Wheat - The Staff of Life

You can't beat wheat for nutrition and long term storage. If stored correctly it will keep almost indefinitely. The uses for wheat vary widely from bread to wheat grass juice to sprouts. We have been buying wheat in bulk and grinding it for bread for over 30 years. For us, it's the only way to go.

First up, nutrition. It's packed, including calories and carbohydrates for energy and vitality. This is a link to the website I use to compare nutritional values for all kinds of foods.

Wheat flour, whole-grain

We haven't ever eaten wheat sprouts, or wheat grass, or wheat juice, but we have read about it. When it comes to wheat, the sky is the limit. In years past we cracked the wheat and cooked it for a breakfast cereal. Here are a couple of links that may give you some new ideas about how to add wheat, or more wheat, to your diet.

Wheat Berries - 7 Recipes You Have to Try

Wheat Sprouts: Health Benefits and How to Grow Them

Wheatgrass Benefits: The Superfood that Boosts Immunity & Nutrient Absorption

Bulk wheat is getting a little hard to find right now, but if you look, you can still find some. And if you do find some, I would highly recommend buying all you can. Wheat berries store much better than flours and they contain the nutrients of the entire berry, unlike any flour you can buy. For years I thought the whole wheat flour I was buying was just that, whole wheat. It is not. Some of the most nutritious parts of the wheat berry are removed to increase shelf stability and prevent rancidity. By the way, a wheat berry and a wheat grain are one and the same thing. I've always wondered why it's called a berry....

We have gone from making yeast bread to sourdough bread. The fermenting process of making sourdough releases more nutrients, lowers the carbohydrate count, and forgoes the necessity of having yeast on hand. For us that has been the way to go. Here are some past articles we have written using wheat.

Making Whole Wheat Bread

100% Fresh Whole Wheat Bread

Got Wheat? Fern's Sourdough Bread

Grinding Flax & Other Bread Making Lore

If you want to make bread from wheat, you will need a grain grinder of some sort. There are many different kinds and most folks have their own preferences. Here is our manual variety if we ever have the need to use it as opposed to our electric model shown in the previous articles.

Grain Grinder, Manual Type

There are other things you can do with wheat besides make bread. Such as.......

Making Graham Crackers & Pie

Fern's Low Carb Meat Pie

We consider wheat to be a very important part of our food storage. We eat bread everyday. If a collapse scenario occurred, making and eating bread would be one of the things I would try to maintain, for our nutrition, health and peace of mind. One of our newest traditions is having a fresh tortilla every afternoon with a cup of coffee. Now when I make bread, I freeze a large portion of the dough to use for daily tortillas. I keep a bowl of thawed dough in the refrigerator, set some out on the counter in a bowl to come to room temperature for use each afternoon. A fresh, hot tortilla with a little butter and salt is a very welcome part of our diet.

Folks, it is indeed a very hot summer. The 'events' in our country appear to wax and wane, but overall the heat and intensity of our nation's discontent cannot be overlooked. Food prices continue to rise. Growing conditions around the country are strange this year, with food production being impacted in very unusual ways. It appears that the days of taking for granted the fully stocked shelves at the grocery store may become a thing of the past. We seldom go to a store, but lately the shelves appear to have fewer thin or bare spots. The increase in prices, though continues to surprise us every time we go.

Think nutrition. Think calories. Think how deep you need to stock your shelves to provide for you and yours for the long term. We don't know how the plandemic will turn out. We don't know how the communist, anarchist attempts at overthrowing our government will turn out. We don't know if a war will break out. We don't know what is going on anymore, what is true, what is total lies, smoke and mirrors. What we do know is that there is a good probability that we will be on our own, left to our own devices. And in that case. You need food. You need nutrition. You need calories. For everyone within your realm of responsibility. None of us ever want to be in the situation where our loved one looks us in the eye and says, "Daddy, I'm hungry." Not when we had the opportunity to do something about it ahead of time. Folks, don't be too late. The consequences will be too much to bear if you are.

Until next time - Fern

The Incredible Pinto Bean

In these times of food uncertainty, nutrition and calories are paramount in my books. What I am going to write about pinto beans could generally apply to most shell beans, such as lima or navy. I have had some questions about canning pinto beans so I will include what I know and have experienced here.

