Being Prepared

When you live in the woods in the mountains, you have a lot of... interesting neighbors. Like the dairy farmer who makes goat cheese every day. And the church organist who practices late at night. And the engineer with the top secret security clearance. And the felon with the chihuahua named Nacho. And the crazy lady who looks like Grandma Death from Donnie Darko who lives in a house with no running water... on purpose. I'm going to let that one sink in for a minute.

Gross, right?

You might also have some neighbors who live in the woods because they believe the world is going to end. Not in the "everyone knows that in billions of years the sun is going to expand and swallow the earth" way. In the "who would you like to have on 'our' team when the sh!# truly hits the fan? This is a very serious question. When the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket... who do you want at your side?" way. And yes, that is a real quote from one of my real neighbors. You can't make this sh!# up. There's this super secret club that Hubby and I were invited to join because Hubby cleared a tree out of the road during a storm and the other guys decided they want him and his chainsaw at their side when the sh!# truly hits the fan.

Anyway, I wanted to see what kind of hilarity would happen at a secret preppers' club in the woods, so we went to one of their meetings. Supposedly, we would be learning how to use acorns for food like the Native Americans did. In reality, one guy had made cookies with acorn flour before the meeting and then described the process to the group. I checked out after a woman asked what kind of sweetener you would use in the apocalypse. After I suggested that you're not going to worry about how sweet your acorn cookies are if you're in a survival situation, I casually mentioned that I'm planting a sugar maple tree so I can try to make my own maple syrup. It almost felt like one of those mic drop moments.

Even though I don't think the world is going to end soon (although with our current political situation, who really knows?), I do think it's a good idea to try to be a little more self sufficient. My sugar maple arrived today, and I know just where it's going. We're starting to run out of sunny places in the yard to put more apples, strawberries, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, pomegranates, figs, nectarines, potatoes, garlic or anything else. But I'm sure we'll figure something out. Or we'll have to start stealing acorns from the woodpeckers to make flour.