Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/13/2009 8:23:19 PM PDT by blueyon
Or South Africa?
A Gemma Meyer observation...
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country...
http://www.ronpaulwarroom.com/?p=16922
You know the stories about “Grandma” having to eat dog food...standby...
They are going to drive the price of fresh produce through the roof.
Anyone with a lawn should start planning now for next year’s Victory Garden.
bttt
I tack toward the Goldberg model of fascism. I believe that model tells us that the line between fascism and Fabian socialism is itself a dream, there is no distinction, since it is possible to have fascism without a dictator (Wilson, Roosevelt).
It sure as hell does.
We are having a record setting cold spring and this, all by itself, could cause massive crop failures, driving the cost of food to record levels this coming winter. Fellow FReepers, as a public service, put food by for yourselves and your families. It will be worth more than the toilet paper they let us use as money.
Don’t look at their shiny puppets. Keep your eye on the basic needs.
The prices are already very high. We have one grocery store within about 45 miles that consistently has low produce prices. We buy enough for several months and keep them fresh in Green Bags or chop and freeze or dehydrate whatever we can’t keep long enough. The costs of electricity and labor has driven up the price of canned vegetables. Frozen vegetables often are on sale and you can buy bulk and rebag in the vacuum bags that you can microwave, but then, the problem is having alternative power to keep the freezers going in case of a power loss.
For fresh produce, the only alternative in winter in the North is container gardening or hydroponic gardening under lights. It is possible for lettuce and cherry tomatoes. To produce enough for 2 people to have 3-4 salads/week costs about $100- $200 one time per each set-up that lasts quite a while and about 65 watts/each of electricity for 16 hours/day, using compact florescent grow lights. I have CFLs that are still good after 2 full years. I haven’t yet tried the LED balanced color grow lights, but they appear to be cheaper both to buy and to run. Miniature or dwarf plant varieties do the best.
Our gardens supply fresh produce for only a few months. For the year between harvests, it is canned/frozen or dried vegetables.
A lawn is usually thin soil and a mat of grass roots. It takes about 3 years to get all the grass out and to amend enough to have the 8”-12” of loose tilled soil needed to grow something.
OTOH, a supply of canned or dried tomatoes will provide enough vitamin C for health through the period between harvests.
This is my 3rd year of learning to grow container vegetables inside during the winter. It is, like anything else, a learning curve. I have found a miniature tomato and a regular lettuce that are easy to grow, taste great and provide at least some fresh produce to supplement our other sources. After 3 years of successfully drying tomatoes and apples, I am going to be branching out this year to peppers, potatoes and other vegetables. In humid areas, you will likely need silicon gel pacs to put in with the dehydrated veggies. The plastic ones used in medication bottles can be recharged by a couple of hours in the oven on low or 170 degrees. My vet saves them for me. You can buy silica gel for drying flowers and make your own.
Here is a website that compares dehydrated veggies to fresh
http://waltonfeed.com/old/self/deh-veg.html
and here is one for miniature/dwarf varieties suitable for container growing
http://www.containerseeds.com/index.html
For some produce, you can buy them very cheap in bulk at harvest time and then preserve them yourself. Sweet corn, for example, costs about $40 for a years supply for two people. There are loads of instructions online for preservation techniques.
This is my hobby and it is a fair amount of extra time/work throughout the year. But it is rewarding in terms of self-sufficiency and I find that growing things reduces stress, for me, at least. I can’t yet say I have saved money, but if these energy plans actually happen, we will at least have access to produce year round.
We will be canning and freezing, to be sure.
I’m growing potatoes and tomatoes quite successfully (so far so good) on ground converted from lawn in April. It is a matter of tilling in plenty of mulch and fertilizer.
I looked at the cost of those LED grow lights...holy schnikies! I think I’ll stick with my plan to use fluorescents (for greens and maybe cherry tomatoes). Could you tell me quite specifically which CFLs you’re using?
You could create a solar dehydrator with some bits of used lumber, a piece of glass and some dowels from the hardware store. I’ve seen one in action and it’s a pretty sweet setup.
