Surviving the Hard Times

It's been a while since I've done any writing. I've been busily growing the veggies out front...picked the first cucumber this week! But mostly I've been collecting. I'm a packrat by nature but lately what I've been collecting is information. My library selections are very eclectic or maybe not to Jericho fans. Some of the topics are homesteading, gardening, solar power, wind power, self-sufficiency, underground houses, nutrition, hydroponics, cookbooks, especially those about camp cooking, vegetarian recipes, cultural cookbooks. I've been collecting little bits of information from all of these books and writing them in my notebooks. Writing helps me remember things and I'm not counting on having a working computer at all times in the future.

The future is uncertain. We're seeing rising gas prices (Ok, they dropped some this week but I'm not going to count on them staying down), rising food prices, a crisis in the mortgage and banking industry due to bad loans, the possibility that we've reached peak oil and the list goes on. So what do we do in uncertain times? We can worry. We can imagine. We can prepare. There are well respected segments of the religious community that teach members of their faith to be prepared. They recommend having a years supply of food stored. That has been taught for many years...before the oil embargo of the 70s, before the S&L debacle of the 80s, before our current uncertainty. I think it's a good idea. After all, I really don't expect food prices to drop anytime soon. So buying and properly storing some extra food can't hurt.

My summer gardening experiments in hydroponics have been interesting. I've determined that during the summer, there is no real advantage to growing my tomatoes and cucumbers in a hydroponics tub. The tomato might have slightly larger fruit that it's counterpart growing in soil. However, they are different varieties so it's a bit hard to determine the size difference. The New Zealand spinach in the dirt is certainly larger than that in the tub but again the spinach in the tub tends to get pinched off and eaten more since it's clean all the time with no grit. Cucumbers I can evaluate side by side. I have one in water and one in soil very near each other so they get almost the same sunlight. The one in soil is much larger and produced cucumbers faster.

I will admit to not being as precise as I should be with the hydroponics. I haven't been dumping my solution as often as recommended, etc. I'm trying to imagine using this setup in hard times. In hard times, I won't be able to afford the nutrients. Talk about sticker shock! I put a gallon of nutrients on the counter and was told it was $118. Excuse me? The sign said $24.95...turns out that was the price for a pint. The tags were in the wrong spots. Needless to say, I went looking for something less expensive. This calls for more reading to find a way to make a natural solution for growing plants. Something that I could make and feed the plants if commercial solutions weren't available. There's that self-sufficiency theme popping up again. Comfrey popped up in several places as a tea for feeding soil based plants. So it's on my research list.

There are several books that were quite informative. Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon was very good and set for some interesting points. This book provides good information on saving seed, growing food in dry conditions, organic fertilizer and irrigation. I hadn't really thought about it until I read this book but think about the lot size of older homes. Homes from the 40s and 50s and even through most of the 70s are on what are now considered HUGE lots. Those lots were the perfect size for a house and a garden spot. Victory gardens were grown during the war to provide food for families. Rationing was in effect. Men were away at war. Times were hard. People grew as much food as possible. Growing a garden then was not the 'hobby' that it's become now. It was something that almost anyone with land did. I'm beginning to itch for more land. Growing a few plants this summer makes me want to plant a big garden again. There are community gardens but the plots are tiny, if you can get one, and just the gas to drive there to water the plants would make it inefficient. Water is a very important factor. If you live in the city or a suburb, your water most likely comes from the faucet, from the water treatment plant. What if these services are unavailable in the future? It will be hard to get drinking water for yourself, let alone water for plants. From this book, I learned about spacing plants for growing in the dry season.

