What's to do?

Thought I would let you know what I'm doing, lest you think the warm slothful weather of Q has got me sipping diet pepsi with my feet up. Well some of that of course.

I've been trading email messages with Gary - see the Daily Pill link to the right. He is headed down this way to get out of the winter and then to Oregon. We have totally different lives, different generations even, and different obligations.

Gary is hurrying to get a garden in on a piece of property in Oregon. His overriding concern is to start literally digging in, growing his own food and thus to put "insulation" between the rising costs of food and his family and their plans.

I have been busy converting what little cash I have in the bank, about $4000 into more durable assets. My goal is to keep light on my feet and get plants started right here in my Airstream for when I arrive back in Eugene. I will be putting in a large garden for the same reasons as Gary. First, it is a no lose situation. Even if the larger garden I plan for this year produced NOTHING I would have the advantage of having make that mistake while still having a small income and the ability to purchase food. If the garden does produce passably well, then I eat well, can a lot, and have lower food costs, as well as a more healthy food supply, for a fraction of store bought food.

Gary has made the point to me, and he and I will talk more about this when we are sitting together around a fire rather than in email, that everyone in the US pays something to stand where they are currently. Rent, own, squat, camp, boondock, one way or another someone is paying for the land under your feet, and thus indirectly you are too. Boondocking which is my overwhelming preference - parking for free, places severe limitations on how much I can impact that plot of land. On BLM land for example, you can stay 14 days in theory, but in reality much longer. But if you put in a garden, well, move along little doggie.

As you go up in costs you go up in ability to do something with the land, like have chickens or grow food. But until you actually own the property - which is not ownership because there are controls (zoning) on what you can do with it - then you have the right to more permanent changes and advantages. Shops with tools, solar power in a big way, wells, storage for salvaged material, root cellars and solar friendly earth structures to live in. All of these require you to own the property outright or with a mortgage.

Gary feels that he can save so much by producing most of his own food, that he can thus afford a mortgage to buy the property. The head butting we do over this is that I think the property values have JUST STARTED to collapse. I'm not in a hurry to buy high and support a mortgage on property that is continually worth less than the mortgage.

So that is where I am, what I'm doing, converting assets - cash to silver or gold, guns and ammunition, stored food. I'm also enjoying the summer sun, reading things that bend my mind in many directions, and generally enjoying this respite before a greater storm is upon us.

What are you doing?