I was reading on a friend's post about synthetic - vat grown protein, and one of the comments went to the effect hat they'd eat the stuff, because protein was so expensive and you only got 4 pieces of chicken in some kind of ready to eat stir-fry meal.
I am sure it'd be healthy, and probably tender... and probably not much on flavor. But it did bring home to me how different our lives are from the norm. We're not, by any western standard, well-off. There are people who might say church-mice look on us as good objects for charity :-). Yet protein or food of any sort is the last and least of my worries (yes, while we learning our way around, we got pretty skinny). It's more 'well,what needs cooking the most', because even in a deep freeze things have a finite life. But we have 3 chest freezers full of food of different kinds, mostly meat, fish or shellfish, but a lot of dried fruit and veg, and cooked fruit and veg. There isn't a ready-to-eat meal in there, because we don't have that sort of money... but there is plenty of protein. And it tastes very good.
From what we read on this blog it sounds as if you're managing quite well, though all the squid in the first year made me doubt if it was really going to work long-time.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that keeps worrying me is if there's some kind of safety-net for health issues, and for when eventual (hopefully) old age makes all the strenuous physical excercise needed to be as self-sufficient as you are much harder and maybe unfeasible. By the time you're 90 years old diving in icy-cold seas to get fish and abalone, or shooting wallabies with failing eyesight, might not be possible anymore.
And what happens to both you and your wife, if for some health-reason one of you gets laid up for a few months? As far as I read on the blog you are the primary food-provider, while her salary likely goes to those things that one really needs money for (the bulk-bought staples, car stuff, rent or home-payments, doctors & dentists & vets & medicines, etc.). Both parts are necessary to keep the household going.
The well-filled freezer, the kitchen garden and the bulk-bought staples gives you some weeks or months of food-reserves, but what happens after that? And what if Barb's money stops coming in, would you have to move again, or be unable to buy gas for the car, or pay for medicines, vet-bills, dentists and doctors, etc.?
I live in a country with a well-established safety-net for its citizens, and have recently been appalled by some of the things I've read on the Internet about how incredibly badly the whole medical insurance, pensions and social security 'collective insurance for bad times' is set up in the USA.
Does Australia/Tasmania have some kind of safety net in place for its residents? Or for its citizens, once you qualify for that? That's in January 2014, isn't it?
Sorry, I'm an unadventurous worry-wart, but I still worry about these kinds of things for people I connect with, even if it's this remote contact on the Internet.
Hanneke
Fortunately Australia has a pretty good safety net :-)
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