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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Time to Prepare

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Take the time to prepare for the coming financial woes.
by Gwen Caldwell

The financial stability of our country is in peril. Unemployment continues to rise. The housing market continues to fall. Banks are failing at an unprecedented rate. The stock markets are unstable, as is our dollar. Folks, the new regime in Washington is not going to fix this problem! No matter how many bailouts they want us to pay for, we are only applying a band-aid to a gaping wound in the financial jugular vein of this country! It will not stop the bleeding.

We have got to start facing the facts and preparing for the total collapse of our financial system as we know it. Start downsizing now! Get your pantries stocked with food, water, essential vitamins and medicines. Making these preparations now may not only save your life, but will ensure that your quality of life is not reduced in the face of economic disaster.

I encourage all of you to look around your homes at the things that you could liquidate right now to create storage space for food and that can create extra financial resources for stocking up on food. Quit eating out, avoid fast food and junk food. Eat popcorn, fruits and vegetables for snacks to keep your immune system built up and save money.

Think about those things that will disappear in a crisis and make sure you have them. Oil lamps and oils, batteries, diapers, camp stoves and fuel, guns and ammo, toilet paper are things that come to mind. Think about those things that might be good barter items in your area...get them.

I urge you to go online and purchase heritage garden seeds, so that you can grow your own food. Even if you live in a small apartment you can plant food in containers to help you supplement what is in your pantry. Buy sprouting seeds and a sprouter. Buy canning jars, so that you have a means of preserving your food.

There are many excellent videos at www.youtube.com on sustainability, survival skills, long term food storage, growing urban gardens and so forth. Take the time to educate yourselves on these skills.

I believe that our time to prepare is short and would encourage all of you to do what you can now. I have already noticed that the shelves at the stores where I live have less selection and fewer items. It is not inconceivable that one day the shelves will be empty.

We will not be getting a bail out, be assured. Our bail out is how we prepare now and how well we do it.

more: http://www.nolanchart.com/article5864.html

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Survival Gardening: Growing Food During A Second Great Depression

My point for you non-farmers out there, is that you are not going to feed yourself with a Mantis tiller and 1,000 square feet of sandy dirt that requires you to pump endless ground water irrigation just to keep your crops alive. If you committed enough to surviving that you purchase over 20 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammo (a good start) I am suggesting that you need to consider a similar commitment to growing food.

more - Daily Survival

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Food Security

Our high-tech civilization depends on a precarious balance. Our beautiful cities, the urban hives where millions of lives are stacked up and laid out, are like black holes sucking in tons of food every day. Each depends on the produce of acre on acre of industrial factory-farming to feed its teeming masses. To modern humans in developed nations, food comes not from the land but from the supermarket. We are affluent to the point where obesity has become epidemic - how ludicrous, that one of the great plagues of our lifestyle is that we have too much to eat! Well, friends, this is all going to change. Losing immediate access to food is one thing that is going to catch the majority of our population very much by surprise.

Start growing your own food, this spring if at all possible.

Another thing to keep firmly in mind is that having a ready supply of food is going to make you a target. I'm going to talk about self defense in another post. For now suffice it to say, start thinking about how you're going to protect your home and your garden.

Long term food security is going to be a bit harder to achieve. If I sound alarmist, it's because the state of the world has me alarmed; and I happen to live in a province devoted primarily to agriculture. I can only imagine what things could be like for people who live in less rural areas. If the optimists are right, and the collapse decides to give us some breathing room, now would be a very good time to start planting our survival plots, thinking about turning every green space we can find into community gardens, and convincing some of the masses who are being laid off at this very moment to take up urban farming full time. I'm convinced that with some work and technological advance, we can get to the point where cities can provide their own food sustainably without relying on the factory farm infrastructure; but I very much fear that a year, or even two, is just more time that people will spend not thinking very hard about where their next meal is coming from. The habit of depending on people hundreds of miles away to serve us our meals is too ingrained. It may well take a sharp shock to the stomach to remind us that when you can't feed yourself, nothing else matters.

more - After the Crash

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Growing Edible Sprouts

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/thumb/d/d9/AlfalfaSprouts1.jpg/300px-AlfalfaSprouts1.jpg All the info you need here, or here.