Another book surprised me. I expected a foodie book and instead found some wonderful tidbits of information inside. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. What would happen if you suddenly decided to eat only foods that were grown within 100 miles of your home? Easy? Maybe until you begin to think about things like salt, flour (wheat), apples, oranges. Imagine spending several weeks at a cabin with no running water, electricity, or nearby store. How would you feed yourself? If it's summer, you may be able to find food in the woods and fields nearby. You may be able to catch fish from a nearby stream. It occurred to me that there's lots of food around most of us. We walk on it. We throw frisbees and footballs across it. We may sniff it and admire it's color. The parks around our towns may hold food that we've never considered before. I shall soon be buying a native plants handbook for my area. I need to discover the food plants that may be growing nearby. Reading the detailed history (as opposed to the high school history book version) of expeditions such as Lewis and Clark may tell us what people in our region were eating at that time.

Our agriculture has changed over the years. Most of the small family farms are gone. The methods of the small farm have been replaced with growing on a mass scale with tractors and irrigation systems. We've come to think of certain regions of the US as areas where corn is grown, or wheat, soybeans, rice. We've been told that wheat only grows in a specific region. What I learned from Plenty is that this is not entirely true. Perhaps wheat grows best in Eastern Oregon or Montana but it can also grow in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. Start visiting farmer's markets. Get to know the farmers. Ask where the food is grown. This information may become important in the future. Knowing someone locally who has grown wheat may give you a chance at loaf of bread in the future. It can also lead you to some food that tastes very different than that in the local supermarket.

Maybe it's being the child of a mechanic that makes me want to know how things work. I've been reading more science books and watching some interesting things on The History Channel. People don't often tinker as they once did. We've become a throw away society. If it stops working, buy a new one. I think that those who are mechanically inclined and able to fix things, will be valued if our country falls into hard times.

That is enough rambling for tonight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write again before another month passes.

Last week the husband and I went to a disaster preparedness class. I found out that we weren't really as prepared as I thought. I have lots of things that are useful in a disaster. I just don't have them organized where you could grab them and go out the door or hunker down in a room to 'shelter in place'.

The class was interesting in more ways than you'd think. My husband and I were perhaps the youngest people attending...we're in our 40s. I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean that the younger crowd doesn't think anything will ever happen? Do they think that the government will take care of them in a disaster? or maybe it's because they've looked all this up on the Internet and have prepared disaster kits. I hope the latter is the case.

Another interesting thing that I learned was don't go to the fire station or hospital if there's a disaster. Well, let me qualify that. If you are having a medical emergency, then you belong at the hospital. If you can walk yourself to the hospital, then you don't belong there and they are likely going to tell you to go home or at the very least to the end of the line. They are going to be very busy taking care of people who are seriously injured and in danger of dying. There was a scene in Jericho where Dale and Skylar are at the hospital after the riot/fight at the mine. Skylar has sprained her ankle and Dale is trying to get some attention for her. When I first viewed that episode I thought she was being ignored because people didn't like how she handled her ownership of the mine. I thought it was about feelings and relationship. In reality, she would probably receive the same treatment even if the doctors and nursing staff didn't know her. A sprained ankle would be very minor when patients are being triaged. So in a disaster think about that scene and whether you really belong at the hospital. You may be wasting your time getting to a hospital. You may end up being more comfortable at home, in the park, or wherever safe shelter can be found. It's not going to be fun sitting around a hospital watching other people get treated in front of you. If you're not suffering from a life threatening ailment, then stay at home. Be prepared to treat your own scrapes and bruises.

I'll repeat that again because it's important to understand. Be prepared to take care of yourself. That really begins with the prepared part of the equation. If you or a member of your family depends on oxygen, do you have extra canisters? Do you want to stake your life or the life of a loved one on the fire department or some other organization being able to reach you with another oxygen canister? I wouldn't.

Medications: Are there medicines that you require to stay alive? Do you have a seven day supply on hand? Yes, seven days at least. Just think back to those news images of the Super dome in New Orleans or the recent earthquake in China. Consider that it may take at least a week before you are in an area with a functioning pharmacy. Don't count on the Red Cross or any other relief efforts to provide you with medication. Even if you do get to an area with a pharmacy, they aren't going to just hand you medications because you say so. Make things easier for everyone by having your bottle with the prescription information on it or a copy of the prescription written by your doctor.

