Blog Archives
Emotional Resiliency
Emotional Resiliency. This is an outstanding link to what is probably the most important aspect of resiliency: mindset. I alluded to this in my previous post about the necessity of starting to garden now so that I can start to gain experience in how to pull it off successfully. Waiting until I need to be able to utilize a skill is a good way to fail. If you wait until you have to, you will be starting out behind the curve. If you are going to sail to the Bahamas on your own catamaran, you need to learn how to swim before you are out in the middle of the ocean. Same thing applies to prepping tools. Jack Spirko mentioned on his interview today that he has encountered folks that have a winch on their truck that they have owned for 11 years but didn’t know how to use it, because they never have used it. It was still wound the way it came from the factory. If you take two people and drop them in a crisis situation, one with all the gadgets and gear but no practical experience using any of them, and another with practically nothing but a practical application knowledge of said tools and a mindset of improvisation, my money is on the guy with the right mindset every time.
Food Sovereignty
Here is an update on what I have been attempting to accomplish toward my resilience. It is important to note the timeline because it seems like so many people are able to just commit a small fortune and an entire week of time to getting their garden (or whatever) established, but let’s face it, there are a lot of people stuck in the rat race that only have snippets of time and limited funds to try and pursue their freedom/independence with.
04/21/13 Saturday Action
– Bought two more bags of soil $14.99ea ($29.98)
– Bought Rosemary bush – $14.99
– Bought 2 lettuce plants, 1 broccoli, 3 cauliflower – $1.29ea ($7.74)
04/27/13 Saturday
Yesterday I overheard the staffing agent for our location mention that he enjoys hunting, so I asked him about it to open up a dialogue. Always be looking to expand your social network with like-minded people, right? He said the next time he and some friends get together to go hog hunting he’d let me know. If he does I fully intend to take him up on it. This will get me the opportunity to meet other people that know how to hunt, I can get pointers from people skilled at it, and I’ll be able (hopefully) to stock my freezer. He said you can get a hog butchered for about $65, which is a good deal for 100 pounds of free range meat.
04/27/13 Saturday Action
– Bought 4 strawberry plants and added them to the garden beds – $1.97ea
– Planted rosemary bush in front of house. I hope to replace useless decorative bushes with useful ones. I don’t know if the rosemary will get enough sun or not which is why I only planted one. If it does well then I’ll plant at least two more to start a hedge.
5/5/13 Sunday
OF course one of the ways of cutting my monthly expenses that I’ve been most successful at (which has enabled me to spend as much as I have on the garden) is in the grocery department. As a general rule I try to only buy meat that is less than $2/pound. This isn’t always easy, and it means we rarely get to eat beef. I do spend more on fish because if I find fish for that price, I’m thinking I probably don’t want to eat it. Also when it comes to chicken it must be less than $1/pound. It helps that I don’t buy boneless, skinless breasts which happens to be my least favorite part of the bird. Since adding more fat to my diet and all but eliminating bread and pasta, my cholesterol numbers have improved dramatically.
5/5/13 Sunday Action
– Bought another blueberry bush (Tifblue?) since two are required for pollination – $10. Neither is in the ground yet, still trying to determine the best place to plant for proper sun exposure and I need to acidify the soil for them. I’ll probably buy (aaaargh: buy buy buy!!!!) some azalea potting soil mix to plant them in and water them with water/apple cider vinegar solution.
– Bought a jalapeno plant for variety – $2.98
– Created a very rough map to record what times the sun hits the different areas of my yard and what times they go back into shade
– I have moved the basil plant to a much sunnier location because the first basil plant only gets about 2.5-3 hours of sun each day. I’ll see which does better.
– Bought another case of Raman noodles (12 ct) to add to preps – $2.28
– Bought a 16 pound brisket for 1.97/pound – finally, beef!!
