Dehydrating the Excess

As much as S.D. and I love canning, some things are just better off dehydrated, especially when there is simply NO freezer space left.  The great advantage to dehydrated foods is the compact and permanent nature of the product.  The disadvantage is needing water to rehydrate your product for usage and that they are all very hydrophilic in nature, they need to be in an airtight storage container, or several smaller airtight storage containers to keep the product good for a longer period of time.

Like canning, there is an original energy expenditure for creating the stored form of the product, but then will stay stored without power or energy until used.  Our latest adventures in dehydrating have involved Scotch Bonnet peppers (1/4 bushel will dehydrate and pulverize down to a 4oz dry storage jar), and even more recently, celery.  Today we are venturing into the world of dehydrated onions.

We have a store nearby, and it is a discount grocer who sells almost expired produce at a mighty discount.  Last week, my dear friend, YAM and I took a trip there and I purchased #50 of onions for $15.00.  I felt pretty good about this and feel as though I can be justified in experimenting again.  It is my hope to convert the mass of onions into a lilliputian stored product.

Hang tight as we figure this one out.

Another Reason to Eliminate Your Yard

In the Midwestern city we live in, the Japanese Beetle is starting to encroach on our lands and way of life.  I may or may not battle the JB, I may continue to change our way of life, so to make our land, home and garden as inhospitable as possible, and thus minimize their effect on what I hold to be really important.  I wish to make the nurseries for their young small and undesirable.

Now, the GOONS have come up with a bacteria that kills them, but it takes 1-5 years to take hold and thrive in your garden, and a side-result is that you will likely have to hand-pollinate your flowers.  The drift I get from that is that Paenibacillus (formerly Bacillus) popilliae is going to kill much more than the JB, it will likely kill most everything else, although I do need to perform more research on this to be certain, the research coming out of Ohio State is that it is not terribly effective anyway.

I think instead of putting milky spore on my lawn, I will simply continue to eliminate my lawn.  Lawns as we know them are urban deserts and wastelands that suck resources that really ought not be sucked.  As our neighbors have gifted us with our very own batch of rapidly spreading creeping charlie, the side lawn will fall this autumn to the raised garden bed plan.  Very likely the front yard will get terraced and garden-ized when there are funds to do so.

With no grass to have larvae in, I hypothesize that I can minimize the JB right here and right now.  The neighbors to the west are turning their lawn over to garden, and the neighbor to the east is all thistles.  It is the expansive neighbor to the south that is the most concern, and for that, I shall increase my garden totals of garlic, kale, nasturtium, and anything else I can find that they do not like.

As though we needed another reason to eliminate the urban wastelands of lawns, I encourage everyone to start taking away their habitat, creating a friendlier habitat for all else concerned.

Loss of Freedom

Loss of freedom is the major theme of all science fiction.  This is a literary thing explained to me years ago in lit/comp class.  Reflect on various science fiction movies, where the government has been abolished, and now "the company" or some all-powerful entity is now in charge of everything, got there in the most corrupt way, and now small pockets of resistance fight against it.  Now reflect on the state of things in America today and tell me who is getting their way...

-food is already addictive and nutrient-poor

-Big Ag is making it more and more difficult to NOT eat GMO foods

-Big Pharma is teaching MDs and CDEs it is okay to have an unhealthy physique, as one can medicate the unhealthy situation as needed

-Big Pharma and Big Ag are in bed together

-the media creates a terrifying situation for parents, making them not wish to have their kids go outside and play (thus getting inadequate physical activity and staying unhealthy)

-GOONS are threatening to remove obese children from the home to "educate" them in healthy lifestyle

Let's see what gateways are being opened by allowing the GOONS to take children out of the home, shall we?  That's just the beginning excuse, will kids be taken out of all homes eventually?  What will the kids be "taught"?  Will kids be returned to the home?  What happens if they are not?

