This picture above is me in my garden area, where I just planted seeds for a fall/winter crop of cold weather veggies. Right now it looks desolate and it is. There is really nothing to eat in there yet and during spring time it didn't do well since I had just cleared out the area, and only now was able to build up the soil with donkey poop & top soil from around the barn (the soil was really acidic from the mountain laurel all around.)A garden takes time to grow.
Which brings me to my annoyance with being dependent still on groceries to provide me with the food I need, like I am stuck in the cycle of the system and don't really have anyone to teach me how to get out. What makes it worse is I have problems with food due to mal-absorption disease Celiac Sprue and when I am not eating exactly what I need to be I become really freaking sick- seriously my body is kinda a mess! Because of my lifestyle, because I make everything from scratch, I am setting my cabin up to be partly off grid, I live in the forest, know many native plants... i do things like gravity fed water and gray water system, etc - people tend to think I am going to survive some kind of apocalypse. Or peak oil, end of times, civilization switch. But I am here to say I am pretty sure I will die out due to my dietary complications & grocery dependence, and that learning these homesteading & rewilding skills are more for reasons of poverty & disease then surviving some kind of worldwide breakdown.
To be honest, I like being the girl scout who's prepared for everything - thinking I'd die out in some kind of Rapture-lyptic Peak Oil 2012 freak show kinda sucks and makes me feel like a failure. Even though it's not related to anything I have done, just a failure of my body to ever have come to a fully functioning level after almost dieing from Celiac Sprue back in 2001. I actually have never cared about any kind of 'end of times', because my personal 'end of times' came when the economy bottomed out and I didn't have enough money for rent & food & basic bills anymore. My apocalypse has been happening for a few years now - and even though no zombies are coming after me, and my neighbors aren't coming into my house stealing my food at gun point, it can hardly be said that being poor isn't equal to being threatened by zombies, in this modern state of time/habits.
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I am a product of my upbringing. So yeah I can identify some plants in the forest, yeah I can talk back and forth with a screech owl, and even if the grid fell apart I'd still have running water..... but I STILL will cry when I run out of olive oil & lara bars. Not cause I am addicted but because my stomach will hurt so bad from the dietary switches I will most likely die or kill myself.
So I guess, ya'll can come take over my Luck Cabin in the event of Peak Oil-alypse 2012.... just wait though till I am dead, I swear it'll only take a few weeks.
Xoxoxo
PS- Watch this segment on CNN where the reporter talks to my friend from highschool (Jenga Mwendo) about how hard it is to get food in the 9th ward of New Orleans (the city I grew up in), all these years after the hurricane. That hurricane was their 'apocolypse'.
