Cause That’s What Preppers Do

Okay, you got me. I’ve been excusing myself from writing a story for the Preparedness Pro contest on the basis of being too busy. I mean, hey, the piles of food storage recipes stacked around my office and upstairs in the kitchen are annoying everyone and must get punched and put into the binders I finally made time to purchase and label the other day. Too bad the dining room table is covered with my gardening binder with all its plot maps and plant information, pencil crayons for color-coding planting dates, garden pre-plant mix and weekly feed mix, seed starter mix, seeds, garden labels cut from old vinyl blinds, various plastic tubs for starting seedlings, and all that jazz. (At least I managed to put away all the plastic tubs that hubby washed last night. I am so glad he agreed to keep up the kitchen so I can focus!) Really, I shouldn’t have planted any seeds yesterday—now I’m going to have to go out there and water them every day! Hope the weather doesn’t warm up too soon, or else I’ll have to get out there and get the raised beds prepared for seeds and seedlings. (Must remember to get to the dollar store for some cheap black pepper to throw in the soil to keep away those annoying pests that eat my turnips and radishes! Darn, now I won’t be able to focus until the pepper is in the ground….) And, whoa Nelly, is it ever hard to keep up with my e-mail! I should just stop subscribing to all the preparedness and health and recipe websites—and maybe unsubscribe from a few! (Good thing I finally figured out how to get some of the e-mails to go directly into a folder without my intervention—do not pass go, do not collect $200.) I suppose I should tell my friends to stop forwarding me stuff I need to learn about, too. Oh and then there’s the health curriculum I am writing for some like-minded friends. Never mind that I’m going on two years with that project…. Phew, sure am glad I finally got the year’s bookkeeping done and the income tax forms completed and dropped off at Revenue Canada. They better deal with my claim immediately because, hey, we really need the money!

Really need the money? Yeah. Hubby’s getting old don’t-you-know and had to take a demotion. Heart attacks will do that to you. It’s plenty shocking to suddenly lose 40% of your income overnight.  I knew it was coming, just didn’t know it would be this soon or that much of a drop! Good thing there’s a garage full of food that I purchased or dehydrated the last couple of years, and the pantry full of vegetables and meat that I canned in the same period of time, not to mention jars and cans stuffed in various cupboards. The boxes and buckets hidden in the crawl space downstairs make me feel better, too, but I don’t plan to touch those with a ten-foot pole unless I have to. Hubby and the kids can crawl in there if they want, but I’ve never been and don’t intend to venture where mice play when the cat’s away.  Speaking of cats, it’s a good thing there’s a bucket of dry food and a Costco box of canned food for them. Funny thing about cats—they love to jump around in the garage and knock jars off shelves; I just hope they don’t push the toilet paper and disposable dishes off the top ones. Probably not; I just barely got one package of toilet paper off the top shelf myself! And besides, I did re-arrange the boxes around the perimeter of the room so that should discourage the jolly jumpers.

I’m so glad there are no juice jugs ready to be washed right now, so I can focus on more pressing matters. But when there are several waiting for me, I will soak them in hot water to get the labels off and then in fresh soapy, bleachy water to disinfect them. Then I’ll fill them with cold water and add them to my stored water cache. If I can find more hiding spots. In a couple of months I’ll have to take the time to thaw out the water jugs in my freezer (pouring the water into the garden, of course) and then refill them. That reminds me, I must get hubby to set up the water catchment system off the greenhouse. The 55 gallon barrel is back in place after its winter holiday in the shed; it just doesn’t have its catchment part connected to the roof yet. The mini-barrel is in place under the hole cut at the end of my greenhouse work bench, all ready to catch water from rinsing produce in the handy-dandy camping drainage basket/cutting board thingy.  Funny how the thing I am most excited to show visitors is my little “summer sink”!

If this weren’t the week of Passover with its unleavened bread, I’d be busy soaking/sprouting/dehydrating/grinding wheat berries and baking bread and learning once more how not to do it. Wait—I am busy making bread, it’s just unleavened bread. More recipes to try out. Well, practice makes perfect and one of these days I’ll hit on the right recipes for us. Good thing I started my experiments awhile ago! Then I’ll get a new sourdough starter going and figure out what I’m doing wrong with my sourdough recipes, too. At least I know we will have bread to eat when everything hits the fan—even if it’s not gourmet! Even if there’s no yeast to be had. And at least we’re all learning to adapt, and maybe even feeling better. Note to self: better buy more wheat berries—we’re going through them faster than I thought we would! Ten buckets is not going to last a year if that’s what we’re relying on!

‘Scuse me a moment. Must go do a bit of exercise—got to get my body in shape for this tribulation marathon we’re expecting!

Back. What was I saying? Oh, yes…I was excusing myself for being too busy to write an article for this contest.  It’s a good thing hubby is on board now. For a long time he didn’t really get what I was up to but now he sees it. Now my future is our future. Now my food storage is our food storage. Now my garden is his garden. So it’s only fair that his vision should become our vision, don’t you think? Yep, he’s had a vision—and apparently two other local guys have had the same vision. They’ve seen their church being used as a refugee centre! Now hubby just needs to get them moving on his idea of turning a huge portion of the property into a community garden! Actually, hubby has had two visions—the second one was about a group of refugees stumbling into our camp. He was expecting them, and we were ready to meet all their needs. Maybe it was just a dream, I don’t know. But I do know we’re not ready for them yet. There is so much work to do and skills to develop and only so much time in which to do it all. So we’ll just keep trucking along—researching, learning, collecting, gardening, preserving, networking, doing…. When all is said and done we’re hoping to hear the words “Well done, thou good and faithful servants!”

Darn, the sun just came out and the greenhouse is getting hot. I better get out there and water my seedlings so I’ll have more work to do tomorrow! And the day after that!

Cause That’s What Preppers Do–Git ‘Er Done!

C.L. Ontario

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