03-22-2022, 02:52 PM
(03-22-2022, 08:57 AM)Ninurta Wrote: My Dear Old Dad, who lived through the Depression, told me that there was no shortage of "stuff", but that there was a shortage of money to buy that "stuff". It's why he was such a good shot, and why he used to count my bullets before I went hunting, and expected me to return with a piece of game for each expended bullet. If he got 15 cents to buy ammo, he bought it. And if he took 9 shells out squirrel hunting, he damned well had to come back with 9 squirrels, or unspent ammo equal to however many squirrels he couldn't find to shoot... and that is what he expected of me. He figured that if he could do it, I could too, but Dear Old Dad was a far better man than I will ever be.
The Depression is why he made me work in the garden every year, trying to force me to learn how to farm. It's why he taught me how to work horses - plow with them, haul timber with them, the whole shebang. It's why he taught me how to work a forge and do blacksmith work (those horses were not gonna shoe themselves, y'know?), and why he taught me what weeds I could eat out of the woods and which ones would make me sick or do me in. He always insisted the day might come when I needed to know all these things and more... and now that the day is upon us, I'm probably too old to exercise that knowledge.
I used to know old timers that ran their cars on pure, uncut moonshine. The purest alcohol they could wring out of a still. Back then, cars had carburetors rather than fuel injectors, and they told me that they had to tweak the carburetors by enlarging the fuel jets, because moonshine had a lower octane than gasoline. All the lines were metal tubing, same as on a moonshine still.
This time around, I'm still not convinced we will have an actual shortage of "stuff", but think we will be unable to get that "stuff" on shelves because of the greenies War on Energy. What we CAN get on the shelves will be outrageously priced, for the same reason.
If your going to garden, and are able to, My advice is to go with the old Indan staples - corn, beans, squash, that sort of thing. Corn, for example, gives a phenomenal return on each grain planted. A single ear can have up to around 900 grains, and each plant is going to have 4 or 5 of those ears. All of that from ONE grain of corn planted. Wheat is nice for flour, but more labor intensive with a smaller return. Learn how to use corn meal and corn flour instead.
If you can't grow stuff, make stuff to barter. barter will be King when inflation weakens the buying power of money to nothing. that will likely be our equivalent of "no money to buy stuff". Stuff you can make for trade, or labor itself, will be your buying power. Plus, the only people setting the value on that are you and whomever you are trading with - not government regulators trying to prop up a dying dollar.
My Dear Old Dad used to have me go out every spring and start collecting "weeds" which we called "greens" and ate. Things like wild lettuce, dandelions, goosefoot, field cress, sorrel, mint, and a lot of others. Pokeweed was one of them. Folks will tell you you can't eat it because it's poisonous, but I've eaten it until it was running out of my ears, and I'm still kicking high. It's all in how you prepare it, and if done right, you can eat it and it ain't bad. Kinda like manioc in South America - Indians eat it there all day long, but if it ain't prepared right, it'll turn your toes right up until you are pushing up daisies.
I remember when my own son was just a wee shit and I took him into the woods regularly to show him what he could and couldn't eat. His ma about had a calf, screaming that it was all "poison". But it ain't. I'm still alive to prove it, and he is, too.
Fertilizer prices? we're small scale farmers here, not corporate conglomerates. Make a deal with a local cattle farmer for all the manure he can haul in exchange for a share of the produce it grows. You both come out ahead.
Remember - you're not worried about feeding gunslingers in Chicago so they can keep on gang-bangin', your only worried about feeding your family, friends, and neighbors. This ain't gonna be the Globalist economy with "just on time delivery", it's going to be as local as it gets. If those Chicagoans can't feed themselves, then let 'em eat each other. Their problem, not yours. You didn't tell 'em to live in a Chicago ant hill with nothing but concrete to grow shit on. Your problem is the survival of you and your own community. Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Denver - all these places can see to their own problems. their problems are no longer yours when it's right down to survival.
One of the key differences between now and Depression Days was that back then, the population was around 20% urban and 80% rural, and now that has flip-flopped. It hit 50/50 some time in the 1950's due to an increase in manufacturing jobs, and just kept climbing from there. That population shift to urban centers is going to bite a lot of folks in the ass, because they have too many mouths to feed, and will have no way to feed 'em. They got too reliant on a Globalist economy, expecting everything would always just be brought right to 'em... and now we have the greenies trying to destroy the transportation that made that happen.
This "integrated economy" is not all it was sold to them to be - pull out one nail - like fuel - the whole damned scaffold collapses. It's TOO interdependent.
Don't worry about the city folk - they'll be busy weeding each other out. You just worry about weeding out that garden patch.
ETA: This is a photo I took of my Dear Old Dad still plowing with pony power in 1974:
He's 24 years dead now. he ain't gonna care if I make him internet famous. We made that plow ourselves out of iron water pipe and a mild steel foot to cut the furrows. While we were at it, we also made a 5 foot (as in 5 legs and feet, not 5 foot long) cultivator to rip the weeds out from between the rows while the corn was growing. Dear Old Dad, he was a survivor. If he couldn't buy it, we made it.
Yet another ETA: Another thing about the population - 50% of the population, a full half of it, lives within 100 miles of the ocean. most of that lives in cities, and is gonna die. The survivors need to learn to render salt out of sea water, That will be their stock in trade, because salt is always in high demand. Your mission, James, should you decide to accept it, is determining a way to get that salt from the shore to the inland areas.
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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.
