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What is the history of government-mandated rationing within the U.S.?
Since WWI, here is how things have played out:
World War 1
Though rationing was not mandated by the government in this war, the government did strongly encourage American citizens to self-regulate their consumption of certain goods. Slogans such as “Food Will Win the War” dominated war posters which were plastered in highly traveled areas.
“Meatless Tuesdays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays” and similar ration-themed days were advocated nationally, with an end result that food consumption within the US was decreased 15% from 1918-1919. (Ref: 1)
World War 2
It wasn’t until after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that the U.S. truly instituted severe rationing. The reasoning for this was that American soil had been attacked, we faced war on two fronts, and the threat of further attacks on American soil was highly likely.
Rationing had to be instituted in order to insure that American troops had the supplies that they needed. Though an annoyance, people generally didn’t have a problem with rationing during this war as they understood the importance of what rationing was accomplishing. There were no moral qualms among the nation in regards to WW2, and many had family overseas who were fighting for our freedom. As a result, rationing was a much more bearable burden.
Here is what was rationed in WW2:
1) Tires
There was a shortage of rubber due to the Japanese invading the parts of Southeast Asia where rubber was produced.
2) Metal goods
These included cars, metal office furniture, radios, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, dog food in tin cans, washing machines, sewing machines, toothpaste in metal tubes, typewriters, and bicycles
The metal and other raw materials which would normally be used to produce such goods instead were needed for the production of tanks, aircraft, and other weapons.
3) Fuels
For obvious reasons, gasoline was rationed in the form of gasoline cards. Government perceived need determined how much one would get per month. In addition to gasoline rationing, a national speed limit of 35mph was enacted (in order to save gas and rubber), and all sightseeing driving was banned.
Firewood and coal were rationed as well, making heating a home during the winter a much more difficult proposition.
4) Foodstuffs
Sugar, shortening, butter, margarine, meat, lard, cheese, processed foods, dried fruit, canned milk, jams/jellies, and fruit butter were all rationed during the course of the war.
Coffee was rationed as well due to German U-boats sinking Brazilian shipping vessels.
5) Medicines
Scarce medicines, most notably penicillin, were also rationed. Though this resulted in troops getting the medical supplies that they needed, it also resulted in civilian doctors being forced to choose between which patient would receive the life-saving medication that they needed and which one would die.
6) Clothing
Shoes, silk, and nylon were also rationed during the war. (Ref: 2, 3)
Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, War on Terror
No government-mandated rationing has occurred within the United States since World War 2.
What Lessons Can We Learn From This?
1) Rationing Doesn’t Happen Often
The first thing I believe that we can learn from the history of rationing within the United States is that it’s not something that happens often. It’s happened once.
The only likely way that government-induced rationing could occur would be if the US faced an attack on its soil that would require the majority of its resources to fight off a potential invasion. The last time that happened was World War 2. That leads me to my second point:
2) Rationing Depends on the Scope of Current Destruction
Obviously an event that wipes out the entire West Coast infrastructure is going to require some rationing on the Eastern Seaboard. Why? Because everything that previously was able to be produced and transported from the West would then be destroyed or radioactive.
Though the threat from Russia and China during the Korean and Vietnam War were both very real, the threats were more or less contained to a different side of the world than ours. Yes, there were instances such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, but as a whole the threat remained a threat. It didn’t finalize.
Had those missiles or bombers hit the States, then I do think that rationing would have happened again as the entire country would have been mobilized.
3) What is Rationed Often Depends on What is Destroyed
During WW2, it was the destruction of merchant vessels from other lands, and capture of strategic factories/material producing regions by the enemy which resulted in certain goods being rationed. The Japanese didn’t bomb our dairy farms though, so why on earth would butter be rationed?
For food items in particular, the main reason that they were rationed was because soldiers needed all the food they could get. If you give somebody 60+ lbs of gear to haul 20 miles a day through extremely difficult terrain in terrible weather all the while having their stress levels constantly elevated due to having to fight for their lives, they are going to need all of the calories that they can get.
As a result, foodstuffs would be rationed too. (It kind of makes producing your own food and homesteading sound good, huh?)
4) Rationing Being Unlikely Doesn’t Make Being Prepared Stupid
It would be foolish to assume that the ability to waltz on down to the supermarket any day of the week to purchase whatever you need/desire with a little square of plastic is something that will always be available. You would think power outages alone would be enough to convince people of this, but alas, that’s not always the case.
Anyone who has some cash, food, water, and other goods laid up already understands that.
The defining moment for me was when my wife and I were on vacation and the kettle corn vendor had a broken credit card reader. I had no cash, and as a result my wife had no ketlle corn. I learned my lesson real fast. Carry cash.
That same preparedness mindset has helped me to avoid other miseries at other times. After all, if just a single credit card reader malfunction could deny you access, couldn’t the power going out for any length of time cause even greater problems? What about the loss of a job?
In Conclusion
Though government induced rationing may not happen in the future, I would argue that the weapons which are available to the world today are much more devastating than anything that has been available throughout history.
Nukes, EMPs, and bioweapons can completely change the economics of a country within a matter of minutes. Yes, an EMP was technically available by the end of the second World War, but we (the good guys) were the only ones who had that technology at the time. That’s not the case anymore.
Now we have rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran (who have vowed to destroy us) possessing EMP, nuke, and bioweapon technology. In a matter of minutes, either of those weapons could make a portion of, or all of a country’s ability to mass produce, transport, and sell necessary goods on a national scale virtually impossible.