First off, if you can find dry beans, I would recommend you buy them. As many as you can afford and find available. I tried to look up bulk pinto beans in preparation to write this article and find that many bulk providers are out, or only have one pound bags or like Amazon, who has a 24 pound bucket for $63.92!! or a 25 pound box for $57.69 or a 20 pound bag for $54.25. I am afraid most people cannot afford these prices. If you have waited this long to try to stock up some long term nutrition, I am afraid you probably waited too long.

We received an email with some information about bulk food items that may be useful to you. We appreciate the effort this person made in sharing a resource with all of us. Here is the email in part:

You mentioned, however, that bulk foods are getting difficult to find. I am LDS and have used the LDS Home Storage Centers for years. You may know all about them. But in case you don't, they are open to everyone and carry bulk items. You can choose to buy 25 pound sacks of wheat or you can buy #10 cans of wheat in cases. You can buy it In a home storage center or you can buy it online and have it shipped to your home. They just want people to have food storage, so there is not a huge markup. Most of the packaging is done in Salt Lake by missionaries who are donating their labor. The older couples who run the centers are also donating their labor.

All of their locations are listed here:

https://providentliving.churchofjesuschrist.org/self-reliance/food-storage/home-storage-center-locations?lang=eng

Here is their product and price list:

https://providentliving.churchofjesuschrist.org/food-storage/home-storage-center-locations-map?lang=eng

Many of their items are out of stock with all of the crazy buying that has been happening over the last few months, but my local center has restocked many of the products that I use and my brother, who uses a center close to his home in Virginia, tells me they have many items back in stock as well. I just bought more white wheat, red wheat, elbow macaroni noodles, and spaghetti. So if you are interested, it is worth calling the center nearest to you and asking what they have in stock.

I don't know if this is of any interest to you, but in times like this we should help each other however we can. 

Nutrition. Everyday, but now more than ever, I turn to foods I know will provide good nutrition. This will be crucial as food supplies continue to be impacted by the Plandemic and resulting economic disruptions. I use this website for comparing nutritional values on many foods.

Beans, pinto, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, with salt

As you can see, one cup of cooked pinto beans with water and salt packs a powerful punch, thus our preference for it. It is often said that beans and rice make the perfect protein. We don't eat rice, but we do eat wheat in the form of sourdough bread or tortillas. We prefer wheat to rice for the comparative nutritional value the wheat provides.

We have a number of buckets of pinto beans that we have had for at least 10 years, which by the way, came from the LDS Home Storage Center in Oklahoma City. We bought in bulk and stored in our own buckets with Gamma Seal lids. If you're not aware, LDS stands for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or commonly called Mormons. I have long thought theses beans would be too hard to cook and eat, and that is true. I also thought they would be too hard to can. This is one of those instances that I was more than happy to be wrong.

Last winter I wanted to get more pintos canned and on the shelf for everyday eating, and to have if the country and world went south. I bought several four pound bags from Wal-Mart, before the virus when they were still available, and we canned a batch of 32 pints. Then recently, we decided to find out if those old beans were still usable. We put three pounds of beans in eight quarts of water and brought them to a boil in the late afternoon. Let them boil for five minutes, then let them sit until morning. I turned the fire on low when I got up around 6:00am and let them simmer until morning chores were done and we were ready to fire up the canner. Here are both types of beans. Both great, on the shelf and ready to eat. The 2010 beans turned out great, good texture and flavor. The older beans are on the left and the Wal-Mart beans are on the right in this picture. Some of the benefits of having beans canned and ready to go is that if you want a quick meal, or the world doesn't allow time to cook a pot of beans, you have nutrition, water and salt ready to nurture your body.

This summer one of my goals is to grow, harvest and can as many pinto beans as possible. In a survival scenario we need calories for energy and adequate protein. Pinto beans provide 245 calories per cup, a healthy form of carbohydrates that does not cause an insulin spike with a quick drop off in energy, and a good level of protein. In my books, an excellent form of nutrition any time.

Our first harvest of beans yielded 10 1/2 pounds from about two 30 foot rows of plants. Now this is not equivalent to the same weight of dry beans because they were fresh. Some were partially dried, but most still retained a lot of moisture. We canned 32 pints with enough beans left over for another 3 pints. I was very pleased with the yield and hope the plants will continue to bloom and provide another harvest or two before fall.

To can fresh or dried beans, we bring them to a boil the evening before, then let them sit overnight. In the morning, simmer until ready to can. We use the liquid from the pot to fill the jars. In pint jars, fill with beans about 2/3 full, add 1/2 tsp. non-iodized salt, fill to within 1/2" of the top with bean liquid, then pressure can at 10 pounds for 40 minutes. This timing comes from our Stocking Up canning book.

