Preparation

Sweet C has, for some time, been concerned with our food storage. He has wanted to inventory, throw out old things and replace with things we are eating now. More whole grains for one thing.
This past weekend was our regional conference. The Saturday night meeting was all about preparation. Not emergency preparation but simply being prepared for what ever may come in our lives. They spoke about the economy, and getting out of debt. They spoke about not turning our wants into needs. They spoke a lot about food storage, and challenged us to get a three month supply as soon as possible, even if it is by buying 3 extra cans of food per week. They also spoke about getting together a store of money. Start with making sure we have a one month supply of savings, then build it up to three, then six, until we all have a years financial needs set aside (Huge goal!!!)
Sunday meeting were more on the theme of spiritual preparation. We had two general authorities so it was really, really good, but many people were more impressed by the Saturday night meeting.
I had been cleaning out our storage room three or four bottles at a time. This week C began to help me. Yeah! He can carry much more than I can. He carried out a couple of hundred bottles. So I have been emptying the bottles into trenches in the largest garden bed. (Hard on the back.) I know it looks really silly, but it does feed the soil and gets all the old fruit out of the storage room so I can put in new and fresh. I'm a little torn. All those bottles represent a lot of work. In the old days when the kids were little we would put up 4 or 5 batches of everything, every year. My kids, little or big, were very good hard workers, and helped a ton. We never ate it all, so I had bottles that were very old and discolored. I won't be bottling so much in the way of fruit and vegetables now - with only two of us we will never eat as much as we used to bottle. I emptied a huge variety of stuff, but I think I feel the worst about the salsa and the black raspberry syrup. Those two were the most work, and taste the best. I doubt I will get much more bottled this year though. Still to much cleaning and sorting to do. Wish me luck.