Tactical Seed Scare Mongers

Okay, dammit, I've heard, seen, and smelt about enough dammit.
HYBRID GARDEN SEEDS AIN'T GONNA KILL YA!

Seed companies take pollen from stable variety A and introduce it to the flowers of stable variety B and know they are going to wind up with hybrid C.
Now if you take the hybrid C seeds home to grow and harvest the seeds, the next generation from those seeds you can end up with different varieties of plants having traits of A,B, or C.
Ya know what, even if you grow only heirloom varieties, unless you take some really careful segregation steps or only grow 1 variety of that plant, you are going to wind up with a mix of cross pollinated HYBRIDS come next season.

So now what?
Well in a long term grid down, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI situation, if you start out with a broad genetic spectrum of varieties, over the years of saving and replanting the seeds of the plants that have the traits you desire, you will eventually wind up with your own specially customized highly tuned varieties that suit both you and the specific micro environment of your AO.
Ya that's right totally Tacticool fruits and veggies!

Okay, now back to the original point I was going to attempt to make, you don't have to plop down a wheelbarrow of Ameros at one time and buy one of those "Seed Vaults". If you do have the cash, cool, you might be saving money in the long run and perhaps they are specially packaged for longer shelf life. But please don't delay in getting at least some seeds stored away, and this years crops planted.
If you don't have a lot of cash to spend in one place and it seems that most of us don't, buy a few packages here and there whenever you hit a grocery store or hardware store, you will find that most even have some heirloom varieties on the shelf.

Now some will bring up the argument about GMOs and Monsantos terminator gene, these may be problems down the road but for the time being these things are being applied to commercial strains that aren't desirable in the home garden anyways. A further stress reducer is that just about any seed variety that I've on regular store shelves have been around forever and a day, in fact some of the varieties are even on listed strains in the heirloom "Survival" seed variety packages.

This war we are engaged in against the shape shifting reptilians from the fourth dimension is a war of attrition, and you must make any headway you can, even if it is bit by a little and a few seeds at a time.

Polluted Poop

I picked up this link from JWR's www.survivalblog.com and also on Staying Alive Blog
It seems that a herbicide produced by DOW chemical is being used by hay farmers (Aminopyralid), not only is this crap being introduced into the food system via hay munchers eating it, the stuff stays virulent even after it's been pooped out and aged.

Hows that for a kick in the nards, you work your ass off in the garden and even try to do things right by using seemingly natural sourced fertilizers. Then BLAM, DOW chemical nukes your garden from 2 links back in the food chain.

I was tipped off a few years ago, probably in the Mother Earth News forums, that store bought cow manure likely comes from a factory farm feed lot where they load up the animals on antibiotics which then translates to fewer beneficial bacteria in your compost heap and in your garden.
This problem they are facing in the UK can come via pretty much any manure source such as those nice neighbors down the lane with horses, all because they bought some commercially farmed hay to feed their stock.

I'm sure you've read how H. Kissinger and other reptilian possessed elitists have referred to food as a weapon, but bullcrap as a weapon who'da thunk it?

I'll bet 100 pre '82 real honest to goodness Canadian nickels that DOW has some agricultural genetics lab with Aminopyralid ready garden seeds sitting on the shelf, ready to sell us for a hefty licensing fee.
I'll bet another 100 real nickels that some day I get brought up on unlicensed online gambling charges for the sentence above.

So not only is the SHTF in increasing amounts, now it is toxic waste poop being added to the mix.

To check the story out yourself go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/29/food.agriculture/print


Edited to add hyperlink to http://www.thetruthaboutdow.org so that it might stay higher in search results - Thanks for the link Marysa

Glad I'm more regular than my writing!

Got my green house finished not long after my last post, and the tomatoes have been doing great in there. The wife really likes playing in there, she can stay nice and warm and out of the wind or skeeters if it is calm.

Speaking of the wind, I've never ever lived anywhere that has such a regular wind as here. I'm certain I'll be able to supply the majority of our electrical needs via a few windmills, but of course the only true test will be actually doing it.

We've been watering the garden from water collected off the roof last time we had some real rain. something still sitting on my list is to redirect the downspouts coming from the asphalt roof into a 250gal water hauling tank we have. Hauling buckets last rain worked, but I still missed out on a lot via overflows.