Anything can happen, but in all probability I don’t think government-mandated rationing will happen anytime soon. However, if you are already prepared for a disaster of any appreciable length (and you have kept your preparations secret) you will be much better able to ride anything out provided that I am wrong.
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A recent Facebook experiment in artificial intelligence has garnered a lot of attention across the internet.
Stories vary considerably, ranging from pure reporting of a technological accomplishment to humor at what had happened to outright fear about the potential of computers going haywire and turning against their human owners like in some science fiction story.
The truth of the matter is somewhat more benign.
This was an experiment and the two computers were chatting about nothing more nefarious then how to divvy up a number of items. The experiment was about how well the robots (not physical humanoid robots as much as artificial intelligence computer programs) could negotiate with one another to come to an agreement.
As such, it was no more serious than people negotiating over price at a garage sale.
In the process of the negotiations, the two robots actually developed their own language, or at least something that hints at language.
Just as two friends or a married couple might have their own code words that they use in conversation with each other; words that mean one thing to them, but something else to others, the two robots started using their own code words. Words which meant something to the two robots, but really didn’t mean anything to the programmers who were running the experiment.
At this point the experiment ended, not out of fear, they say, but out of a realization that they had not set the parameters for the experiment correctly.
The programmers had allowed for the creation of their own language, but failed to place the limitation that the language had to be intelligible to humans. As the experiment was really about developing the ability for a robot to converse with a human, it was stopped.
Apparently, the next generation of this experiment is going to include a modification to the programming. While continuing to allow the robots to develop their own language, such changes will be limited to things that are understandable by the human operators.
Whether that is because the computers supply the definitions as part of the process or they are only limited to words and syntax that the human operators can understand is probably still up in the air.
Were I to be running the experiments, I would probably try both, just to see the difference in the results.
While there was nothing really scary about this experiment, maybe there’s a little bit of reality in the fear caused by the misunderstanding of this test and its results. Not because of the danger of computers negotiating trades, but the potential of computers making decisions that their human operators don’t understand.
While artificial intelligence mimics human thought, it can only do that as well as the programmers are able to develop their programs.
Thinking machines would by their very nature be immoral, not having any morals whatsoever. That may not be dangerous in the short-term, but there really is no way of telling where it might lead. We’ve all seen the atrocities that humans without morals are able to propagate on each other; so it’s only logical that computers without morals will eventually be able to do the same.
Thinking computers and robots need some system of checks and balances. That’s why science fiction writer Isaac Asimov developed “the three laws of robotics,” placing limitations on the decisions that robots can make. These laws have actually been so well defined, that other writers have used them too.
Ultimately, any use of artificial intelligence needs human oversight. The decisions that we make, as humans, take into account many factors that we don’t even realize.
Our decision making process is extremely complex. And while it may be imperfect, by and large it protects human life and works to generate some benefit to at least some group of people.
Artificial Intelligence is Not New
The whole idea of artificial intelligence (AI) is not really new. Science fiction television shows as far back as the 1950s featured humanoid robots that could think for themselves and communicate with their human counterparts, even offering advice. In serious scientific research, we find the first discussions of artificial intelligence going back as far as 1947.
Alan Turing, the British mathematician was the first to suggest that AI would best be researched by programming computers, rather than building machines. Considering that the very first computer was built in 1937 and ENIAC, widely considered to be the earliest electronic general-purpose computer was finished in 1946, Turing was obviously ahead of his time.
Research into AI was carried on in college laboratories and research departments for the next couple of decades. But it wasn’t until 1980 and the birth of the idea of expert systems (a form of AI), that artificial intelligence took off. Since then, the growth of AI has been slow, but consistent.
I distinctly remember some of the work that was going on in the 1980s, as I was an engineer during those years and so managed to keep abreast of it to some extent.
Those were exciting years for computer programmers, with the idea of developing a true AI system being seen as the holy grail of computer programming.
In more recent times, research into applying artificial intelligence, especially the decision making part of it, has progressed considerably, funded by the idea of developing totally autonomous machines that can eliminate the human operator.
Much of current AI research is focused around replacing human operators for mundane tasks. One of the most successful of these is in the area of self-driving vehicles. A number of companies, around the world, have been working on developing such systems.
The LS3 Robotic Mule, developed for our military forces, is a prime example of using AI to make autonomous vehicles. This walking vehicle is under development for the purpose of carrying loads for infantry. One mule is supposed to be able to carry the packs of a squad of infantry, freeing them of that load and making it easier for them to fight effectively.
Another excellent example is the Mercedes-Benz self driving truck. Videos of the truck, which is in road testing, show the driver turning control of the driving over to the truck and literally moving his seat back to relax with a tablet, while the truck drives itself. Mercedes is planning to offer the truck, which has a futuristic look, for sale in 2025.
But over-the-road trucks aren’t the only place where we can expect AI to take over the job of driving vehicles, Uber has placed an order for 100,000 self-driving cars, to be delivered as soon as the technology is proven. Their parent company, once again Mercedes-Benz is hard at work to fulfill that order, with testing of 15 self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs on the road in Arizona, picking up passengers and delivering them to their destinations.
What Does this Mean to You and I?
While these breakthroughs in technology might be exciting to watch, they tell a potentially grim story for humanity. This story is especially evident in Uber’s order for the 100,000 self-driving cars.
