtains around those to close them off so you couldn't see there's five-gallon buttons unless you, you know, pull back the curtain. Um we had an empty spot in one of the halls uh at the back and built in a little closet there that wasn't there before with like a little, it was one of those little doors you can push on the door and it pops open. So it was kind of almost like hidden because there's no doorknob or anything. Um, gosh. Trying to think, uh under, oh, we had a double wide. It was a we bought a used double wide for cash. It was so we saved money doing that. Um, but underneath of in the crawl space, I guess that's what you call it, crawl space area, we had an a space where we were able to put put buckets and um garbage cans, lidded garbage cans underneath there. Uh I can't really think. I mean, I'm sure that there were other things, but those are the the ones that really come to mind.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Those are great. Yeah, those are um, you know, it's like people will send me messages asking, and I'm like, okay, think outside of the box. And it sounds like you guys really did. So those are some great options for people to think about. Can you share a little bit about what inspires you on your prepper homestead journey?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Uh, my children, I would say, um, making sure that all my kids know they can always come home. Uh if they if if they think that they need to, that um, you know, it's it's not gonna be it wouldn't be completely easy because there'd be plenty of work to do. But I I would say that they're they're the main inspiration. Um uh and I don't know if this is inspiration, but just looking at the world today, I mean, the last two years have been nuts and doesn't seem to be improving any.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yes, there have been so many conversations in online spaces or with people I know um about the state of our world right now. That could be an entire podcast all into itself. Can you share a little bit? You know, everyone's prepper journey looks so different because we are all unique and we live in different areas and our family sizes are different. Um, can you share a little bit about what might be unique about your prepping, your system, your organization?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Hmm, I don't know that it's very different than what many people do. Um the only thing maybe a little different is I have really focused on traditional foods. We talked a little bit about that, the sprouting, um, being able to have, I mean, uh 400 pounds of wheat is great if you've got, you know, buckets and buckets of wheat, but wheat kernels aren't edible as they are. So, what are you gonna do with that wheat? So, making sure you know how to use that wheat, making sure I knew what to do with it, because I wasn't much of a baker or a I wasn't even much of a cook. Uh, so I've really focused on that aspect of it. So now I know, I mean, here's what I can do with this wheat. I can sprout it, I can mill it, I can make sourdough, I can um cook it into cereal. You know, that's the how how has it been used throughout the centuries? And that's what I look at as ways to use it in the future. Um, and how can I cook? I no longer have an all-electric house. I, when we we built a our house after after saving up for for several years and living in that double wide, we bought a new piece of property and we've been building our house, the off-grid living that we were doing a little bit at a time. And as we've added to the house, we've made specific choices, uh, like my my stove, my oven, and my stovetop are propane powered, propane powered, I guess that's the right thing to say. Um, but they're as a specialty one. A lot of propane stoves still need to be plugged into an electrical outlet to work. But this one runs on um, I think it's eight double eight batteries that uh that gives it the spark. But even if those batteries are dead, it has a it has the ability to light the oven. A lot of um ovens have a safety feature, so you can't manually light it with a match. Uh that our ours doesn't have that safety safety feature, it's built to be able to use with no power, no batteries, nothing. So choices like that. Um so we can continue to cook to be able to prepare our meals. And uh besides for that, we have the wood stove, our main heat is a wood stove. And uh before our kitchen was finished, uh, that was where I did all of our cooking. On top of the wood stove, inside of the wood stove, outside on a rocket stove, outside in a sun oven. Uh, just a lot of different uh alternative methods for preparing meals.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Can you share a little bit about like I'm going back to your off-grid time and you just talking about alternative cooking kind of made me want to go there? Um, can you share a little bit about what you learned in the the years that you guys were off-grid?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

