No money, no food
If you had no money to feed your children, how would you go about getting food?
The question you read above is a scenario given by https://writingexercises.co.uk/scenario-generator.php. This site is good for prompts or characters to write about. If you have nothing to write about you can give it a try. It's an interesting question and I wonder how many of you readers deal with this.
If it comes to me as an adult I can do with just a bit of food and it can be found in nature too. Will it keep me alive? If I like to plant something I need seeds or plants to start with. I have seeds but it will take long before it will turn into food if I can harvest at all. Let's be honest if I don't have money for food I won't have money to pay for the electricity (so no water either). Hopefully, I still have a roof above my head. I rather die in my own cold home in bed the outside under a bridge or be hit by a car.
If I have no money to buy food for my children I need help. Where to get it? I hope my eldest can give me a few euros but if not?
I have no contact with other people, neighbours or friends so which options are left? At the time I can't feed my children I stopped eating myself. They might be able to visit the school a bit longer but at a certain point, that's no longer possible. To get to school they need to take the car to the bus stop. The car needs gasoline, the bus costs money, the money needed to buy food. If not for me (I can try to live from sunlight and air and save more energy by sleeping, can I hibernate, more) then at least for my children.
Would I eat our pets? No, I wouldn't and I would set them free if I can't afford to feed them. The wolves can hunt and most likely that is what I would give a try.
There are plenty of birds, rabbits, hares, even deer just no water to fish. Perhaps I can find eggs or we eat mice, rats or something else the cats find.
In the country, mother Nature provides food. Winter will be hard but jobless, poor and hungry means being creative and using your time to go for a hunt and search for and collect food and... if possible prepare it for the winter.
The leaves of the dandelion make a good salad, out of the flowers a jelly/jam can be made.
Poppies are good for jam, syrup and it's good for the throat and fights sleepless nights. Good to calm down and who knows to hibernate?
Most flowers can be eaten and so can rosebuds (you can make syrup or jam out of it and it contains vitamin C, spending a lot of time outside is good to keep warm and for the needed vitamin D). Chamomile grows outside too good for tea, infections and hopefully, I'm no longer allergic to it.
Since I hunt I can see if I, or my wolves, can catch one sheep out of the herd of hundreds of sheep walking around here and making my life miserable for years with all their stable flies and shit. So we can eat meat: sheep or lamb, hare, bird (pheasants, I let the owls and birds of prey live) and we have veggies. I know some have orchards with apples, grapes. If those places are abandoned I go for it. If not I can offer to help pick fruits. Many orchards let it rotten because no one is willing to work. Kind of a pity and a great waste.
What more can I do except for offering my services (I can cook, clean and much more)?
I can sell some stuff although I learned it takes time. For everything is a buyer but rarely if you need it so the trick is to start in time and be prepared. Being prepared is what I try to be but it's hard. If you know me you know I do have a pantry and it doesn't only contain food.
What happens today is predicted and if you know your history, read the news in the past three years you know what we are heading to. Crisis after crisis and no crisis will pass without a war. That war is started by the same who started all those other wars and time after time got away with it. It's sad but true that no one will come to your rescue if you need it most.
So to answer the question... I will search for food before I am out of money. I will try to find a way to make my children survive as long as they want to. I will stop eating myself, not eat my pets but search in the country, hunt and if needed I beg, sell as much as I can and if that isn't enough I go after the fruits and (living) food of others. I won't let my children die because of the greed of a few wealthy families, the war they provoked just to depopulate. 'Nood breekt wet' (Necessity breaks the law) a Dutch idiom says and what counts for the present dictatorship with all its restrictions counts for me too.
Ps, I wouldn't easily rob a store because I don't live in a city. No shops nearby, no fast food restaurants where one can eat out of a garbage can, no beggars sitting on the street.
Being aware of what happens to us in Europe is the first step. Counting with and being prepared for the worst is the next. By now we know while governments spend billions the people pay the price. Each day everything is more expensive. The best start of starting a pantry is with the most essential things one need to stay alive. This isn't toilet paper but food. Perhaps I should calculate how many cans of beans I should buy to have food for my children for at least one meal a day for a year or two?
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