Are we beginning to see the theme here? Being prepared helps the whole system work better.

So husband and I have begun to work on getting all those disaster items that we have in various areas of the house organized. I started by organizing the food stores. I actually started that before attending the preparedness class. With food prices, I don't want to buy food that I may already have on hand. I found that I have seven jars of marshmallow creme fluff...or did the total rise to nine? Anyway, more than enough fluff. The movement of food from the four foot deep pantry shelves to walk-around shelving in the garage netted about twenty boxes of Hamburger helper. Oh well if we get tired of it we can just cook the noodles and use the flavor packets for broth or something.

Turns out that the pantry design creates shelving that is too deep. Things get pushed to the back of the shelves and stays for years. The plan is to put plastic shelves in the garage. They are free standing so we're able to walk around them and shop from our own little store. Since they can be disassembled, they'll move along with us if we decide to go somewhere else. So what about all that pantry space in the house? I've decided to move the deep fryer, steamer, rice cooker, etc into those deep shelves in the pantry. After all it's a lot easier to see that big rice cooker behind the fryer than it is to find the can of beats behind the cans of pineapple and corn. Hopefully, we'll have no more lost food. We'll know how many cans of pasta sauce we have on hand and will buy more only when the supply reaches the restock level.

The other messy place where food gets lost is the bulk foods tub. It didn't start out that way. It started out in plastic bags from the grocery store that collected on the counter top. Then it got cleaned off for a party and parked in a tote (still in their plastic bags from the store). Pretty soon we didn't know whether we had dried cherries, corn meal or farina. So I've gone on a buying spree to acquire square or rectangle storage containers. Round containers seem to leave too much wasted space. The containers must stack. They must be labeled. Now I'm focusing my obessive organization skills on our food supply. Now we can quickly tell how much bottled water we have on hand.

I'm still reminded of the Jericho episode where Jake is talking to Hawkins. "You have a generator and a food supply..." Jake seems to think that makes Hawkins a terrorist. Why? Maybe he's just prepared for the nexted disaster. Sad to think that someone might be labeled a terrorist just for being prepared. Although I'm not as prepared as Hawkins, I don't have a generator. I don't have a concrete room in my basement. Mainly because a basement doesn't really working in my semi-wet geographic location next to the old swimming hole. However, if I ever move to Kansas, I will have a basement. I grew up on the edge of tornado alley. I've seen a few of them on the ground. I've heard them in the air when they didn't touch down and I've driven through the aftermath of tornadoes. For Kansas, I'll have a safe room in the basement or an underground house.

Which brings me to my dream house....good for tornadoes, nuclear attacks, and keeping burglars out. Call me crazy, a recluse, or maybe the woman of your dreams but I want my very own missile silo. I want to win the lottery and convert my missile silo into a luxury home. This website shows one man's dream plan for converting a missile silo into living space and more. It's called "World's End". Just imagine fourteen levels of living space. Swimming pool, theater, and all the storage you could ever want. No danger from tornadoes. Just build a nice earth sheltered garage above and you can laugh at the weather. I'm sure lots of neighbors would start stopping by whenever the weather started getting rough. Well, at least there'd be plenty of room for everyone.

I'm chuckling right now as I write. I'm sitting in a Starbuck's in an upper class neighborhood while I write this. Not exactly the type of place where you hear conversations about disaster preparedness, growing food in tubs or living in missile silos. Of course, I'm drawing more than a few glances in my jeans, hiking boots and waterproof jacket. Of course, if they were designer jeans and the latest in high tech outdoor gear, I'd be acceptable. But here I sit writing away. They'll just have to deal with this decaf drinking hick chick. Oh yes, did I mention I ordered and am drinking black decaf coffee? Not an Americano, not a latte, just plain old decaf coffee. In the Pacific Northwest, that's almost as bad as walking into a Northwest brew pub and ordering a Budweiser. Sacrilege! But hey I got free coffee because they had to brew it. Didn't expect that...that is the free coffee. They always have to brew decaf for me.

