Preparedness Checklist

Barry Update:  He's still alive.  Seems to have more energy each day, but with the weather coming on, I hope he's strong enough.

One of the reasons Jon and I want to have a "farm", is preparedness. On our travels to disaster areas in the U.S. we saw what happens to people and society when individuals are not prepared.  I think the governments disaster relief efforts were astounding and they did a great job of getting food and supplies to devastated areas.  However, when almost everyone in an area, be it metropolitan or otherwise, is unprepared the consequences are almost insurmountable.  The lines to get food, and not a lot of it, took hours if not days to get through.  Drinkable water was still scarce even with public and private relief efforts combined.  The chaos, even in rural areas, that we witnessed started us thinking.  How prepared are we?  And should we rely on someone else for our survival? Of course this line of thinking took us, along with our disgust of modern food production, to creating our own self sustaining utopia of sorts.

Except we're not prepared.

There is a massive winter storm headed in tonight, and we find ourselves in a miserable state.  We have a generator (check), but no gasoline or money to get gasoline to run it(not check).  We have drinking water (check), for about 2 days(not check).  We have food to last quite a while (check), but no way to heat it with the generator dry (not check).  Of course we do have a fire pit we could cook on(check), if we had bothered to haul any wood to the covered porch where it wouldn't get drenched by the coming storm (not check).  I've got chickens!(check)  But they aren't laying because they are deathly ill!!!  (not check)  And horses(check) that are unrideable(not check).  But the chickens do have feed and heat lamps so they'll be fine(check). The horses have feed and shelter (check).  And I did make several loaves of bread and stew up a chicken so we will be ok for several days(check).  And we made some great friends who live very close and have kids the same age AND a wood burning stove(check).  All our cell phones are charged(check).  AND we can learn from our mistakes (check, check, check!).

So we have lots to think about before next year.  I think number one on our list is to get a wood burning stove.  But like my mother-in-law told me and Jon when we got married.  You can't have it all, right now.  It takes time to acquire things.  I guess utopias are the same way.  They must take time to acquire.