Mostly  out of laziness I haven’t really done any grocery shopping for the last three weeks.  I’ve pretty much just been living off of what is in the freezer and cupboards. And, unsurprisingly, I didn’t even notice it until the other day when I realized that I’ve used about $25 of my monthly grocery budget and haven’t bought anything other than Coke and a half gallon of milk.

I’d mentioned a few posts back that the bargain meat purchasing has led me to have a freezer full of food and that at the end of the month half of whatever is left in the freezer is carried over to the next month and the other half goes into the deep freeze for that rainy day. Well, it’s been three weeks and my freezer is still full of various bits of dead animal flesh. There is easily another few weeks of pork loin, steaks, turkey breast, pork chops, and such sitting in there.

The point? Clearly theres at least a months worth of meat in the refrigerator’s freezer, and it’s nice to be able to blow off grocery shopping and use the money for something else. Also, its a nice reinforcement that the current policy on picking up and tucking away the bargain meats has been working well.

Contrast with this fascinating piece about how in Venezuela, just having a couple mango trees in your yard can make the difference in avoiding starvation….but can also lead to armed men looting your tree for food.

“I have a mango tree … This tree is currently saving my life, but might also get me killed soon.”

That’s Busteq. He’s a middle-class Venezuelan who lives in a nice neighborhood. In short, he’s a lot like many of you, except his country (which has more oil than any other nation on earth) saw its currency go tits-up when gas got super cheap last year. This, combined with almost comical levels of government corruption, has brought their civilization to the brink of collapse.

Ah Venezuela….it’s like a nationwide Katrina experience that just never ends.

It’s nice to think that just the stuff sitting in my kitchen right now has gotten me through almost a month all on its own. And thats just the stuff in the kitchen cabinets. Once I dip into the long-term storage food I’d probably be right at a year or so, at least. Of course, as the link above demonstrates, having food when your neighbors do not is great for keeping you fed and lousy for keeping you safe. This is where the Venezuelan experience differs from what might happen here. (And, if you’ve been reading about the hurricane-ravaged islands in the Caribbean you can read some pretty scary stories about looters and other opportunists running amok.) In this country, assuming youve got your head screwed on straight and don’t think the world is all peace-n-love, the smart prepared individual will have the means to keep his property his.

What’s it like when a prepared survivalist rides out something like the recent hurricanes? Well, our Friend Of The Blog, Harry,  at Self Sufficient Mountain Living sat out the tail end of it and appears none the worse for wear.

It’s an interesting, but very predictable, time in a survivalists life when the gun stuff fades in precedence and the mundane things like food and toilet paper take the spotlight. On the other hand, having been into preparedness in one fashion or another for about thirty years it’s not unreasonable to think that within that time frame I’ve managed to get the gun needs pretty much met.

Anyway…..

Fun little piece about Venezuela and worth a read. Definitely makes you feel like heading to CostCo or SuperWallyworld to stock up. Oh, and before I go, here’s another piece in the same vein from the same source: My Wealthy Country Became A Dystopia Overnight: 6 Realities.