What I learned is it was exhausting. That's one reason we're not off-grid anymore. It is a lot of work. Uh, you know, and I can't even imagine what it would, well, I can imagine, but I don't want to what it would be like if um, you know, if you have to go and hunt your food and grow your food, also in addition to the off-grid preparation, cooking, um, the ways of cooking. And we did, I did laundry by hand, not all of it. We still went to the laundromat some. So I did, you know, that uh it's a it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

I think sometimes, you know, at least in the homestead aspect of all of this, there's this romanticized notion of how grand and slow and peaceful life might be. And you are so right. Grid goes down, we are all gonna be so tired all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yes, yes, it's uh you know, and I think there's a lot, uh I think there's a lot to be said about the using the sun cycles and you know, working from sunup to sundown. I think that that would really be very realistic because there's work. Um, but now like here, you can't work it's weather dependent. So, I mean, how much when when we have a blizzard going on, there's not a lot that can be done outside, even if there needs to be, it's just not safe. So there's that to consider too.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, yeah. We're in North Idaho, so um, yeah, we definitely get lots of snow, and we had some negative 10, negative 15 degree days, and I do not want to be outside in that. I how low do you go in Wyoming? I mean, I'm sure it's even worse.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Um, I think the lowest that we've been here was 42, negative 42. Oh my god. Um that's it's chilly, but you know, once you get down there, how how how cold is it really? So, but you know, they say it's a dry cold, which there's a lot of truth to that. It can be zero outside, and if the wind's not blowing, it doesn't feel that bad. Uh, it's when that wind comes up, and Wyoming is known for wind. Uh, we just a couple of days ago had a 128 mile an hour recorded, uh, about two miles from me. Yeah, so that's cold. Uh when when it's cold and windy like that, it's really cold.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

