Sunday, May 18, 2014

Sunday Reading - A New Hope





My new job has added to my perspective of prepping and life after government debt/cheap oil. To be honest I am seeing a spark out there these days that gives me some hope things may not collapse into the "Mad Max" type scenario we sometimes hear about. For the first time I think I am actually seeing an advantage to the long slow collapse scenario that up until now I had thought was one of the worst possible outcomes.

Of course the government and the Liberal/Femocrat PC doctrine of wealth redistribution is still a very real threat but as resources dry up so does the amount of area even our juggernaut of a government can control. This is the final problem that I don't think any expert can answer because so much depends on how fast resources deplete and how quickly the tyrants move.

What has caught my attention however is the sheer number of small farm and/or sustainable operations I have been seeing lately. As I shuffle cars all about the countryside these days I have been taking some scenic roadways and I have been seeing a lot of interesting scenery to say the least. Small pastures of sheep and goats, gardens literally everywhere and homesteads popping up where I know there were none 10 or 15 years ago.

Enough for me to take notice. After years and years of being used to seeing large scale agricultural operations and then living this life as I have it seems I can spot the small operation immediately now. It's hard to put my finger on I guess, at least in any one example but I see the similarities in design, animal types, usage of materials and I just know.

I even saw a couple of apiaries here and there and I never remember seeing bee hives from the road before when driving around.

Small agriculture appears to making a big come back all over these days.

Another thing I noticed is a lot of old junk piles and rusted metal piles appear to be being removed. That could be a sign of people scrapping to make ends meet but it also means more small plots will be put into productive operation of some sort as well.

The times are changing my friends. It's slow, it's sometimes hard to identify unless you can see places with new eyes in a time lapse situation but it is happening. Like all change it started slow but I suspect it is speeding up as well.

Guess we will see.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!


17 comments:

  1. There is no doubt more people are running to ground.

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    1. Lurk - And I think the future rests almost entirely on those who are....

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  2. More people are starting to realize that if they want to feed and house themselves and their families, it's best not to depend on the charity of others. That gets old for both parties.

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    1. MV - It never seems to get old for those old government employees though :)

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  3. Rural America will bounce back faster then the big cities. small farms can adopt faster then the large one. We noticed this weekend the farmers are getting out working their fields.

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    1. Rob - Yes but the cheap fuel needs to go before the food get's scarce or the government will have the energy to begin confiscation and that does worry me.

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  4. I've told my husband for years that small family farms will make a comeback and they will be the salvation of agriculture in this country. He had always doubted that, he grew up during the hey day of bigger is better/spray everything with poison agriculture, but he is starting to see I just might be right. ;-)

    Miss Violet

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    1. MV - Ya my Step Father is kinda the same way but he does come around in the end. Many of my neighbors though are in for a rude awakening.

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  5. Hey PP

    Let's hope people figure out that they need to do something to take care of themselves.

    I was wondering what the sugar to water ratio was when you put hummingbird feeders up for your bees.

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    1. Spinner - I used a 1 to 1 sugar/water ratio. I was gonna do 2 to 1 but it was so cold most of the time the 2 to 1 mix wouldn't flow out of the holes at all. As it turned out two bee yards loved the hummingbird feeder syrup and one yard never touched the stuff. Not sure why.

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    2. Thanks, we had a swarm move into a hive that was empty and I thought I would try placing a humming bird feeder close by them until the black berrys started blooming.

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    3. You could make a boardman feeder with a canning jar and just punch holes in the top. Google one they look like they might be easy to make.

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  6. PP,

    I believe you're going to see more small farms/homesteads in the next several months. Come late summer, prices will be going up much more on fruits, vegetables, meats, cotton, etc...... due to drought, severe weather, fire, death of cattle, and disease.
    Therefore, shelves in the grocery markets won't be stocked as plentiful. It won't surprise me one bit to see our crime rate rise even more than it has.

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    1. Sandy - Ya. You know I am getting calls from local markets now asking me to deliver fresh produce this year, something that has never happened before.

      I think it is going to get interesting.

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  7. Sf - Or now that Kalifornia is drying up I guess Mexican veggies will be going up in price too.

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  8. Before the industrial revolution, Britain had a number of periods of declining population that were a sort of slow collapse. They weren't a lot of fun to live through, but It does show you can downsize without a complete societal collapse.

    Of course they also didn't pump their economies up into the stratosphere, and there are instances of these types of societies collapsing.

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