This is quite the rambling post but maybe you'll stick with me and learn something or begin to think about things. It doesn't matter if you don't learn from me. If you just start to think about things and go elsewhere to learn more, then I feel like I've accomplished something.

Since watching Jericho, I've found myself reading more. I read about solar power and hydroponics. In searching out these books at my library, I've remembered how much I love libraries. They are magical places for me. With a book and some time, there isn't anything I can't do. My husband has rediscovered the library and now has his own library card. He loves movies and used to buy lots of DVDs. Then there was the day that he bagged up a grocery bag of DVDs that he no longer wanted. Of course, several hundred dollars of DVDs will get you less than fifty when you sell them. So back to the library. You can check out DVDs at the library. Wow! Free DVD rental! In this economy that can be a wonderful thing. So I urge everyone to find their local library, get your library card and spend a few hours discovering what's available.

The well of words has finally run dry for the day.

It started one night as I was watching the SciFi channel. They ran a marathon of Jericho episodes. I was hooked. I should have been working. I should have been writing but instead I watched. I was fascinated, intrigued, and thinking.


If you've never seen Jericho, here's the scenario. Jericho, Kansas, population 5,000 is cut off and fending for itself after 23 nuclear weapons are detonated in cities around the country. They receive Homeland Security messages to sit tight, help is on the way. Then they are hit with an EMP pulse that knocks out most electrical circuits. Winter comes and food is getting scarce. If that scenario intrigues you, as well, then stop by CBS.com and catch up on all the episodes.


Twenty-three nukes exploding on US soil would be devestating to this country and mind-boggling to many of it's citizens. In this fictional account, Washington, DC was one of the targets. So it's safe to assume that a good portion of the government as we know it would be destroyed. Our government hasn't shown itself horribly efficient at handling emergencies lately but it is nice to know that there is still a government. Without a defined goverment, many people try to become the government usually for their own best interests.

The writers for Jericho have been quite imaginative or maybe it's just realistic. After the attacks of 9-11-2001, government officials commented that they'd never imagined someone flying an airplane into a building. Perhaps they need to watch a few more television shows and read a few more books...after all, Tom Clancy imagined a plane flying into the capital building in one of his books and he imagined it before 9-11 happened. So if writers can imagine these things, then so can the bad guys. There are hundreds of things that can be used to attack this country; just spend a little time reading about EMP bombs. There is little that a country can do to protect against it without ruining the things that make this the country that we love. So what do we do? Cower in fear? I suggest preparedness.

Other than being observant of things around me and performing self-defense tactics in the face of danger, there is little that an ordinary citizen does day to day that fights terrorists. It's sort of like fighting Mother Nature. Do we give up? No. We continue to build dams, control avalanches, predict the weather. But what do we do when Mother Nature hits us with a devastating blow from a hurricane? We pick up the pieces and try to be prepared for the next one. That's the big lesson that I learned from watching Jericho...preparedness. Everyone, everyday can do small things to be better prepared for a disaster; buy an extra bag of dried beans, a couple of extra cans of food, an extra pack of toilet paper. You don't have to buy 300 pounds of rice, 20 cases of bottled water, and a generator in one trip. Just a little extra here and there.

So there's the first lesson from Jericho. I'll be writing and letting the thoughts flow as they come along. That may mean two posts a day or one a week. The topics will be wandering and varied. Lots of things interest me these days. It's been a circular trip lately through wind power, moon shining (ok, ever wonder how to make a still?), solar power, hydroelectric generation, storing vegetables in the ground for winter, hydroponics, seed storage, and earth sheltered dwellings. I'm an expert on none of these but after watching Jericho, some knowledge on the topics might prove useful. Knowledge is power. Let's learn more.