MORE ON FOOD

The high cost of cheap food. http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/highcost.pdf is a good article on why food is going up in this country and around the world. The news yesterday that Russia and Venezuela lowered their food prices prior to their recent elections and got the net result of lowered food supplies in their countries is an indication of what is taking place globally. You pay or you don't eat.

Stumble bums like Bush come up with weird ideas like gasahol from corn and what not. Now the price of corn is going through the roof and you can't buy any sugar for a decent price. The trick to this is just cut your fuel consumption in half, or more. It costs a lot of money to drive anywhere these days. Gasoline is about $3.25 here in the countryside and has been predicted to go to $4.00. Nasty business. But the tanking dollar and the high cost of fuel will stop all this extra stuff people do anyhow.

I have a friend in very southern Mississippi who is getting his garden in right now. He said he didn't have non-hybrid seed available in his area and would have to go to the Internet to get it. Welcome to the club, my friend. I told him to go right ahead and plant his skag seed and get the crop. But I also admonished him top go ahead and get non-hybrid seed and plant it also. I told him I was ignorant of what skag seed and non-hybrid would do planted closely together so I told him to make another garden plot a good distance away for the non-hybrid vegetables. The hybrid seed will produce bulk food product to fill your gut. I cannot vouch for it's nutritional value, however. I read years ago that hybrid corn will not pick up 8 to 9 trace elements from the soil. I think that is why dumb animals will step over hybrid plants to get to non-hybrid. But humans are smart, you know. They'll eat the hybrid stuff and love it.

I told my friend to get a gardening book by some sort of decent human being who put the directions to saving seed in their book. If your gardening book won't tell you how to save the various seeds from your plants don't bother buying the damn thing.

We will be canning our produce this year with one of those cooker type of canning devices. You just load the big pan up with jars full of produce, put water in it to the level instructed, and turn the heat of and let 'er get hot for X-amount of time, depending on the vegetable in use. When the tenperature has reached it's prime and the time has elapsed for what you are processing, you put the lids on and then the rings and you have your canned goods. Sounds good but I have never done it so this will be a learning experience. I am working with some old folks who know how to do it so I will probably come out okay. In a multitude of counselors there is safety. If you do this be sure to get the directions and follow them to the letter. What is the use of doing all that work to grow and preserve and then have rotten product? Not my style!

I really don't know how this money thing is going to work out. Some think it is a tempest in a teapot and some say it is going to be a global depression. Make your own decision but get yor food thing taken care of. Don't leave yourself in a position where the global economy can screw you and leave you defenseless. The numbers for the dollar yesterday was that it had fallen to 73.72 cents. That was a 52 cent drop. Not too good, folks. You can get data on things like this from http://www.kitco.com/market/. I use it all the time.

You might take a wooden nickel or two these days. Might make good firestarters.

Stay alive!

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net