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Is there such a thing as over-prepping? Yes, particularly when it comes to food.

I finally got my supply closet a bit more organized and was a little surprised to discover 12 bottles of ketchup. Twelve.

Now, when there were three of us or even five of us, I think we went through a bottle maybe once a month. Since we’re down to just two, I’m estimating that bottle would last two months.

Which means I have two years’ worth of ketchup, an item that I can make myself if the tomato crop is good. And I’m not even sure how it happened, but I’m guessing it’s for the same reason that we have two jars of Miracle Whip in there too:

My husband doesn’t look in the cabinets or closet before he goes shopping.

To be fair, he used to call me like ten times—okay, five. Seriously. During a shopping trip my phone would ring off the hook. So to speak. And the reason he was going, and not me, was because I had a lot of things to do already. So he’d call.

I broke him of that habit, but the trade-off is that we have extra stuff that he might think of at the store and just grab “in case.”

I think, though, I have a solution:

I hung a whiteboard in the supply closet to make a list of things needed. Take a picture before you go, and voila, you have the list to pick up any sale items. Plus, of course, the regular grocery list.

IF SHTF happened any time soon, we’d be ready. And ketchup is a vegetable, right?

Just kidding. But we’re nearly fully stocked for a good six months—for two-three people. And this is how it should be.

The other side of prepping is this:

For example, I have a couple packages of store-bought cookies in that supply closet. Now, of course they need to be rotated like everything else, but they’re “emergency” cookies. My husband and I have very different ideas of that word. “Emergency.”

I’m all for cutting back and toughing it out—even with food. I cook a little less; not less often, I’m talking about portion size. It’s something we’re trying to get back to, particularly since as one ages, one needs fewer calories. Yes, I take the workload into consideration. But the typical diet in the US consists of overinflated portions, restaurants and at home alike.

So if I feel like having a Chips Ahoy cookie, and I know where they are, I might or might not take a stroll and grab that package. But only if I happen to being going that way anyhow—I’ll wait and maybe remember to get it.

See, when SHTF, you’re not going to be able to run to the store just for a cookie, and you might really NEED that damn cookie. The heck with your appetite or calorie intake, your emotional health is important too. And cookies make a lot of things better.

And this is the other side of prepping: your mental and emotional preps. Get used to doing without or doing with less now, and if it happens, you won’t be caught by surprise. It’ll be just another day as far as your habits and health are concerned.

But you can always make oven fries to use up all that ketchup:

Oven Fries

Scrub potatoes

Slice to your preference

Toss with olive oil

Season with whatever you like: garlic, onion powder, pepper, anything in your spice rack/cabinet.

Bake at 425 for about half an hour or so, stirring once or twice, until as crisp as you like.

Most days, we get up with the sun and drink coffee until our brains start to function. We take care of the dog and cat, of course, and I pick up all the miscellaneous stuff from the night before, put away dishes, make the bed, all the mundane things that most people do every day.

Of course, I get to do some of that from the deck while the sun rises . . .

I do my PT and make breakfast and check on the herbs and seedlings, burn trash, and again, all those boring things everyone has to do.

And I work on business-y stuff.

After that, we have a project. Or ten.

Yesterday, I put on my shiny new red boots—which aren’t so shiny anymore—and tromped out to our newly plowed garden.

Damn, it’s big.

And before anyone mentions that it’s TOO big, let me tell you that it does take quite a lot of rows to feed two people. And trade with neighbors. Or even sell some at a local market if it comes to that.

We’re not using it all this year. We’ve doubled the size from last year, particularly since we’re here fulltime now. Of course, this year we’ll actually have more of a return, thanks to the FUD fence.

I’ll leave it to your imagination to interpret that.

Yesterday was the start of the FUD fence: twenty-some short posts in the ground, topped with 10-foot-tall poles, surrounding about 330 linear feet of garden.

Later today, the poly-something fencing arrives; we’ll attach it to the poles and be ready to roll.

In a manner of speaking. It’s not quite that simple and, I’m sure like most things, will take 2-3 times as long as we estimate. But this year, NO DAMN DEER will eat my green beans!

In other news, the peach trees we planted last fall are fully leafed out and the apple trees are budding; and I think—going out on a limb here—I’m going to have more than five blueberries this year! We’re also cultivating a wild raspberry patch. Have a ton of them out here, but these are all grouped together right by the fruit trees. And yes, we’re fencing those in too.

Once the FUD fence is finished and the garden planted, we’ll move on to the next project: more fencing. Our perimeter fence has a couple gaps on one side, some missing hogwire on another, and is completely non-existent on a third side.

Then, of course, there’s the dock and shelter by the pond, the kitchen shelter and barbeque at the campsite, the barn itself, the pasture fence, clearing, burning, and a few other things . . .