Posted on 02/09/2009 12:36:11 AM PST by nw_arizona_granny
Yahoo ran an interesting article this morning indicating a rise in the number of survivalist communities cropping up around the country. I have been wondering myself how much of the recent energy crisis is causing people to do things like stockpile food and water, grow their own vegetables, etc. Could it be that there are many people out there stockpiling and their increased buying has caused food prices to increase? It’s an interesting theory, but I believe increased food prices have more to do with rising fuel prices as cost-to-market costs have increased and grocers are simply passing those increases along to the consumer. A recent stroll through the camping section of Wal-Mart did give me pause - what kinds of things are prudent to have on hand in the event of a worldwide shortage of food and/or fuel? Survivalist in Training
I’ve been interested in survival stories since I was a kid, which is funny considering I grew up in a city. Maybe that’s why the idea of living off the land appealed to me. My grandfather and I frequently took camping trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway and around the Smoky Mountains. Looking back, some of the best times we had were when we stayed at campgrounds without electricity hookups, because it forced us to use what we had to get by. My grandfather was well-prepared with a camp stove and lanterns (which ran off propane), and when the sun went to bed we usually did along with it. We played cards for entertainment, and in the absence of televisions, games, etc. we shared many great conversations. Survivalist in the Neighborhood
Wow that’s great!! Thanks a lot.
http://3acrehomestead.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-record-setting-temperatures-for.html
Saturday, February 7, 2009
More Record Setting Temperatures for Florida
I have lived in Florida all my life and while we have had very cold weather I do not remember it getting as low as it has here in a very long time. Wednesdays low was 10 degrees with the low on Thursday even lower, 9 degrees. Friday morning was 12 degrees. I remember in the late 80’s having some very cold temperatures and in 1991 we had a snow flurry in downtown (now called Uptown) St. Augustine, Florida. Not sure how cold it got over in St. Augustine this year as I am now 2 1/2 hours inland.
I have learned that the ducks and chicks do not need the heat lamp. They have been just fine. The Coop protects them from any drafts. I have a 12” layer of hay on the floor of the coop. My hens and duck are still laying eggs for me. I thought they would slow down with the cold weather. Being that they probably do not have as much to forage for while they free roam during the day I have been supplementing them with a little more food than usual. I also opened up the garden and have been letting them clean it up for me. While they have loved cleaning up what is left in the garden I think they love the collards best.
The Advantages of the deep freezes we have been having is the summer mosquito’s should not be as bad. At least that is what they say. I will have to let you know on that one.
I am going to work in the garden today cleaning up and starting to get ready for the warmer weather. I will also start some seeds inside as I personally think we will have some very cold weather thru March. After roaming around Lowes one day I noticed that they have the grow lights that provide the UV rays not only in the bigger sizes but also lightbulb size that you can put in a lamp to set over your plants. I am going to purchase some for my plants inside. While I do have the greenhouse with the temperatures getting as low as they have everything I put inside froze. I think it will be cheaper and greener to start some plants inside than to provide heat outside in the greenhouse. We have kept the thermostat in the house set between 60 to 64 degrees. I tried 59 and it was a bit uncomfortable.
Note, If you go looking for the lightbulbs at Lowes they are in the aisle with light bulbs, bottom shelf next to the heat lamp bulbs.
Posted by Barbara at 5:11 AM
Labels: chicks, Ducks, Weather
My pleasure!
Well, I was feeling very smug - I make my own cigarettes - the cost was about $7.11 a carton. I was buying bulk tobacco for $16.49 a pound and the tubes are 5 cartons for 7.95.
Well, today I stopped in and picked up my makings for the next 6 or 7 weeks. Since I usually engage the clerk in conversation over various topics, today she told me that I better stock up before April 10th. She says that they have the new price that includes the 0bama tax - $24.95 a pound. A 50% increase! So I immediately thought of you and your growing the tobacco - I told her that well, at least I could buy the tubes and grow my own... Guess what - the price on the tubes will double!
So, it looks like I will have to go back to the pipes I was smoking years ago, and follow your lead - grow my own!
I figure it will be $12.09 per carton which is still cheaper than regular manufactured prices but paying them that much additional tax ticks me off... Like Boston Tea Party level.
What variety tobacco did you get?
The growing isn’t too hard - nor is the drying - I know several Amish who grow it for a cash crop. The hard part as I understand it is the curing. It is very strong and harsh if you just dry it, it has to have a humidity of about 70% and a pretty warm temp for it to cure right. The tobacco that used to be shipped from the colony to England was put in barrels and this caused (along with the high humidity of the sea air) the tobacco to ferment/cure/(I think there is another name for it too) So, by the time it was unloaded in England, it was nice and mellow.
