Wednesday, March 18, 2015

consuming to invest 4


CONSUMING TO INVEST 4

Traps And Snares

Our last item, toilet paper substituted with cloth diapers ( used also, obviously, as diapers ), didn’t save you much money up front other than the fact the total cost was lower compared to stocking the actual paper version ( say, $60 total instead of double or triple that ).  But this one, and most others, will save you money immediately and keep doing do as long as the money economy continues.  Obviously, check your local laws.  I wouldn’t want a repeat of the chap named Dallas in the 80’s who trapped in Northern Nevada ( a local hero, for those pussies not turned to the dark side of Yuppie-ism ) and was harassed by game wardens until he killed one ( might have been two-a bit fuzzy on the memory here ).  If you live in the rural areas, and it is legal, trapping and snaring is going to be one way of really cutting down on your meat bill.  Or eliminate it altogether, although one imagines this would be quite the time sink.  I don’t list this under the Old Timey Skills section because I can’t imagine there will be much of a resource that will translate into a living, but for a supplement to the dinner table ( and a few useable furs for personal use or gifts ) this is a pretty cheap tool.  A book or two ( one on primitive trapping using natural materials, perhaps one of those Stone Age Survival books, and one on modern snares ) and some steel wire should just about do the trick.  The tanning part can translate into a skill as there will be sheep and cattle available for leather, but don’t expect a huge marketable amount of meat ( there will be enough pellet guns and rimfires out there for an army of hungry idiots, and they won’t mind blasting off half the meat from a carcass of every small wild critter out there-the populations will take a hit after the collapse ).

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Personally, I don’t care for snaring.  But then, I can also get my protein from a Styrofoam tray in the supermarket.  But having this cheap set of tools will sure be nice when I change my mind ( which I will, probably prior to the cans of generic Spam running out ).  Keep in mind that hunting burns a lot of calories.  If you don’t catch anything, those calories you can’t spare are gone.  Trapping is much more efficient, net calorie wise ( just as I bother you to realize the energy resources we are using are so far down the net energy scale they are next to useless in our capitalist industrial society, so too must you learn and heed net energy for your own body ).

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CONSUMING TO INVEST 5

Seeds And Garden Tools

It is embarrassingly easy to garden.  Not to farm.  Farming is feeding yourself.  Gardening is supplementing your shopping so you save on your vegetable bill.  Not too long ago, say five years, it wasn’t even worth the bother to garden.  Perhaps herbs and flowers, due to their price, but not veggies.  They were so cheap it wasn’t worth the effort.  When that nights family salad cost you literally five minutes on the work clock, there was no need to grow your own.  Well, welcome to ten years into Peak Oil ( and fifteen years into net grain production shortfall globally-don’t worry, for now all the African and middle eastern peasants are in calorie deficit for you.  Just beware it will be your turn soon ).  Veggies are now three times the cost of five years ago, plus most are now imported from Mexico rather than California ( where snow pack shrinkage and suburb expansion met awhile ago ), AND, it that isn’t enough, I’ve noticed a lot more are now genetically modified ( anecdotal evidence, of course, but they seem to rot differently ).  If you don’t garden now, you would be silly.  Saving your health is great, but add that to saving money and you have a winner.

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Your library is chock a block full of gardening books.  Read a few, then search online for real seeds, fix your soil and grow something.  Mother Nature does most of the work for you, and you need only a tool or two such as a shovel.  And it won’t be too many weeks before you get to eat real food, nearly free.  You can screw it up and waste a metric butt ton of money, but unless you are some idiot competing with others for recognition and Yuppie Brownie Points, you don’t need to.  Beware any advice from the modern version of Mother Earth News, as they are there to sell crap for their advertisers.  Anyone who buys a tractor without being able to feed himself 100% is just buying a hayseed’s version of an SUV to impress the ladies and himself.  While I’m on the nagging about Asparagus Growers Porn, the old magazine ( which you can buy on a CD for your computer-the first ten years for $20 ) was a resource for surviving without much money.  You could see plans on making a windmill out of junkyard parts.  The new version just pimps store bought, expensive tools.  They are artificially priced low, compared to a lot of magazines, but beware what they are saying/selling.  You can usually find a good article or two, but you’ve just killed a tree to do so.  If you MUST read the rag, buy the subscription for the library so it doesn’t waste as many resources.  Then just print whatever lone article is worthy ( you should get online access with a subscription ). 

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13 comments:

  1. You're not eating vegetables, you are eating something else. Ordinary people can't afford vegetables so other things were invented and disguised to look like them at a much lower cost. The downside is you have to eat a lot more of them. Eat real vegetables, at a potentially much greater cost, and you'll find you don't have to eat as many of them.

