by Ron Foster
“Look when we get back to the house Mike, Julie and me set you out a care package of sorts. Nothing much mind you, just a bit of food to tide you over until we get the hunting and trapping routine down and hopefully start producing some regular meat from our trap lines. Before we go any further with this conversation, I can tell you here and now buddy that you’re likely going to want to turn your nose up at most of what it is that I have reserved for you.” David said before gently hushing the rising protests from his friend and fellow soldier that Mike was never going to turn his nose up at anything David ever offered or happened to discard as surplus food stores or garden produce in his direction.
Mike paused to reflect.
“Hell on earth, I would bet that some people were probably already wishing they hadn’t fed rover that last can of dog food and had instead saved it for themselves and their own bellies by now . Or for that matter if they didn’t have a pet themselves to care for themselves then they might most likely be eying their neighbors pets by now as possible a la carte menu entries. It is a dog eat dog world now. I can not even imagine what folks will be doing or thinking in the big cities when there are no dogs, rats or cats left to eat.” Mike thought with a shudder before quickly clearing those bad thoughts out of his mind. However, Mike still worriedly kept thinking about of his own dog’s safety in these trying times. Once it is matter of your life or that of a dog, opinion can change as to property rights or to someone’s normal loving nature and view of them.
“Look Mike, you’re a meat eater and a have a hardcore male appetite the same as me that does not under any stretch of the imagination think we even ate a meal if we are forced to partake of a vegetarian diet. No meat on my plate and eggs don’t count, I didn’t eat a meal is the way I feel about it. Which, old buddy, you and I might be stuck eating grazing food like a cow for more days than I care to think about later on in this disaster. I really don’t know how in the hell women do the salad thing entrée for dinner or lunch and claim they get their tummies so full, because as far as I am concerned that only works if you are a rabbit. I have got a variety of canned and bucketed crap stored for long-term last ditch emergency rations like 5 gallon buckets of different types of wheat. You know the kinds of wheat I mean like soft white summer and hard red winter wheat that the emergency food stores sell you in order for them to puff up the numbers of the daily adult required calorie counts on those high priced year supply packages of dehydrated or freeze dried long-term storage foods? Yes wheat is tried and true real nutrition and yes you can live off it long-term, but we aren’t going to be none too happy with it or without it I am afraid. The bible says supposedly “wheat is the staff of life” or so I have heard. I had my wheat stored for when things were brought to a level where we eat just to survive. You know, sort of as iron rations to keep me from seeing my ribs too soon should the game disappear for a season. I have this belief in regard to preps, “if it’s all you can afford, then buy wheat and have SOMETHING!” The day will come or might come along when you say to yourself I really want to eat SOMETHING, but it is not too important WHAT that SOMETHING is and if that’s all there is to eat anyway, it won’t matter.” David said, regarding Mike before carrying on.
“However buddy, we can be somewhat hopeful about the menu we are going to likely get stuck with someday. I have some recipes for wheat that knowledgeable folks swear makes it sort of taste like meat, but I have never tried any of them dishes myself personally. I do know however, that I can pour hot water over wheat and wait a few minutes and end up with something like cereal if need be, but that ain`t even close to oatmeal from what I gather. As far as I know the stuff might taste like grass, but I will eat it and be thankful for it when we get to that level.” David explained, regretting that he couldn’t do more than share some of his precious iron rations with his survival neighbor.
“Iron rations were my last line of defense preps and could be considered a make or break starvation solution while Julie and I were trying to make it through a tough winter.” David said while hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that he could make up for the loss of some bucketed and canned grain now by producing and growing his own replenishment come summer .
“I remember you telling me about us needing to plant a bit of that wheat and oats rather than eating it up awhile back David. When do you plant and when do you harvest that wheat grass stuff anyway? I never known anyone to grow it down south and closest thing I might know would be Rye that is raised around here.” Mike asked trying to grasp the amount of seed and labor it would take to even raise an acre of the commodity.
