Emergency Plan

One thing that I have been considering this year that I haven’t in years past, is an emergency plan. I don’t really know why we haven’t already done one. You would think with the addition of Emma in 2008 that would have pushed us into that direction, but if you thought that you would be wrong. We really don't even have a decent first aid kit!

I read a lot of blogs that talk about TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), and they seem relatively prepared. When I read their posts about bug out bags, or food storage, or anything to actually prepare for an emergency I think, “wow, that’s really great, we should do something like that.” It seems to be a lot of thinking for me though, and not so much in the way of doing.

Over the past 3 years I have become a lot more comfortable with our food supply. We belong to a CSA. I am learning to garden and preserve as much as I can. We have a year round Farmers’ Market in my town now, and I have local sources for pretty much all I could ever think of to use, milk, butter, flour, salt, vegetables and fruit. I feel pretty happy about that. I’m cooking mostly from scratch – including baking my own bread yummy! I feel good about food, well I will next year when I actually have the food in my freezer and cupboards...

The emergency plan, yeah, no clue about that one. I don’t have a strong desire to leave my town. Like I said, I know where I can find just about anything food related organically and local. Also, my mom lives just a couple houses down from me, and obviously I couldn’t leave her. My big issues I guess are heat (still haven’t built a new chimney for that woodstove), and the fact that we only have .2 acres of land. Not a huge piece of property if TSHTF.

We don’t have a danger of flooding at my house, because we are way up on a hill (although flooding does occur every spring downtown). We do tend to lose power a lot in the winter because of heavy snow, ice, and wind. So until we have the woodstove hooked up, we are kind of up the creek as far as losing power for long stretches of time. That’s really the only big concern that I have, losing power. I guess we do have earthquakes pretty frequently, albeit tiny little itty bitty ones, and there is always the chance that we could have a very large earthquake.

So after writing all that, I still have no idea what our “emergency plan” would be. I think it more likely that we would be a place for our family to come to if needed. Our house is big enough to fit quite a few people I think, although it wouldn’t necessarily be the most fun and would take a lot of getting used to, I think it would be doable. In fact, I almost think that this is the way of the future. I think more families are going to start living together, multiple generations under the same roof just like it used to be. Maybe I am crazy, and maybe I won’t see it in my lifetime, but I think it is the direction we are headed. Especially with the amount of debt this country is in right now…and not just the collective country, but all the individuals as well. I guess I have a lot more thinking to do on this subject!