Keep our heritage foods

The link to the article below is very distrubing. Will we be left only with Frankenfoods?

Please Save non-GMO seed sources

Garden Planning

Although we are back to cold and snowy days, the recent warmer weather was a little reminder that spring is coming soon. With spring comes the excitment of peparing and sowing the backyard vegetable garden. Before it gets to late we need to start planning for that awesome veggie producer. Now is the perfect time to choose which vegetables and how many of each you would like to plant this season. Check your notes from last season to see what you liked and what worked to try again this year. It is also important to see where each crop was planted in the garden and make sure to rotate this year.

As early as it may seem, in many areas, now is the time to start planning and start some seeds indoors. Use this CHART to figure out when you need to start your indoor seeds for the coming season.

Now is also a great time to get a quick inventory of your seed stocks and gardening tools. Do you need anything? I know I do. Last year my seedlings that were started indoors were started a little late and were weak and leggy. I had only used a germination station and some shop lights with growing bulbs. This would have been ok except for the temperature of the basement at night. This year I will be adding a propagation heating mat. This mat will keep the soil an average of 10-20 degrees above ambient room temperature. This mat can be more precisely controled with the addition of a thermostat. I have found that Seeds of Change has a great selection of seeds and other supplies. I also plan to organize my set up better this year. Last year was slightly rushed and not PLANNED well, hence the reason for this post. Don't let it happen to you. Once I have everything set up I will post some pictures that can be used as examples. No copyright on how my stuff is set up. I am here to help and share.

Spacial Gardening

Click the title to link to the video.

This is a great idea for people with minimal or no garden space. Perfect for Urban environments. It would also come in pretty handy if Senate Bill S510 goes through and creates steps towards making home gardening illegal. I could see this in my basement or safe room hidden away from government home gardening gestapo.

If I could make one change to it however, I wouldn't built it from PVC. I would want something that didn't leach chemicals into my food supply.

Self reliance through your home/building

With new technologies emerging every day it is becoming simpler and simpler to become self reliant. A major step towards self reliance would be getting your home/building off grid. Energy in the form of electricity is extremely important in our way of life today and being able to produce it yourself is the epitome of self reliance by today's definition.

Architecture of the home is itself being somewhat self reliant. It is your shelter and place of comfort and safety. Now imagine that home can supply it's own power to function as a home by today's standards. That would give you a ton of piece of mind, not mention eliminating those pesky bills. That is how most people view the benefit of off grid self reliant homes/buildings. Let's look deeper into the benefits. Think of the pride it brings you knowing that you have created a true safe shelter free from someone Else's control. Someone Else's control?! Yes you heard me correctly. Now before you block that out think for a moment the control of say, a power or gas company, has over your home. You miss a bill, they cut your ability to see in the dark and provide heat in the winter. Who is the crazy one now? It doesn't even have to be a result of something you do. Storms can cut off the power supply to your house. A crisis in the major oil producing countries or a dissolving of our relationship with them could jack your costs or eliminate the oil to produce electricity almost completely. And if you think our own country can just switch on their power production to supplement that you are just naive and disillusioned. Now it is very easy to see why it is a major step to produce energy for your home yourself.

In today's world you could really take off grid and self reliance to the max. I would say you really don't have to be connected to anything physically and not miss out on the cushy comforts we enjoy. Let's go through the list. You can have your home produce all the energy it consumes and more. You can supply your own water through a well (if possible) or by harvesting rainwater and purifying it within your home. Heating and cooling systems along with water heating can be electrically powered with the self produced energy. Most people use their cell phones as there primary phones which could eliminate a land line. Even TV and the Internet can be obtained through satellites. If you purchase an all electric vehicle(EV)in the near future you can charge it with the power you produce at your house. Now you can see that basically through your home you can really become self-reliant, self-sufficient & self-sustainable. You may say, "hey, Free, what about the cell phones, TV and Internet being controlled by someone else!" unfortunately these items can't be supplied by yourself however; there is plenty of competition with mobile phone providers and you can access the Internet with free wi-fi hot spots. TV, though not how you typically may envision it, can also be accessed through the Internet. That is not your control totally for those three items, but I would say it is pretty good.

Applying these steps provides a crucial part being totally self reliant. This is a personal goal of mine and for many people. Some is for self pride and some is for lack of trust in the powers that be that we "depend" on to help us survive and live the lives we hold dear. Either way it is a good path to be on.

Let's catch up

Well, it’s been awhile since my last post. I apologize! I am also going to focus my posts more towards their purpose; self-sustainability/ self-reliance. I will do my best to avoid politically charged posts unless they relate directly to the idea behind this blog. From time to time I may post about how the US as a country/community should and can also become self-sustainable/ self-reliant. With that said I will proceed to providing you with useful information.

Let’s catch up. This year I had great improvements in my backyard vegetable garden. I built a more organized layout with a fence to keep out pests, namely a woodchuck that had been enjoying use of my garden. I found that woodchucks are far more clever than I had given them credit for. He/she found the fence to only be a small obstacle in the trip to a wonderful meal. I quickly solved this with a live trap (have-a-heart) and removed him from the property to a nice waterfront piece of public land. Once that problem was solved the garden took off.

I would argue that one of the easiest and beginning steps in the path to self-reliance is a backyard garden. Now for those of you without a backyard don’t get your panties in a bunch. Container gardens are just as effective and can be indoors or outdoors on a porch/deck/patio. All you need for either is some good soil with mixed in compost (preferably compost you make yourself), seeds (that are GMO free and non-hybrid), and natural or simulated natural light. Be sure to plan, well before planting, on which items to grow and when they need to be started.

If you choose to use fertilizer I would recommend a product called “Neptune’s Harvest.” For me being from New England I get an added bonus on top of its outstanding fertilizing abilities. Neptune’s Harvest is made in Massachusetts so I am purchasing a product made in close proximity to my location. I used this fertilizer in a method called foliar feeding. This is spraying the liquid fertilizer directly onto the plants leaves. This is best achieved using a pressurized container that allows the liquid to come out in a very fine mist. I purchased the one I use at Sears. It is more commonly used to apply insecticides.

My garden is an insecticide and pesticide free area. I figure that one of the major benefits of becoming self-reliant is being able to control things that involve your life. This is very important when thinking about food and what you ingest. There are many organic and “safe” products out there to protect against pests and any other aliments that may harm your garden. This year I had some problems, but I did some research and will be applying my findings next season. I will be trying to attract natural pest predators to take care of any problems. These would be typically, ladybugs, lacewings, trichogramma wasps, etc. There are ample websites explaining how to attract these protectors of the garden, but you can also purchase them online.

As your garden begins to produce the pride of harvesting something that you have grown yourself is indescribable and very rewarding. It is more than likely that towards the end of the season you will notice you have more vegetables that you know that to do with. There are a few things that can help with that. It is always nice to give to others so giving your neighbor some extra harvest is nice and can strengthen local community. Another is to allow some fruits and vegetables to go to seed and harvest the seeds for storage or the following planting season. This will require some knowledge and I choose to purchase a book called “Seed to Seed.” In something like that you can learn the ins and outs of seed saving. The method I used this season to handle extra harvest is canning. The most effective way for me was mason jars and a “ball” canning kit found in stores such as Target. The secondary benefit to canning is the ability to store the food over a relatively longer period of time. This comes in handy for the “survivalist/ prepper” as well. The last method I am going to mention would be drying or dehydrating. I think this would be best used for herbs, but I may get into trying this in a future season.