My First Harvest

Last night I got to enjoy my first harvest of green beans from my backyard garden—and let me tell you, it was delicious. I proudly took to Facebook to share my delight in eating something I had grown myself.
 
Then I stopped for a minute. Why is it so spectacular that I grew my own food? Think about it—I certainly wouldn’t brag on Facebook about cleaning the toilet, washing the dishes, or sweeping the floors today. Those things are nothing special—after all, everyone does them—so it makes sense that it’s pretty rare to feel special about handling those mundane tasks.
 
Growing your own food used to be mundane. There was a time when everyone had a garden, and thus it was considered completely ordinary and expected to feast on your own green beans or fresh tomatoes.
 
As preppers, our goal is to prepare for coming troubles. And let’s be honest—one of the troubles we expect more than any other is that when disaster hits, there are going to be a lot of desperate people who will want in on our store of preps. In the mean time though, it’s not right for us to simply hold our provisions and skills over others’ heads and brag about what we can do. Instead, we need to seek to return those skills to the level of the mundane.  Encourage family members to participate in gardening. Recruit a friend to help make a day’s canning session run smoother. When we off-the-gridders finally perfect our preparations, we should find that preparing for trouble is about as novel as doing the laundry.