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This is day 2 of my No New Groceries challenge, wherein I attempt to live off the fat I’ve stored in my freezer and pantry.
Perhaps I should have thought about this for a little longer. I mean really. Who starts a crazy project like this on a whim? And what kind of a lunatic does it in public by blogging it? (If you can call three people a public.)
And what kind of a kook does this in the autumn? Isn’t this when we are biologically programmed to be storing food? You know, ensuring the survival of the clan through the long, cold winter? Seems like this could go against human nature somehow, doesn’t it?
Financial experts advise us that we should have six months of expenses in savings “just in case you lose your job” – which in this continuing downward spiral of an economy is all too real a scenario. Not to mention my growing urges to shout obscenity filled epithets at the idiotic imbeciles to whom I trade my time for money. So wouldn’t having a month (or more) of food stored also be a good idea? Wouldn’t that six months of expenses be a lower number if one didn’t have to spend it on food in addition to mortgage and ISP fees? Isn’t this exactly what the end timers are always saying? “Make sure you have gallons of water and miles of toilet paper in your bomb shelter just in case they drop the big one on us!” Or the swine flu hits. Or Jesus comes back. Or something.
I re-read that inventory yesterday and I thought that it sounded terribly privileged. All that meat! (and to think I spent years as a vegitarian?!?) And organic CSA (community supported agriculture) veggie shares? AND fruit? Who does this woman think she is??
One or two of you may still be reading from back in the day when around here every dollar was stretched thin, every unplanned expense was cause for dismay and I was begging for a “bigger hog”. Seems like Babe has grown up to be quite the sow and I have climbed right up to the haunches of that sucker.
And those two reasons are exactly why I’m plowing ahead with this cockamamie scheme: because hoarding food is part of our fear-based society and because I have clearly lost touch with the abundance with which I am blessed.
I know this is a risky endeavor. But the reality is that I am lucky enough to be able to stop this challenge at any time and go to the store and buy what I want to eat. Just about anything I want to eat. I’m not forced to this because personal economic disaster or because of regional famine. I’m not doing this because I truly live anywhere near the edge. I’m not desperate, like so many of our neighbors are. I’m doing this because I have stopped noticing how lucky I am. And it is only chance, my friends, that keeps me from having to use government coupons to feed myself and my son.
I’m not kidding when I say that I could lose (or be pushed to quit) my job at any time. None of us is secure these days. And I know you know that. But I also want to be quite clear that I am not more or less “favored by God” than someone who does have to rely on our help to keep from starving. I am not smarter, or more strategic, or more talented. I’m just luckier. For now anyway.
But to continue to hang on to this food only feeds that fear. Don’t I really believe that “enough” is enough? Can I live in to that belief? Can I figure out how much is actually enough and live there instead of wobbling wildly between extremes?
Our society tells me that I’m being foolish and even worse, I’m not taking care of me and my own. I’m risking my own and my son’s security and relying on my neighbors to take care of me in case something happens to my income. There are many in our society that would tell me to my face that I am not American for taking on this challenge; for squandering my own personal safety net of a freezer full of meat.
That is true. I am squandering it. Because I think that no matter how much I freeze, store, plan or hoard, I’m going to need help if something bad happens. And the truth is
