Pandemics, Panics, Murphy's Law, and Living in a Tiny House

I hope you are all having a wonderful, healthy, and safe winter, spring, or whatever season it is for you at the moment! Recent events, or more accurately, some of the reactions I've seen from people to them, have prompted me to cover a little bit about what I do when things go wrong around here. I've been asked many variations of these questions over the years. "What if you get sick?" "What if you get hurt?" "What if you are snowed in?" "What if your vehicle breaks down?" "What if any of the other million things someone can think of goes wrong?" 

The short answer is that I plan on things going wrong, breaking down, and getting ill. Because this is what I've observed through both my life and broader history. Stuff breaks. Weather does unexpected things. Things wear out. I get ill. And usually all these things happen at the most inconvenient times too. 

One good example is shortly after I moved into my tiny house here, the heater broke. Now I'd just moved in recently. I only had one heater, a situation that is no more as I now have at least three options to heat my house! It also happened to be a Friday night. Also it happened to be twenty something below zero fahrenheit. Also, the closest heater repair guy was a 17 hour round trip drive away in the winter, and did I mention this was heading into a weekend? Also, I happened to pick up some kind of stomach bug and was flat on the couch throwing up. Too

Winter Squash

Some of the many squash I helped grow and harvest at a previous job in a different and much warmer location!

 Winter squash (the hard, sometimes oddly shaped and colored ones, not things like zucchini which are summer squash) are a great way to get lots of vitamins, minerals and fiber, among other thing, into your diet in the winter. Check out http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2751/2 or other sources if you want to see a list of all the vitamins and minerals they contain. They also store very well, so are a great winter food. I would love to grow and store my own as they are pretty easy to grow. If you have a warm enough climate. Most varieties take a 100 day plus frost free growing season and here we're lucky to have 50 days without snow. Usually with multiple frosts in that period. But wether you can grow your own or buy them, one of the best things about squash is how easy they are