Live Small: It’s time to keep friends close, family closer

On the one hand, I believe we will become more self-reliant by degrees as cheap fuel quality and quantity change.

Though it may be harder to live this way, we can gradually learn or re-learn how to garden, keep a few rabbits, chickens, goats or sheep to supplement groceries and borrow items from or barter with people in our community.

mojo recently left this comment when I asked the question, “Will chickens in the back yard soon out number dogs?”

I'm not sure how much zoning restrictions allow in the way of keeping livestock on the property, but in a perfect world I'd be living at the beach and pulling my dinner from the surf every day, and using the by-products to keep a fertile patch of garden going for vegetable production. That's how the natives did it before we got here and it worked for them. Yeah, I could live that way.

On the other, as the present economy falters we will face a wide variety of unexpected hardships during the new age of austerity.


["Without our reindeer we'll be doing more ourselves.":photo GAH]

For example, “a growing number of Americans are giving up their dogs and cats to animal shelters as the emotional bonds between people and pets get tested by economic ones.” The Associated Press, Dec. 22

A hard rain is falling. And there will be many tears.

Keep your friends close and your families closer.

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Do you see declining cheap oil and growing self-reliance in a positive or negative light? Both?