– Bought 3 sweet potatoes from the grocery store that I am going to plant and see if they grow. I have done this with regular potatoes, and in fact are what is doing best in my garden currently. Not only can you eat the tuber part of the sweet potato which is better for you than regular potatoes, but you can eat the greens as well. At least this is what I’ve heard. Don’t know what they taste like but they can’t taste worse than dandelion leaves or collard greens.
5/7/13 Tuesday
I have to keep this in the front of my mind when I think about just how much money I have spent starting my garden. It is something that must be done for all the reasons I’ve listed in the past: if you can’t feed yourself you aren’t truly free; the quality of the food we purchase and consume is terrible; there is more to growing your own food than just sticking it in the ground, this is a skill that must be developed and there is a definite learning curve.
I find myself broke again and halfway wishing I hadn’t spent the money. I don’t have to garden right now; perhaps I could have used the money more productively. The garden isn’t going to make me money, not too sure it’s going to save me money – especially this first year. I am trying to adjust to being a single dad and make it on my income without overtime.
Make no mistake, I thought I could learn to garden on the cheap, a little at a time, but that would just make the learning curve exponentially long.
5/7/13 Tuesday Action
– None that I can think of
5/8/13 Wednesday
I took today off from work because it is my youngest’s birthday and I wanted to see her off to school and be here when she got home, she really likes it when I am. It’s also a good dad thing, let’s her know that she matters and that she is important to me; that I would sacrifice for her. This also gives me an opportunity to clean up the house before the ex comes over and it allows me to get a little more life done as well. Priced materials for the patio cover I want to make. Looks like I’ll need to spend around $200. That’s just to get it covered, that doesn’t include the cost of building the deck on top of the cover. The material I priced will be for supporting the second story deck, it’s just that instead of building the floor of the deck I’ll probably just add some of that sun screen material over the frame until I am ready to buy the remaining lumber and hardware for the floor and railing of the deck. This is contributes to resilience because it will reduce my cooling bill this summer. I know this for a fact.
5/8/13 Wednesday Action
– Bought some organic azalea soil mix to plant my blueberries in – $12.99.
– Priced materials for the patio cover I want to make.
5/12/13 Sunday
I have a 30gal trash can in my garage that I have been using to keep random things like scooters, tarps, bicycle pumps etc. in. I originally found it in that alley waiting for trash pick up because it was filled with rot
ting yard waste. Someone had filled it with leaves and grass, then left it through a couple of rains and sun, and it stunk. I took some garbage bags and dumped the rotting debris into it, took the can home and cleaned it. Well today I found new homes for the stuff it was holding it took it out back to use as a water catchment. The plan is to set it up on two cinder blocks for some elevation right under my drain spout. I will put a hole near the bottom and run a hose into it so I can use rain water for watering. I guess I’ll have to use aquarium glue instead of caulk to avoid any chemicals in the water. I have some screening that I will put over the top of the trash can that is long enough to hang over the sides so I can just wrap some cordage around the can to hold the screen in place. I believe the mesh is fine enough to keep mosquitoes out.
5/12/13 Sunday Action Taken Toward Resiliency
– Planted two blueberry bushes, amend soil. Put excess dirt from the holes along the back fence (lowest part of my property) to form a berm – 1 hour
– Dug out container for water catchment – 20 minutes
THE IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability=Resilience, Resilience=Sustainability
“those with great wealth have captured the for-sale machinery of governance, and “persuaded” the Central State to carve out quasi-monopolies and cartels that enable artificially high premiums. They also buy subsidies, exceptions and tax breaks for their income streams.” “The financial and political Aristocracy will continue to do more of what’s failed because they have no alternative model that leaves their power and wealth intact.” – Charles Hugh Smith
Quit thinking in terms of total collapse, and start focusing on personal independence. Become resilient and become free from the artificially high costs that dependence on the current systems enables. The reason people resist becoming resilient is because they worship convenience. We have become over-dependent on single source systems, and dependence is not liberty! Liberty is one of the foundational and fundamental pillars of America. It is intrinsic in the definition of America. America is supposed to be the land of the free, and I for one don’t want to be enslaved.
