This...

[ladyVet]

4. I remember reading somewhere that things went in about an 80 year cycle.

You have a really bad time (the Great Depression, say), after which the country tries hard to fix things and make it better. Then, a couple of generations go by and bam, it starts all over again. People forget how bad things were, and don't believe anything like that could happen again.

I haven't forgotten. My parents were children through the Depression, and I heard tales about how hard things were. My mother was lucky, in that her father worked and they had enough land to raise animals and large gardens. My father had it harder, his alcoholic father hardly worked, they didn't raise any food sources and they were often hungry.

I grew up poor, spent most of my adult life poor, and raised three kids without a lot of luxuries. We're used to it, and now we have land we can use to raise some food (and I love my chickens). My sister and I are thinking of going in on a pig next spring. Her boyfriend knows how to butcher. I've talked to her before about possibly getting a deer around here, but we'd have to get a license. And a gun, though I've got family that would probably lend us one.

So as long as we can keep the taxes paid, and the electric bill, we'll get by. It won't be fun, but we can do it. We're already thrifty, fix our own cars and houses, build stuff we need, and make do.

Oh, thinking about deer: A local store that sells guns and hunting gear has put up signs for a couple of years about giving away venison. I haven't looked into it, and I need to remind my sister (they are having it really hard), but that's something folks could look into in their area. It's that time of year.