Jacob's Cattle Beans

Something I learned about canning fresh beans as opposed to dried beans. Fresh beans tend to be much softer when you cook or can them. I prefer a bean with a more firm texture, like the old beans and the Wal-Mart beans. We grew Jacob's Cattle beans a few years back. It's another shell bean very similar to a pinto. We also canned them fresh and they were much softer, just like the pintos we just harvested and canned. I always thought the softness was just the nature of the Jacob's bean and never thought about the difference in canning fresh instead of dried. Accidental learning can be a very interesting teacher. Now, instead of canning our next harvest fresh, I will dry them first and see if I can get the type of canned bean I prefer instead of the softer variety. One benefit of the soft beans is the ease at making a type of refried bean for tortillas. By the way, if you have trouble finding pinto bean seed to plant, the ones from Wal-Mart work just fine.

A few years back we tried a different method of canning beans we had read somewhere. In quart jars we added dried pinto beans to half of the jar, filled with boiling water and 1 tsp. salt, then canned according to recommended time (I don't remember now how long.) They were tough and crunchy. I don't know how old the beans were or any other details, but we found out for us, this process didn't work.

Ground pork, pintos & salsa with sauteed cabbage

There are many different ways to add beans to a meal for a nutritional boost. I've already mentioned refried beans and a bowl of beans. You can add them to soup or to just about any dish. Like this. But folks, nutrition and energy is, and will be the name of the game as our future continues to unfold. I pray the day never comes that I can't sit in my comfortable, air conditioned home and type on a computer on the internet. Just how much infrastructure has to remain in place for me to continue doing this? How long will it last?

We will never forget someone asking us why we go to all this work to raise and preserve our harvest. Why do all that work when you can just buy it at the store, they asked. Because now you have a hard time finding or affording the humble pinto bean at the store. Grow it or buy it, food is of utmost importance right now for everyone. Like I've said before, regardless of the events surrounding us, peace or anarchy, without food, you are dead.

Until next time - Fern

A New Era of Individual Responsibility?

COVID19 will be a part of the world's vocabulary for many years to come. Discussions of the impact it has had on countries, cities, towns, neighborhoods and families will be ongoing for many years. We don't even know what those impacts will be, for they have yet to play out in real time. History in the making, right in front of our eyes.

If you or yours have suffered a loss as a result of this virus, our hearts and prayers to out to you. There have been many difficult situations and fears that have been heart breaking. I look forward to the time that I can go into the nursing home to see my mother again. Visiting through the window with someone in the advance stages of dementia is very difficult. She doesn't understand and it just breaks my heart.

After the initial scare of a raging pandemic that was predicted to kill millions and millions of people, leading to shortages at the store, and overwhelming the ability of the medical industry to cope, we are now in the stage of trying to regroup and regain a sense of normalcy. The resulting stay-at-home/lock down orders have highlighted some of the tendencies of governments to initiate and strengthen their desire to control the lives of the people they 'govern', showing they aren't in the position to serve the people, but to control them. Some of the serfs are not happy with this. Most of us initially complied under the false narrative of the severity of the virus and pending threat of death by a virus - the invisible enemy, President Trump calls it. 

But this isn't an analysis of the advice given to the President by his task force members that are also trying to roll out their own agendas of control. Personally, I think this has been a bioweapon unleashed upon the world as a backlash for leaders and countries backtracking from the One World Government and attempt to control everyone and every country in it. Control. Ultimate control of everyone through the monetary system, the food supply, medical attention, the ability to work and provide for the family. All of it. The whole package deal. Life. And everything that it entails.

No, this article isn't about that. You can read many different articles and opinions about those topics. This is about the changes some people appear to be making in their lives. For instance. Why are the Mom & Pop mail order chicken hatcheries unable to fulfill orders until late summer now? Why are seed companies out of seeds? Why are gun and ammo suppliers seeing record all time sales and shortages? There are shortages of radios - alternate forms of communication. Why are the shelves at the store that hold beans, rice, pasta, flour and other staples mostly empty? Why are the news stories on the mainstream sites showing how to make bread, how to bake, how to cook?

Frank and I have discussed for years that if just a tiny percentage of the population of our country woke up one day and realized they would run out of food, went to the store and bought enough for a week that the shelves would be empty. Then along came COVID19. And it happened. And it continues to happen. And the prices of everything are going up, except for oil and gasoline. It appears they will continue to go up. Excuses for that? Supply chain disruption, it's China's fault, it's...... It really doesn't matter what caused "it" and what is going to continue causing our new normal to unfold. The fact of the matter is the future will unfold whether we like it or not, vote for it or not, or deal with it or not.

