by Ron Foster
Planting all those marigolds was damn sure going to screw up any OPSEC ideas he had of doing any gorilla gardening as far as concealing the glimpse of the 35 or 40 foot of his garden you could see from the road and he pondered on that.
A bunch of bright pretty flowers in a landscaped setting would draw someone’s eye dead toward what he wanted to remain more obscure he had realized. After giving it some practical thought, he had decided for himself that the solution would be to plant the area in mostly Seminole squash that you could see from the road about 75 yards away.
To the uninitiated eye, at least for part of the growing season, it would look damn near like a patch of the noxious weed Kudzu to the country boys around here. That acreage eating nasty weed scourge of the south was something to be avoided and despised by most folks with any walking around sense.
Having Kudzu on your property dropped your land value to nil because it was so damn hard to get rid of, that is unless you managed to find the main root in a field full of it and dose it with used motor oil or some other toxic substance equivalent to Chernobyl. That stuff was so voracious in its growing patterns it covered up and ate telephone poles, cabins, farm equipment, barns; you name it in a period of less than a few years unless you fought it with determination and hateful diligence.
It was also snaky looking as hell and no sane country boy dove off in a patch of it without a pair of armored snake boots and stick to whomp four legged and slithering creatures as well with. What was worse than ducking and dodging the possible venomous and otherwise snakes was the most assured fact that at certain times of the year the risk and threat of getting a master case of the “Red Bugs” was alarmingly high. Once you got that you knew you were in for a case of the worst itching and needing to scratch you were ever going to get.
Now for those folks that are not experienced with southern climes might not know what a red bug is. It is an anthropoid, what northern folks call a chigger and they are a force to be reckoned with and to be avoided at all costs if you can. This biting blood sucking microscopic insect actually digs into your skin and lives there until it dies or you get rid of it. The resulting round the clock itch of them son of a bitches will drive you bug eyed crazy even if it was just a couple of them little tiny red spiders that jumped on you. The bite wound starts out as a small red dot and soon develops into an angry looking small pimple affair that just gets redder and itchier as time goes by. You can’t stand not to scratch it but you know if you do it will make it worse.
Those that are familiar with this parasitic nemesis perform Herculean efforts for days trying not to scratch these bites for fear of infection or stirring the critters up to dig deeper and cause even worse itching, but scratch eventually we all do whether consciously when we are awake or subconsciously when we are sleeping. Damn it, it made David itch and burn just to consider them pests. Many memories of the number of times he had got them and had been trying to focus his mind on not to scratch regardless of how good it would feel just for a moment stayed with him. The cure to immediate itch t is to smack it, yea smack the skin like you would a wrist playing schoolboy games to raise a whelp or draw the blood to the surface. That little trick lasts a while and seems to help relieve the need to scratch or rub the itch so incessantly.
David had done some research on the internet about how to get rid of the 2nd worse scourge of the southern pine woods and fields (the first is imported fire ants) and came up empty except for an untried patented medical solution to get rid of the frisky persistent itchy bastards.
What amazed David the most in his research was the number of so called experts or doctors who poo pooed the notion of the number one cure for the bedeviling beasties was somehow ineffective. The general idea of how to get rid of them amongst generations of southerners was you had to smother the nasty’s before they ate you alive or reproduced. The experts said for many reasons we were full of it and our concept of the insect and its feeding habits on humans and other animals was inherently flawed because their research said the wretches died after they burrowed in and didn’t feed or reproduce the way our country lore suggested.
“Well, bull shit!” David had exclaimed in his own mind or to anyone that would listen after reading such expert bull hockey that was in his opinion bad advice given without tried solutions.
“Why he had been he himself had been dealing with them pesky insect critters for more years than he could count. The number one universally accepted tried and true remedy of the southlands was to put clear nail polish on them, lacking that valuable commodity he had tried using everything from rubbing alcohol, hot as you can stand it showers, baby oil, Zinc oxide cream (if that’s all you had, good for poison ivy and oak)Red Devil lye soap, Witch Hazel, mercurochrome, gun oil, turpentine, kerosene, paint thinner, soap (Irish Spring, Life Buoy etc.( strong scented soap to leave on awhile and itch before scalding one’s self in hot water.) etc. had all been tried at one time or another in his experiences or overheard by him listening to others at National Guard drills trying to get rid of the incessant deep abiding itch a bite site would give you with varying results.
If you were a very lucky human you would only have one or two bites where those little buggers would feast wherever your blood was closest to your skin like where your socks or underwear connected to your body. That’s the places where they would start to first get you as they traveled up a pant leg after attacking and milling around the tops of your well tied or bloused boots. It was wherever your clothing got closest to your skin they would attack. The closer the blood is to the surface the more apt something is to get bit. Your waist where your belt, your underwear or your pants contacted waist skin was a favorite for them biological hazardous little bastards.