“We have ourselves a wheat cook book and a farmer’s almanac for reference is about all I can say on that subject. I have about three hundred pounds of the stuff stored around here to experiment on or get creative and process further. Come spring we will give planting some kind of wheat a shot. What we got to have us Mike is some kind of grain crop as a staple to preserve and put away for hard times as well as supplement our daily diets with. The land around here is not good at all for growing vegetable crops and we don’t have much fertilizer to help it along. I have tried to raise corn before here and other places and if you don’t have a ton of fertilizer for this poor soil and plenty of rain, you are just wasting your time and energy. At least wheat is lot like growing grass and we can do that I hope. I have some canning jars stocked up, but I don’t have very many to spare. We are going to have to try and dehydrate or sun dry what we can with the fruits from the vegetable gardens. I have never tried sun drying myself before, but I have some muslin and mosquito netting to try out in order to keep the bugs off of the veggies while they are baking and drying under old Sol. I also got some of those dollar store plastic picnic, white netting looking food table tent things to try. Hopefully I won’t need to try my hand and patience at that lost art of air and sun drying. I have a truly modern approach to solve my preservation and drying needs though utilizing two small electric food dehydrators that I can run off my marine batteries and solar panels. I also have a Sun Oven that has dehydration capabilities which I haven’t tried out yet for that purpose, but I have the directions and recipes that came with the oven and I have watched a lot of YouTube videos on the subject. I want us to try our hands at making some jerky in the Sun Oven using some of the deer meat this go round. We shouldn’t have any problem doing it I don’t expect, that is if we get it sliced nice and thin along the grain”. David explained trying to envision the ramifications of trying to plant a crop in spring and hopefully being able to store something for next winter from the gardens as well as put up any kind of meat some way or the other. If he and Mike couldn’t through their toil and labor produce and preserve some kind of surplus from the gardens this summer, then they were going to have nutrition problems aplenty no matter what kind of meat they could secure from hunting or trapping efforts.
“Damn, first thing I want to trade for if I can find them is a few live chickens” David mused, mad at himself for not preparing properly to raise a flock someday. Other than previously buying 25 foot of chicken wire on a very limited budget, his plans for having the material like wood and nails on hand, or having the completed project done by this time evaporated into one more of those would da, could da, should da, sentiments he seemed to lament a lot about lately. He didn’t give such wishful things much further thought though. He had done his best to balance his prepping and his regular life as well as he could. What he now had on hand in the way of preps was as adequate or not as it will ever be and no sense fretting about anything missing or depleted. No one could possibly afford to buy the supplies that might be needed for this level of disaster. What you had to invest in was knowledge and practicality to even have a general idea of how to “ad lib in the danger zone” as David referred to some of his MacGyver like tendencies of his using a common household item to overcome the lack of a tool or technological solution to get the basics of life like food, fuel, shelter, clean water etc.
“What’s a “Sun Oven’?
Is that something you can run off your solar panels and batteries also? “Mike inquired trying to envision some kind of low wattage appliance like device.
“Oh no, a Sun Oven is not electric at all, my friend. Regular appliances require way too much wattage to even consider. Think of a sun oven as basically black steel or iron pot nestled in an insulated box with glass over it that uses the suns energy to cook with. Mine is far from being that simple though. I have what I am standing here proud to say, the Cadillac of all solar cookers with the trade marked name “Sun Oven”. How spectacular is that? That fine technologically advanced cooking and baking solution is an alternative energy marvel with many hidden as well as evident craftsman oriented attributes. I will show you my sun cooker later and maybe we can talk about building you something to cook in but it will be much less efficient and elaborate as my commercially made one.” David responded thanking his lucky stars and doing a mental happy dance he had such a resource on hand for his post-apocalyptic and intriguing off grid kitchen setup.
“Apocalyptic nothing” David mused with a grin. He used that trademarked Sun Oven year round. Not only did it keep his kitchen from heating up in the summer, but reducing his electricity bill was also a key factor anytime. It was so efficient that he had no problem in his southern winters producing some of the most flavorful and juicy food you ever had. Sun-baked foods stay moister and have less shrinkage than conventional oven-cooked foods.
https://www.sunoven.com/foster-coupon
“Oh I know what you’re talking about David! Seems that I remember something about the theory of them kind of solar cookers from a science class I once had. I have never seen a commercially made one however, what’s it made out of? Hey, It looks like Charlie is either out and about somewhere, or he might of moved in with that girlfriend of his around Dothan. Looks like no one is to home.” Mike said noticing no vehicles in the driveway in front of the trailer on the hill.
“I haven’t seen him around for a few weeks now come to think of it. He was here when the power first went out, we chatted for a second in passing. Back then I wasn’t sure how long this blackout was going to go on and just stopped by for a few minutes to check on him. He hadn’t made up his mind then if he was going to the girlfriends or having her come down here. I would have thought if he was taking off long-term he would have come down and told me something, but there is no telling with Charlie. He has his own ways and might have just left without a word and will pop back up whenever.” David said and after a quick look around the property he and Mike headed back to start processing the Deer.
3
Gardens, Bug Bites And Water
Julie had been listening to the news on the radio while David was gone with Mike and besides the bad news about uncontrolled fires in several major cities along with the litany of boil water warnings and various announcements that the government wanted you to know they were doing everything they could to restore power there were some new things to add to the list. Flu pandemics, Cholera, Famine, late season Ice storms.
“Damn depressing to listen to the station, but it was indeed some news, life still went on and they were not alone.” Julie mused. Life was going on elsewhere and folks talked about it over the airwaves and gossip fences. How long it could remain so as a norm seemed to be becoming more questionable by the day. For now, she and David had food and they were not physically sick so they regarded it as being blessed with a future. The hope of spring planting seemed a far away and distant thought but they had faith in their self-reliance and hopefully all their stored preparations would win out the day. Not many complaints or laments to despair regarding these rehearsed plans to grow a victory garden of sorts in the face of adversity.
