As I pointed out in November, my business partner is putting about 5 acres under intense cultivation in marketable vegetables, so I really won't need to buy any vegetable seed for my family's own garden, which leaves me free to plant some unusual things. This year I will have a chance to start gardening the way I want for the future.
My survival garden is geared very much toward easily stored foods, grains such as buckwheat, amaranth, alfalfa, barley, hard red winter wheat, quinoa and millet, and beans that can be dried and put up in bags or old wine bottles, usually called "shell beans," such as pintos, kidneys, cowpeas (blackeyed peas), some limas, etc. I want to grow as many different types of these shell beans as possible, to provide both visual and taste variety.
This grain/bean combination has the advantages of providing large quantities of whole proteins, and they can also be made into porridges for breakfast and stews for dinners. They can be served cold and mixed with honey, or hot and served with corn pones. They can be ground for bread. They can also be sprouted to increase their vitamin content.
Leftovers can be eaten cold, or made into patties and fried into cakes.
Most of them are also highly bee-friendly, and I look forward to a bumper honey crop.
And they store well, and can be easily measured out and put in any other container for trading purposes. Try that with canned squash.
Beans and grains also have much better soil-building capacity than, say, tomatoes or broccoli.
They can provide winter food for chickens, goats and rabbits (my next food resource acquisitions, God please grant me the time!), and bait for deer.
Perhaps most importantly, these foods produce meals that my family and friends will eat and can digest. Most of us around my neck of the woods have been raised on "soup beans and cornbread" and won't mind at all having to eat it (for a while at least).
To have farm-fresh canned veggies all winter long would be nice, but canning is expensive both in resources (imagine cutting enough wood in the middle of the summer to heat pressure cookers for canning bushel after bushel of green beans) and time. Grains and beans just need separating from shells and threshing, and then drying.
I also intend to buy some other new things to grow, like sweet clover, and possibly a couple of pecan and persimmon trees. And some other marketables that may have an economic niche someday, like cotton and tobacco.
My purchases for now also include many herbs which will be new to my garden, chosen both for medicinal and cooking use, and picked largely by my skeptical, yet loving, wife.
Below is the first column of a spreadsheet I am using to compare costs from different seed sellers:
Crop (grains)
Buckwheat
Millet
Yellow sweet clover
Alfalfa
Russian sunflower
Flax
Barley
Sorghum
Crop (legumes)
shell beans:
Etna
Black Turtle
Hidatsu Shield Figure
Yin Yang
Kidney
Pinto
Crop (herbs)
Rosemary
Basil
St. John's Wort
Chamomile
Catnip
Lemon Balm
Yarrow
Yes, I know clove isn't a grain, but it seems to be best purchased from the same places that sell grains.
I think 2010 is going to be a very bad year economically for a lot of people, including me and my family. It is going to be more important than ever before for us all to find cheaper ways to do the simple things, including putting dinner on the table. If you don't have a garden yet, please give some serious thought to starting one.
The people you love most may thank you one day.
Pray for Israel,
Gallowglass
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Reply from M.D. Creekmore
Hope everyone is well.
I recently sent a message to Mr. Creekmore over at thesurvivalistblog.net about what his fallback "Iron Age occupation" would be. I think he misunderstood in part what I was getting at, and the reply and subsequent comments were rapidly hijacked into a discussion of the history of the the dissolution of governments in hard times and how on or off the mark JW,R is.
I didn't mean "Iron Age" as in "we got bombed back to the Iron Age" (more commonly seen as "bombed back to the Stone Age"), I meant was "what will you do for a living if our world should shift for reasons economic or otherwise into a situation where your current occupation could not provide you with a living?" The world envisioned by James Howard Kunstler in A World Made by Hand was more what I had in mind. I used the wording of JW,R in How to Survive TEOTWAWKI when I said "Iron Age." I should have been more specific.
Below is the text of my e-mail and Mr. Creekmore's reply:
Mr. Creekmore,
I am a regular reader of your Survival Blog and appreciate your insights, advice and hard work.