Dump runs have been ok, but nothing too spectacular, a few UPSs with mediocre batteries, and a few other good SLA batteries, also 1 good small deep cycle and 1 good starting battery. A couple more computers and a 24" full suspension bicycle. The SLA batteries will be used for my electric bike project, right now I'm just Jerry rigging a 24v motor & gearbox from one of those mobility scooters you see old folks and the morbidly obese riding around on. This will be a test platform to try gear ranges, then I'll build the low slung electric recumbent bike I've wanted to build for a few years now.

If the economy is tanking as fast as us doomers and the stock market bears think, I better figure out what computers I'm going to keep and sell of the rest while there is still a market for them. Canadian economists are saying that we have about a year before the recession that is on going in the States reaches the same levels up here, this must be focused on Ontario & Quebec as usual, I doubt that anyone from a forestry driven town in BC would agree with that time line.


I'm finally going to attach some pictures of my A frame greenhouse, the frame is nice and solid, the plastic is a worry, but has already weathered some good wind storms favorably.
You might be able to tell from the pictures, that I ain't no Finish Carpenter, in fact I'm pretty sure I don't have any Scandinavian in me.

Anywho, keep preppin' and learnin' or the Reptillians are gonna gitcha.

Plants a poppin' through

We just got a good sprinkle of rain, there were no new plants popped up before the rain, now radishes, peas carrots and a few of the others have popped up.

I finally finished framing the greenhouse, I kinda botched the two supports for the end but it will do, I need to figure out how to properly measure and cut compound angles. Now I need to find or make some lath to screw down on top of the plastic, the wind here will rip the plastic off right quick.

A few more good dump finds, a older CRT iMac which I've been hoping for a while to find and setup for the wife to use, also a decent P4 machine and plenty of ram and hard drive space to go around.
Found a perfectly good 2 burner Coleman propane stove, just need to buy the tank connector. A sit down hand crank sharpening wheel, the frame is wobbly but my wire feed welder can fix that, and the bearings are blown out on one side but I also found a pair of sealed bearings that might do the trick. I need to go back to the dump pretty quick to check for some bathtubs to use as raised planters in the greenhouse, last time I went all of the tubs were pushed up into the high pile and I ain't riskin' life and limb for a free bathtub or such.

I started a rant about food supply in this thread, but it got a little long so it should appear above this one.

OMFG choking at sight of flour price

We took a ride into town today to do a little of this and that, stopped at the local grocer, Lord Thunderin' Jesus help us all, $14.00 for a 10kg bag of the store brand white flour (just about 25lbs fer you 'mericans).
Probably only 1 week ago it was I believe $8 to $10 depending on brand, I thought the prices were going to climb bit by a little over the summer, but nope. We were warned it was coming, now it's here. Stocking up on tangibles doesn't seem like such a bad idea now does it?
A grain mill certainly just climbed way the heck up in my machinery to get list.

Not much new marked off of the projects list, other than a decent desktop computer. I picked up a 2ghz Athlon machine from the dump that was simply borked by viri and spyware, nothing a little linux injection won't fix. My goodness I wanted one of these machines when they first come out, they are still overkill for my day to day computing.
A few other dump finds, mower that worked first pull with fresh oil & gasoline, more bikes blah blah blah.

Got a load of peat for the garden, now I'm set to plant, and just in time from what the locals are telling me.
No work done on the greenhouse yet, still sniffing around for some free lumber, but I'll probably have to break down and buy it.

Almost forgot, for those that are stocking up on Calcium Hypochlorite pool shock for water disinfection but have yet to find info on how to use it check out the USA EPA directions http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/faq/emerg.html

That's all for now.

Truck full, including kitchen sink

I made another scrounge run at a local dumps recycle section yesterday. Lets see, I came back with a roll of chicken wire and some fencing for around the garden, two mountain bikes with front suspension, a small wheel barrow, grass rake, pick axe head, a stainless steel double kitchen sink, a suitcase sized tin trunk, 5 unwritten CDRs, and a few other items I'm not remembering right now.

Bicycles are a great item that I figure I can collect now for free, and refurbish as the pile of organ donors builds up. As I see it, bicycles will soon not be tossed aside so freely as they are now. The simple economics of it right now is, why would anyone pay a bike mechanic $50 or more dollars to fix my bike when I can go to any store and buy a happy shiny funtime Lao Tse brand slave labor new one for $100. Of course it rarely works out that way, they plan on buying the $100 bike, but wind up taking home the $200 one that only looks a little beefier and has some sort of "me too" feature.
I might as well go a little further on the bike rant. How bloody crazy is it that we buy a new bike, break a little something on it, or let it rust, throw it in the dump where it gets crushed and then shipped halfway across the damn world to be melted down and turned into another new bike. I could go on but have now reached the point where I'm boring myself with this.