There are several sites that have plans for a curing cabinet for tobacco if you are interested.
Insects: The New Face of Terrorism? (back)
February 12, 2009
The nature of modern terrorism shows that people are often caught off guard by attacks that use the most seemingly innocent devices.
In a column published in UK ’s The Times Online, guest contributor Jeffrey A. Lockwood issued a warning against overlooking ecoterrorists’ use of insects as weapons.
‘A great strategic lesson of 9/11 has been overlooked. Terrorists need only a little ingenuity, not sophisticated weapons, to cause enormous damage. Armed only with box-cutters, terrorists hijacked aircraft and brought down the World Trade Center ,’ Lockwood writes. ‘Insects are the box-cutters of biological warfare - cheap, simple and wickedly effective.’
‘Insects are one of the cheapest and most destructive weapons available to terrorists today, and one of the most widely ignored: they are easy to sneak across borders, reproduce quickly and can spread disease and destroy crops with devastating speed.’
Lockwood is an entomologist, a professor of philosophy and creative writing at the University of Wyoming , and author of the book ‘Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.’
Lockwood said the 9/11 attacks resulted in the loss of thousands of lives as and $27.2 billion. In comparison, the Asian longhorned beetle, which arrived in 1996, and the emerald ash borer, found in 2002, could take out more than $700 billion worth of forests, according to US Department of Agriculture estimates.
What’s more, insects carry diseases, which could transfer onto crops and eventually humans.
America saw the effects of insect-borne diseases on a smaller scale when West Nile virus found its way into the nation’s borders in 1999. The nation’s defenses were useless against the disease, which killed 654 people and sickened 7,000.
Lockwood said the US ’s losing battle against West Nile virus is another reason why the nation should be concerned about its African cousin, Rift Valley fever.
‘Originally discovered in 1931, this viral disease caused miscarriages in livestock while young animals suffered 10 to 70 per cent mortality rates. Mosquitoes spread the virus from Kenya . In 1997 a virulent strain appeared, able to infect the human nervous system. About 200,000 Egyptians fell ill, of whom 2,000 lost their sight and 598 died of encephalitis. Every region of the US has a mosquito species that is capable of carrying the disease.’
And Lockwood said it would be easy for an ecoterrorist to introduce the disease into the US with $100 worth of supplies, simple instructions and a plane ticket.
‘Stacking a nation’s defenses along its borders is a strategic error,’ wrote Lockwood. ‘The better model is that of public health. Rather than hoping to stop every sick traveler entering a country, a wise government would stockpile vaccines, train health professionals and educate the public.’
‘Western societies tend to think in terms of the short-term spectacle and heroic saviors of Hollywood action movies. Our disconnection from the natural world makes us believe that risk and benefit unfold at a blistering pace,’ Lockwood writes.
‘For a terrorist group with patience, a slow-motion disaster in ecological time would be a perfect tactic against an enemy that thinks in terms of days or months, but would suffer across the generations,’ he concluded.
Source: http://www.redorbit.com/modules/news/tools.php?tool=print&id=1632293
You are right about Gutenburg site - all public domain.
I use it quite regularly as I homeschool our 12 year old daughter!
After tonights vote we really are going to need this thread!
I've been trying to find some answers on greenhouses. We have such trouble with bugs up here I'm thinking I should build a greenhouse rather than plant in the ground. Could you tell me if you get a lot of bugs in the greenhouse?
http://olnee-web-news.blogspot.com/2009/02/consumer-initiative-warns-against-new.html
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Consumer Initiative warns against new Ebay rip off.
Who on expensive items on Ebay offers, but not wins, gets a little later fraudulent offers to purchase through the Ebay system. Criminals exploit this acquired accounts. The trick is ancient, but it works, despite new security measures still in place.
continues, site is about the web, may be a German site.
[How free speech slips away, other articles linked on sidebar]
Chicago police probing Obama slur claim
UPI Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:43 AM PST
CHICAGO, Feb. 13 (UPI) — Chicago police said they are investigating whether a city police officer made a racial slur about President Barack Obama in a phone call to an FBI agent.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/13/Chicago_police_probing_Obama_slur_claim/UPI-48551234546299/
might have reached 40 degrees today**
Sorry! It was almost 70 here and everybody is getting antsy about planting. Too early, and it’s going to get cold again, but you can’t make them listen! :)
It almost always rains here on the 4th, too. You can just about count on a big thunderboomer ruining or delaying the fireworks.
