I’m having one of those intermittent impulses to start stockpiling shelf-stable, dried and canned foods again. Not sure where it comes from, only that some of the generalized dark-gray cloud of gloom and doom that is lurking in the atmosphere may have just finished drizzling a mist of vague paranoia down onto Blondie and me. Or maybe it’s the ancestral memories of my grandmothers, no mean slouches in the food-prep and stash-away in case of a spectacularly bad winter or some unspecified disaster. They both of them lived through the Depression; when Grannie Dodie passed on, there was a couple of years worth of canned goods stashed in the garage, some of them so old the tops of the cans had gone dull-colored under a decade of dust. Grannie Jessie was raised on a Pennsylvania farm where they butchered a pig every fall, filled the root-cellar with potatoes, beets and carrots, and canned the results of their summer garden, in shelf after shelf groaning under the weight of mason jars, filled to the top with jewel-toned tomatoes, green beans, piccalilli and Concord grape jelly.

Save for the two years and some spent living in Utah, my own packing-the-larder-with-massive-stocks of food was pretty much modeled after Mom’s… which is to say, we didn’t, much. We generally had just enough on the shelves and in the fridge to last until the next go-round of grocery-shopping. Why not? The grocery store was always there, Dad’s paychecks were at least marginally generous, and regular; and Mom really didn’t care for canned foods, preferring the fresh and/or made from scratch variety. And we lived in California, for pete’s sake, the year-round fair weather and agricultural champion of the west. Generally the emergency food stash in Mom’s larder consisted of a couple of cans of tomato sauce, some canned Vienna sausages and an extra-large can of tuna. Maybe some dried pasta, and something exotic in a tiny can with foreign lettering on it, which someone gave to Mom and Dad as a Christmas present a couple of years previous which Mom was saving for a special occasion and which no one ever quite had the nerve to open, because if it was really vile, no one would want to eat it and then it would all go to waste. And if it turned out to be really, really good, then we wouldn’t be able to find or afford another can, so best just leave it safely on the back of the shelf.

Besides, at the Redwood House, we did have a vegetable garden, and a range of olive trees, and Hilltop House was planted all around with orange and lemon trees, so in the case of a grand economic meltdown, as a last resort, we would have had olives and oranges and lemons, by the bag… anyway, the long and short of it is, that I never felt the least interest or impulse to stash away mass quantities of relatively imperishable food until that period when I was assigned to Hill AFB, Utah—where, for a variety of reasons, this was a cultural and religious imperative, to the point where most old-style suburban houses came ready-stocked with a couple of fruit-bearing trees and a vegetable plot, along with the seasonal water-system to irrigate same. My own rental house in South Ogden came equipped with a root-cellar, lots of larder-space, a bearing cherry tree and a hedge of insanely prolific apricot trees… some of the best of them were intensely succulent; it was as if someone, thirty years before had walked the fence-line planting apricot trees, and so ever since the lawn along that side of the yard was mined with moldering fruit and mounds of apricot stones. There were so damned many apricots, and I did my best, I really did, but I haven’t been able to bear the smell of a dried apricot ever since. All the ordinary grocery stores stocked lavish quantities and varieties of canning supplies, and restaurant-sized bags of flour and sugar, and other staples… so it was as if there was something in the water. I eventually bought a deep-freezer, and an electric dehydrator, for reasons that I cannot very well articulate. It just seemed like a very good idea, at the time.

And so, now it seems like a good idea again. Maybe the various experts in disaster preparedness, dinning advice into my ears over the last couple of years – after Katrina, after floods, fires, riots and diverse other disasters – have finally achieved a degree of success with me … or there is something about these times, and reading about all those people who- through forethought, were comfortably equipped to ride out disasters. I just have the feeling that I ought to start doing this. Have enough food on hand at all times, stocks of things that I just cannot live without, like tea and jam for bread, and the means to cook food, if there should there be a power interruption that lasts for weeks. I ought not to be depending on a local grocery store, if we run short in a day or so. I ought to have sufficient a stash – for days, weeks and even months. I ought to have a garden again, for more than just ornament, and something in the larder- more than just the usual couple of cans of tomatoes, the half-used packet of Japanese-panko dried bread-crumbs, and the various bug-proof glass jars with about half a cup of dried beans in the bottom, lentils ditto.

So, this Friday, Blondie and I were checking out Sam’s Club and making a list. I can’t, with all my other financial obligations, say that I spent a bomb, on everything that we looked at… but I invested in a 8-pack case of canned tomatoes, a quart each of olive oil and honey, a brick of cheddar cheese – which, alas, tastes nothing as good as the Department of Ag surplus cheddar, which used to be sold at the military commissaries at like, about 50 cents a pound and made the most totally awesome mac-and-cheese imaginable. We made notes about the costs of 25 and 50-pound bags of rice, and beans… and the costs of another propane bottle… I just can’t get away from the feeling that I ought to be doing something more. I bought a bunch of 2-inch pots of tomatoes and pepper plants a couple of weeks ago; they were on sale, at a very good price at the Humongous Big-Ass Grocery chain, a week ago. We planted them, last weekend, the tomatoes in pots, and the peppers in the ground… but I can’t escape the feeling that I ought to be doing more, that I can squeeze some more edible plants into the sun-warmed spots in the garden…

I have read that letting potatoes sprout, and then cutting them up, with a sprout in each piece, that they grow very well… and that fava beans will grow in a heap of gravel.

Spring is here, and with the usual promise of a new season. Its just that those promises are all of vague and threatening things. Thus to work, this weekend. In the garden, and on other projects.