THE REAL THREAT TO BE PREPPING FOR
I have finally had my “Aha” moment in regards to the most likely disaster we need to be prepping for,: taxes and inflation. These are the greatest
Image courtesy of renjith krishnan
danger we are facing, and even though they aren’t going to lead to anarchy and complete societal breakdown, they will lead to increases in crime and violence, and shortages of many of the things we take for granted. While the systems people have become helpless without will still be in place and functioning, we the people will not get as much utility from them as we once did.
Taxes are about to become the biggest crisis we face. Our taxes are on the rise because local, state, and federal governments are going broke through their refusal to do what we the people are required to do (budget, live within our means).
This is going to pull more and more money out of our pockets and out of the monetary system, leaving fewer dollars for us to spend. The top tax rate in France is now 75%. 75%!!! Ouch! Not only are we going to have fewer and fewer dollars to spend, the dollars we do have are buying less than they used to.
“the question of how the increase in Social Security taxes would affect the poorest workers did not seem to garner much debate on either side of the aisle.
“I don’t see any reason to consider supporting its extension,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, in testimony last year. Even Nancy Pelosi, a reliable liberal who leads the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives, was for letting it expire.
If you wanted to design a policy to squeeze the spending of lower- and middle-income households, raising the payroll tax is the way to do it,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors. “It’s very regressive.”
Retailing analysts and economists say high-end earners will largely be spared.
“I wouldn’t expect it to have much of an effect on BMW consumption,” said Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “The people who will notice it the most are the ones making the least.”
When asked how their financial situation had changed in January, 32 percent of people with incomes below $75,000 said their pay had dropped, compared with 13 percent who said it had increased. By contrast, 38 percent of people earning more than $75,000 said their wages had gone up last month, and 23 percent said they had gone down. “ – http://finance.yahoo.com/news/higher-payroll-tax-pinches-those-174834511.html
As people spend less, prices will continue to increase as businesses struggle to maintain profit margins. This will lead to people buying fewer items and a vicious cycle begins. Also, less buying power means a diminished ability to repay loans. So if a bank or lender doesn’t have faith in your ability to repay a loan, they aren’t going to make the loan. That means you are going to have a really difficult time replacing a car that breaks down, which could lead to losing your job.
Couple tax increases with the continual rise in inflation and the erosion of the dollar’s buying power and you are looking at a situation in which the working class is basically becoming indentured servants.
One of the steps to take in order to be resilient when this happens, I MUST HAVE DEPENDABLE TRANSPORTATION NOW! The time is coming when we are not going to be able to afford a replacement. Back in early December I took my cash savings and bought a used Honda Civic 5 speed for $2600. With proper maintenance I should be able to get at least another 100,000 miles out of it, and it has a 4 cylinder engine so it gets good gas mileage. I saw it as having more value than the cash I was sitting on. I am now attempting to replenish my cash. Saving $50 per week should replace it in about a year. I think it is vital to be sitting on cash as we approach the coming crisis. I also think it is wise to have a portion of that cash in silver because silver is going to start to appreciate in value at some point. You don’t want it all in silver though because you don’t want to be in a situation where you can’t get it converted back into dollars in time to take advantage of a great deal.
An important note about taxes: the very rich don’t really care at what rate they are taxed at in this country because the tax laws were written by them. As long as they know what rate they will be charged, the can have their accountants, planners and advisors plan for it and adjust accordingly. These sophisticated tax planners have nearly 4 million words of tax code to help them in their tax avoidance. 74,000 pages seems to be excessive and wreaks of special interest. Wasn’t Romney’s tax return over 375 pages long? He paid a rate of between 13.5% and 14.1%. Sounds low to me, but my tax return has less than 10 pages. For the sake of disclosure, I am not an Obama fanboy, I did not vote for him. I voted for Gary Johnson.
We The People
The Constitution of the United States of America does not grant us our rights as individuals, it protects them!!
The term “inalienable” means unable to be taken away from, or given away by, the possessor.
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