It's the New Year! It's Gotta be Better, Right?

Um, yeah, sure.
Sitting here on December 31, 2010, with a 60-mph-whiteout blizzard raging outside, I am cozy and secure. The woodstove is cranking out the heat, and needs to be fed every two hours or so; the clever animals are snuggled down in the hay beds I made for them in the pole barns. We had homemade waffles and homegrown eggs for breakfast. The freezers are full of produce, not to mention 1/4 of a cow and almost a whole butchered hog, still. Mike is baking bread in the kitchen, hoping that the flickering power stays on long enough for the oven to bake it. Jars of produce, of apples and apple butter and even apple jelly sit on the shelves downstairs, next to 60-lb, 5 gallon buckets of rice, wheat, oats, sugar, and honey, snuggled in with # 10-sized, freeze-dried cans of fruit and vegies, dried spices and flavorings.

And yet, here I sit, going over seed catalogs, drawing out the garden - the garden that right now is frozen, six inches down, under its blanket of snow, that looks like a barren wasteland instead of the virulently productive summertime landscape it becomes. Why on earth when I have so much already, would I want more, more, more? What sort of paranoid fantasy is churning my guts and driving me to choose another spring of hard labor, another summer of endless harvesting and canning and dehydrating and preserving? What sort of maniac would wear themselves out, every year like this?

I bought a lot of seeds already, this past summer, when the stores put them on sale, clearance racks full of unwanted, discarded, picked over seeds. Then they were 97 cents a pack (few people realize that seeds will germinate 2-3 years after the year for which they are produced and packaged). I bought fall trees and grapevines on sale, that sit in my greenhouse right now, barely warmed to above freezing, going thru their cold-hardening without exposing them to the 30-below temps and pounding wind that they will have to be strong enough to endure next year. What do I need an orchard or a vineyard for?

The seed catalogs sent to me this week are giving the lie to the "YAY! No more recession!" pathetic fantasies that are gripping the media and every talking head with a passionate frenzy. The seed prices haven't doubled - they've tripled, some even quadrupled, just since last spring. Of course, seed companies had to pay more this year; for fuel, for water, for shipping, for fertilizer in the fields to produce these tiny seeds, as well as for printing and packaging and producing their glossy colorful catalogs.

If seed is higher this year, produce costs will be higher this summer. If it takes more to produce it, then the end costs will be higher. This is just simple math, anyone can do it. If weather plays a factor, prices will leap upward. Look at Florida, just this week, where fresh vegetable prices at the farmers' markets doubled in one week. Literally doubled. They said it was because of the two previous frosts, and that was a part of it, of course. But when a farmer has to pay double for his fuel, his production, and his own expenses, the buyer of his produce will pay for it.

It has been a long time since we have seen food shortages; few alive now remember (or, they choose not to remember) the sanded sugar, the green meat, the wilted vegetables that stores were passing off at high prices in the late 70's and early 80's. Back then, folks grumbled and whimpered and whined, and ate soy burger instead of beefburger, ate whatever they could afford, cut out sweets and coffee. This year, I have a feeling things will be different... and not just because the prices will be so high, or the stores will be so empty.

Things will be different because the mouth-breathers, the gullibles, the same ones who fell for the "Everyone deserves a home!" political, media-driven housing bubbles and dot-com bubbles, are falling for the media and governmental lies that "Everything is looking up! I'm fine, you're fine, we're all gonna be just FINE!" self-congratulatory wolf cookies they have desperately, frenetically, believed in, over and over again. When, once again, it turns out to not be true - this time not just resulting in bankruptcies, housing repos, and moving in with Mom and Dad, but real base desperation and hunger for basic necessities - things will be very bad. Those who still believe that the world owes them a living will be shocked to their core when they realize they have become grasshoppers, out in the cold with no food, no where to go, and no one to care for them. They will be angry. They will be resentful. And they will take it out on those who 'have' - have a little more, have a little security, have a little job or a little income or enough foresight to pre-plan.

Me, I'm not too worried about divulging what I have on here. Those who read this, who have failed to plan will not be able to make it this far; they will run out of not only fuel and food, but the incentive to go to the back of beyond, when there is so much to take all around them - and so many unarmed, undefended, unprotected sheeple around them to take from. The folks around me have the same attitude as I - we have what we have, we are armed and won't allow not only ourselves, but each other to have it removed from us easily. We work hard, we stock up, we grow what we can and share what we have, we keep our guns loaded and our powder dry - and wait.

Yes, Happy New Year - here's hoping that all the signs that I see, all of the plans that I've made, all of the work that I'm doing and have done are totally unecessary; that they are merely the paranoid fantasies of someone who thinks that most folks are self-righteous, self-promulgating assholes who firmly believe that their survival is paramount, when they have never lifted a finger to ensure it, other than to sign their EBT application or Welfare deposit slip, or to beat an old lady to death for her Social Security check.

But - what if they aren't? What if I'm right? What are YOU doing to ensure your own survival?