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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > To me, the world has never been 
> a scary place.
> 

The world is only a scary place to the easily frightened.

But my real observation on Lynn's comment is this:  The world is not a scary 
place, true enough, but that goes double for the homestead.  The homestead is 
very much not a scary place.

Unlike Lynn, I have an arsenal of guns.  I'm a trifle older than Lynn and in 
all those years I've never had occasion to point a gun at a human being.  
Likelihood is I never will.  

What I HAVE had to do is put bread on the table.  Not just often but daily.  
So I set about to have my mind and concentration on things like that.  How to 
grind corn, how to grow barley, how to keep sourdough culture alive.  
Likewise 
when I examine the verities and realities of my life as a homesteader, I need 
to deal with fuel daily which means sharp saws and skill with an axe and a 
strong back.  I need to be involved in how water drains from my road,  how 
long 
the freezers will stay solid without electricity, how to get the lichens off 
the pear trees, when is the cornfield dry enough to plow.

All benign things.  None of the sinister or scary.  Those are the things that 
actually make up the day to day life on the farmstead.    There's no  
proclivity to dwell on what I'd do if the zombie-like displaced hordes came 
from the 
cities or how many rounds of 308 I have to stave off invaders.  The 
likelyhood 
of that happening is somewhere between nil and so close to nil that it makes 
no odds.  But it is certain that tomorrow I am going to want to have bread on 
the table and since it bids fair to be below 10 degrees here again tonight, 
my 
concentration is on which saw is the sharpest to get in a good, cheery 
section of that tree I felled two days ago for the big Franklin stove.

Nothing scary about that.  Nor is there likely ever to be.


James