PREPS AND WATER, ETC.

Ahhh....the 1st of September and the morning is a little chilly. I like the Fall and Spring the best. A little warmth during the day and coolness at night. The garden has startedt to dry up from lack of water. Someone tampered with the water pipe from the spring and the guy who went to fix it couldn't get the job done. But my beans made it just fine. They are nice and dry and done. And the Handmaiden is going to pick some today and I will be snapping beans like a mad man, God willing. I gave away two pounds of the beans yesterday to a man who I hope to persuade to prep. A little personal project. It has to be handled just right.

It looks like Hurricane Gustav is about to go ashore and head West in Louisiana, with most of the force missing New Orleans. But New Orleans is gonna get some wind. Oh yeah. Probably gonna get some rain too. Lots of rain. But the tracking cone looks like it will miss southern Mississippi looks like it will escape the brunt of the force. Mike Kemp, lately of the SCOPE CUT post, is hanging in down there as best he can. And if you haven't read the post on SCOPE CUT and the comments that come with it, you have missed the show. Highly educational and more than a little bit emotional. Try it.

The Handmaiden and I are very happy with the amount of food we have in storage. To amass what we have on our low income is amazing the hell out of us. She has been drying tomatoes and mint leaves, so we will have good tea and good nutrition this Winter. Sun dried tomatoes are funny in that they are so light but so strong in tomato taste. Sun drying them really concentrates the flavor. I'll try to get her to type us an article on the how-to-do of drying the little red beauties. I need to go check my corn and see if it has "made" yet. There is not a whole lot of it but it is non-hybrid and can be used for seed next Spring. Saving seed is such a great thing when you are poor. Ten dollars worth of seed this year can easily produce a few hundred dollars worth of seed for next year. We will have to get up a care package for Mike Kemp and send him some bean and corn seed for next year. I'll be sure to send him detailed instructions as to how to deal with this seed. Hah!

Mayberry and Dragon seem to be getting along just fine. Dragon is working and Mayberry is cooking outside for his family. Both are into planning things in a positive manner. Love it.

The wife is getting my breakfast ready on this fine morning. I love breakfast. It is my favorite meal of the day. And for years I never ate it. Lots of coffee in the morning and then about lunch time I was ready to eat. But somewhere in my 40's I started to eat breakfast and that has not changed.

I am reading articles by various bloggers about shooting and keeping in practice. My thoughts on this are "if you can afford the ammo, do it." I learned a long time ago that shooting was a deteriorating skill and if you don't keep up with it you lose your edge. Oh, and don't go hunting with Dick Cheney!

There is so much stuff about water these days. People living way out in the country are on what they call MUD. That means Municipal Utilities Department. And that means they are hooked into the system for their water and I think that is horseshit. Get land with a spring on it or a shallow well that you can easily pump by hand. To hell with buying water. If you can't see what this system is trying to do with the necessities of life then you are not paying attention. We are in a slow slide toward oblivion. Our options are being cut every day. Let us call this situation "get less and pay more." As the working class and the middle class get reduced to peons, we will get charged more and more money for what we have to have to live and we will get less and less of it as time goes by. Then you will find yourself a peon, subject to the will of the state and it's minion the corporation. This will tend to keep the populace docile and subservient, which is exactly what the state wishes you to be. Get a grip on this concept! Don't forget that a bill was introduced in the Pennsylvania state legislature in the 90's to start putting meters on farmers wells and charging them for the water they used. There is nothing beneath the dignity of our politicians. They will do everything and anything to keep power and control. And if it means keeping you on short rations concerning water use, then they will do just that. There are a few places in this country that charge for the amount of rainfall that falls on peoples years. They justify this on the cost of storm sewers that have to be built.

Although I am not a big fan of cisterns, if you can collect rainwater from your roof and hold it until you want to use it, then you will be ahead of the game, as far as I am concerned. Of course, this could all come down to a shooing war but you know the American public does not have the guts for anything like that. Sissies! We shall just have to see what happens. Since I am a firm believer in error being it's own reward, something will probably happen and the various governments will be caught up in another area and let us little guys escape. Wouldn't that be just too bad.

Stay alive!

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net