Part of what has made Uber so popular is that it has given 160,000 people in the United States and somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 drivers worldwide an opportunity to make extra money, using their personal vehicle to provide rides to others. Creating that many jobs in an unconventional way attracts a lot of attention, both by job seekers and the public in general.
But what’s going to happen to those people when Uber gets serious about using self-driving cars? Or what about the 3.5 million truck drivers in the US? Where will they work?
Granted, the replacement of all those drivers with autonomous vehicles will take a number of years, but it appears that the handwriting is already on the wall.
Advances in technology tend to displace workers, and the advances in AI might be the biggest job displacer of all time. The tech jobs that these advances create don’t come close to the numbers of jobs lost; if they did, the advance wouldn’t go forward.
Besides, the workers who are displaced don’t have the necessary skills for those new jobs. They have to be totally retrained into a new field or they become just one more statistic, added to the rolls of the unemployed.
The loss of manufacturing jobs here in the US has received a lot of attention. China is more or less universally hated for taking those jobs away from us. But the loss of manufacturing jobs to automation actually outstrips those lost to China. We are losing our jobs to robotics.
This is simple business economics. While automating requires a huge investment in equipment, it’s a one-time investment. That means that the lifetime cost of that robot is much less than the equivalent human operator.
Skilled welders, for example, earn about $25 per hour in manufacturing plants, while the costs of a robot work about to about $8 per hour. With increased competition and consumer demands for lower prices, companies are forced to automate.
“The loss of manufacturing jobs to automation actually outstrips those lost to China.
We are losing our jobs to robotics.”
Is this a real threat? Yes, most definitely. According to one tech insider, a former employee of Facebook, within 30 years, half of humanity could be unemployed, due to artificial intelligence and automation. This is the danger we face from AI, robots taking our jobs, not turning against us to annihilate us.
To put that in perspective, unemployment during the height of the Great Depression reached a high of 25%. Yet this technologist is talking about double that number. We just lived through a recession which peaked out at 10.1% unemployment, yet 10 million households were displaced. How could we even begin to handle a 50% unemployment rate.
Supporting this idea of a technology apocalypse is the news that many Silicone Valley insiders are preparing for a major breakdown in society. Whether it is through buying a house in New Zealand or building a private retreat on an island, many of the wealthiest technologists in the country are preparing a place to run to, when society collapses.
Considering how much technology is driving America today, perhaps these insiders know something that the rest of us don’t. There’s truly something to be concerned about, if the people who are planning the future don’t want to live in the future they are creating.
Society is not ready for this. We don’t have the systems in place to take care of that many unemployed people. Our country’s safety net would be torn asunder, simply because there would be as many people needing assistance, as there would be working.
With only a 30 year timeframe before such an apocalypse were to occur, it is doubtful that we will be able to develop the means of taking care of all these people. The problem is so much larger than anything we’ve ever seen before, that a simple expansion of existing systems wouldn’t work.
Rather, we would need to reinvent society as a whole, coming up with a totally new way of meeting people’s needs.
Perhaps this is behind Silicone Valley’s push for a universal basic income. These people, who are shaping the future even now, are the only ones who understand what is coming. They have a vision for a new world, but it’s one that we are truly unprepared for.
A fifty percent unemployment rate definitely qualifies as an apocalypse. I’ve written about a financial collapse before, something on the order of the Great Depression; but as we’ve already discussed, that’s nowhere near as bad as this.
Is this risk real? I honestly don’t know. All I know is that the rate of technological advancement that is happening in the world today makes it possible.
We have already seen millions of people lose their jobs to technology. What is there to stop millions more or even tens of millions more from losing their jobs?
That’s a risk we just can’t afford to take.
Over and over again, I see scenarios proposed which would cause hungry gangs of people to roam the streets, attacking whoever they could in order to get food. Ultimately, this is the reason why so many preppers have guns and ammunition. The downside risk of such a situation is grave enough to warrant investing considerably in being able to protect our homes, our families and our food supplies.
This could very well be such a situation; a much more realistic one than others I’ve heard. Without the ability to take care of all those displaced workers, they will become desperate. Desperate people, it is said, do desperate things.
So how do we prepare for such a potential? I think there are two possible ways, both of which would probably work. For simplicity sake, I’ll call them the bug in and bug out options.
Bug In Option
While as much as 50% of the workforce could potentially lose their jobs from automation, there will still be 50% who are employed. So the trick is to make sure that you are part of that 50%. How? By having a job that can’t be fulfilled by a machine; one that requires a living, thinking human being.
There are many jobs which can be accomplished by machines. As we’ve already discussed, manufacturing jobs are being replaced by automation all the time. But machines can’t design the products, program the robots and sell the products. Machines can’t write the code that makes computers run; nor can they provide medical services to the people who are fulfilling those more technical jobs. For that matter, they can’t teach the people who will fill them either.
There are and will always be jobs that require thought and imagination. So the key to job security in this scenario is to get the necessary education and training for those sorts of jobs. People with valuable degrees, meaning degrees for which there is actual work, are and will continue to be in demand.
It’s the people who don’t have marketable skills, whether educated or not, who will lose their jobs.
Basically what this means is that the people in the lower end of the socioeconomic scale are the ones who are most likely to lose their jobs to automation. That makes sense, because it is easier to design machines and develop the software to replace those jobs.
Just look at what’s happening to the fast food industry in cities and states that are pushing for the $15 per hour minimum wage. Self-service kiosks, where customers order their food off of a touch screen are replacing cashiers. Kitchens are becoming more automated, with machines doing the cooking and only a skeleton crew of workers managing the machines. Low wage earners are losing their jobs.
