Wax and Wane

When I first heard about Peak Oil, I did a lot of things those first few years to prepare for the coming crisis.  I 


- bought a wood stove fireplace insert & cords of wood (and got good at stove stoking)
- started a garden (and got to know the three kinds of slugs in my yard)
- raised layer hens from chicks for eggs (and a few broilers by mistake!) 
- started buying local milk from a dairy many miles away
- figured how to get my favorite type of bread from the local bakery (order ahead!)
- built a couple different chicken tractors for my chickens
- started raising an angora rabbit for the wool
- volunteered at the local Heifer Project International farm (learning about raising livestock)
- joined a local spinners guild and bought a portable spinning wheel
- banished the TV from the living room to areas in the house I don't go to
- attended a Peak Oil Community Solutions conference
- started riding my bike and getting in shape
- bought a moped to drive to work (my commute was 6 miles)
- joined a vegetable CSA and a meat CSA

I'm sure I'll think of more, but that's a good start of the list of things I was doing in the early days to be prepared.  And I felt prepared.  But I had a definite advantage those first few years: I was working part time.  So I had time for all these things. 

And then I started working on the coop, and soon after started working full time with a long commute.  The chickens started eating each other, the rabbit kept getting matted because I wasn't grooming her, the milk place was too far, and I couldn't make it to the bakery before it closed because I was working so far away.  The vegetable CSA was far away, and far too many vegetables for me and my daughters.  The meat CSA - I kept missing the pickup even though it was on my way home from work, and the meat turned out to be a lot of cuts that I didn't want or didn't know how to cook.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  This stuff isn't easy.  And it is so easy to be pulled back into the industrial system, because the grocery stores are easy to get to , open all hours, have everything you need, etc. 


The one thing that I have continued to do is the wood stove.  Which reminds me, I need to order my cordwood for the winter.  I always worry that they'll have run out by the time I call.  I do love the fire, building it, watching it, feeling the heat.  Lugging wood is a pain, especially in the snow, but its good exercise.  And I feel stronger after doing it all winter.  And I do a darn good job stacking it in the fall - I get comments on it!  


And the other thing, of course, is the food co-op I started.  It's an online way for people to order from local farmers, with a volunteer distribution service to pickup sites once a month.  The co-op is also why I didn't even try to plant a garden this year, and why I've hesitated buying chicks again.  Between working full time and the co-op, I'm so busy and so stressed, that choosing not to plant the garden this year was a choice to have a little less stress in my life.  That's how I felt when I gave away the last hen after she had killed and eaten her buddies.  And relieved to find that same person would love to take the rabbit as well. 


But as I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, about post peak oil scenarios, its got me thinking about how unprepared I am, and how much less vulnerable I felt when I had the chickens and the rabbit, and the CSA shares, and the garden.  I feel like my level of preparedness waxed and now has waned, and its time to get back on the waxing side of that cycle.  Sure the local food co-op is good, good for the community.  But it is only one piece of my personal preparation, and I'm going to feel a lot better if I get back to some of those other things I was doing to prepare for the coming crisis.