I am the ant: Part II

This is my Dad, doing one of his favourite things.

Having fun.

Here he is, with our first sheep, known as Frisky. Frisky was a good sheep, who came running across the fields with thundering hoofs whenever we called him. He was gigantic, being bottle-fed for some weeks past the point we should have cut him off. Dad, and we, loved this lamb.

Dad was on a Scout camp when he rescued this orphaned goat. We called her Whiskey, for some strange reason. Dad loved Whiskey too and built her a little house where she lived in our back garden.

Dad worked at Church College of New Zealand as the plumber. He started work at 7:30am but usually went in an hour or two early to work on his private projects. He worked hard and whenever he sat for very long he fell asleep. Sometimes it was at the dinner table, after a nice meal cooked by my Mum, and sometimes it was sitting against a wall on a sunny day.

Dad loved to go camping. Mum always said this photo made them look like diddicoys, or gypsies.

I come by my stockpiling instincts honourably. When we moved to New Zealand in 1967, my Dad, for the first time since we joined the Mormon church five years earlier, was surrounded by members of the church.  Most of us are fiercely independent and believe in being self-sufficient. He embraced the lifestyle with enthusiasm.
Nay.
He owned it.
He became that guy, the one who built wheat grinders and researched the best way to store wheat. He was the guy who found the suppliers for bulk food and got frustrated when people weren't as enthused as he was over buying 40lb buckets of honey. Dad was a force of nature when it came to getting things done and his old friends still remember all of the work he did to help them get their food storage items.

After our new house was built, Dad enclosed the area under the stairs in the basement and disguised the door that led into it. He lined the walls with shelves and bought himself a shotgun. His philosophy was that he had done everything he could to persuade his neighbours of the importance of being prepared and now they were on their own.

My sister read Part I and was teasing me about revealing my stockpiles to the world. I reassured her that I would tell the rest of the story.

My Dad was good to the bone, but he did not suffer fools lightly.

I am my father's daughter.

Right down to the shotgun.