This is the trend we can expect to see. To survive it, we need to make sure that we are not overtaken by it.
In addition, we can probably expect to see an increase in crime as more and more people lose their jobs. Our society has many people who walk close to the edge between being law-abiding citizens and criminals.
While they are productive members of society today, the loss of their jobs could very well give those people sufficient reason, in their own minds, to leave the path of righteousness and turn to a life of crime.
Should that happen, we will need to be ready to protect ourselves. Our homes will need to be fortified and we will need to be armed. You know what to do, I’ve written about it before and so have others. There’s no reason to repeat it here.
Bug Out Option
Our second option is to quite literally head for the hills, find a remote location and homestead there. That doesn’t mean waiting for the technology apocalypse to come and then bug out, but rather to start preparing today. Just as the technology gurus of Silicon Valley, we need a survival retreat where we can go, when those hungry gangs start roaming the street.
This will require time and investment. Unless there is a complete breakdown of the government, which I doubt is going to happen, you can’t just go and build a log cabin on federal land somewhere. Rather, you’re going to need to buy a piece of land, build some sort of home and prepare to become totally self-sufficient in every way. That’s why I used the word homestead.
Such a place will need to be in a remote location, so as to avoid the risk of being attacked by the aforementioned gangs. There is safety in numbers and one of the risks associated with living outside of town, on your own, is that there would be nobody around to help you, should you come under attack.
So you really want to make sure that your survival homestead is in a place where those gangs aren’t going to find you.
Even so, you’ll want to prepare extensive defenses to use, just in case. If you can find a place to bug out to, you have to assume that others can find it too.
Failure to prepare for that eventuality could end up being the last mistake you ever make.
This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.
from Survivopedia
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Editors Note:THIS article is from John Hertig. As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of threeAmazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today.
When out in the wilderness (as at home), splinters happen. This is often from wood for fire or building shelter, or various man-made materials encountered. In the southwest, we on occasion have close encounters with various spiny plants resulting in a similar condition. As we all know, splinters are painful when you get them, and while they are embedded, and if not addressed, can work their way deeper and become more of a nuisance. Removing splinters as soon as practical is the best course of action. Thus, having splinter removal capability as part of your pocket or at least readily available first aid kit is usually a good idea.
There are many techniques which claim to remove splinters “naturally”, by “drawing it to the surface”. Do you know how many of these I have tried? Not one and I don’t currently plan to try any of them. All sound messy and time consuming, and just a bit mystical. After all, who would think that a slice of raw potato or the wet inside of an egg shell would coax a splinter out? These methods do not seem fast enough or definite enough for me. I’m old school; my methodology is to grab the offender and drag it out kicking and screaming. It just makes no sense to mess around applying this or that, covering it and then waiting for that sliver to sneak out on its own. Really, what is the point? It might be “less painful” than the brute force methods, but come on. Isn’t getting the splinter, and living with the splinter, more painful than digging it out and being done with it?
Furthermore, there are “splinters” which are not organic (wood or thorns). Next most common is strands of wire, but shards of glass or chips of metal or plastic can behave in a splinter-like manner.
Brute Force Splinter Removal methods
There are two such schools of splinter removal: Tweezers and Needle. Tweezers (technically “thumb forceps”) are sort of like micro pliers you use to grab onto the splinter and pull. Needles are a thin pointy tool which you use to impale the splinter and drag it out. For splinters which have an end sticking out from the skin, tweezers are the most easy and reliable choice. But if the splinter is below the surface of the skin, there is nothing to grab onto, and the “needle” comes into its own. You can use an actual (sewing) needle for removing splinters; better is a splinter specific tool often known as a splinter “out”, “liberator”, “remover”, “pick”, “extractor” or “probe”. The best ones are flat or triangular in cross section, with sharpened edges to help penetrate. Such a cross section is less likely to slide off the splinter than the smooth round cross section of a needle. The sharp edges also allow you to cut away surface skin which is covering the end of the splinter if necessary. This is why one of the names for this tool is “liberator”.
Choosing Your Tweezers
There are an incredible variety of tweezers out there, and most are fairly useless for reliable splinter removal. Any gripping tool or even fingers will do when there is some of the splinter protruding. For those small, embedded splinters, the tweezers point must be thin enough to get into a small depression and clamp onto that tiny end of the splinter. Yet the tips must be strong enough to grasp firmly and not slide off when you go to pull on the splinter. The tips must be aligned well enough that they meet correctly and the arms must be sturdy enough that the tips don’t slip sideways from each other. I’ve tried dozens of tweezers and the ones I like best are by Tweezerman. They are a bit pricy, but are the only ones I’ve found which really do the job. Their Ingrown Hair/SplinterTweeze has wonderfully fine precision tips. But every time I’ve got that splinter end grabbed, it always slips free. A better choice is their Point Tweezerette, which is shorter (easier to pack), a bit wider and something it grabs stays grabbed. This model does not appear on their website, except as part of a men’s grooming kit, but is readily available from eBay by itself.
The Splinter Remover
These are available as sterile disposables or permanent instruments. A top disposable is the Splinter Out and they are readily available, as are other similar products. On the other hand, finding a permanent liberator can be challenging. Often, they are paired with a sub-standard pair of tweezers and are fairly crude in quality themselves. Although I am primarily a tweezers fan, there are times when the liberator is more effective, so I have some which are adequate; I only go for ones which have a tip which unscrews and screws in backwards to protect it, and the world around it. Maybe some day I’ll break down and try some sterile prepackaged ones.
