Why we prep
Here's another reason why you – and your friends and family – should prep:
Pakistan fires 'first submarine-launched nuclear-capable missile'
Well isn't this ducky? Pakistan, a supporter of various radical Islamic factions with an ICANW-estimated arsenal of 110 to 130 nuclear weapons, is working on being able to lob them from submarines.
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Wikipedia tells us, "Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries as it is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam" and their Constitution states "... that all laws are to conform with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah."
Sweet.
The days of America being protected from catastrophic attack by two wide ocean barriers is over. It has been for a while now. And although nations like Pakistan can't turn the U.S. into an atomic wasteland, they might well be able to take out the electrical grid.
And that would be game over.
If the lights go out and don't come back on, how are you going to eat?
And that's one of the reasons we prep.
I'm no longer the snow-lover I once was. Snow is great on postcards (for the folks my age) or desktop themes (to show how hip I am), but the days of my joining a bunch of friends for sledding in sub-zero weather have passed me by.
I might be more inclined to enjoy a snowstorm if I got to skip a day or two of school, but now I don't get to skip anything, including feeding the livestock, plowing the roads, digging out my neighbors (and myself) or defrosting a no-freeze water line. Don't get me wrong, as a resident of an often-parched part of the American Redoubt I'm glad to see God's blessing of slow-release water, but ...
The biggest problem with winter for the prepper is it shuts down a lot of projects. You can do only so much reloading, and even radio-com exercises get to be tedious.
However there is one thing that can bring a ray of summer sunshine into the McLene compound which occurs this time every year. It's our own snow-bound version of the return of the swallows to Capistrano: the annual arrival of the seed catalogs.
If you're a real prepper, you're also a farmer. Whether it's in your backyard, on the balcony of your condo, or preferably in your one acre (or better) garden, growing things to eat sustainably is a major prepper merit badge.
The term "sustainable" gets a bad rap these days because it's become a politicized club mainly used to keep socialism viable. Just like the terms "man" and "woman," its definition has been rendered meaningless by those who use it as a tool of control.
But "sustainable" has a very real definition for the self-sufficient set. Dictionary.com defines it as "... pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse."
Whether you've got a garden already established or are just starting out, your goal should be to increase your self-sufficiency in food production. And winter is the best time to plan your personal Eden.
On paper, gardening is easy. After all, all you need is WWF. (Not the World Wrestling Federation, although getting a few of those guys to pull the plow might be useful.) WWF is a simplistic acronym for Water, Warmth (from the sun) and Fertilizer.
But as a whole bunch of hippies from the 60s discovered to their dismay, "heading out to Eden" isn't as easy as it sounds.
This is the beginning of a series on prepper gardening, which is not the same thing as regular gardening, simply because the concept of gardening for the prepper is a far more serious endeavor. The standard backyard garden is a fun way to raise some veggies for personal enjoyment. If something goes wrong ... well, Costco is right down the street and they're having a special on kale.
But a prepper garden doesn't have that margin of failure, because if times are tight enough, the store shelves will be empty ... along with the belly of the prepper and his family. For the self-sufficient, gardening is a serious business that needs to be approached with careful planning and as much redundancy as possible.
For example: There's a drought, so no rainfall. Use the well. Power goes out and the well pump won't work? Use a hand pump. Well is too deep for a hand pump? Try water pumped from the pond. No pond? Use a well bucket ... and on and on.
Think this is a bit far-fetched? Well, in a long life I've had to do all of these things in what could be called normal times – and the power always came back on within a week. Imagine what it would be like if that week was a month. Or a year. Or never.
Gardening for self-sufficiency is a serious business, and there's a big learning curve. When I first started gardening many years ago, I failed miserably. Fortunately I had the time to learn from my mistakes; but if you've bought one of those "survival seed kits" and stuck it on the shelf right next to the gun you've never fired ... well, I suppose at least you can eat the seeds.
So the next few columns will be about specific ways to set up a prepper garden, or to convert your existing garden to your prepper requirements. We'll cover how much garden you need, the best ways to grow food in a limited space, choosing the appropriate seeds for your area, how to save seeds, designing and constructing efficient watering systems, pest control and how to protect your bounty from the "grasshoppers" (see the old fable about the grasshopper and the ants).
So throw another log on the fire, start dreaming about summer squash, and get prepared.
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