GOITER AND PROTEIN

Just looking at the trees and the grass and the crops and whatnot from my porch. So much 0of a bounty in this place. Of course only about 13 or 14 percent of it is tillable but that beats the hell out of nothing! There is much to be done with our fields and our creeks but we have not pursued agriculture to any great degree. We have concentrated on MONEY. Ah yes. Good old money. Just take you a handful and stuff it into your mouth and see how good it tastes and how much it does for your body. And you know that last statement was a shuck from the very beginning. You can't eat money. You have to eat what we call FOOD. Food generally consists of vegetables and meat, with a rock thrown in call salt. The salt is ground up very fine so it will easily come out of salt shakers. Salt is also supposed to have Iodine bonded with it. Not is a noticeable amount but just enough to keep you from getting a Goiter. A Goiter is an enlargement of your Thyroid gland. Most Goiters were caused by Iodine deficiency. Now days we get plenty of Iodine in our Salt and goiter is nowhere around, like it used to be. Where I live in southern Indiana used to be called the Goiter Belt. Morton Iodized Salt stopped all of that. There are maybe a couple very minor causes of Goiter that will involve a doctor and more knowledge than I have, but a prepper, a person getting prepared, should stock up on Iodized Salt or Sea Salt. The salt from the ocean has Iodine in it. But anyhow, do not fail to get salt for your retreat. It is essential to life and it has the necessary Iodine to keep your Thyroid healthy. Ain't much sense buying salt with no Iodine except to melt snow or tan hides.

But I am not going to spend the afternoon talking about Salt and Goiters. I want to talk about food. You need Protein and vitamins and minerals. You need fiber. And of course, you need water. My garden efforts are mainly focused on Crops and not salads, but I love salads. My wife cuts up a little meat and cheese with my salad greens and that makes a meal. to my way of thinking. But I am of the school of thought that says you gotta eat protein. I am in no way a vegetarian. I eat all kinds of meat and I think it is good for me. But if I run low on meat I know that I can make it on a mixture of grain and legumes. Grain is Rice or Corn or Wheat. A legume is beans and peas and lentils. Or maybe lentils are beans. I can't remember but I know the wife can. Those people down in Louisiana scarfing down all those meals of Red Beans and Rice are getting their protein. But the food does not have to be southern spiced beans and rice. It can be Great Northern beans mixed with some rice, or served with some cornbread. I enjoy eating Hominy. Love the stuff. If someone has a good method of making Hominy I would really appreciate you sending it to me. A bowl of Hominy and a bowl of beans sitting side by side in front of me at the table would crank me right up! And do not forget about putting a little meat in your bean pot. All those cute little Tweety birds flitting about over the local landscape will cook up just fine in your beans as they cook soft. Red Birds, Black Birds, Blue Birds, Boattailed Grackles, Robins, Sparrows, Wrens, and all kinds of seed eaters will do you up just fine. I would avoid the scavengers and the carrion eaters. Of course, Ducks and Geese are the creme de la creme and you might not want to just cook them in your beans. But those other birds can be cleaned and tossed in the bean pot to cook for a while and studies have shown that it really increases you protein uptake. You ought to use every trick in the book to get your protein allotment. It is necessary for survival.

You ought to really consider growing chickens for both meat and eggs. Keeping a few sows and a boar will keep you in some good sausage and pork chops. Just remember that the bigger the animal the more meat you will have to deal with. Butchering a 600 pound calf makes more meat than a little nuclear family can handle without a lot of preservation. Cattle, meat goats, sheep and hogs carry a significant amount of meat on them and you must be prepared AHEAD OF TIME to deal with it. One of the tell-tale signs of raiders being in your area is discovering dead animals with only the choice parts eaten and the rest left to rot. There are many ways to preserve food and a prepper will know all about them. The wife and I have acquired a pretty big library on how to preserve certain things we eat. The electricity may not be flowing through the wires one of these days and food will require more attention than we are used to giving it. You can't just throw something in the fridge or the freezer if the juice ain't running.

I am a fan of dried vegetables, if they are the kind that dry and store like you need them to be. Beans and Peas and Grains all store very well if you get them dried. And drying IS A METHOD OF PRESERVATION. And while I am on this subject I would like to make a few points for your edification. For the sake of brevity let us say that the garden is done on October the first. I don't know where you live so I am just setting that time as a reckoning point. So on that date your fresh vegetables are history until the next year. So you now have until the middle of next Spring to deal with a vegetable drought unless you have PRESERVED enough to get you through. And I know there are tricks for the learned to do, such as cold weather crops and all of that. But unless you have the means to get the seed to grow cold weather crops you are out of luck. You have either preserved the food to get you through or you will do without. And doing without can be a real drag. A nagging belly and health problems and other folks complaining can make your life miserable. But you can preserve your food! Canning, drying, smoking, even freezing if you have the electricity. Otherwise you go half a year with no vegetables. And that can mess you up. You can preserve your meat on the hoof and claw it gets around on. Basically if you don't kill it, it doesn't rot. You can butcher a chicken and eat it just about any time of the year. If you have the food and water to keep it alive until you are ready for it. What I am really getting at is no matter how well you have prepped, the day is coming when your preps will run out. That is the day you are made or undone. For the initial crash I am all for having canned food to get you through. I am doing it myself. So would anyone with any kind of a brain. But it will run out and you will need to produce and preserve your own food. It is a fact of life. If you want you and yours to continue walking around on this planet then you better be able to feed yourself and your family and your friends. That means you must have livestock and non-hybrid seed. And you have to manage all of it. It is literally a lifestyle. It's a job. It is a career. And it is much easier if you have help. That is why I make such a clamor and din about a Clan. If there is a lot of work to do and not enough hands to accomplish it then something is not going to get done. It's a law of nature. Our ancestors lived in Clans and we will be getting back to that in the near future. Think! Figure it out ahead of time. Don't go into the future with your eyes closed. And stay alive.