Other Needs
Having the tools to remove a splinter is great, and necessary for the task. However, in order to remove a splinter, it kind of helps to be able to see it. And some splinters can be very tiny, and some environments are rather low light. Thus, the complete splinter kit includes sources of light and magnification. Let’s see, one hand for the instrument, one hand for the light, and one hand for the magnifier. And that assumes you are not working on your own hand, a common location for splinters. It is helpful to consider light sources and magnifiers which do not need to be hand held.
I have two flashlight types I like. One is an Olight S series “baton” light with a magnet in its tail cap. Just set it against a magnetic surface and the light requirement is satisfied without hands. These lights are small but not tiny, and are not cheap. I carry one at all times, and for all purposes, so that is not a problem. But when I am building a first aid or splinter specific kit, I go for the Photon Freedom Micro II. This is tiny; hardly bigger than the quarter sized lithium batteries it uses for power. And it is surprisingly bright at full brightness. Best of all, it comes with a small mount which can clip to the bill of your hat, or your pocket or other thin upright. And it is even magnetic for even more mounting options.
As for magnifiers, there are many; most are not “hands free”. Hands free magnifiers tend to be too big and heavy to be considered “portable”. I often use either a stand mounted assembly magnifier or a magnifying visor – at home. For portable use, I depend on a nifty little gadget called a “thread counter” or sometimes “linen tester“. This is a moderately high power lens mounted in a small folding stand. And it is possible to clip the Photon Freedom to it, giving you a freestanding light and magnification solution. There are thread counters which have built in lights, but I have not tried them since their batteries are tiny, so they probably are neither bright nor long lasting.
Afterwards
So you got the splinter out. Whew, relief is at hand. But wait; you are not done yet. After all, that splinter punctured your skin, dragging who knows what with it. The pain from the splinter may be gone, but is pain (or worse) from infection warming up in the bullpen?
You also need some basic skin puncture first aid. That is, a cleansing pad such as Benzalkoniam Chloride to clean the area, an alcohol pad or lighter to sterilize your instruments, and a packet of antibiotic cream and a Band-aid for when the surgery is completed.
The Process
Ouch, you think you just got a splinter. The first thing to do is to see if you can see it, and if it is big enough, grab it and pull it out. Whether or not that is successful, carefully clean the area with your cleansing pad. If not sterile packed, sterilize your tool(s) by wiping with alcohol or holding it in a flame. Use your magnifying device to find the little dickens, and attempt to grab it with tweezers and pull it out, or drag it out with the tip of your liberator. If this does not work, use the tips of the tweezers or the point of the liberator to pull back or cut a bit of skin from above the splinter, hopefully exposing enough to grab and pull, or drag. Repeat until the splinter is out.
Once the splinter is out, wash the area with hot water if available, pack the wound with anti-biotic ointment and cover with a Band-aid.
from The Prepper Journal
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Editors Apology:My bad as the article is from R. Ann Parris, it looks like her work, but was part of a set of articles that came bundled from Pat that I put in the wrong directory.
Editors Note: As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award like R. Ann Parris as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of threeAmazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today.
When we sit down with the goal to be prepared and self-sufficient, we have to balance a lot. We already walk tightropes between work and home life in many cases. Adding a pursuit that could really be its own full-time job only makes things harder. The self-sufficiency arm alone could occupy a full work week, and for some, the future looms as a period when we may have to increase our physical vigilance on top of producing our own food, medicine, and supplies.
There are methods we can use to make gardens maintenance friendly, and plant selections can ease it further. In some cases, there are plants that grow with few inputs and are specific to our regions. In other cases, we can also decrease our labors in a work-heavy and typically strength-sapping hot season by making selections that ease the other side of growing and harvesting.
Processing & Storage
Whether it’s annuals, an annual veggie garden, or perennials, whatever methods for production we choose takes time away from our daily lives. Then our produce needs to be processed, one way or another.
Even now when most lives are relatively easy due to power tools, refrigeration, and transportation, we tend to be pretty busy. I think most of us expect that even without the tug of paying jobs and some of the extracurricular activities that suck up our time, a life “after” will be just as busy and in some or many cases, even more labor intensive.
When we examine that “labor” word in regards to processing food, don’t forget that it’s not only the physical act of shelling beans and field peas, and our chosen method for threshing and winnowing grains or stripping corn cobs, or stewing tomatoes and slicing up zucchini. Most storage methods – even the truly historic methods – call for supplies: canners, jars, copious lids, a dehydrator or outdoor netted racks of some sort (and cooperative weather), a cold smoker, or things like salt, sugar, pectin and rennet we either have to stock or figure out how to produce.
When we process something, we also regularly have to provide fuel. Besides water and gardening, I think fuel consumption for household processes is one of the most underrated and underestimated aspects for preppers.
If we can eliminate some of the burden of processing foods for storage, we can eliminate not only some of the draw on our valuable time, but also limit some of the constant drains on supplies, and give us at least a little bit of backup in case our supplies are damaged or consumed.
Happily, we can create those backups pretty easily, by adding traditional storage or “cellar” crops https://morningchores.com/root-cellars/ to our garden and orchard plans. They basically go from field to storage, poof, done.
I’ll skip over beans and cereals this time, because they really need their own articles. Instead, I’ll stick with the veggies and fruits that are easiest to store without much if any processing.