Frank and I chose our life style decades ago. We have worked toward this level of self-sufficiency for a long time and have realized many of our dreams. Now we are working on new dreams, how to maintain as much independence as we can, as long as we can, while we 'grow' into old age. We are in a time of change in our lives. The parallel is that now the whole world is in a time of change with no real sense of the direction it will take. A true time of cognitive dissonance where normal has flown out the window, never to be seen again. Where did it go? How did it leave so fast? Amazing, isn't it?

Now people are searching for ways to manage, ways to provide for their families, ways to continue to be independent without leaning on the government, food banks, or other means of income. Will this lead to a new era of individual responsibility or an ever growing population that expects everything to be provided? 

The few times we have been out and about in a very limited fashion over the last month or so, we have noticed more garden spots. Some large, some small, some in tubs or buckets. We find that to be very encouraging. We have heard of some folks that are focusing more on food and provisions, for the time being anyway. Will it continue? Will this be a wake up call for some that priorities need to be changed and focused on the real things in life? I think once the restrictions are lifted there will be a rush to regain the old normal, only to find it no longer exists. Some behaviors will be driven by fear of the virus and the effects it will have. Government overreach in it's many facets will be here to stay unless people stand up and install those that would reverse the heavy handedness that has shown up in some areas. At this point, I would say the future is an open book with blank pages. If things are allowed to continue the way they have been going it's just a matter of time before we are all locked down, tracked, banned and told to sit back and shut up. But that's not my focus here.

Take stock of your shelves. How long will your food last if you could never buy one more scrap of food? Without Food, You are Dead. I wrote about it not long ago. Control of the food supply can and will control you. Period.

What can you do to supplement, stretch, extend your food supply to the maximum extent possible? What do you need to learn to increase that supply even more? We have been writing here on and off for a number of years about our attempts to grow food and raise animals to increase our self-sufficiency. If you haven't been reading here very long, check the list of articles and pages that may lead you to some information that may benefit you. Frank has written extensive articles on radio communications that will explain how to set up a network of communication for your family or area in case cell phones are down. There are many articles on gardening, raising goats, chickens and pigs. We have written about reusable products you can make, like the masks that are being made around the world right now. If you have questions, ask. We and other readers are always ready to share our experiences in the hopes it may help another.

We're all in this together folks. Some days it looks like we have fallen over the cliff of no return to soon crash at the bottom with a resounding thud. Other days? It just looks real dicey. We have yet to see if more serious food shortages and economic calamities are right around the corner. At this point, I think the virus is the least of our worries. I can only hope it is a new era of individual responsibility which will lead more people to step up and take care of their own instead of holding out their hand for more while they scream about someone not wearing a mask.

Pay attention. Take notice and take stock of your shelves and yourself. No one is coming to save you. If They show up at all, don't get on the bus.

Until next time - Fern



By the way. Does anyone know why some of the pictures in our last few articles have disappeared? All of them were taken at the same time, none were downloaded from the internet. I haven't researched the problem, it just wasn't that important to me. It may be a simple fix.

Our Normal Abnormal Life

In many ways, our life hasn't changed much. We milk goats, make cheese, plant the garden, eat at home and don't socialize. This is pretty normal for us. Now that I cannot visit my Mom in the nursing home except through the closed, glass door, which we did for the first time today, we seldom go anywhere. While we were in town today we went to the store. Frank stayed in the vehicle while I went in to get apples. I wore gloves and cleaned my hands with an alcohol soaked wash cloth when I was finished. I took note of some of the store shelves while I was in there. The produce section was fully stocked. There was very little pasta, no spaghetti sauce in jars or cans, and only a few cans of spaghetti-o kinds of foods. There were no dried beans or flour of any kind. Many of the canned vegetables were sparse. I didn't go down any other isles, so that is my report for the grocery store today. It is a smaller, local grocery, not the Wal-Mart type.

A few weeks ago we stocked up on animal feed, filling every container we have to the brim. That will last us well into summer if not beyond. We stocked up on fresh apples and cabbage, too, but that's about the only store bought items we wanted/needed. The new air lock version of making sauerkraut has taken a backseat to the fermenting crock again for now. Even though it will take us months to eat the full crock that is percolating away at the moment, that's okay. It's nice to know we have months of nutritious, probiotic kraut awaiting our dietary needs.