You talked a little bit ago, you were talking about traditional foods and learning skills. And um, that is something I just really urge people who maybe aren't on land yet or are living in the city that homesteading and prepping isn't about stuff, it's more about skills, and you can start right where you're at learning things. What have you found to be some of your just most valuable skills?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Well, I do love sprouting, I like uh sourdough. I really like the kitchen skills, but um you know, uh learning how to light a fire. Uh, that that's something I do every day now. Well, during this time of year, looking forward to the days I don't have to light a fire. Uh, but you know, that's I I and yes, I think it's great to have be able to light a fire by rubbing a couple of sticks together, but buy matches, buy matches. Lighters, you know, have have the stuff that you need to not make your life difficult at least to start, so you can learn, learn those extra skills. I mean, I think it's great. I mean, we do a lot of camping and a lot of outdoor stuff, but I am telling you, I would not want to have to survive in the wilderness. I wouldn't. I I would rather figure out what I need to do to hunker down at home instead of bug out and live in the trees.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Same here. Um, well, I think maybe I probably could. I don't want to at all. Like my husband loves backpacking, and him and my kids go backpacking and they just adore it. And I'm like, no, I like my plumbing. I'm gonna make my plans for, you know, if it's not there, to be here at home enjoying my house and my kitchen. So you have a website, um, Homespun Oasis. And um can you share a little bit about your real food cooking and what kind of information people can learn there?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yes, so uh that um Homespun Oasis, I started it in 2009, I think. Uh, and it's a the original name of my website was Real Food for Less Money, because it was during the time that we were learning preparedness, we were also changing from a standard American diet to a traditional foods diet, um, more focused on the teachings of Weston A. Price, who was a dentist who traveled the world in the 30s and 40s, and really studied um not just people's dental health, but their physical health and compared it to their diet. And you would think in the 30s and 40s that people uh had were eaten pretty good. And a lot of them did, but that was also the time when processed foods were really becoming popular, the ease of it. And he noticed a direct correlation between uh more processed foods and uh less dental and physical health. Uh and uh so it's it's really interesting. Uh, some of his studies are at he even uh noticed that uh as uh parents were eating more processed foods, their the face shapes of their children were changing. Uh their faces were becoming narrower and they were having problems breathing, and uh children weren't able to nurse as well. And he his theory was this was diet related. So it's it's actually pretty interesting. And I had been experiencing some some gut issues for several years, and my daughter, my youngest daughter, she was I think 12, around 12 at that time. And both she and I had irritable, irritable bowel, irritable bowel syndrome. And being able to switch to the traditional foods diet got it under control for both of us and made a huge difference in the way that we felt. So seeing the results, I stuck with it. Uh, but our switch from a standard American diet to a traditional foods diet was pretty slow. We we didn't have the money to just go out and buy all organic and the best of everything. So we did a lot of inexpensive changes like bone broth. Uh, you know, being able to make broth from basically leftovers that would normally be thrown away was one of the ways that we stretched our money. Uh, we started raising, we had two acres then, and we started raising chickens for both meat and eggs. And that made a huge, huge difference. It was a lot of time, but it made a huge difference in being able to provide good quality meat. Uh, we ate a lot of beans and rice, and beans and beans and rice is also still a main part of our food storage. I learned, I didn't know how to cook dried beans really. Uh, my mom had cooked them when I was a child, but I never paid attention, so I had to learn how to cook them, uh, learn how to how to use them. And that that journey is there's a lot of information on our beans and rice in on my blog. I have a, I call it a uh stretchy beans 13 meal rotate uh 13-week rotating meal plan. We where we ate beans for like three nights a week uh during the during our tightest financial times. And that it was actually really good to learn how to use them and be able to create different meals. So we weren't just having a bowl of beans every night, it was different flavors each night. Uh so that's on there, and and that became a book, uh Stretchy Beans, which is also available for sale on there. Um so a lot of a lot of traditional foods, simple foods, homesteading as we have learned how to raise chickens and goats, and our off-grid experiences are recorded on there, and our preparedness. Uh, I have a lot of preparedness articles on you know different different aspects of it. I uh I try not to be too over the top about the sky falling. Um even though sometimes I might feel like the sky is falling, I rem I try to remember that it's not and not reflect that the sky is falling in my articles too much.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Can you share? You and you may have you shared a bunch of them in what you just said, but um specifically share some of your best tips for um budget prepping and or budget cooking.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yeah, um, beans and rice buy in bulk. Uh that has that actually was one of our biggest things was being able to find something we liked, like um, you know, pinto beans, those are common. Everybody knows what those are, but you know, I'd buy a small package, find a few ways to cook them, and then I would search them out uh to buy them in bulk for less per pound. Uh Azure Standard, which is in, you're probably familiar with that. It's an Oregon. It's a one of the companies that I really liked ordering for from. We had a drop, and it was easy um to be able to get stuff from them once once a month. Um, so and so buying in bulk, but the important thing is buying what you're going to eat and eating what you buy. So that goes back to this, you know, the saying of um store what you eat and eat what you store, which is something that I definitely do. I mean, we do now have, we have a, you know, things are not as tight. And so we have added some dehydrated or I'm sorry, freeze-dried number 10 cans just to have, but our bulk, our storage is still mainly bulk items: beans, rice, whole grains, um, just very, very simple and a lot of spices. I am a huge fan of spices. So I like um Frontier, I think it's called Frontier. They have some good spices that you can buy by half pound or a pound. If there's a spice that we like and use a lot, I buy it in bulk.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yes, I love Azure Standard. That is um like every month. And my drop is 10 minutes from my house, which I adore. Like, I don't have to go into town, it's great. So you've I just did the math. You've been prepping for um 15 years. That is a long time, and I would love to hear, um, you know, just as you look back on your journey, what have you done well? And what would you change?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Oh boy. Um the biggest thing I think I would change is I would start. Well, I don't know if I would change it. I was gonna say I would start with a better plan, but I've really I've learned a lot in in the hard ways. Uh, so I don't know that I would really change that because it's it's put me where I am. Uh, but there have been times when I've spent money. I probably, if I would have had a better plan, wouldn't have needed to spend. Um, so so maybe a plan would be a good idea. I like spreadsheets and organization. Uh, so that's that's good. Um, this house that we built, I would have maybe added a few more storage places. So it our house isn't very large. I think it's maybe, I don't even think it's 1400 square feet. So, but it does have has um some nice storage areas like under the eaves and and and extra cabinets and a nice pantry. So uh, but I I could definitely do more. I'd love to have a basement like you have. That would have been good to build under the house. So um we are looking at putting in a root cellar, and it's kind of funny, the guy that I talked to about building the root cellar, you know, I've got uh solar panels on my house. And he taught I've talked to him a few times, and I think he kind of had my number. So when I said, I'd really like to put a root cellar, where do you think you could put it? He looked at me and he goes, Do you really want a root cellar? Are you putting in a bomb shelter? So that it was kind of funny. I still don't have my root cellar, but one of these days I'm gonna get it. Um, but I do think you know, more storage would would have been better to plan for. But then on the flip side, you gotta store things so you can find them again. I uh I'd like to focus on like one item each year. And before COVID, I had decided that that year was going to be, I was going to focus on medical supplies. So I had to pull out everything and see what I had. And I was surprised to discover that I had multiple items that I already had two or three of because I'd forgotten that I'd bought them.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Can you talk a little bit more about the one item per year?

