Today, I won a major battle. It seems like a good time to make a few notes of how and why I got here, and what it is I believe I won.

It began as a deep, sudden insight into how fragile the food supply is in this country. I knew something instinctively back then, it has taken me years to learn to put words around that knowledge. Most of us are well aware that we are at war - "for our minds" as AJ says, but it is really simpler than all that. This is a siege. Cut us off from food and water until we beg for mercy. It is perhaps the most basic war strategy, and highly effective.

Like so many others, I began "prepping." I live where winters can be brutal, so I have always put things up for winter. At first, I just put up more. Soon, I was not content to stop there. I wanted as close to total control of my food supply as I could achieve. If SHTF, I want to eat and eat well. Food storage only lengthens a siege, food production foils it.