Squashes
Squashes are among the best-known storage crops. Autumn or winter squashes are the longer-growing, thicker-skinned cucurbits http://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/squash/winter-squash/. It’s those tough hides we have to work through that let us sit them on a shelf and walk away, for weeks or months on end. There’s a long, long list from all climates that includes kabocha, spaghetti, kuri, Hubbard squashes, the gourds, and pumpkins.
Squash are ready for storage when the rinds darken, and you can’t punch a fingernail through them. The plants sometimes cue us that they’re ready by yellowing and dying back a bit, and in many cases the vines will go woody. We then cut them off with a stub of stem attached, brush any soil or debris loose, and let those thick skins toughen up more with a 1-2 week cure in a 75-80 warm, somewhat dry space, up off the ground. They can be cured in the field, propped up, but there are risks there that a barn or crib can help eliminate.
Then they go into a slightly humid space – the average basement, household pantry, spare bedroom or office, and dry cellar is fine. Some will store for 6-8 weeks even at 60-75 degrees, while others will only store that long even at the ideal 45-60 degrees. Some like Hopi and fully-matured tromboncino will store for a full year or longer.
The downside to the winter squashes is that they tend to take a full season to grow, and only produce a few to a handful of fruits per plant, compared to the tender summer squashes that can be producing in 55-65 days and readily fill a laundry basket when they’re picked often and early.
Humid Sand-Box Crops
Some of our storage crops like it damp. It keeps them from shriveling up and browning, or wilting into rot. We can create humidity with damp sand or sawdust, layering in root veggies like rutabaga/sweedes, turnips, beets, parsnips, carrots, and celeriac. The root veggies are also ideal candidates for burying in a wooden crate outside once temperatures drop http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/garden-yard/root-cellars-zm0z11zkon.
We can also use damp boxes to store cabbage, celery and leeks.
For them, shallower trays work well, because we’re going to cut them with a section of their stems still attached, and “plant” those stems into the sand or sawdust. The veggies will then wick up moisture that lets them be stored for weeks or months.
They’ll store longer if we can keep them between about 35 and 45 degrees, but even 55-60 degrees can significantly extend their shelf lives. If we can’t come up with a damp box or pit for them, we can also individually wrap them in plastic to help hold in moisture. (And now you have a justification for keeping every plastic grocery bag that crosses your path.)
Tree Fruits
Nuts have to be the next-best known storage crops, and right there with them are apples and pears.
Modern supermarket apple varieties don’t store quite as long or as well in many cases, with the exception of Granny Smith that will sit on a counter for weeks and extend into a month and longer if we drop the temperatures.
We’ll have better luck storing the tart apples than the sweets, and the firm-crisp apples and pears over softer varieties. Mid-and late-season varieties are also more storage friendly, usually, and can provide us with fresh fruit later in the season.
Apples will do best in a cool, 40-65 degree storage space, and will do better yet if we save some newspaper and phone book pages to wrap them in and stick them on racks with 0.5-1” of air space between each fruit and each layer.
Pears will be even happier if they’re given the same treatment but an even colder space – just above freezing up to about 50 degrees. Pears will also commonly benefit from a cure period after they’re harvested.
Both pears and apples like storage with some humidity, which makes them good candidates for storage above some of our damp boxes, but only the leafy veg boxes. The root veggies are pretty sensitive to the ethylene released by fruits.
Medlars that “blat” (rot) are another example of a tree fruit that we don’t have to rush around processing during some of the busiest times of the year. It’s an acquired taste and texture, ever so slightly reminiscent of apple butter, but especially if we want to keep our food production hidden in plain sight, medlars may be a nice choice for us.
Nuts are pretty easy, even soft-shelled peanuts. Pick, brush, stack in a dry place, move on.
One thing to note is that walnuts that are removed from their husks will be less tart/bitter than those that aren’t processed at all. On the other hand, one of the “cheat” ways to remove that husk is to just stack them up in a bag until it rots and can just be scrubbed, or to leave them in water until the husk rots and drops away.
Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes
Potatoes and sweet potatoes need to make it through our winters and in many cases all the way through the earliest parts of spring, so we have even more reason to start practicing with them as soon as possible. See, they’re not really flowering seed producers at this stage in evolution, and it takes a while for seed starts to get going, just like tomatoes. We’re going to have to cut potatoes and let them callous, and-or grow starts from them if we want to continue reaping potatoes and sweet potatoes in a world without Tractor Supply and Baker Creek.
After harvest, both sweet potatoes and true potatoes are brushed off, then cured.
Potatoes cure best at 50-60 degrees for 2-4 weeks. To be at all soft and palatable, sweets need to cure in a warm but not too hot space, 80-85 degrees, and usually don’t need more than two weeks.
That’s similar with Asian and African yams for the most part, although some of those need a little longer or will tolerate hotter cure temps.
We’re typically harvesting sweets and yams when it’s still pretty warm, but if we need to heat space for them, we can use coolers or insulate small pantries or closets, and rotate in jugs and pots of hot water. We can also potentially use our vehicles or camper shells as a hot zone for curing sweets and yams, but we need to monitor the temps and be able to provide ventilation if it gets too hot during the day, and keep the temperatures up at night.
Once they’re cured, potatoes and sweet potatoes like the same moderate humidity we can find in most household basements, pantries, and spare rooms. Sweet potatoes really want to stay at 50-60 degrees for their storage, but potatoes will handle a dug-in pit that only gets as low as 45 or so, or can sometimes be stored in rooms adjacent to barns, greenhouses, or coops – reaping the body heat but not too much of it.
