the bistro off broadway

The views expressed on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County News Online
text

Preparing for the End Times II
Gardening & Hunting
By Aaron Olson

The wise see danger ahead and avoid it, but fools keep going and get into trouble. Proverbs 22:3 NCV

The Bible talks of prepping several times.  Look to the story of the 7 brides waiting for their bride groom, or to the story of Noah. He was, in my opinion, the ultimate prepper. Only he and his family survived the flood. Granted, the reasoning was divine will in his favor. However, he was called to gather, with the help of God, enough food for his family and all of the animals that were aboard, along with building the ark. Luckily we have better technology to obtain both food and water. For this column I will be focusing on food gathering.

In a previous column I spoke briefly on gardening. Gardening in and of itself is multi-functional. Not only are you growing your own food, you are also attracting wildlife onto your property.

Let’s focus on gardening for a little bit before getting into wild game. Gardening is one of those things that requires practice. Some trial and error will be involved, learning what plants grow best in your soil conditions, when to harvest, how to treat for pests. Things of that nature.

Start by looking at you and your family’s eating habits. Grow what you eat: if you don't like spaghetti squash, don't grow it. Keep heirloom quality non-GMO garden seeds on hand. They usually have a 5-10 year shelf life if stored properly, along with the benefit of not having any chemicals in them. Organic crops have been proven to grow as well as, if not better, than GMO crops. They also develop traits faster than GMO crops, such as flood and drought tolerance. A lot of this has to do with the fact that you can plant multiple generations of the same crop. With GMO crops, they have usually been sterilized so the seeds they produce will not grow crops. If you have seeds in storage for a few years you can plant the seeds, grow your plants, and harvest the seeds for the next season.

This also applies to end-time events. Gardening seeds will more than likely become a good bartering item (just speculation). The benefit of seed swaps is you can introduce new genetics to your crops, ultimately making them hardier. You can also trade extra seeds for items that you may need, or for the services of someone, such as a blacksmith or carpenter.  My belief is that bartering will become the way of paying, if/when we have an apocalyptic type event (grid goes down, economic collapse).

On to the tasty critters. Hunting and trapping are also important to keeping protein on the table. The 12 gauge shot gun will kill most everything in the eastern woodlands, if not the U.S.A. My preference is my H&R single-shot. A break-action single-shot shotgun is the most versatile type of shotgun on the market, in my opinion. My H&R can shoot 12 gauge obviously, but it can also shoot 20 gauge, 410, 45 long colt, 9mm and many more. All you need is an adaptor to drop in the barrel and the ammo to shoot. The single-shot break-action style shotgun can also be used as a muzzleloader if necessary. Say you are out running your trap line and you see a deer. With a .22 adaptor you can use the same shotgun for dispatching animals on the trap line as hunting deer. Take out the adaptor and drop in a slug.

As far as trapping goes, conibears are fairly simple to use, as long as you know how to bait them for your target animal. I wouldn't use anything bigger than a 220 conibear. A 220 will break fingers if you get them caught. A 330 or larger will break limbs, which is not good in a long term survival/self-reliance situation. Foothold style traps can be equally simple; long spring is better than coil spring, but are much harder to find. With foothold traps, you'll have to have a way to dispatch the animal. Snares are ok for 72-hour survival scenarios, but they single use items. If an opossum or raccoon gets caught in one, the snare will be trashed 99% of the time. Box traps are very nice. Remember: live food never spoils. If you catch something in a box trap, you can feed it and give it water until you are ready to dispatch it and make supper.

Something that may be useful knowledge is that primitive trapping is currently illegal in almost every state. In a long-term, wide-spread disaster, no one is going to care about the legality.

Raising your own food source is something worth considering. Rabbits, chickens, and other small animals can be kept with little space and can be fairly inexpensive when weighing the benefits.

Food will only last as long as it stays unspoiled. Finding ways to preserve food off the grid will be knowledge worth having. Smoking, drying, salt-curing, freezing (depending on the time of year) and canning can all be done off the grid. It'll be up to you on which one you choose based on your resources. I would prefer smoking or drying. Drying can be done via the sun as it was by the Native Americans. It requires very little, if any, resources. You just have to keep the meat dry, even from dew. Canning is probably my least favorite way of preserving food. It requires the most resources. You need to build a big enough fire to boil water for an extended period of time and the lids for the most part are single use.

God Bless and stay vigilant.


 
senior scribes
senior scribes

County News Online

is a Fundraiser for the Senior Scribes Scholarship Committee. All net profits go into a fund for Darke County Senior Scholarships
contact
Copyright © 2011 and design by cigs.kometweb.com