I'm connecting the dots, and I refuse to see what the pattern is forming into, as it is too unspeakably horrifying.  I find myself in a small pocket of resistance already.  Where are you?

Putting Together Some Little Pieces

Our mother in law loves jigsaw puzzles, how tiny pieces come together to create a bigger picture.  In a general sense, I'm not a huge fan of jigsaw puzzles, but will concede that the state of affairs in the United States is looking more and more like a jigsaw puzzle that is slowly coming together to show us (who care to look) the larger picture of what is happening.  

Recently, I read an article about a proposal to take obese children out of the home and put them into foster homes, as their own parents are not fit to keep them healthy.  A proposal to take children out of the home because of a weight issue.  Wait.

We're going to back up the bus right now and review some things that are going on in America right now because of BigAg and the GOONS: food is chemically designed now to make it addictive and basically nutritionally void.  Our packaged food is based off of a GMO science that is not tested and has dubious safety implications.  We are being placated by false bread and media circuses, being turned into obese, sedentary, easily controlled zombies.  With all this going on, unless you keep your child "healthy" (read: are complacent to the state) the GOONS will take your child away.

All this while taking away self-sufficiency in droves.  

There's never a complete loss of hope, though, but the GOONS don't want you to realize it: turn off the TV, limit your screen time in all forms, get you and your family off their duffs, plant a garden, raise your own food, learn to preserve it and reject the system.  Reject the system that has created the addictive, poisonous atmosphere that would make you and yours unhealthy and obese, dependent on drugs and toxic foods, along with your family.  Reject the system that does these horrible things to TAKE YOUR FREEDOM AWAY.  Reject they system that would take your children away.  Be strong and self-sufficient on your own.

Go on, turn the computer off, take the kids, go for a walk, make a plan.

Stop reading.
Go.

Check back with us later.

Easy Little Garden

If you need garden space, you need it now, and you have remarkably limited abilities to create a garden, here's THE most basic way of making a garden.  Very few steps.  Just ready to go....

1. get a cardboard box, a plain cardboard box.  I used the bottom half of a box some shelves came in for the laundry tomb, it's about 4' x 2' x 6" tall.

2. put the box on the lawn somewhere, pick a place you kinda want to have another garden next year.

3. open several bags of garden soil from the store, mix with bags of compost from the store if you'd like.

4. dump the soil into the box.

5. add seeds or baby plants.  water, or not if it's going to rain that night.

There you go, you've just made a garden.  The cardboard should suppress most of the grass and weeds, allowing them to die off over the summer as the box itself rots away, by next summer, that patch of dirt will be your garden, all ready to go!  As I'm not keen on tilling (and, BTW, second year after no-tilling last year, barely any weeds at all!), don't even bother next year, just move aside the big leftover chunks from last year, and put your baby plants in the dirt as is.  Mulching helps quite a lot, but isn't a total requirement.

This year, we indulged in a $30.00 purchase of a used (and loud) chipper shredder and used it to grind up all our yard waste (and our neighbors, and their neighbors) this spring to make into mulch. Cheap and easy to do, but it does take 2 people to make it really successful.  We have a plethora of earthworms and the soil is easy to manipulate so far.

With no-tilling gardens, I will fill in a couple gaps that were left out in my experience.  As long as you have a heavy coat of mulch, using seeds will be kinds difficult: many like actual dirt to germinate in, so move the mulch aside and make sure it stays moved to one side to get your seeds in.  Baby plants, just move the mulch aside, scratch the soil beneath just a bit and get the baby in, replacing the soil and mulch around it works wonders.  Nobody told us that, we had to figure it out on our own.  With no tilling, too, two days work is broken down into about 3 hours of work, because you just put your plants in; there is no extra work to aerate the soil (it stays pretty fluffy if you can minimize walking on it).  

So, lazy gardeners, listen up! stop tillling, you don't need herbicides if you mulch enough, don't be walking all over the place, and give seeds actual dirt to do their thing in.  You can get a lot done by pretty much doing nothing at all, hear?

