An introduction of personal circumstances always seems necessary, so I’ll get that out of the way first. My husband and I, along with our three children, moved from a moderate sized Texas town of 200,000 to a small spread out community of about 1.500. That population of 1,500 lives in an area of about 40 square miles. Our location, of which Mr. Rawles would not approve, is hot and dry. We are learning new ways in all areas of our lives to make this living situation work. We and our 3 teen-aged children love our community and the new freedom that we have found here.

My husband is a man of many, many skills. A natural problem solver, he can look at most situations and fabricate some kind of solution. Whether it is plumbing, construction, economics or world politics, he sees the situation in mechanical terms. While he can find or fabricate solutions for most construction, plumbing and solar converter problems, he can’t fix the problems that we see in the political and economic world. So we do the next best thing. We prepare.