Food Storage preps

I'm finally going to be getting some food storage preparations taken care of. I'll be storing two 5gal buckets, one of rice and one of beans. In each food-grade bucket will 3 separate sealed mylar bags with the respective rice or beans and a few oxygen absorbers to help the food last much longer. The benefit of keeping it in three separate sealed bags is that if I open one I don't compromise the longevity of everything all at once. I bought a cheap sealer from Harbor Freight and the mylar bags online.

And I know this sounds like something the crazy old hermit does, but I see it as a very positive and practical thing to do. Food price ARE rising and, this is a way to eat tomorrow at today's prices. Not only that but it's a peace of mind thing. If I were to lose my job tomorrow and not have money to buy food, I could easily and very happily live off the rice and beans that I eat on a regular basis anyway. And in the worst case scenario such as a natural disaster (most likely to be an earthquake around these parts) I'd be well prepared, which eliminates a lot of the fear of such a thing happening and the panic that one might have if they had NO food in their house and the grocery store was trashed.

Life Goal

They ask you when you're young what you would do if you had some enormous amount of money and they say that's supposed to help you determine what you might want to do for the rest of your life as a career.

I don't know that I've ever had a satisfactory answer for that which could be translated into a lifestyle before now. It might at one point have been to buy every material possession I could wish for, which is a sad thing because it means the person answering that might be doomed to be a consumer for the rest of their life, but thankfully my views have changed.

Today if I were given an enormous amount of money, basically if I were "set for life," I would buy a big property. Not necessarily a big house, but a big property that I would use to give myself a truer liberty than most people in our country have today by making that home into something that helps me take care of some basic human needs myself, rather than depend on society for those things and stay trapped in the cycle of having to work a full-time job in order to pay to survive in comfort and security for the rest of my life. I want to grow all the food I could ever need and most of what I could ever want. I want to harvest rainwater and shape the land to make the most efficient use of water to keep reliance on public water to a minimum. I want to install solar panels on my roof, not because Al Gore says I have to, but to cut down on my reliance on the power grid and keep my electricity bill to a minimum. I want to find peace in putting work into the land and not have to live every two weeks on my paycheck and worry about what a horrible situation I would be in if I lost my job tomorrow.

To work toward this life I'm going to seriously start saving money. I know it will take me a long time to save enough to buy my own place somewhere, but if I reach that point it will have been worth it.