Why did I grow all of this corn for cornmeal? Why would I do such a thing?
It’s just for fun, of course. I just like growing corn. It’s certainly not because I expect there to be a second wave of the pandemic that will bring down the supply chains for good, and that we’ll have only the food we have on hand to get us through the winter. And even if such a thing were to happen, I have total faith in my government’s willingness and ability to feed me and my family in such an emergency. Don’t you?
So I worry about basement flooding in a TEOTWAWKI scenario. If there’s no electricity to run a sump pump, you’re just going to have to wait for the water to naturally drain away.
But you wouldn’t have to worry about your furnace or your washer and drier if there’s no electricity to run them.
You would have to worry about food you have stored down there, but you can get that out when necessary. And there would be a lot of mold.
But still, you’d have a place to stay. And it may never flood again like it did in 2018. Our house has quite a few things going for it with regard to TEOTWAWKI.
I drained the 3 outside rainbarrels yesterday. They weren’t frozen, but they probably will freeze soon. I left one outside and in position with the valve open last winter, and it seemed to come through just fine, so I’m going to do that with all of them this winter. It would be good to get a few more of those 55-gallon plastic barrels just to have on hand.
Dealing with the coffee grounds for composting becomes more complicated without them, but doing it inside the greenhouse is still a very good alternative.
I have to say that those rain barrels haven’t been terribly useful, mostly because we’ve had few prolonged stretches of dry weather. But they’re still good to have on hand, because those dry spells (along with sudden collapse of the electrical grid) aren’t predictable.
I ordered a 6-gallon bucket of buckwheat groats from Pleasant Hill Grain in Nebraska yesterday (Honeyville didn’t have any bw in stock and hasn’t for some time). I feel a little crazy still stocking up on staples…but the world situation is more dire than most people realize.
On the one hand, as Sharon Astyk used to say, you can’t buy your way into preparedness…but it’s not going to hurt, either.
I covered my kale a few days ago, and haven’t had it uncovered since, because it hasn’t been above freezing very much since then. That’s not ideal, but it does get a bit of dim light through the tarp, and it will be okay for a few days like that. I’ll get it some sun this weekend, and also hope to get a transparent cover made. I might as well keep it going as long as possible.
If all your transactions are part of the formal economy, you’re going to have difficulties when the SHTF. After that, everything will be under the table and informal. If you’re not doing any of that now, you need to change some habits and learn how to do it while it’s not the only game in town.
Living off the grid. I want to re-experience what I experienced in Connecticut a couple of weeks ago, the simplicity, the quiet, the calmness.
That is something I can do any time. All I have to do is shut off the electricity and I’m there. I should talk the family into that and do it — shut off everything except the freezer, and it’s quiet. And besides the experience of the moment, it’s good practice, so when the electricity goes out for the last time, it won’t come as such a shock.
I would also like to buy a second property, an intentionally off-the-grid property. I imagine blissfully quiet weekends there, with no noise except a passing airplane now and then. I’m not so sure that such places exist in Wisconsin…but they worse my hearing gets, the more likely it is I’ll find one. But what chance of getting the other half to agree to that?
I want that last power outage to happen now, tonight. I want this crazy, techno-culture to end. I hate it and want it to be over.
Ending and Beginning 