Mainstream Prepping

It's In The Sunday Paper

This April 10 article from the LA Times appeared in our local paper yesterday.  It focuses on a family in the Shenendoah Valley of Virginia who are "stockpiling" food, not for a natural disaster, but for an economic one.  Most of the article is very straightforward and presents a good look at one aspect of modern survivalism.  The article even talks about our sponsor, Shelf Reliance, and features a Cansolidator and Thrive brand food in the photo.

Naturally, coming from the LA Times, they had to include some snarky comments at the end from a professor of food policy and international business at Tufts University in Boston.  "While there is nothing wrong with being prepared, Tillotson is skeptical of products that claim to last longer on the shelf than the lifespan of the average horse. 'You can't keep people from getting old no matter what you do to them.  Food is the same way.  In five years it may taste like a dog's breakfast.'"  I can just hear him sounding like Thurston Howell the 3rd when he said it and looking distastefully down his nose not just at the products, but at the people who buy them.  "Mwhuh, Lovey, I don't think that maid even knows how to prepare something like this... thank goodness."


It's In The Family

At Easter lunch at the in-law's yesterday, my wife's aunt mentioned that her husband had planted 100 pounds of potatoes.  She said that they were worried that food would get scarce and the government would take over the grocery stores; but if that happened, they'd at least have potatoes to eat.  They don't really know what I do, and we don't see them very often.  There wasn't opportunity to dig deeper in the conversation (25 people jammed up in one house for lunch), but I think I'll bring it up next time we see them.  They live out in the country and I've always had the impression they were fairly self-reliant, so I'm kind of surprised they don't have a more well rounded garden.


It's In The Neighborhood

I was off work today, and got my new plants in the ground.  Tomatoes, jalapenos, watermelons and strawberries.  I also took a ride to the dump with the trash for the last two weeks.  There are a lot of farms around here, but I noticed that there were at least a half dozen large gardens between here and the dump that I had never seen before.  A couple of them looked to be about 1,500 to 2,000 square feet and had fencing around them.  More and more people are coming around.  They may not take the name of "preppers," but that's what they are.