09:25 – We survived the Great Power Failure of 2016. I got up this morning as usual and took Colin out for his short morning constitutional. When I came back in the house, I noticed that the ceiling fan wasn’t spinning and when I flipped a light switch nothing happened. I tried calling Blue Ridge Electric Co-op but got only a fast busy, so it was apparently widespread. Fortunately, the power came back on about 0743.
Lori, our USPS carrier, is definitely a prepper. Yesterday morning, I asked if she’d had a good weekend. She’d spent two solid days canning, everything from beans and vegetables to spaghetti sauces to beef stew. She was also happy that her brother had brought her a whole bunch of 2-liter soft drink bottles, because she doesn’t buy 2-liter bottles. She intends to wash and dry them and then fill them with bulk staples.
She said she’s already in good shape on stored food, not even counting the 20 or so cattle that she keeps, but intends to keep going. I asked her about water. She doesn’t have any water stored, but she does have a spring on her property. Then she surprised me. She said that if things ever got really bad and we ran short of food that Barbara and I were welcome at her place. I thanked her and said that if we ever needed to take her up on that offer, it’d mean I’d committed an epic prepping fail.
Prepping is pretty common up here in the mountains, I guess because most of us are just a big Basket of Deplorables. Barbara and I noticed when we were looking at homes to buy that many of them had massive amounts of food stored. One place was particularly notable. It had a large basement room filled with closely-spaced shelving that contained probably 10 to 20 person-years worth of cased canned goods and bulk staples. Many of the other homes we looked at had similar stockpiles, if not quite that size.