    The frankenstein vegetables for the most part go right through you and have little nutritional value so you may initially feel full but are nutritionally starved, so in 3 hours you are hungry again. In the long run you're not saving any money by buying the hybrids at reduced cost over the real stuff at greater cost.

    What you are doing though is running more, but less quality, fuel through the system causing it to wear out faster. Supposedly the average person needs 2000 calories of the trash food per day but if you consume real food you can do with half that amount.

    It takes time for your system to adjust and level out. You can't eat real food for a couple weeks and expect to see amazing results. It will take 6 months to a year to equalize.

    If you live on a 1 acre piece of ground it is possible to grow most of the natural heirloom vegetables you will need in the course of a year. We're working our way in that direction.

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    1. Okay, so it isn't just me who thinks modern veggies are worthless. I get enough vitamin pills so I only crave a green salad about twice a month, and that is for the enzynes.

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    2. Sir Lord BaltimoreMarch 19, 2015 at 8:11 AM

      Its interesting this discussion of hybrid vegetables vs. heirloom vegetables etc. It can be extended to other foodstuffs too. In China there have people selling fake eggs. These "eggs" are made from various industrial waste products. A few years back there was also another Chinese fake food scare involving the use of melamine in baby formula. Pretty extreme examples of frankenfood.

      Thing is during wartime and in the industrial revolution much of what people regard as staples of the American diet are little more than repackaged waste products--Crisco, Velveeta, and the entire soft drink industry for example. Soft drinks in many regards being an early example of "better living through chemistry".

      I guess its only natural that the same people that would fob off a carbonated wood ash distillate concoction as a "fizzy fruit drink" 130 years ago would branch out to screwing with agriculture.

      The diminished nutritional value of vegetables today is another proof that we are living in the beginnings of a time of scarcity.

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    3. African scarcity cushioned the globe from shortages for decades ( one example, Chinese ate better as Africans ate worse ). Since 2005 or so, the middle east took one for the team. People are going to be really surprised when food shortages happen here. Right now, as you said, fake food fills the shelves. But when you have flat food production at best but usually food supply decline added to population growth-even if the growth rate is down, it is still some increase- eventually no matter how good your military and economic control is, you see true shortages. And the population in this country is still allowed to be stupid crazy.

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  2. Only thing I saw worth trapping for food around Elko was jackrabbit, and the locals swear they ain't fit to eat. Never tried one myself, but they looked edible. Of course there are coyote you could trap, but I for one would have to be starving and out of rattlesnakes before I tried one of those. And I HATE snakes.
    TMEN(mother earth news) died to me when they sold out to the japs in the early 80's and went to glossy color print. This coming from someone who had read every hard copy from day one up to about 84. (I grew up surrounded by east coast hippies in WV) Backwoods Home filled the void for a while, with many of the original writers and editors from tmen went there but they sold out in the end. Then I found you Lord Bison, stay true my friend.

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    1. I shall stay true until I die, a greasy puddle on Bullion Road, run over while biking. Now, just make sure to tell all your friends.

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    2. "Only thing I saw worth trapping for food around Elko was jackrabbit, and the locals swear they ain't fit to eat."

      I was wondering about this as well, and was going to ask what type of game that you have in the Elko area Jim?

      I know that when I visited the ghost town of Bodie in the high desert of northern CA, that there were prairie chickens (Grouse) all over the place. If one carried a good air rifle, you could have cleaned house, and had a good dinner everynight.

      "TMEN(mother earth news) died to me when they sold out to the japs in the early 80's and went to glossy color print."

      Sadly I can relate, and felt the same way when Field And Stream went down the road to political correctness. No longer was it the manly magazine of my youth, that featured old school writers such as Ted Trueblood or Gene Hill. I stopped subscribing, and wished that I held onto those old publications from my youth of the 1960's and 70's.

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    3. From what I understand, you can't eat the jackrabbits for half the year due to really nasty worms. You can always eat bunnies but they are a lot smaller. And then you have the bubonic plague fleas to consider. I think. One source says no fleas here, other say yes there are. Who to believe?

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    4. Did a little research for ya Jim. Jackrabbits do in fact get something called botfly larve, which looks bad but once removed does not affect the meat. In fact most wild game in the area is affected by it. Fleas do exist in your area, but not as bad as most.

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    5. Okay, that sounds familiar. Thanks!

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  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Entire comment deleted as there was personal info on it at the end. I don't know how to delete a comment partialy, or if it can be done-sorry

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    2. Too bad, because it was a good comment. Hopefully he saved it as a draft and can re-post it minus the sensitive information of course.

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