I blog about life, my life, and that includes a lot of gardening, canning, and otherwise preserving summer’s fresh bounty for the long winter months. Every now and then, I get comments or emails from so-called Doomsday Prepper groups. These are people who share my fascination with self-sufficiency, but for different reasons. Many Prepper groups expect the world as we know it to end soon and without warning. Their fears range from the massive changes due to global warming to a complete collapse of our government.

I’m not a doomsday type of person, but I do like to stock up when the veggies are fresh and I have time to can. This stock-up process gives us good quality jams and pickles and more goodies in the pantry and locally grown vegetables in the freezer. We don’t do it to prepare for some mythical End of the World, but it does ease our winter grocery budget and bring a taste of summer to the table when there is snow on the ground.

So when I started reading Michael Perry’s book Coop, I could identify with his statement in the Prologue.

Whether through prescience or too much nervous reading, we have developed a low-key doomsday mindset regarding the imminent future, and believe the time has come to store up some potatoes and teach the young’uns how to forage.

He hit it right on the head. Maybe I should stop reading so much dystopian fiction. Or maybe I should just water the seedlings, spread the compost, and always remember to vote.