Oh, and I can hear my Thanksgiving turkey tweeting away in the nursery with her five Barred Rock sisters.
I'm brand new at this, but yes, I agree completely.
...and I find that growing things reduces stress...
Oh yes, immensely.
I know some pro-Obama farmers, and I just don’t get it. I need to ask them how they feel about this...
For the potted plants (tomatoes)I also used 2 24-watt fluorescent long tubes,called Sun Tubes by Ott Lite. I found them at Home Dept. They are on chain supports with hooks at the top of the shelving unit I used this winter, so I could easily raise them as the tomatoes grew. I used a space blanket tucked into the shelving unit frame to keep the plants warmer and reflect back more light and I added regular GE curly fluorescents (26 actual watts=100 watts)in cheap shop reflectors as soon as flowers appeared. It made a difference. I could see that the light from the regular fluorescents was warmer than the long tubes. Also, perhaps because of the reflectors(?) it seemed that there WAS some added heat from the curly bulbs. Logees (online) has heated pots that use very little electricity. They usually have them on sale for $40 in the summer. Tomatoes will grow in cooler temps if the roots are warm. I have two pots at the moment and they did well last year.
These are the LEDs I was looking at:
While there are some very spendy ones, there are smaller ones around $40. But I don't know enough yet about the color, except that the bluish ones are for foliage and the red ones for flowers/fruits. There are also $15-$30 long fluorescents used for aquariums that seem like they would fit into a regular fluorescent tube fixture.
People have told me they have used regular fluorescents for light supplementation for tropical house plants in the winter before the CFLs were available and it worked for that purpose. I tried the 75 watt incandescent grow lights, but they are expensive to use and get hot and they burn out much faster.
We have really humid conditions in the summer (SW WI). Would a solar dehydrator work, here? We get heavy dews, too. I know my electric one (elderly Ronco) is costing whatever it costs to keep a single coil heated, but I haven't figured it out. I did notice perhaps $5 on my fall electric bills that I am pretty sure were the dehydrator and perhaps the stove for boiling down tomato sauce, which I freeze in bags laid flat on a cookie sheet in the freezer....they freeze/defrost faster and store easier if frozen flat. I just don't have the extra storage room for jars. I hate water bath canning, too. I dried most of my tomatoes and it was really easy to make tomato paste and sauce by reconstituting them, using a food processor and then making sauce when I needed it. I just about ruined the processor trying to make tomato powder, but just using reconstituted dried tomatoes was fine.
We have a generator and are working on getting enough marine batteries and a solar panel array for charging them to keep freezers, hydro machines and a dehydrator working in case of power inaccessibility and gasoline shortages. If I had the necessary $7k and the correct site, I would put in one of those below-ground greenhouses with passive solar heating. But I don't have the money for that, at the moment, and our situation is a North facing valley farm, so we get very little direct sun in deep winter...perhaps 4-5 hours.
For now, we are supplied by a rural Electric Co-op and we are just hoping that electricity stays affordable and available. The Co-ops are really fighting the cap and tax while adding in all the wind, solar, methane they can. But we have gone up 10% in the past few months and have been warned about possible brownouts in the future, mainly because of the restrictions being put on coal.
I envy you the turkeys!! But I have kept chickens in the past and disliked it. I know people who keep chickens and we trade them for eggs and occasionally for butchered chickens. My husband does hunt, deer and grouse, so far...we have lots of wild turkeys, so perhaps we will get one of those sometime. People say they are good, but only the breast is really usable.
ping
BTTT
Employees at New Seasons do not even know about this bill. They are totally in the dark. Pelosi and Waxman have been bought by Monsanto.
The bill will outlaw all organic food and home gardens will be required to use GM seeds (genetically modified seeds) The law will be rammed through Congress in record time according to my sources. Do your own research on HR 2749.
Strange Martial Law via Food Control: HR 2749
Liberals in Portland will go nuts when they learn Nasty Pelosi and Nosey Waxman have taken campaign bribes from Monsanto to outlaw all organic food.
Last November, just two days after the election, Obama, while on his jumbo jet, told someone on the phone his real agenda would be implemented in about six months — and here we are.
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