Why am I doing all this?

When I woke up, I stoked the stove on our lower level with wood from the basswood and boxelder trees in my back yard. I chainsawed and split the logs myself last spring, and yesterday I finished stacking it next to the back door as new snow floated down. After stoking the fire, I flipped the new cheddar cheese I made 10 days ago so it ages properly, and added yogurt I made from a half-gallon of skim milk to my oatmeal. Today I don't need to bake bread (rye, three loaves at a time), but I might do a bit of laundry and dry it on a rack set up next to the wood stove. I've made my own crackers, replaced a zipper in my winter coat, and always shovel the driveway the old-fashioned way with a a shovel and a grunt.

In the spring I'll put in my front vegetable garden from seeds I saved last fall, plant the nut and fruit trees I plan to buy, put up a separate raised herb garden, and fertilize everything with compost from two separate "bins" made of straw. Summer projects will be to build a clay oven from the clay-heavy soil out back, cook more with the solar oven I bought last year, and possibly (if I can ever find the energy) dig a deep pit in back that can be used to store vegetables or age cheese.

Why am I doing all this?

Part of it is economics--it would never have occurred to me to try to make anything from scratch if I had income that supported me comfortably and if (big if) I thought the larger economy would continue floating safely along so I didn't need to change in order to survive. But of course, I don't believe any of us is safe in the times that approach us, and I am big on avoiding bad things if I can. It may be that my efforts at self-preservation will be futile, but you know what? I can live with myself if they are, because I will have done my best. I know on the deepest of levels that I am here to grow my soul, and that that growth is my purpose. I don't grow by being safe and avoiding bad things--I grow by engaging them. And part of that engagement involves not only doing wise and prudent acts of preparation prior to the collapse, but also and perhaps most importantly, developing the personal links that form a genuine community. None of us survives alone, in spite of all the "rugged individualism" rubbish that's part of our national psyche.

For me, developing that supportive community with friends and neighbors is the most challenging part of these times. I'm an introvert by nature and social niceties escape me. Establishing real community is my soul's growing edge--much more difficult than felling trees and making clay ovens.