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As an example, Mr. Obama should have the staff gardener put in an organic garden this spring and report on it via his web site.

Growing Food on the White House Lawn


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My list of easy to grow, in a fairly small space, nutritious vegetables for a moderate climate, in no particular order.

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Spinach
Lettuce varieties
Onions
Tomatoes
Peppers, hot and sweet
Carrots
Turnip greens, Kale
Early peas

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My wish list for survival and healthy living includes hemp foods.

There is one thing that we all have in common: this tiny planet we share. Today the world is throwing around terms like "sustainability" and "green living" but what does that really mean? Hemp is one of the most diverse plants on the planet, and could literally supply most of humankinds needs for fuel, food, clothing, building products, and medicine. Despite its usefulness, hemp is illegal to grow in the United States.

This site is intended to be an avenue for the community to empower themselves with information. There is a truth that must be heard!

Why should farmers grow hemp?
Because hemp is the ultimate cash crop, producing more fiber, food and oil than any other plant on the planet.


According to the Notre Dame University publication, The Midlands Naturalist, from a 1975 article called, "Feral Hemp in Southern Illinois," about the wild hemp fields that annual efforts from law enforcement eradication teams cannot wipe out, an acre of hemp produces:

1.
8,000 pounds of hemp seed per acre.

  • When cold-pressed, the 8,000 pounds of hemp seed yield over 300 gallons of hemp seed oil and a byproduct of
    6,000 pounds of high protein hemp flour.


These seed oils are both a food and a biodiesel fuel. Currently, the most productive seed oil crops are soybeans, sunflower seeds and rape seed or canola. Each of these three seed oil crops produce between 100 to 120 gallons of oil per acre. Hemp seed produces three times more oil per acre than the next most productive seed oil crops, or over 300 gallons per acre, with a byproduct of 3 tons of food per acre. Hemp seed oil is also far more nutritious and beneficial for our health than any other seed oil crop.

In addition to the food and oil produced, there are several other byproducts and benefits to the cultivation of hemp.

2. Six to ten tons per acre of hemp bast fiber. Bast fiber makes canvas, rope, lace, linen, and ultra-thin specialty papers like cigarette and bible papers.

3. Twenty-five tons of hemp hurd fiber. Hemp hurd fiber makes all grades of paper, composite building materials, animal bedding and a material for the absorption of liquids and oils.

4. The deep tap root draws up sub-soil nutrients and then, when the leaves fall from the plant to the ground, they return these nutrients to the top soil for the next crop rotation.

5. The residual flowers, after the seeds are extracted, produce valuable medicines.

Our farmers need this valuable crop to be returned as an option for commercial agriculture.

While marijuana is prohibited, industrial hemp will be economically prohibitive due to the artificial regulatory burdens imposed by the prohibition of marijuana. When marijuana and cannabis are legally regulated, industrial hemp will return to its rightful place in our agricultural economy.

Hemp may be the plant that started humans down the road toward civilization with the invention of agriculture itself. All archaeologists agree that cannabis was among the first crops purposely cultivated by human beings at least over 6,000 years ago, and perhaps more than 12,000 years ago.

Restoring industrial hemp to its rightful place in agriculture today will return much control to our farmers, and away from the multinational corporations that dominate our political process and destroy our environment. These capital-intensive, non-sustainable, and environmentally destructive industries have usurped our economic resources and clear-cut huge tracts of the world's forests, given us massive oil spills, wars, toxic waste, massive worldwide pollution, global warming and the destruction of entire ecosystems.

Prohibiting the cultivation of this ancient plant, the most productive source of fiber, oil and protein on our planet, is evil. In its place we have industries that give us processes and products that have led to unprecedented ecological crisis and worldwide destruction of the biological heritage that we should bequeath to our children, grandchildren and future generations.

Restore hemp!

more - hemp.org

Original: http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2009/01/time-to-prepare.html

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