Storage Crops
Spring, summer, and autumn are already pretty busy seasons for a lot of us. Family obligations and things like fishing and hunting are already in competition with our gardens, orchards, crops, any livestock we own or other projects. They’re also the seasons we need to get buildings and power sources repaired, and wood cut and stocked.
Summer, and in many places autumn as well, are also our drought seasons, which means unless we have reliable water sources and backups for them, we can expect to do some heavy hauling – and some of us may already be filling barrels and buckets and tanks to haul for livestock and gardens.
Add in the mega-disasters and regional or wide-scale hungers some expect, or even the increased risks of garden and livestock threats from desperate humans a la Great Depression, Venezuela, and some of the dissolution and wars that have faced Europeans in the last century, and we can expect to spend more time on defense, as well.
Those are all factors that makes it worthwhile to consider crops that don’t need much processing. Autumn squashes, apples, carrots, nuts, and potatoes that need minimal work before being crated or stacked on shelves can save us valuable time. Maybe that’s time we’re harvesting livestock and grains, or maybe that’s time we’re shelling green peas, peeling tomatoes, and slicing crookneck for the dehydrator or pressure canner.
Even if our storage conditions aren’t ideal, the ability to produce crops that can sit for even just a few weeks can buy us time to get in precious hay and straw, and deal with the more perishable yields of our gardens and orchards.
While there are some drawbacks to various storage crops, there are also a lot of benefits – both now and “if/when”.
from The Prepper Journal
Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies?
#SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag
Editors Note: As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award like John as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of threeAmazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today.
When we sit down with the goal to be prepared and self-sufficient, we have to balance a lot. We already walk tightropes between work and home life in many cases. Adding a pursuit that could really be its own full-time job only makes things harder. The self-sufficiency arm alone could occupy a full work week, and for some, the future looms as a period when we may have to increase our physical vigilance on top of producing our own food, medicine, and supplies.
There are methods we can use to make gardens maintenance friendly, and plant selections can ease it further. In some cases, there are plants that grow with few inputs and are specific to our regions. In other cases, we can also decrease our labors in a work-heavy and typically strength-sapping hot season by making selections that ease the other side of growing and harvesting.
Processing & Storage
Whether it’s annuals, an annual veggie garden, or perennials, whatever methods for production we choose takes time away from our daily lives. Then our produce needs to be processed, one way or another.
Even now when most lives are relatively easy due to power tools, refrigeration, and transportation, we tend to be pretty busy. I think most of us expect that even without the tug of paying jobs and some of the extracurricular activities that suck up our time, a life “after” will be just as busy and in some or many cases, even more labor intensive.
When we examine that “labor” word in regards to processing food, don’t forget that it’s not only the physical act of shelling beans and field peas, and our chosen method for threshing and winnowing grains or stripping corn cobs, or stewing tomatoes and slicing up zucchini. Most storage methods – even the truly historic methods – call for supplies: canners, jars, copious lids, a dehydrator or outdoor netted racks of some sort (and cooperative weather), a cold smoker, or things like salt, sugar, pectin and rennet we either have to stock or figure out how to produce.
When we process something, we also regularly have to provide fuel. Besides water and gardening, I think fuel consumption for household processes is one of the most underrated and underestimated aspects for preppers.
If we can eliminate some of the burden of processing foods for storage, we can eliminate not only some of the draw on our valuable time, but also limit some of the constant drains on supplies, and give us at least a little bit of backup in case our supplies are damaged or consumed.
Happily, we can create those backups pretty easily, by adding traditional storage or “cellar” crops https://morningchores.com/root-cellars/ to our garden and orchard plans. They basically go from field to storage, poof, done.
I’ll skip over beans and cereals this time, because they really need their own articles. Instead, I’ll stick with the veggies and fruits that are easiest to store without much if any processing.
Squashes
Squashes are among the best-known storage crops. Autumn or winter squashes are the longer-growing, thicker-skinned cucurbits http://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/squash/winter-squash/. It’s those tough hides we have to work through that let us sit them on a shelf and walk away, for weeks or months on end. There’s a long, long list from all climates that includes kabocha, spaghetti, kuri, Hubbard squashes, the gourds, and pumpkins.
Squash are ready for storage when the rinds darken, and you can’t punch a fingernail through them. The plants sometimes cue us that they’re ready by yellowing and dying back a bit, and in many cases the vines will go woody. We then cut them off with a stub of stem attached, brush any soil or debris loose, and let those thick skins toughen up more with a 1-2 week cure in a 75-80 warm, somewhat dry space, up off the ground. They can be cured in the field, propped up, but there are risks there that a barn or crib can help eliminate.
Then they go into a slightly humid space – the average basement, household pantry, spare bedroom or office, and dry cellar is fine. Some will store for 6-8 weeks even at 60-75 degrees, while others will only store that long even at the ideal 45-60 degrees. Some like Hopi and fully-matured tromboncino will store for a full year or longer.
The downside to the winter squashes is that they tend to take a full season to grow, and only produce a few to a handful of fruits per plant, compared to the tender summer squashes that can be producing in 55-65 days and readily fill a laundry basket when they’re picked often and early.
Humid Sand-Box Crops
Some of our storage crops like it damp. It keeps them from shriveling up and browning, or wilting into rot. We can create humidity with damp sand or sawdust, layering in root veggies like rutabaga/sweedes, turnips, beets, parsnips, carrots, and celeriac. The root veggies are also ideal candidates for burying in a wooden crate outside once temperatures drop http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/garden-yard/root-cellars-zm0z11zkon.