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Oh, one that looks like. Yeah, one um, and maybe item's not the right thing, one category per year. Um, so that's like in uh all Joe and I, my husband and I will say, okay, well, this year we're going to focus on, and that year before, so that was in January, you know, the COVID stuff. We were, I hadn't really heard about it much. I started hearing little little whispers, I guess, um, at the end of January. Uh, but so I'd already started on buying medical supplies, and I just knew that that was gonna be our focus for that year, and I had made up a list. Okay, in January I'm gonna buy this, March, in February, I'm gonna buy this, in March I'm gonna buy this, you know, and went through what I'm gonna buy each month for the year, because you know, it's gonna be that our that was gonna be our focus. Well, COVID changed everything, and I ended up ordering everything in you know, February, so I could make sure we had what we needed. Um, but I it's not the best way to do it. It's really better to be able to take the time, look for sales, and you know, look where where the best buys are instead of buying everything at one time. And I guess maybe I would change that. I wouldn't I wouldn't be so reactive if I knew now, knew then what I know now. So, um, but and then last year I uh wanted to beef up some of our so last year, one of the things we had a couple of things we worked on last year, but one of them was clothes. So we spent a lot of time in um used clothing stores, uh, thrift stores and yard sales looking for clothes for you know multiple sizes for us and our son and our grandchildren, and you know, having having that. Um, and actually that's something I've done off and on, even before before I started prepping as you know, yard sailing and thrifting to provide clothes. Um, have you ever heard of the book The Tight Wad Gazette? I'm sure you have. Yeah, yeah. So she has a really some really good articles on how she did clothes and kept them in um bank boxes and labeled them for the kids. So and I've kind of tried to follow, follow that plan even before I ever did preparedness, because you know, as a mom of five, you kind of got to look for the bargains on clothes.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Uh yeah, clothing preps is something people um like when I talk about on Instagram, people are like, You prep clothing, how does that work? And I'm like, Do you have a hand-me-down box? And they're like, Yeah, that's a prep right there. I think that uh, you know, sometimes there's this huge misconception about, and you can't see me, but I'm, you know, finger air quoting the word prepper, that um, you know, we're all bunker living gas mask wearing people, which I'm totally fine with. Like that's great too. But there are so many different ways as mamas um and grandmothers that we prep for our families and we just don't even know we're prepping.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think clothes is huge. And, you know, as a writer of fiction books, that's something that I think about when I'm writing. Um, you know, what are you gonna do when you rip those pants when you're out cutting wood? So, you know, you can't just run down to to Walmart and get a new pair.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

You just brought up a writer of fiction books, and I am so excited to talk about that. So let's jump in there. Um, so you say you are cozy apocalyptic fiction. Can you define that for us?