Most of our routines haven't changed, so here is a pictorial of some of the things we're doing during this normal/abnormal life. We're still making cheese and sourdough bread, although we have started making tortillas out of most of the bread dough, just because we like them. We eat them fresh everyday with a little butter and salt. The dough freezes and stores well in the frig, so I can take out what I need for each day, let it come to room temperature on the cabinet, then cook them when we are ready to eat. If we do happen to experience a collapse, making small, daily batches of dough for fresh tortillas will be easier than trying to bake bread or rolls. Just a thought I have had when we transitioned to making daily tortillas.

Bread dough in the bowl, cheddar cheese in the stock pots

Some of the seedlings are now in the garden. If we get a frost, we'll need to cover the tomatoes and squash. 

Seedlings hardening off from the greenhouse

Tomato seedlings

The large tomato that grew in the greenhouse over the winter.

Whey from cheese making to water in the tomato seedlings.

Tomato seedlings

Carrots

Yellow squash

It's been very wet and muddy for about a month now.

This week we had record high temperatures in the 90's. This weekend we will probably have a frost. It reminds me of the challenges farmers are having with the food supply and the issues with the solar minimum and how it affects weather extremes. The Ice Age Farmer is listed on our blog roll. He has some interesting things about the solar cycle and food supply. The pepper and beet seedlings will have to wait for the frost to pass to be planted.
 

Peppers

Beets on my planting wagon.

We thought a few more hoses were in order.

Frank used a garden hose to fill our storage tank from the water well by the greenhouse. We can use it for the garden or drinking water if necessary.

The world? Our country? Outside of the virus, the economy is on the verge of imploding. The effects of the virus don't appear to be near as devastating as the hysteria and overreach of the government indicates it was 'supposed' to be. There is some underlying sinister plot in play that hasn't raised it's ugly head into the light of day yet. When it does, I don't know if it will have the ugly head of a fire breathing dragon or the boot of the man upon our throats. It is difficult to find any clues or facts (how to know what is true or not is impossible anymore) that lead to any logical conclusions at all.

And then there are the 'essential workers' that have received their "papers" for safe travel to and from work. When I hear the term "Papers, please." it makes me think of a World War with major restrictions and controls upon the activities of societies across the globe. We know a man that received his "papers" a few weeks ago indicating he works in an essential industry, then received a comment recently with the same scenario. Is there a time coming when all travel will be restricted without official "papers"?

Phone apps are being developed to track people that have been infected, are suspected of being infected, have been vaccinated (once it becomes available) or haven't, and probably who is using all of that 'dirty' germ laden money. With many, many people staying home or drastically restricting their travel voluntarily due to fear, those that are out and about will be easier to track. Why is this really desirable? I don't really think it has anything to do with a disease.

So, we will continue to stay home, order a few things online to be delivered and continue our normal/abnormal life. There are times when the vision of what we see coming down the road is almost paralyzing. Other times, we continue our daily routine, just like any other spring, only with the feeling we need to keep an eye out over our shoulder for that sinister overshadowing that creeps ever closer. We used to say the storm is coming, get prepared. Now? The storm is here and it's too late.

We would really like to hear what you think and what is happening in your area. When it rains, it rains on all of us. We are all in this together. Speak up now while you still can. You never know when something you say may help another.

Until next time - Fern
 

Homestead News, Volume 22

I keep going back to the quote on the last article.

"Consider what you would do if you knew [we inserted if you actually BELIEVED] your country had already moved beyond the point of no return."

When Frank and I discussed this quote, my response was we would keep doing what we are doing, because we do know that we are beyond the point of no return. So, with that, here is the next homestead update and some of the things we are doing to prepare.

We are watering the garden with the water well and a 12volt pump. Why now? It's time. We have had this well and pump since late 2008. It's been waiting in the wings. This spring Frank looked on the shelf at the box with the pump in it again, took it down and figured out what we needed to install it. Nothing. We had everything we needed, it was just putting in the time and effort to install it. Since then we have treated the well, pumped out the old stagnant water, treated it again and had it tested twice. The first time there was still one type of coliform bacteria in it, so we treated it again. The second time it came out clean. We've been watering the garden in two hour intervals about three times a week. When we started using the pump, we measured the production which is about three gallons a minute. This was one of the first things that came to my mind when we read that quote.