Your cat stories were funny! I’m more of a dog and horse person, but I have “talked” to a few cats. LOL
I think you can still get bugs in the greenhouse. Granny will have a much more comprehensive answer on this if she hasn’t jumped on this already.
Re the heat, you can store sealed two-liter bottles of water in the greenhouse to retain heat during the day, and they give off the heat at night. Don’t use gallon jugs because they break down too fast. Friends might be willing to save them for you. They have a recycle value here in CA (to keep the bums employed).
[I consider this a must read article, as it will soon be available here and it is our kids who will pick them up, or we might to throw in the trash can, so a kid did not take the pills.
Three or 4 years ago, all over America, people were picking up trash and bags, that exploded when opened to check it before putting in the trash can, I remember a Calif. Lady and several Janitors.
Also beware of black trash bags, in Louisiana a few years ago and also in Washington, there were black trash bags, styrofoam ice chests and loose fishing boats found with explosives in them, ready to explode.
One fisher man in Wash. hooked the stray boat and hauled it to the pier, only to find it full of explosives, it had been meant to ram a Military or large ship.
granny
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304770155&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Hamas threw ‘medicine grenades’ at IDF
Feb. 13, 2009
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST
Medicine bottles, transferred to the Gaza Strip as humanitarian aid by Israel, were used by Hamas as grenades against IDF troops during Operation Cast Lead. Pictures of the grenades were obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.
The medicine bottles were manufactured by the Jerusalem Pharmaceutical Company, which is based in el-Bireh, a town adjacent to Ramallah, and the global pharmaceutical company Shire.
The medicine bottles were filled with explosives, holes were drilled in the caps, and fuses were installed. Once Hamas fighters lit the fuses, they had several seconds to throw the grenades at soldiers. The IDF also found small explosive devices that used medical syringes to hold their fuses.
The medical grenades were discovered in northern Gaza by troops during last month’s three-week battle against Hamas. The grenades were taken to military explosives experts, and then disassembled and studied.
continued..........
Thanks Marie, that’s what I thought. I was careful too and had no problems.
Whereabouts are you, and what kind of tobacco? Laughing here. There was little or no tobacco grown here last year for the first time since—prob the 1700’s. Eastern NC.
If it grows, and you pick it, rub a ripe tomato on your hands. It will get the sap off. LOL
Taggerty residents rushed up to the house to get the dogs out, and what followed not only saved the dogs’ lives but three houses.
“When everyone went up there they found a shed next door that was on fire,” he said.
“And if people hadn’t gone up there and put that out the whole row of houses would have gone up.”<<<
God at work again.
Thank you for sharing this miracle with us.
One could almost say the dogs saved the 3 houses.
How awful and sad that these fires even happened.
Is there an I.D. on the arsonist as yet?
Do stay safe and be careful.
Some place in those mountains, there is a vein of pure gold.
A prospector, brought in samples to Needles, Calif.
Later the prospector got caught in a storm, but 2 of his burros were found tangled reins hooked on a tree and the back packs full of pure gold.
No one has ever found them.
I found one canyon that had been worked, rough and beautiful, but most of the work was the surface soil.
To the east of Yucca, is silver and southeast is copper.
You would enjoy a book by NeLL Murbarger [sp?] the name of the book is “Ghosts of the Adobe Walls”.....a lot of it is around Yucca and the photos of the Signal Canteen, is where I took clients to camp for a weekend.
They had sold their riding stable and moved to Kingman, and brought the dogs with them.
We were sitting around the campfire, talking and Joyce said
“You don’t suppose those dogs found a horse do you?”
LOL, they were working dogs and went out into the brush and rounded up all the ranchers horses, wild horses and burros and brought them to the camp.
The ore from the Alsea mine was shipped to Wales for processing, it is beautiful country and I never had a chance to fully explore it.
I have long laughed at the “campers” for trucks, for they are indeed the Gypsy wagons, the Chuck wagons and the Covered wagons that are so much a part of our history.
We sometimes have to be led to the different greens.
A friend introduced me to the real mixed greens, he gave me a gallon of all the greens he had, pre - chopped and ready to eat, chard, all kinds of oriental greens, radish tops, lettuce, beet tops, turnips, leaf cabbages any thing he could find to add, and it was fantastic eating.
I don’t care for radish or beet tops alone, but love them in a mix, and always throw in some onion leaves in my mix.
Some bean and pea leaves can also be eaten, or even steamed and served with butter.
There is one pea variety, as I recall that you grow to eat the plant, no, I don’t remember the name.
The compost pile is as important as the table food, as it makes what you do eat taste better.
Thank you.
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