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Uh well, it's not an actual genre yet. Um, but it's yet, I'd love to see it become an actual genre. Wouldn't that be fun? Um, so my books are cozy. Um I call them cozy because there's there's no profanity. There is, there's people die. I mean, it's the apocalypse, but I try not to go into too many gory details about the deaths. Um, there's no on-screen sex. Um, and uh, so it's just it's kind of like a cozy mystery, only it's about the apocalypse.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

And I think it was great. Like I that phrase drew me to your table because I was like, I have to know what this means. Um, and I have had people ask when I've recommended your books. Um, are these can as a Christian, can I read this? Because sometimes that's an issue. You know, some people don't want all the language and the sex and all of that in their books. Um, and so women, at least the women I'm interacting with, really appreciate that about your writing. So I am not done with the Havoc in Wyoming series. Um, I have two books left. So, like, you're probably really good about not spoiling anything. But can you share a little bit about your inspiration for that series?

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Sure, yep. Um, but let me just uh back up really quick before I forget. Uh, you said that you know, Christian can Christians read the book? And I should say that they are, in addition to cozy apocalyptic fiction, they are uh what some people call futuristic Christian, or because they they are faith-based. There's a lot, so for some people, too much. Um, a lot of there's got talk about God, there's prayers, there's scriptures in it. I mean, my books, the books four, five, six, and seven, their titles are all taken from from one of the psalms. Uh, the so it's, you know, they are faith-based also. So um, not, and that's not for everyone, and I understand that. I am specifically writing for a specific person, I guess. And uh, she's probably like a 50-year-old female. Uh it's that's a I guess that's a thing that you're supposed to think of one person to write for. Um, so I don't know. Uh, but uh let's see, let me go back to what your question was. My inspiration. Yeah, so in addition to cozy apocalyptic fiction and futuristic Christian, there's also it's heavy prepper. There's especially in like the first three books, uh, there's a lot of preparedness in the stories. Um, the books are uh everything that happens at first seems like it's an isolated event and it's just slowly picking away uh at society. Well, in our our main family, the Caldwells, they live in a small town in Wyoming, and we get to see what they are doing to in reaction to what's happening around them. So they enact what they call plan A, and um plan A takes them honestly shopping a lot. Uh and is this I wrote these books before the before COVID, and they Jake called well, goes to town and he buys groceries, and you know what else he buys? He buys toilet paper. So um I actually caught some comments, not very good comments, because one lady had commented that there is no way people would go to town and buy toilet paper. Ha ha. I got the last laugh on that one.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yes, you did. I am a I like to hold a book in my hand kind of person. I like paper, and I do have books that I will just, you know, read on my phone. Uh I think we have the Kindle app or something like that. Um, but I much prefer paper books. And so I bought book one at the expo because I was like, I'm gonna try this out and we'll see what it's like. And um I was maybe a third of the way into it, and I'm a pretty fast reader. Um, I was about a third of the way into it when I'm like, I need to order more of these books because in the time it's gonna take them to get to me, I'm gonna be done. And I need to like have that next book ready because that's how good the story was. Um, what ended up happening was Amazon took longer to ship it. Uh, and I read books one through five on Kindle before the books even arrived. Like they were great. Um, and I remember walking my husband through. Like we'd be driving in the car. I'm like, oh, and then this happened, and then this happened, and now this is happening. And it just spurred really great conversations with us. So I think um, you know, like I said, I still have two books to go, so I'm not done yet. Um, but books one through three were you just painted a great mental picture of the characters and the family and you know, their their proper lifestyle and their thinking. And I think even though it is a fiction book, people can read that and glean so much information out of it. And I just absolutely loved that about the books.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

