Protecting your food during hard times

            This article is mostly a reminder about considerations for protecting your food during hard times. The idea is that others will get hungry, and may try steal your food, whether stockpiled in your home, cached nearby, or growing in your garden.

            Speaking for myself, nothing would infuriate me more than someone taking my garden grown food during the night.  After all, I have to eat, too.

            Since everyone's situation will be different, this article just focuses on considerations for you to think about.

            Now I backward plan. Said another way, I devise a security/patrol plan first, and then build my garden area into this plan. Said even another way, a good security plan should also be simple (KISS - Keep it simple stupid), and able to guard/protect me, my Family and Friends, my food, and my water and waste water methods.

            For example, I have a micro water turbine electric plant, and around 800 feet of drop, but have chosen to use less of the drop in order to keep my patrol routes more concise and shorter and easier to count on.  Like the old expression says, there is no free lunch.

            So my garden location, or locations, will be similarly influenced. After all, I need to eat, drink, and use waste water methods to keep from getting sick from bad water and contaminated food.

            And, having been a Marine, I have already made my peace about hurting other people if I have to. That's important, too. Said another way, thinking  about these things ahead of time helps me as opposed to reacting at the time, like if someone is in my garden at night and taking my food I've been growing to eat.

            The other big thing to me, is deciding on priorities. For me, the old basics like food, shelter, and clothing trumps about any other thing, to include my electric plant. I should add clean water and waste water methods are more important than electricity, again as an example.

            In summary, think about things, especially priorities, before you start your own actions. The old expression comes to mind. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.

            Anyway, I have, and the result has been relocating my garden areas, to include liming and fertilizing them ahead of time, to more defensible areas.

            Last, food security can include protecting it to eat later, like in preserving it. Even then I have backward planned, and have the gear to save it for the cold season when plants can't grow. That's how high a priority I give food to eat. All this has a way to influence my budget and purchasing decisions.

            Even I have to hedge my bets when it comes to food. So a simple rotation system to make sure no food is allowed to go bad due to shelf life problems, and I take the necessary actions in a timely manner,  gives me faith that I can adjust to about anyway the future evolves in becoming our own reality.