As you too are a recent reader of Mr. Rawle's How to survive teotwawki, I was wondering what your opinion is of his admonition that everyone should have an "iron age occupation" to fall back on?
For my part, I am a novice beekeeper and intend to sell/trade honey (and its attendant by-products: wax candles, mead, etc.). I am also learning about brewing beer, and I am trying to gain knowledge and experience in making traditional Cherokee-style moccasins. I share 5 acres of my land with a truck farmer and there will be an increased need for food in the upcoming years even if there is no quick-slide SHTF situation, and I will use food production to the economic advantage of me and mine as well.
Just out of curiosity, I was wondering what your fallback iron age occupation is?
Thanks, and I look forward to your response.
Gallowglass
Gallowglass, one area where James Rawle's and I disagree is what will happen after economic collapse. From what I've gathered reading his writings - he believes the government at all levels will simply go away or cease to exist, after such an economic event.
If we look at history we see that this isn't realistic. As I've said before governments do not relinquish power easily and economic collapse will not guarantee an end to government. I know this is a survivalist wet-dream but in reality it's not very realistic.
For example let's look at The Great Depression of the 1930s , Russian collapse of 1998 , Argentine economic crisis (1999–2002), Zimbabwe etc., as bad things were, each had one thing in common - government did not go away and often became more oppressive and controlling.
Besides more oppressive governmental control, massive unemployment and a decrease of GDP after economic collapse, we will likely see a redistribution of resources (they take what you have and distribute it among themselves or others) an increase of violent crime and home invasion, more drug abuse, prostitution and vice, starvation among the poor and a lower standard of living for all but the wealthy.
Another area where I tend to disagree with many survival planners is that after an economic collapse, we will suddenly revert to early 19th century technology and way of life. This idea has long been popular with Kurt Saxon and others but again it's not very realistic when we look at recent history for example.
Economic collapse is not a time machine that will send us back to the past. So don't expect to get rich pounding on a blacksmith anvil, sewing coats from raw hide, fur trapping, crafting wooden barrels or wagon-wheels etc. These skills are good to learn on a personal level just don't expect the world to beat a path to your door...
So what trades, skill and jobs do I think will be viable after economic collapse?
Anything to do with food production, private security, medicine, alternative power, day labor / odd jobs (a lot of competition for available work), transportation (charge a fee to take several of people from point A to point B), repair, prostitution and drug dealing and manufacturing (not recommended for obvious reasons) etc.
While I can't list every conceivable opportunity here - I don't know your situation or skill set, it is a simple matter to research and brainstorm ideas. You may need to combine two or more trades in order meet your needs. For instance; you could sell/trade honey, work part time as a private security guard or perform day labor as opportunity becomes available.
Remember the more self-reliant you are the less dependent you will be on outside sources for income to supply your needs. If you can produce your own food, liquor do your own repairs etc., there will be less need to barter for outside sources for these items. Self-reliance is key.
My fallback occupation(S) plan isn't much different from what I do now. Reloading, gunsmith services, odd jobs, repair work, selling / bartering extra garden produce and egg production.
Keep in mind that we've been talking about economic collapse here, life after say a worldwide plague, cosmic impact, supervolcano, nuclear exchange or similar event will be different and could in fact send us back to the stone-age or similar. Plan accordingly.
Do you have a Post-TEOTWAWKI trade? What is it?
That's what M.D. had to say. What will you do to provide for you and yours when you don't have your present job (and damned few other people do either)? Imagine that money for the most part isn't around any more, or that inflation has rendered it worthless. How are you going to get by?
I would love to hear what you think.
Pray for Israel,
Gallowglass
I recently sent a message to Mr. Creekmore over at thesurvivalistblog.net about what his fallback "Iron Age occupation" would be. I think he misunderstood in part what I was getting at, and the reply and subsequent comments were rapidly hijacked into a discussion of the history of the the dissolution of governments in hard times and how on or off the mark JW,R is.