So well, thank you. Um, and I would like to, you know, they are serious preppers. Let's just call them serious preppers, and they put a lot of things in place. I mean, honestly, they're my dream. The Caldwells were living my dream. I'd love to have what they have. Um, and it seems like, you know, they've got everything, they've got these huge plans, but the big question is, can they keep it? So, and I I think that's the interesting thing for me. Um, you know, we we might have the best plans, and I'm a big fan of community. I really think that if if the worst happened, we're we're not going to do well being lone wolves. We need to you know work together, but not everybody has the same goals in mind. So that's where the challenge comes up, and that actually, you know, as you know from reading the stories, that's a big part of it, is the the inter the react the the um actions between the people. It's it's not just about you know how many gun battles can they get in, it's the challenges of working together and living closely together and a community coming together, and not everybody has the same end goal in mind.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Yeah, do you have any words of advice or wisdom for new preppers um who are looking for that community? Because not everyone knows someone who preps. Um or just yeah. Advice. You've been doing this for a while.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah, and I think probably um, you know, we're such a tight-lipped community. Uh, it's there's so much talk or maybe not talk about, you know, don't don't share your plans. Don't, you've got to, you know, keep quiet what you're doing because so and so is gonna come knocking on your door and take everything you've got. And and I understand that fear, I I do, but um, I mean, I I told you about the the guy who's gonna dig my root cellar who who, you know, thought it was probably a bomb shelter because I guess I don't hide it very well. And so if you see somebody with solar panels, do you automatically think they're a prepper in Wyoming? I guess you do, in other places, probably not. Um, so I think it's it's hard because you want to keep quiet because you want to not everybody know what you have, but you also do need to find that community and find people that you can trust. I don't know um how to go about it in a way other than maybe form friendships first, and then when you're comfortable with that friendship, then approach the subject. And sometimes that's for us. I mean, it was starting to have people over for dinner and you know, being comfortable with them. And I'm not much of an entertainer, I've always been kind of um introverted. It's hard for me to want to have people into my house. I mean, I have to clean it if they're gonna come over, and that's a challenge.

unknown 45:38

You know.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Um, but we really we did. We we started inviting people over and really found out that we there's a lot of like-minded people that I would have never expected. Um and it it does take a little bit of going out on a limb. Uh, but I think when you really listen to the the leadings that maybe you know you're getting, I I felt like God was would lead us to talk to certain people or to not talk to certain people too. Um, and I think that we really just tried to follow those those leadings slowly, slowly.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yeah, I totally agree. Like, you know, we have to go out on a limb sometimes to create that community because people are so important having people in our lives. Um can you share? Uh we talked about the Havoc in Wyoming series. You have uh another, do you have one more fiction series? What other fiction books do you have?

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Yeah, um, I do. So I have The Havoc in Wyoming, which kicked it all off. Um, and so that's seven books. And then I also have three side stories that are with that series. Um, I do have that uh if you're on Kindle, that's available in one download. So you get 10 books in one download, which is kind of nice. Um, and then I have a spin-off series from Havoc in Wyoming with some of the same people that we meet throughout throughout the Havoc series and set in the same world, and it's called Montana Mayhem. Um, and there's five books. I'm trying, I'm sorry, I get confused. I think there's four books out already in that, and I think book five, yes, book five comes out um the end of next month, the end of May. Um so we're yeah, it comes out May 26th, and then uh it'll have I think one more book in it. So it'll be a six book series, I think. So I uh I'm I write, I'm what's called a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants. I usually don't really know what's gonna happen. I might have a general idea or think I know what's gonna happen, but what tends to happen in my stories is the people in them get a mind of their own and take me off on some journey I wasn't expecting. So while I right now I think it's going to be a six-book series, my people might have a different idea. So it might be a seven-book series or eight-book series. I don't really know. I love that. That's great. Um, it's kind of annoying, I'll be honest. I've tried doing an outline and it just didn't work out too good. I couldn't stick with it. So it I don't know. I I'm surprised some days, just as surprised as the reader is.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Um, you also have nonfiction books. Can you share those with us?