Frank's next step will to be to install solar panels on top of the greenhouse which he has already configured, installed onto a framework and wired together. These panels will connect with a battery bank which is already installed in the greenhouse with a charge controller, and will be used to run the well pump. He is just waiting for cooler temperatures and some help. It won't be long. We have some ideas running around in our heads about pressure tanks and plumbing the well into the house, but that is down the list quite a ways and may or may not materialize.
 

Next. Food. We have been canning more tomatoes and tomato sauce to replenish the stock. We canned instead of froze our winter squash. Today we finished grinding the remaining beef in the freezer. A few days ago some of it went to making and canning 14 quarts of chili.

We have plenty of cowpeas on the shelf, so this patch will be picked, left whole in the pod, and dried in the greenhouse. This will be some of our winter animal feed. It will be interesting to see how well it keeps and how well the animals like them. The goats love fresh pods, with or without the peas. The chickens like the fresh or dried peas, but not the pods.

Several of you have asked about the amaranth experiment. The spring planted crop is still producing even after four cuttings. I have learned to let the heads turn an almost rusty, golden, brown to make sure they are ripe to pick. The heads dry in the greenhouse, then I remove the seeds, winnow the chaff and save the stems and chaff for the goats, which they are eating quite well. They like it.
 

The summer planted amaranth crop has not done well at all. They grew very slowly, then started falling over. Turns out the pigweed weevil loves amaranth stems. Amaranth and pigweed are in the same family and wild amaranth, which is called pigweed, grows here quite well. All over the garden, in

fact. It's just that I didn't know what it was until this year when I grew amaranth and right beside it was this weed that had leaves exactly the same. Interesting, the learning opportunities that come along. Well, after the weevils came the cabbage moths, or I think that's what they were.

Many of the plant's growing heads became covered with sticky webs, small worms and black clots of eggs. I picked these heads off and fed them to the chickens. This batch of amaranth is just now starting to show seed heads even though some of them are much taller and thicker stemmed than the spring crop. They won't have time to mature before frost. We plan to pull these plants and hang them whole to dry for winter animal feed. We'll see how that goes.
 

Amaranth seed heads drying in the greenhouse

Wheat on the left, amaranth on the right

The amaranth seed we have been able to harvest is going into our bread. We tried the seed whole a few times, then started grinding it with the KitchenAid grinder on the finest setting, otherwise the grains are so small they fall right through the grinder. I like the additional nutrition this adds to our bread. We have not tried eating any of the greens even though we have read that they are edible in both salads and cooked as greens. Maybe next year. 

Our focus has been on increasing the food supply for our animals and ourselves. We consider our goats and chickens to be an important part of our food supply. Our garden has now become not only our food supply, but some of theirs as well. Since writing this article and running across the Ice Age Farmer, we feel it is wise to grow or store as much food as is practicable. The Ice Age Farmer had a couple of interesting videos out yesterday about cooler temperatures affecting crops this year due to the solar minimum and about some scientists saying we will have to rely on cannibalism for protein in our diet to help with global warming. Folks there are some very strange things going on with food and food control. Some people have some very perverted, dangerous ideas they are actually presenting to the public, not in some dark, back room. The more we can rely on ourselves and what is on our shelves, the better off we will be.

Wouldn't it be great to be wrong? Wouldn't it be fun to sit back and watch trash stuff on television and eat ice cream out of the carton (as long as someone

hadn't licked all over it and put it back on the shelf in the store)? Wouldn't it be grand to be clueless, hopeless and caught totally unaware when there are no more cell phone signals, television signals, talking boxes that can answer every question you ever had, a myriad of devices that can watch, track and record your every sound and move, in every room in your house, even in your bedroom? Wouldn't it be great to know that there will always be food on the store shelves, gasoline for your car, Amazon delivery right to your front door and free stuff from the government? Wouldn't it be great to have friends to count on in the event of a collapse that wouldn't come and kill you for your stuff because they were the grasshoppers while you were the ant? 

Wouldn't it?

What would we do if we knew that our country had already moved beyond the point of no return? We have been doing it most of our adult lives. Preparing. Learning. Practicing. It's why we became reserve police officers before Y2K, became EMTs in remote Alaska, lived on a homestead where financial resources were focused on creating a sustainable life, learning what grows here, and how to care for animals that will help feed us. And now we've been drawn to this place, this world of the internet to share with those that might listen and that will teach us in return. Every last thing we can learn, practice and practice some more, will help us in this journey as we all fall off the cliff of civility and normality. Stay safe.

Until next time - Fern