I didn't mean "Iron Age" as in "we got bombed back to the Iron Age" (more commonly seen as "bombed back to the Stone Age"), I meant was "what will you do for a living if our world should shift for reasons economic or otherwise into a situation where your current occupation could not provide you with a living?" The world envisioned by James Howard Kunstler in A World Made by Hand was more what I had in mind. I used the wording of JW,R in How to Survive TEOTWAWKI when I said "Iron Age." I should have been more specific.
Below is the text of my e-mail and Mr. Creekmore's reply:
Mr. Creekmore,
I am a regular reader of your Survival Blog and appreciate your insights, advice and hard work.
As you too are a recent reader of Mr. Rawle's How to survive teotwawki, I was wondering what your opinion is of his admonition that everyone should have an "iron age occupation" to fall back on?
For my part, I am a novice beekeeper and intend to sell/trade honey (and its attendant by-products: wax candles, mead, etc.). I am also learning about brewing beer, and I am trying to gain knowledge and experience in making traditional Cherokee-style moccasins. I share 5 acres of my land with a truck farmer and there will be an increased need for food in the upcoming years even if there is no quick-slide SHTF situation, and I will use food production to the economic advantage of me and mine as well.
Just out of curiosity, I was wondering what your fallback iron age occupation is?
Thanks, and I look forward to your response.
Gallowglass
Gallowglass, one area where James Rawle's and I disagree is what will happen after economic collapse. From what I've gathered reading his writings - he believes the government at all levels will simply go away or cease to exist, after such an economic event.
If we look at history we see that this isn't realistic. As I've said before governments do not relinquish power easily and economic collapse will not guarantee an end to government. I know this is a survivalist wet-dream but in reality it's not very realistic.
For example let's look at The Great Depression of the 1930s , Russian collapse of 1998 , Argentine economic crisis (1999–2002), Zimbabwe etc., as bad things were, each had one thing in common - government did not go away and often became more oppressive and controlling.
Besides more oppressive governmental control, massive unemployment and a decrease of GDP after economic collapse, we will likely see a redistribution of resources (they take what you have and distribute it among themselves or others) an increase of violent crime and home invasion, more drug abuse, prostitution and vice, starvation among the poor and a lower standard of living for all but the wealthy.
Another area where I tend to disagree with many survival planners is that after an economic collapse, we will suddenly revert to early 19th century technology and way of life. This idea has long been popular with Kurt Saxon and others but again it's not very realistic when we look at recent history for example.
Economic collapse is not a time machine that will send us back to the past. So don't expect to get rich pounding on a blacksmith anvil, sewing coats from raw hide, fur trapping, crafting wooden barrels or wagon-wheels etc. These skills are good to learn on a personal level just don't expect the world to beat a path to your door...
So what trades, skill and jobs do I think will be viable after economic collapse?
Anything to do with food production, private security, medicine, alternative power, day labor / odd jobs (a lot of competition for available work), transportation (charge a fee to take several of people from point A to point B), repair, prostitution and drug dealing and manufacturing (not recommended for obvious reasons) etc.
While I can't list every conceivable opportunity here - I don't know your situation or skill set, it is a simple matter to research and brainstorm ideas. You may need to combine two or more trades in order meet your needs. For instance; you could sell/trade honey, work part time as a private security guard or perform day labor as opportunity becomes available.
Remember the more self-reliant you are the less dependent you will be on outside sources for income to supply your needs. If you can produce your own food, liquor do your own repairs etc., there will be less need to barter for outside sources for these items. Self-reliance is key.
My fallback occupation(S) plan isn't much different from what I do now. Reloading, gunsmith services, odd jobs, repair work, selling / bartering extra garden produce and egg production.
Keep in mind that we've been talking about economic collapse here, life after say a worldwide plague, cosmic impact, supervolcano, nuclear exchange or similar event will be different and could in fact send us back to the stone-age or similar. Plan accordingly.
Do you have a Post-TEOTWAWKI trade? What is it?
That's what M.D. had to say. What will you do to provide for you and yours when you don't have your present job (and damned few other people do either)? Imagine that money for the most part isn't around any more, or that inflation has rendered it worthless. How are you going to get by?
I would love to hear what you think.
Pray for Israel,
Gallowglass
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