There was more than one deep wood hunter around here that swore that wearing women’s panty hose kept the red bugs and ticks off of you, but David had not got around to trying that particular fashion. Spraying insecticide on those thin military nylon or canvas belts he wore when he had his army uniform on and spraying the area where he bloused his boots seemed to offer a degree of protection, he had even tried blousing his boots with dog flea collars with marginal effect.
Anyway, basically any area that looked like it contained kudzu was to be avoided and property that looked like it had some on it, usually meant its owner had abandoned it or was just pretty lazy and a poor land steward. The Seminole squash he had in mind was perfect to imitate Kudzu in the early growing season. That stuff quite often put out 50 ft or better vines and he would just let it go wild and maybe even train some of it to swallow part of his garden fence. Now later on when it set small pumpkin looking squash it wouldn’t fool anybody, but it was very useful camouflage for a time. Seminole squash is an ideal prepper storage food because if its stem is not damaged that stuff lasts longer untreated than anything else David knew of. He once kept a squash on his kitchen counter for a year and a half and it was still good until its stem got knocked off and then it soon began to rot. David planned on planting this ancient heirloom squash pretty much everywhere around his property and just letting it run wild. He would need to look out for snakes but this particular squash was pretty much impervious to insects and disease and it didn’t seem to attract those dang red bugs. Red bugs could be anywhere or everywhere, it was just that for some reason certain areas were more buggy than others.
Getting the garden all tilled up and his various landscape projects completed were constantly on his mind. He hoped his food forest project would take and become almost permaculture, but he had his doubts on nature’s cooperation in that regard.
What little bit of precious gas he had available was going to be the big thing to conserve for these tasks. David had about 10 gallons of gas stored in his shed at the moment with the right kind of ethanol reducing Stabil for small engines already mixed into it. The gas guzzling problem he also had though regarding his immediate needs of home heating was that he had only about a half cord of wood stacked and maybe 50lbs pounds of LP gas to see hi
m through the tail end of winter and heat the house. Both his and his girlfriend Julies cars had some gas in them but they had determined that the half tank of fuel in hers needed to stay unmolested in case of emergency’s like a bug out, so that left them about a quarter of a tank or maybe 5 gallons of gas in David’s vehicle.
David had declared his car and the gas in it their emergency generator because he could hook an inverter to his vehicles battery and run a few useful items like a battery charger to top off his big Sunrnr solar generator if the sun hadn’t shined for a while, or some project like running a dehydrator had drained it too much. He also had a few 12v marine batteries as part of his off grid system but they were getting a bit old and didn’t hold a charge as well as they used to. Normal electric chain saws draw too many amps to try and run off solar but he had a cordless 18v 6 inch chainsaw he found indispensable to stack his woodpile with thumb size sticks for his rocket stoves.
David always had back up to his backups and was proud to say one of the ones he had chosen was a SilverFire Hunter model rocket stove. This was the only patented rocket stove on the market that had a chimney to vent the little bit of smoke it produced up out through a window or wherever. David had it sitting under a table in the laundry room of his home ready to be vented out a window should the need arise.
David called his little added on backroom to the house his “Prepper Pod” because if needed, he could retreat to it in the dead of winter or the heat of summer and have himself a microcosm of modern comfort with minimal effort on his part.
Why, one could stay in that one little room and except for having to use a bucket or go to the outhouse, have everything you needed at arm’s length somewhere in the room, positioned and ready to hand. Actually, you didn’t even need to leave the house if you had enough water to flush the toilets because he had an operational septic tank.
On David’s to do list was hooking up a 12v D.C. pump to a rain barrel in order to have running water for indoor plumbing, that is if he could keep the barrel filled. He had slowly accumulated all the parts over time for the project and had them around just for this particular day and purpose. David’s thought about how he had justified their expense and purpose when he told Julie he was light on cash from buying parts and couldn’t afford to buy something else.
“With what is going on in our nation right now, if you’re not prepping, you’re not thinking, and right now I am thinking it sure would be nice to have ourselves a cheap indoor plumbing backup.” David had told her and Julie, being the intrigued prepper that she was, wanted to go play and get the project started as soon as possible. Well, David had not got around to rigging that setup or a couple other things that he had dreamed up and got materials for that he had stored in his shed for just this sort of occasion. He didn’t lament much for never having made a dry run at installation, he just hoped he didn’t get in the middle of it and find out he needed some cheap insignificant part that he no longer had ready access to at a hardware store. Hell, he had crap stored that he couldn’t even find at the moment and wondered where he had misplaced certain items or key parts.
Organization was not his long suit but pack ratting all kinds of stuff to someday make his prepper shack operate totally off grid was his hobby. The acquisition and research was the chase. Now he had plenty of time to play with his accumulated toys and prepper woman Julie would be in hog heaven helping him to do them expeditiously and neatly. The tasks of making the prepper shack as self-reliant as possible had been discussed into the wee hours of the morning many times by the two of them and the plans had been verbally rehearsed, refined and revaluated many times over.
One thing David pondered about and regretted was that he lacked any kind of manual for how to construct a water lifting device out of PVC. He had researched the subject of other means though.
