(Continued from Part 1.)
Gardens and Jungles
In my Year 2 update that was posted in SurvivalBlog last summer, I shared that I had nothing but garden failures. There are several problems I had to solve with gardening where I live. First, I had to turn a lawn into a garden. Second, plowing only brought up dormant seeds that I jokingly say are from all the surrounding counties. Third, there is no water piped out to the garden and I didn’t have enough water due to the previous well situation. Fourth, we had a semi-drought in year 2. Fifth, the wildlife here was absolutely delighted with the garden buffet set before them: birds, rabbits, voles, squirrels, deer, etc. Sixth, I chose a wonderful spot for the garden with excellent sun exposure, only to find out it was in a “wind tunnel” every Spring! The wind ripped up the ground cover and tossed it over the fence three times. I would staple it back down, and boom, another storm, and more work. Very discouraging. And seventh, my homestead sits atop a rocky hill. There are more rocks of all sizes in my soil than you can imagine.
Remember that if you purchase “emergency seeds” or a “seed vault”, there is zero guarantee that you are going to be able to create a garden from scratch and eat from it the first season. This is year 3 for me! Did I get some produce the last couple of years? Yes, but it would never have fed a family. It was more like Show and Tell: “Oh, look there, a potato, a zucchini, is that a little watermelon under the weeds, what in the world ate all the sweet potato slips?” I ended up purchasing produce from a neighboring farm, and from the Amish.
This year I went with raised beds – very tall (32”), metal, raised beds, 6.5ft long and 2ft wide. I purchased 8 of them, but so far only 5 have been constructed and filled. It took an hour to assemble each bed – very tedious work. It took a lot of work to fill those beds up before I could even plant in them. But, why so tall?! Where I live there are rabbits galore, voles, deer, wild turkeys, crows, and snakes. I had to account for all those critters. The garden is fenced against the deer and double-fenced on the side the deer come in on. I learned that a deer will easily bound over a fence, but two fences 6’ apart deter them. They see it as a trap.
There is ground cover underneath the beds to prevent creatures from coming up into the beds from underneath, and as weed prevention. I didn’t go so far as to lay down hardware cloth, but I had planned to. That would have been an excellent deterrent for the smaller creatures who dig underground. I also had a terrible time weeding the last few years, and as I get older, it gets harder. Did I mention that I am now, officially, a Senior Citizen? Tall garden beds solved most of those problems for me. The catch is having enough material to fill the beds and I had plenty of barn waste to fill them with, but it had to be trucked up a hill from the barn area and into the garden.
I am prepared to erect hoops and fabric to cover each bed should I need to. So far, the cicada invasion has remained out in the forests around my property. I think I’ve covered all the bases, but who knows! Before all of that, I had to deal with the jungle mess of a garden I already had. Rather than plow it this year, I mowed it and then tarped it with vinyl, used, billboards for several months. All plowing did was bring up seed heads of a bazillion plants that are native to Tennessee, so I figured using heavy vinyl tarps, held down with heavy cement bricks, would kill most of the seeds and keep the tarps from being whisked off by the wind. That worked really well. After removing a tarp (I rotated 2 very large vinyl tarps around, section by section), I rolled out woven ground covering, and down on my hands and knees I stapled the heck out of it. Last Spring, the storms ripped up the ground cover three times, so this year I ignored the section of the garden that was most vulnerable to the high winds, and concentrated on the sections that had a wind break.
With some help, the manure and hay from the barns, some of it composted, and some of it fresh, were dumped into the garden beds to fill them 75% full. (None of my fields are sprayed with pesticides or herbicides and none of the hay I purchase is sprayed either. I had no fear of chemicals in the compost.) That made the garden beds very heavy and immovable to the winds. The beds were then topped off with a finished compost that I had to purchase. The barn materials will feed the beds for a long time (she hopes) and the finished compost was the planting medium. I planted some plants by seed and purchased some “starts”. The raised garden beds are thriving! And it’s now an easy task to walk by them and pull the weeds rather than bending over, getting down on my hands and knees, or wielding a hoe. A several-hour weeding job turned into a ten minute walkabout in the garden every morning.
