White House Warns of Global Food Shortages After Ukraine Invasion

[Ninurta]

Your dad, was like my two grandfathers. My maternal grandfather raised 9 girls by farming, fishing, cutting wood, and making moonshine. I heard stories of how good his moonshine was. Wish I had his recipe. My paternal grandfather raised 10 children, 7 boys, 3 girls, by farming and working in the cotton mills when they were not shut down during the depression. 5 of his sons fought in WW2, the youngest 2, my dad was the baby, also served just after the war ended in Germany and France. 

I use to hate it when we were made to get out and hoe the corn and shell the beans then have to can what the garden provided but now I am thankful. We built a tunnel house to put my citrus trees in last fall and other plants through the winter. It worked very well and we will build another soon. We have a garden plowed up and ready to plant. We have always kept extra canned food and gardens but have really buckled down the last two years. Thank goodness most of my neighbors are family and friends who also garden, raise beef, mechanic, electrician, welder, former military. My only worry is Atlanta keeps expanding closer and closer. I envy you living in the beautiful mountain area. 

Dear Old Dad served in Germany right after WWII, in the 15th Constabulary Squadron, guarding the new borders against the Godless Commies. His separation from the army and the ending of that unit coincided.

When he was a kid, he traded a shotgun for a blacksmith setup - anvil, hammer, mud-box and bellows - so that he could keep his horses shod himself. Later in life, we built the forge he taught me in. We made the mud-box out of an old truck rim, by welding sockets for iron pipe legs on it, and making a "T" out of pipe to weld to the bottom of the hole for the hub. On the "T", one end was welded to the rim, and the other end we put a rotating "door" on to control air flow, and on the stem of the "T" we mounted an electric blower so that, through the miracle of electricity, I didn't have to pump a bellows. Then we packed the truck rim with red clay to hold the heat, and Dear Old Dad made a grate to cover the top of the hub so that the coals didn't fall into the "T", but we could still blow air into them. When you turned on the blower, the rotating door at the bottom controlled air flow - more closed for more air into the coals, more open for less air into the coals.

a 150 pound anvil mounted on a section of tree trunk that I never got split for firewood, and a 2 pound hammer, completed the setup. I learned to make horse shoes - with and without ice clogs on them for summer and winter - and knives. I learned how to forge weld, and how to twist ribbons of steel to make decorative fireplace sets, among other things. Dear Old Dad also made a small anvil for finish work out of a foot long section of old railroad track.

I never got around to showing my son how to blacksmith. I was working a lot in those days, not around enough. However, he HAS taken up the sport on his own now, again with a home-built forge. He makes knives.

Dear Old Dad never made any moonshine, but we knew folks who did, so we always kept a couple gallons in the cellar, for medicinal purposes you understand. Instead, he made wine. He made wine out of anything he could get hold of - dandelions, potatoes, blackberries, just anything that could be fermented. I made some once out of wild plums.

An old guy we knew made moonshine in his kitchen. He had an old wood cookstove, and had built a groundhog still of about 5 gallons capacity, and would run off small batches at will. We could get it from him for about 20 bucks a gallon - try finding moonshine for that price now!

Pap showed me now to move piles of vegetation with a horse and a loop of rope fastened to the singletree of the harness to clear land for a garden. He said that was how they used to move hay shocks.

If we needed a dog house or a chicken clutch, we built it. there were no Walmarts here in those days.

When it gets right down to surviving on nothing, some folks can get just downright inventive.

Thee mountains ARE beautiful from the tops of the ridges. Down here in the holler where I live, it's just mostly shady. And green. Green everywhere. Even in winter. When the leaves fall from the trees and the weeds die back, the mountain laurel and ground pines takes over the task of greening things up through the winter.

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