Rowers Pump
David if nothing else was an interesting and inquisitive old soul Irrigation Reference Manual (Peace Corps, 1994
Chapter 3.5 Pumps and water lifting devices
Figure 3.15 Swing Baskets (Ref. 28)
Wicker swing basket of average capacity 8 liters.
Swing basket made from metal sheets
Figure 3.16 eater Scoop (Ref. 28)
David described how in the past in some countries, water was moved from pool to pool or to irrigation ditches using an affair called an eater scoop. Basically, it was a scoop you could make out of wood or an old can attached to a stick to be able to shovel the most amount of water from one place to another. Now by knowing and thinking about this arcane technology as a prepper, he tried to envision various modern uses for it. One thing he had come up with was applying the principal to modern day street gutters. Water runs down the gutter on both sides of a common neighborhood road to the street drains at alarming rate during a storm. The flow of the water is so fast and shallow often times that it makes it very difficult to collect before it’s lost to the sewers. No everybody knows upstream from you god knows what might be flowing in that water and even more so now that you have everybody’s stacked up stinking refuse on the curb awaiting a garbage truck that will probably never come again but this trick is useful. Hell dirt roads, suburbs etc. you might not even worry much about really bad contamination coming down the pike. Even in the cities if it’s a strong rain the gutters will be washed out some before you try it anyway. What if you just needed water to water your crops or flush your toilet? Just get your poncho or rain suit on and commence to letting the scoop fill up automatically and dumping it in a 5 gallon bucket. You are already probably going to have every pot and pan you have out anyway trying to collect some water and hopefully your prepared for this type of thing and not out trying to catch your death of cold doing it because you lack protective clothing or commonsense. Those pans or buckets you have set out are not going to collect much unless you already made you some kind of rain collection system to increase surface area and flow with a piece of plastic or old poncho.
David and Julie had joked as well as discussed in earnest a purchase Julie had made a while back of ten new Czech military surplus ponchos for seventeen bucks and some change. David had shown Julie the internet ad for them as a great bargain but he was watching his pennies and waiting on a gift card to stack coupons with for what he felt like was a more practical purpose or use of funds.
Julie had made this purchase with much aforethought as only a wonderful prepper girl and intuitive motherly and imaginative woman could do. She had viewed this particular deal as an especially whimsical and practical acquisition to spread a little love and preparedness. LowBuck Prepper`s Prepperstock meet and greet was a few short months away and as she was lovingly wont to do was looking for inexpensive highly thoughtful things to bestow upon new and old friends.
If you have two ponchos, you can construct a brush raft or an Australian poncho raft. With either of these rafts, you can safely float your equipment across a slow-moving stream or river.
Brush Raft
The brush raft, if properly constructed, will support about 115 kilograms. To construct it, use ponchos, fresh green brush, two small saplings, and rope or vine as follows (Figure 17-4):
Push the hood of each poncho to the inner side and tightly tie off the necks using the drawstrings.
Attach the ropes or vines at the corner and side grommets of each poncho. Make sure they are long enough to cross to and tie with the others attached at the opposite corner or side.
Spread one poncho on the ground with the inner side up. Pile fresh, green brush (no thick branches) on the poncho until the brush stack is about 45 centimeters high. Pull the drawstring up through the center of the brush stack.
Make an X-frame from two small saplings and place it on top of the brush stack. Tie the X-frame securely in place with the poncho drawstring.
Pile another 45 centimeters of brush on top of the X-frame, and then compress the brush slightly.
Pull the poncho sides up around the brush and, using the ropes or vines attached to the comer
or side grommets, tie them diagonally from comer to corner and from side to side.
Spread the second poncho, inner side up, next to the brush bundle.
Roll the brush bundle onto the second poncho so that the tied side is down. Tie the second poncho around the brush bundle in the same manner as you tied the first poncho around the brush.
Place it in the water with the tied side of the second poncho facing up.
Australian Poncho Raft
If you do not have time to gather brush for a brush raft, you can make an Australian poncho raft. This raft, although more waterproof than the poncho brush raft, will only float about 35 kilograms of equipment. To construct this raft, use two ponchos, two rucksacks, two 1.2-meter poles or branches, and ropes, vines, bootlaces, or comparable material as follows (Figure 17-5):
Push the hood of each poncho to the inner side and tightly tie off the necks using the drawstrings.
Spread one poncho on the ground with the inner side up. Place and center the two 1.2-meter poles on the poncho about 45 centimeters apart.
Place your rucksacks or packs or other equipment between the poles. Also place other items that you want to keep dry between the poles. Snap the poncho sides together.
Use your buddy's help to complete the raft. Hold the snapped portion of the poncho in the air and roll it tightly down to the equipment. Make sure you roll the full width of the poncho.
Twist the ends of the roll to form pigtails in opposite directions. Fold the pigtails over the bundle and tie them securely in place using ropes, bootlaces, or vines.