Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens

By Kathy Garrison
I received this book for Christmas several years ago. I really enjoyed reading it, though I have already implemented most of what it says I need to do.

Everyone needs to evaluate their preparedness needs for themselves. Ours are minimal.

We don’t live in tornado country.

We don’t live in Hurricane country.

We don’t live in the city where riots are very likely.

We don’t live too near a volcano.

We don’t live near a floodable river. (Seriously, if the nearest river floods enough to threaten us, you had better have an ark built!)

Our danger of disaster is pretty much limited to wildfire, and earthquake and we aren’t at too much danger from either, really.

We did come very close to being evacuated for fire a few years ago so I will be make evacuation kits as suggested in the book. The truth is, though, you kind of have to have fuel growing to have a wildfire and we are desert. Even our sagebrush only get shin high. My Volunteer Firefighter Son says its is extremely unlikely our would ever burn in a wildfire. They might evacuate us if the hills were on fire just to be sure, but a fire just wouldn't have enough fuel to jump the road and get to us.

We have also had times of as much a whole day without electricity. Not much of a problem except we have a private well and no electricity means no water. Otherwise, my children are already used to living without electronic entertainment and we would enjoy the chance to cook dinner over an open fire in our large, gravel parking lot. Actually the major thing we appear to need is a gas generator so we could still have water :-)

However, I do try to keep our pantry stocked, so we could go as much as a couple of weeks. If there was a bad storm food might could not get over the Sierras to our grocery store for a few days. Or if we were to all get the flu at once, so no one could go shopping, it would be nice to have the cupboards full.

I do need to find a good way to store at least a couple day;s worth of water though. That one could be a big deal if something happened to the generation plant over the hill from us so we didn't have electricity.

Remember the whole Y2K scare a couple decades ago? I read about a couple that stocked up with months worth of food and water because they were convinced that the world would come to a halt. They felt like fools when nothing happened on January 1 …

Until the blizzard hit on January 3 snowing them in for more than a week!

There is another reason to be stocked up; what if your neighbor's house burned down? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take them a couple weeks worth of food? Or if they lost a job, stock their pantry from yours? What a wonderful way to love our neighbors like we love ourselves!

It is wise to evaluate all possibilities and be prepared, even to the point of having enough to share with your neighbors. Then trust God to take of the rest.