First Printed April 15, 2015
It’s that season again. Spring. Time to mow. Time to grow.
The gardening part may be more important this year. More urgent. For folks who’ve plowed, planted, pickled and preserved for years, it’ll be business as usual, but it might be time to take a second look at preservation.
Freezers have become the way to go. Pick food, prepare it simply, drop it in zip lock bags and stack them neatly in a freezer. Four or five hundred dollars invested in a small/medium freezer will maintain foods for a couple of years at least. Everything goes great as long as electricity remains available and a cat doesn’t knock the plug out of a high wall socket. That happened to me once. Everything inside thawed and rotted.
Canning is the thing. Learn how if you don’t know already. Teach somebody who doesn’t know if you already do.. Share what you know about gardening and preserving, particularly canning, with family members and good friends.
Buy extra canning supplies when they are available at good prices. Keep funnels, tongs, and big spoons handy. Replace your canner if you aren’t sure about its condition. Everyone has heard stories of green beans splattered all over a house from an exploding pressure canner, but pressure is still the best way to go. Reliable preservation of any edible meat or vegetable, no matter the acid content, is worth learning how to pressure can safely.
Why all this emphasis on growing and canning food? Why, all of a sudden now am I all turned on about it? What set me off?
Realization of a confluence of circumstances. World events coming together to suggest a repeat of history. Perhaps not only a repeat, but an extension besides.
Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961. Vladimir Putin of Russia was born October 7th, 1952. The Cuban Missile Crisis took place October 14th through October 28th, 1962.
For those folks, President Obama’s age or younger, The Cuban Missile Crisis came about when Premier Nikita Khrushchev attempted to arm his friend Fidel Castro’s Cuba with intermediate range nuclear tipped missiles. America couldn’t have such short lift time missiles based so close to our shores. President John Kennedy said no and made it stick. Missiles sailed back to Russia on the same ships they’d arrived on.
You can bet your socks that Raúl and Fidel Castro as well as Vladimir Putin will remember this embarrassing loss of face at hands of American intimidation. I’ve seen conjecture that President Kennedy died in retaliation for part in that Cuban/Russian defeat. I’d guess their vaunted nationalistic pride cries for revenge against the American Warmongers that made their homelands lose face in direct confrontation.
Now the stars are aligning for Cuban Missiles Crisis II. President Obama is hugging and making nice with Raul Castro at a summit meeting of American heads of state as I write. Removal of Cuba from the list of states which support terrorism is rumored. Return of Guantanamo, a much maligned prison for terrorists, has been mentioned.
Numerous recent news stories have discussed Mr. Putin’s nuclear saber rattling. He’s made sure America and Europe know nuclear weapons are on the table when he addresses his take over of Ukraine and they’ve been mentioned in conjunction with incursions around Finland and other Baltic countries.
How long before those missiles set sail again for Cuba? After hugging Castro and “resetting” with Putin, can Obama hold his thumb over our nuclear button while he tells them to get out? Based on his past record, I’d say we’ll be in trouble.
June 2013 I wrote a column about a book, “One Second After” by William Forstchen. Forstchen describes a Electromagnetic Pulse attack launched against the United States by a missile fired from a common container ship in the Caribbean Ocean. After massive die offs of population East of the Mississippi, possession of food and water became of paramount importance to folks remaining.
If Cuba gets nuclear weapons with Putin’s finger on their trigger, America is one huge step closer to Forstchen’s described Armageddon. Best way to survive those circumstances is with reliable sources of food and water independent of commercial sources.