SPEAKER_00 48:40

Yes, so I have um five, maybe, maybe five nonfiction books. Uh, I actually that's where I started writing, was on the I had the blog and I started writing nonfiction books. I the I had one called, I have one called Design a Dish, which is about cooking methods instead of recipes. And at that, actually, that book is inspired by um by the Taiwan Gazette, because in that she talks about methods. She has her muffin method and her casserole method. And so I love the methods, and I have a muffin method, but it's done with soaked muffin, muffin batter, which is a traditional foods um way of making grains easier on the stomach. So um, so that's design a dish. And then I have real food hits the road, stock the real food pantry, stretchy beans, and then my two newest books are uh sourdough for your food storage and sprouting for your food storage or sprouts for your food storage.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Those sound great. That sounds like just a wealth of information for people just jumping into learning different kitchen skills. What should I ask you, or what would you like to share that I don't know enough about you to ask?

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Well, I don't I maybe I don't know enough about me to share. Um I you know, I'm just an ordinary person, really. Uh I'm pretty simple. I I like easy. I I don't I like to stick at home. I like to just you know make an easy life most of the time. And then there's a part of me that wants to go out and travel and see the world. And you mentioned backpacking. I love it. We go backpacking and camping, and it's so much fun. So, but when I'm home, I want to be home. But when you can get me out, I want to stay out. So I am just uh, I don't know, a weird combination.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

Well, that's awesome. Um, we talked about your website a little bit. Can you just run through all the resources and places that people can find you online?

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Yes, so um homespunoasis.com is the web the blog, uh, which I work really hard to put up a new article every week. There was a couple year hiatus when I was writing and not focusing on the blog, but that's been one of my goals for the last year is to put up a new article every week. Boy, that's a difficult goal, but I'm I'm sticking with it. Um and then MillyCopper.com is my website for the fiction books. Uh, and if you go there, you can click on the Reader's Club link and join my weekly uh it's a weekly newsletter that I send out. And uh I give try to make that interesting with preparedness tips and homesteading activities, um, you know, what we have going on, plus that's where I share the latest on the books, uh, what new books are coming out and what's available. And when you sign up for that, you actually can get a free digital digital book. Um, I think the offering changes. My daughter, the one that helps me, she she keeps up that, she does that technical stuff. But I think right now the offering is for um it's called Wyoming Refuge, which is the prequel to Havoc in Wyoming. Uh so that's that's free. Um, free digital in whatever format you want on there. Uh, you can find me on Facebook. I have a Millie Copper author, is my Facebook page. And um I have a Pinterest page that's kind of fun. There's uh my early books. I kept my I kept uh started a board for each of the books, and I shared my research on the board. And I want to go back and update books five, six, and seven on that, but my computer crashed and I lost all my research papers. My links, I know. So um it so that's a work in progress. Um, but my Pinterest page is it's it's it's there's quite a lot of preparedness information in Pinterest. Um and oh, I am and definitely if you're interested in the books, sign up for my Reader's Club. I'm also working on getting all of the books put into audio. So right now, the first book, Cold Will's Homestead, is available in audio. But I'm hoping that Katie's uh journey will be up in audio before the end of June, and then the rest of them at regular intervals until they're all available.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Oh, that's great. So many people just love audiobooks, you know, being able to listen to a book while they're driving to work or something like that. So that's awesome. Um, listeners, I will link all of these resources and places that you can find Millie in the show notes. So um you can find those there when you're we're done listening for today. We are coming up on an hour, Millie, and um I have so much enjoyed this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

Well, thanks so much for having me. It's been very fun. Um, and I'd love to, you know, chat with with you again and any of your listeners that want to reach out to me, I'd be more than happy to talk with them if they have any additional questions that I can answer.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Well, thank you so much. Um and listeners, thank you for joining in today. I hope you enjoyed hearing bits of Millie's journey. And you can check the show notes if you'd like to contact her or if you have any questions for Millie. Her information will be there. And as always, prepared, not scared. Thanks for listening.