The thought of growing a big garden was treasured and this hope shone like a beacon to them as the hopes of an early spring approached. They held solid hope in their knowledge of raising a crop this spring and their stock of precious vegetable seeds appeared to be adequate to achieve their goals.
David and Julie spent odd evening hours occasionally pouring over his library of gardening books looking for new tips or tricks to help them insure a good crop by gleaning some wisdom from some tidbit of knowledge forgotten or yet undiscovered. Long gone for the pair were the days of jumping in the truck and running to the seed and feed store for plants or insecticide. Whatever things they had on hand now garden wise on this particular day, was all they could expect to have for the foreseeable future and beyond. Anyone who has ever gardened before can tell you that there were a million and one things that could go inexplicably wrong come planting and growing season. That weather was often fickle and contrary was a known fact to think about and prepare for.
David’s big three worries for the garden were drought, insects and disease. Drought was the easiest to handle because there was a certain amount of preparation you could do for it like strategically placing rain barrels at the perimeter for the hand watering that would soon be necessary.
Insects and disease were another matter. He had lost the seasonal war with insects like squash borers more than once and had lost plenty of tomatoes and squash to fungus like diseases over past growing years. Often times he blamed the wilt on possibly already infected plants he got from the nursery; other growers’ problems in his area supported this theory. Julie and David hoped that since they were raising this year’s garden straight from seeds that the risk or threat of disease or infestation was nonexistent. However, the gut wrenching thought that his raised bed gardens had once held disease and bugs before and might yet remain to infect the new plants nagged at them. David was practicing crop rotation and he and Julie had spent the previous day trying out and implementing an idea Julie had found in one of his books.
The concept for cleaning up the old beds was called soil sterilization. They had spread clear plastic sheeting over his dozen or more garden boxes in hopes that the sun’s ultra violet light would get the ground hot or UV saturated enough by spring planting to kill any lurking viruses or insect eggs. David should have done it more towards the end of summer to maximize the positive effects the book said would be heightened but that was hindsight now.
He had done his customary burn off of most of the raised garden beds when the vegetation had died down during late fall and it was dry enough now to catch fire again after having accumulated enough fallen leaves and pine needles to get a small blaze going. He burned the surface of each bed to its 2 by 6 wooden soil line one at a time because a grass fire if it got out of control could also catch the leaf litter of the nearby forest on fire and wildfire was the last thing anyone needed..
All those raised growing beds had previously produced plenty of veggies for David and his household’s consumption and he proudly declared it also grew a decent amount to spare that he could give away to friends. However, the area he had planted did not produce that much extra, NOT near enough surpluses to think about canning or drying to try to fill a pantry for winter.
About the only thing David could think to do about this shortfall of produce was to till up the ground outside the edges of his garden fence and hope something would grow in the farmed out Alabama red clay soil with no fertilizer or soil amendments added by him to improve it. One thing David did have plenty of was leaves and pine straw in his woods and he and Julie had decided to start trying to build up a layer of debris around the gardens fence in hopes it would compost down some and even if it didn’t they would till it into the soil come spring. David said pretty much anything they did would be an improvement and said use the area as a dumping ground for anything organic within reason from now on.
The outside of the garden facing the back of his house consisted of a slight downhill slope and David had a trick he wanted to try out called “Swales” to increase production along its length. A swale is basically a series of little C shaped “dams” that catch and hold water in small depressions in front of them.
He had considered doing this landscaping project for some time in order to up his chances of se
lf-reliance in food production as well as he found it aesthetically pleasing to landscape the area in this intelligent way. David had accumulated a small stack of bricks leftover at a jobsite to build himself a more permanent lower maintenance landscaping project to take advantage of this particularly advantageous growing system by terracing up the slope properly.
The small inclined slope, which was about a 100x 20 or so feet in length, lent itself to a unique swale arrangement. He could make a series of swales traditionally going downhill but he could also tweak on the principle and do some terracing as well as in order to create some catchments sideways to feed water into his main growing area.
He had a shit load of what he considered dubious germinating seeds left over from years gone by and other growing seasons that he planned on just willy nilly planting around the garden in hopes of creating a food forest of sorts should even 10% of them produce a sprout he could coax out of the ground he would have something amazing if it worked..
He had purchased a couple boxes of seed mixture recently from the dollar store of French double mixed color marigolds and he had high hopes and plans of interspersing them all around his garden to deter insect pests. Dwarf Marigolds are pretty much as good as regular ones to help keep them damn squash bugs and other crop destroying insects away. You need to companion plant marigolds, but you need to grow the French ones, they have the most scent those nasty bugs hate.