Gaining Credibility and Staying Hydrated

The CDC has determined that the ZA may actually occur.  I don’t liken the CDC to the other GOONS, as the CDC actually seems to have its act together and actually helps people, so, in my book, the CDC is exempt from GOONS status.  I like their preparedness statements, but I think that truly, it doesn’t go far enough for preparation.

S.D. and I were discussing what we have, what we need, what is in the pipeline and what our plan will evolve into.  One of the things most immediately is the need for potable water.  As water is a fairly good heat sink, we will likely have water stored in the root cellar, so to ameliorate temperature fluctuations through the seasons.  As the ZA may happen before we get the cistern in, so we will have to take smaller steps prior to it happening.

Your water needs, per person, for consumption only varies between a half and a whole gallon.  As medical services will become scarce, avoiding dehydration at all costs will be paramount.  While the CDC assigns 1 gallon per person per day, that is for all cooking and drinking needs, I will encourage all to have 1 gallon per person per day for drinking only, and extra for cooking and extranea.

As bleach does go bad after six months or so, some people have turned to swimming pool bleach in powder form, which is used in minute amounts to purify long-term stored water.  The formula is basically: one heaping teaspoon of Ca(ClO)2of 78% (granular calcium hypochlorite) for 2 gallons of water.  This is your disinfecting solution (you’ve just made household bleach of sorts).  To then disinfect your drinking water, use one part of the solution you just made to 100 parts water to be treated.  Let the solution rest for at least a half hour before drinking it to let anything solid precipitate out.

The dry granular form of Ca(ClO)2 as in dry form in a sealed container, it will stay good rather indefinitely.  Once mixed into solution, it will degrade quickly (I estimate faster than household bleach), perhaps within a matter of weeks as opposed to months.  Only treat as much water as you would use for a couple weeks at a time.

While the gold standard of water purification is to heat it to 145 degrees for 6-10 minutes, after the ZA, fuel will very likely be in short supply and using it to purify water (instead of cooking pathogens out of what might be questionable food if you have to forage) could be addressed as wasteful.

Keep your health, stay hydrated!  Fight the zombie horde by outsurviving them!

is it going to trip you when the zombies come?

we are in the season of little things and emergence of the new.  If your tank is empty, refill it in the garden, where things are coming up, getting leaves, and becoming what they were meant to become all along.  It's also time to assess what to keep and what to dismiss.

 

Assess what you have, and look at what you need, does what you have further your gain, does it help you get by day to day, or is it just taking up space?  Is it somethong you are hanging on to because someone will make you feel guilty if you send it on its way?  Most importantly, will it help you survive the ZA?  or will it trip you?

 

Now, I come from a long and strong line of vetran crap-hoarders, but I fight against that tendency every day that I can.  There are hoarder months and bulldozing months for me as I fight genetics and learned behavior.  In recent times, I am applying a "use it or toss it" mentality much more than in the past.  It has made my garbage service less than thrilled with our household, but that's what they get paid for.

 

We endeavor to use everything at least twice before discarding it (although SOME things are very strictly one use items and will NOT be used twice.... no matter what), and to stem the tide of frivolous spending when those resources could be better used elsewhere.  Our grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and we can learn a great deal from them as we prepare for the ZA.  Finding the right balance of well-supplied and just having a lot of crap laying about is something each household needs to do for itself.  If I could not sew or fidget with crafty things, my primary form of entertainment would be gone.  For others, reading material is of utmost importance.

 

Learning to live without the television is coming easier and easier to Americans with the HD revolution where the GOONS sold out to the major entertainment corporations.  Non-electric means of making one's mind and hands busy will become more and more important. Discover what you have and what you need to dismiss, lighten the load so you can have a stronger bulwark in other places.  Start looking at what things are now and what they will grow to be: a problem or a solution?

 

Surviving isn't just having a pulse, it's having a life to go with it.