Parallel Society Coming ?

[Ninurta]

Ninurta, yer sayin' my ole hide is only worth a dollar?

Well, mitigating factors to consider are that back then, a buck stretched a lot farther than it does now due to currency manipulation and inflation, and as I said, the value of things is the value people place on them - nothing has an intrinsic value all by itself, not even gold and silver. They have only the value assigned to them. I value your hide pretty highly.

As an aside,  back in the 1830's, a distant cousin of mine sold his wife for "an averageable deer hide", but the guy didn't pay him after he took possession of the goods, so he took it to court and sued the fella for his deer hide - didn't want the wife back, he wanted his deer hide. They were a pretty rough bunch, I reckon, and value is in the eye of the beholder. That cousin's name was Daniel McCune, he lived on the West Fork in WV - an area known to be pretty rough by the locals, even to this day - and the story can be found on the internet. Gotta wonder just how bad a wife the gal was if Daniel was willing to sell her off, and the purchaser then refused to pay after he picked her up...

If anything is parallel my brother, it is our thoughts.

I've been growing tobacco for years now, Virginia variety, can't get Burley to do well around here. Did very well this year for seed stock, excellent in fact.

When I expanded my garden last season, I found some wild mint plants growing in the back corner and found out they are called "horse mint" or "field mint" and they have a high menthol content, second highest I believe. I bought a pint of cheap vodka to extract the essential oils, it works. I plan on using my still to concentrate oils like that  some more. Got lots of winter green to play with too.

Seems like I should try developing my tobacco processing to include making chew and menthol pipe tobacco this harvest.

All the tobacco seed I have at the moment is for "nicotiana rustica", rather than smoking tobacco. It's Indian tobacco, native tobacco, called "sacred tobacco" by some. I've got two varieties, one from the Great Lakes region called "Midewiwin", and another that was sold as "thousand year old tobacco", but which in reality answers the description of Cherokee tobacco, which is what it probably really is.  I got it for the nicotine content, which is 3 to 9 times higher than regular smoking tobacco. I planted some in a test pot when I got it to see how viable the seed was, and ALL of them sprouted - but they damped-off and died, all but one tiny seedling that is still hanging on, all stem and no leaf due to the damping. I have to find a way to control that before spring comes and planting starts in earnest.

I have the "secret" recipe for Copenhagen snuff around here somewhere, but I can't even imagine the stomach spasms this rustica would produce if I tried to make snuff out of it. It would probably be downright hallucinogenic.

A month ago or so I went to my old stomping grounds to gather botanicals for growing here, from the wild where they were. It's all grown up into brush and jungle now. The peppermint was nowhere to be found, and just one stand of catnip there which was in bloom and had not yet gone to seed. There was also one single lonely goosefoot plant there. Now aeons ago, before corn was a thing among the Indians, they grew goosefoot (chenopodium) as a grain and green. The seeds are the same as that expensive assed quinoa you can get at the grocery store, and that is how they ate it - as a grain, and as greens. Chenopodium seeds were found in an archaeological dig in Daugherty's Cave about 3 miles from that spot, and I have to wonder if that lonely little goosefoot isn't a direct descendant of what once grew in an Indian plot there.

Chenopodium also draws salt from the soil and stores it in the plant. Indians used to burn it and use the ash to salt their grub when they couldn't get salt in bulk.

I've got a couple seasoning herbs growing, spearmint and basil and rosemary, but will have to get corn and bean seed before spring comes. I'm going back to the dirt so I can tell grocery stores and supply chains to kiss my ass. It's weird - I hated gardening when I was growing up, but I'm damned glad I learned it while I could now, so I could be ready for the times to come.

Dear Old Dad has been dead and gone for about 23 years now, but wherever he is, I thank him for running me through those wringers despite myself!

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