We can also use damp boxes to store cabbage, celery and leeks.
For them, shallower trays work well, because we’re going to cut them with a section of their stems still attached, and “plant” those stems into the sand or sawdust. The veggies will then wick up moisture that lets them be stored for weeks or months.
They’ll store longer if we can keep them between about 35 and 45 degrees, but even 55-60 degrees can significantly extend their shelf lives. If we can’t come up with a damp box or pit for them, we can also individually wrap them in plastic to help hold in moisture. (And now you have a justification for keeping every plastic grocery bag that crosses your path.)
Tree Fruits
Nuts have to be the next-best known storage crops, and right there with them are apples and pears.
Modern supermarket apple varieties don’t store quite as long or as well in many cases, with the exception of Granny Smith that will sit on a counter for weeks and extend into a month and longer if we drop the temperatures.
We’ll have better luck storing the tart apples than the sweets, and the firm-crisp apples and pears over softer varieties. Mid-and late-season varieties are also more storage friendly, usually, and can provide us with fresh fruit later in the season.
Apples will do best in a cool, 40-65 degree storage space, and will do better yet if we save some newspaper and phone book pages to wrap them in and stick them on racks with 0.5-1” of air space between each fruit and each layer.
Pears will be even happier if they’re given the same treatment but an even colder space – just above freezing up to about 50 degrees. Pears will also commonly benefit from a cure period after they’re harvested.
Both pears and apples like storage with some humidity, which makes them good candidates for storage above some of our damp boxes, but only the leafy veg boxes. The root veggies are pretty sensitive to the ethylene released by fruits.
Medlars that “blat” (rot) are another example of a tree fruit that we don’t have to rush around processing during some of the busiest times of the year. It’s an acquired taste and texture, ever so slightly reminiscent of apple butter, but especially if we want to keep our food production hidden in plain sight, medlars may be a nice choice for us.
Nuts are pretty easy, even soft-shelled peanuts. Pick, brush, stack in a dry place, move on.
One thing to note is that walnuts that are removed from their husks will be less tart/bitter than those that aren’t processed at all. On the other hand, one of the “cheat” ways to remove that husk is to just stack them up in a bag until it rots and can just be scrubbed, or to leave them in water until the husk rots and drops away.
Potatoes & Sweet Potatoes
Potatoes and sweet potatoes need to make it through our winters and in many cases all the way through the earliest parts of spring, so we have even more reason to start practicing with them as soon as possible. See, they’re not really flowering seed producers at this stage in evolution, and it takes a while for seed starts to get going, just like tomatoes. We’re going to have to cut potatoes and let them callous, and-or grow starts from them if we want to continue reaping potatoes and sweet potatoes in a world without Tractor Supply and Baker Creek.
After harvest, both sweet potatoes and true potatoes are brushed off, then cured.
Potatoes cure best at 50-60 degrees for 2-4 weeks. To be at all soft and palatable, sweets need to cure in a warm but not too hot space, 80-85 degrees, and usually don’t need more than two weeks.
That’s similar with Asian and African yams for the most part, although some of those need a little longer or will tolerate hotter cure temps.
We’re typically harvesting sweets and yams when it’s still pretty warm, but if we need to heat space for them, we can use coolers or insulate small pantries or closets, and rotate in jugs and pots of hot water. We can also potentially use our vehicles or camper shells as a hot zone for curing sweets and yams, but we need to monitor the temps and be able to provide ventilation if it gets too hot during the day, and keep the temperatures up at night.
Once they’re cured, potatoes and sweet potatoes like the same moderate humidity we can find in most household basements, pantries, and spare rooms. Sweet potatoes really want to stay at 50-60 degrees for their storage, but potatoes will handle a dug-in pit that only gets as low as 45 or so, or can sometimes be stored in rooms adjacent to barns, greenhouses, or coops – reaping the body heat but not too much of it.
Storage Crops
Spring, summer, and autumn are already pretty busy seasons for a lot of us. Family obligations and things like fishing and hunting are already in competition with our gardens, orchards, crops, any livestock we own or other projects. They’re also the seasons we need to get buildings and power sources repaired, and wood cut and stocked.
Summer, and in many places autumn as well, are also our drought seasons, which means unless we have reliable water sources and backups for them, we can expect to do some heavy hauling – and some of us may already be filling barrels and buckets and tanks to haul for livestock and gardens.
Add in the mega-disasters and regional or wide-scale hungers some expect, or even the increased risks of garden and livestock threats from desperate humans a la Great Depression, Venezuela, and some of the dissolution and wars that have faced Europeans in the last century, and we can expect to spend more time on defense, as well.
Those are all factors that makes it worthwhile to consider crops that don’t need much processing. Autumn squashes, apples, carrots, nuts, and potatoes that need minimal work before being crated or stacked on shelves can save us valuable time. Maybe that’s time we’re harvesting livestock and grains, or maybe that’s time we’re shelling green peas, peeling tomatoes, and slicing crookneck for the dehydrator or pressure canner.
Even if our storage conditions aren’t ideal, the ability to produce crops that can sit for even just a few weeks can buy us time to get in precious hay and straw, and deal with the more perishable yields of our gardens and orchards.
While there are some drawbacks to various storage crops, there are also a lot of benefits – both now and “if/when”.
from The Prepper Journal
Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies?
#SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag
