PREPS AMD MONEY

I am awaiting the completion of our supper. The wife cooked up some homemade tomato sauce this weekend and we are having spaghetti and meatballs tonight. I was asked to taste the sauce when it was done and I can vouch for the skill of the Handmaiden. Delicious. A lot of the ingredients for the sauce came from our garden and the Handmaiden's foraging. Can't beat the price. There ain't a whole lot for me to do at this point so I type at the blog. That is a good use of my time.



The Handmaiden sorted through more beans this afternoon. It was warm and there was a touch of breeze on the porch so she got to it. She does the sorting in a sieve. Works very well. Not many beans failed her inspection and we now have about three pounds of Black Beans freezing their little butts off. They are alongside about ten pounds of our homegrown Horticulture beans, commonly referred to as Cranberry beans. We have forty pounds or so of different beans to go through and it is well worth the effort. After the beans come out of the freezer we put it a dollop of Bay Leaves for extra measure. No more risk taking. We have declared war on the bugs. They will cost us food and money if they are allowed to continue having their way. It is a good thing I pushed for an inventory of our preps. This is how we discovered our predicament. And it is how we came to the solution we are using. Necessity is the mother of all invention. But we have much too much invested in time and money and energy to let this stuff go to hell. I fully believe that we are about to go into a rough time in the lives of ordinary Americans and food will be a nice thing to have around. After all, the fedgov raised their standard to folks needing to have 2 weeks of food on hand instead of a few days. I think they were about 50 weeks short of the mark but that is merely a difference of opinion.



Another item on the food front is the possibility of getting a cow-share going with a local farmer. Good clean cows and tested and all that stuff and you buy a share of a cow and get your milk that way. Lots of cream and good enzymes in that whole milk! And it hasn't been all killed by factory processes. I may partake of this cow-share offer. I have read about it a little bit and I think I might like it. I know I like that cream on my fruit every night. Strawberries. Blueberries, Baked Apples. hummmm, good.



In perusing the financial blogs and pages today I was amazed that people still do not know where to turn. The $100 bill went up 6 cents in value. Crude oil finished flat across the board. The DJIA went down $180.51. These people, with all their power and money, cannot make this economy obey. There are just too many screw-ups in the system for anyone to handle. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac are looming on the horizon. They are both about fifty billion in the hole, for a one hundred billion dollar failure. No one is even talking about Ginny Mae as yet. The list keeps growing and growing.



The heavy duty economic writers on the blogs and the web pages say that the worst is yet to come. They say there is stuff buried in the accounts of these banks and pension funds that will stagger the imagination. I can remember when the sub-prime mortgages were the problem of banks that played fast and loose and recklessly with the public money. But there were still banks who had not done that, right? Wrong! They all did it. Every last one of the big bastards got in on it. Hide and watch. It will be fun and games for those who are prepared. So get on board the survival train and go for the ride of the century. And write it all down so your grandkids will know what you went though. And stay alive. I'll post this in the morning.



Michael



mboone@rtccom.net