Survival Plans

Awhile ago I wrote about a plan to eat from the garden and hunting. It sounds like such a good idea, but what people tend to forget is the fact that very few people each just plain vegetables and fruit. Most people add at least salt and pepper to food. These are easy staples to stock up on and store, but what about the other stuff you add to veggies? Most people around here would never serve green beans without bacon grease in them. Or don't you usually put butter on potatoes? Even most of the fruit that I see has been cooked with sugar. While the plain produce is very good for you, it is the stuff that you add to it that makes it so good to eat. The problem here is foods like butter are hard and time consuming to make and will not last long without refrigeration. Shortening which can be stored longer at a warmer temperature is also beyond the ability of most people to produce at home, let alone in a survival situation.

In most lives today we just eat whatever suits our fancy at the moment. I do indeed go to the store every other day to buy fresh fruit and vegetables and even in this tiny rural location always have a large and varied selection from which to choose. If I were depending totally on what I was growing I would be eating according to the season and weather. And lettuces and greens are lovely, when they are in full production the weather is still usually cold and no amount of that vegetation will satisfy hunger born of cold wind. And so in the height of summer around here the gardens are hibernating or only turning out tomatoes. The work of skinning, gutting and butchering even a small deer in the heat of summer could induce heat stroke. And no one is going to have a cold drink in the frig or cooler to offer relief.

All this could sound pessimistic but it is not. It is part of a well thought out plan, because the more that is at stake the more careful and detailed the planning must be.