So on to the kitchen sink, I'm not sure how much money I saved myself in the near future by picking this up, but you can bet that a new stainless sink would have cost me a heck of a lot more than the $10 gas it cost me to go to the dump, and there isn't a damn thing wrong with this sink. I can only guess that plain old consumerism landed this sink in the dump, it probably clashed with their new cultured granite countertops that they got a home equity loan to install.
Arrrg, I guess general consumerism is weighing on me today, I should be looking on the bright side, consumerism got me this stuff for nearly free.

I finished boxing in the two garden beds, but have yet to fence the wall for the climbers to hang on to. I'm working tonight on the head scratchin' and costing for building a smallish greenhouse. It's gonna be a simple 'A' frame built primarily with 2x4 by 10'. I'll have to purchase the lumber as I'll need full length uniform pieces, plus I haven't looked much for a good scrounge site for lumber. The father-in-law had a nice pile of scrounged lumber but it's getting eaten up pretty quick.

I guess that is all for the moment.
Don't let the Reptilian Overlords get ya down!

I PPE, do you PPE?

Saturday was a very good day, I got to go shooting. First we did long shots 300 yards to a little over 500 yards, I didn't take very many shots, I really need to spend some time steadying my aim. The few shots I did take were with a bolt action Ruger 30-06 and some shots with a single shot break action .308. I forget who makes the .308 but it has a lightweight polymer recoil reducing stock, it's a very nimble feeling gun. I'm not sure at this time which round "should" have more kick, but the .308 was definitively mellower in this case.

We then moved on to the .22 plinkfest at around 40 yards, so I practiced working with that tiny bit of recoil to move to the next shot. After we knocked to heck out of those targets, we moved on to something I've never tried before - Skeet. I didn't do so hot shooting this, I was giving it too much lead, so I was firing ahead of the pigeon most of the time. Towards the end of my box and a half of shells I was really getting the hang of it, but had just enough shots that my shoulder was a little but not too sore. If I take up any sport this summer it will be skeet, screw that golf crap! Finally a sport for me that has practical application. Ducks and geese will definitely be on my families table and in the freezer this fall.

Most of my work on Sunday consisted of getting the first two beds ready for planting, mainly I was busting sod, as this is the first spring I've spent at this location and the bed was left to fallow last couple of years. I'm not sure if I'll get much amendments into it before planting, frost date is coming up quick. This bed isn't going to be all that big 14' by 3' and another along the shed wall about the same size. I'll pickup some chicken wire or some type of hardware cloth from the dump to cover the shed wall for the peas and beans to crawl up.

I'm not planning on growing a whole lot, as I expect to be working a lot of overtime this summer. I want to rack up as much cash over the next year so that I can git on to my own piece of property. Then I'll be gravitating from growing a supplemental garden to growing "crops", providing the majority of our food. This garden might take a little of the edge off of the rising food prices, but for time investment I figure I'm better off buying storables rather than producing them myself.

Today (Monday) I did some more sod busting and got the support stakes and the long side boards of 1 bed in. I'll snap a pic or two tomorrow when I finish it, I'm only going to post pictures of projects that either have reached maturity, or come to a turning point of some type.

A good practice I picked from the last place I worked, wearing PPE (personal protective equipment). I worked on a contracted project for Royal Dutch Shell and they are rabid about personnel wearing appropriate protective equipment. As such a huge corpse, workplace injuries are a loss that will show up on the balance sheet with a number big enough to make the Queen Bilderberger sit up and notice.(OK maybe perhaps one of it's direct reptilian minion underlings)
When I went out shooting, I remembered my hearing protection, but forgot my eye protection. I promptly and properly kicked my own ass for that, for any other thing I worked on since Saturday afternoon that has the slightest chance of landing a mote in my eye, you can be sure I had my protective glasses on. I didn't wait till sharp pointy things were flying to say "Oh crap, safety glasses, I'll grab them right after I finish this". Being able to see, hear and count to twenty (fingers and toes or mental capacity) will go a long way to assuring my family's survival.