This was not a cheap solution. It was very expensive. What I was looking for was a “forever solution” to the large garden effort. Future raised beds will be built out of wood. I found a design that I can physically accomplish on my own, and won’t cost near as much as the metal raised beds did. The garden is designed to feed my large family, not just myself. It is a SHTF garden. I was willing to invest in things that would last decades. I don’t regret that. In the meantime, selling extra produce to the people who purchase milk and eggs is very easy. I can put up as much as I want and sell the excess for now, until the day I have to close the gates permanently. Is there an OPSEC fear? Yes. But, as I stated previously, I’m extremely selective as to who steps foot on the farm. I also have layers of security including dogs, fencing, gates, cameras, protection devices, etc.
My health
Last year I became extremely anemic and the fear of cancer progression returned. My Oncologist wanted to hurry me into chemotherapy, but I refused. The last time I had chemotherapy was in 2017. I had no desire to repeat that. I had completely changed my lifestyle, eliminated all processed foods, got off all prescriptions drugs (even chemo pills), and strived to thrive in fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and home-raised farm food. However, I was working so hard on the farm this past year that I neglected myself. I needed to slow down and pay attention. When I get really busy, I have a tendency to not eat and I push myself hard. I told the doctor, “I can fix this”, to which he was highly annoyed. I knew I had to downsize, or rightsize, the farm. I knew I had to prepare iron-rich foods and eat them. I knew I had to take rest breaks and shift my focus to myself.
This past Winter, my doctor almost kicked me out of his practice since I wouldn’t do what he wanted. I finally relented to having iron infusions after I made absolutely certain that there were no “blood products”, only minerals, in the infusion. I knew that if my red blood cell counts got too low, I would need a blood transfusion, and since my opinion is that the blood supply is tainted with any number of things, I would not allow that. I also knew that if I got too sickly, I might not be able to recover without all kinds of treatments, and the farm would fall apart. This Spring I had one iron infusion. That, combined with downsizing the farm, preparing food and eating it, resting more, and trying not to overdo it all the time, I am doing much better.
My red blood cell count is very close to normal range as I write this. My Oncologist was pleasantly surprised that my situation had stabilized and I was doing well again. He’s a nice guy. LOL. I am a stubborn old woman. I think I learned my lesson. Maybe. When I sit in the Oncologists’ large waiting room, watching people come and go, looking like they are on death’s door, and proclaiming “Doc says I’m cancer free right now!”, I smile and nod to encourage them. And secretly I swear to myself that I would rather die out in the field than go through chemotherapy again. Not to say it’s not miracle working for some people – it certainly is. But, for me, I want to choose my own path of lesser evils.
Cooking from scratch is a large part of why I am so healthy despite the attacks on my body. I refused the gene therapy injections as a matter of course. My immune system was too fragile to add in another variable when the injections were being pushed. I’m glad I made that decision. But, the biggest thing I’ve done is eliminate all processed foods. All of it. And that means there is a lot of work associated with cooking everything from scratch. Out of bread? Gotta go get that dough going. Want a hamburger? Gotta get those hamburgers buns made and baked, home-raised hamburger defrosted, vegetables sliced; are home made condiments handy? French fries? Get out the potatoes, get to rinsing, slicing, and deep frying in tallow from the home raised beef harvest. Want cereal for breakfast? Grab the oats, or make granola in advance, maybe a delicious Dutch baby made of farm-fresh eggs and fresh milk? Craving ice cream? Well, I need to cream separate the milk, gather fresh eggs, and pull out the organic sugar (I still think sugar makes the best ice cream. There are alternatives.).
My eating habits have changed drastically. Only whole foods and foods that I can raise here or buy from a neighboring farm. The things I still purchase are: rice and organic peanut butter, bleach, distilled vinegar, paper towels, toilet paper, trash bags, etc. The list is short. I was at Costco the other day to pick up some bleach, and grabbed some fresh grapes and organic prepared cheese tortellinis. My body pretty much rejected that food. I had to throw it away because I couldn’t eat it. I don’t know if that’s because my body will only tolerate fresh, whole, foods or if there was actually something wrong with that food. That’s the downside of a pure diet – zero tolerance for bacteria or processed foods. The upside is very rewarding. I am strong and healthy, but it’s a lot of work to stay in that healthy groove. No, I don’t eat out! And mostly, I don’t miss it.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 3.)