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Prepare Your Family (for Hard Times)
by Douglas Willhite Copyright © 2008
"The debate is not whether we're going to have a soft landing or a hard landing in the U.S. but how hard the landing is going to be." Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics, New York University; from Time Magazine, Feb. 4, 2008.
In President Bush's 2008 State of the Union address he stated:
"Our security, our prosperity and our environment all require
reducing our dependence on oil consumption over the next decade."
If your family is NOT feeling a burden from higher food and fuel prices, the bursting housing bubble, wobbly Wall Street, or too much debt, then count yourself among the very fortunate.
The good news for the rest of us is there is much we can do to help cushion our families and stabilize our communities in the face of financial hardships and vital resource shortages.
If we look back a few generations in America, many families had a wealth of traditional knowledge and skills which were passed down from one generation to the next that made living with less purchasing power doable and even pleasurable. Our ancestors managed without sweet crude oil for thousands of years. There is much that we can learn from them. They often worked hard and enjoyed life even while getting by with far fewer conveniences, choices and creature comforts than the smorgasbord of options which today's Americans take for granted and have grown dependent on.
Energy scholar, Richard Heinberg, admonished "if you're interested in finding shelter during the storm, get thee to the productive side of the economy. Grow something, or learn to make or repair something useful."
Positive steps to take & skills worth developing
- Grow as much of your family's food, medicine, fiber, fuel and other resources as possible. Especially food! Farming, gardening, and manufacturing were once cornerstones of traditional American family life, and must become so again.
- Use your backyard, patio or rooftop to begin setting up a "modern homestead."
- Raised or permanent beds and container gardens are generally the easiest way to build fertile soil, conserve water, and virtually eliminate tilling and weeding. However, in the high desert southwest, raised beds may dry out too fast, so it's probably best to dig your beds into the ground and cover them with mulch.
- Start with a mix of composted manure and sandy soil. Top off with compost and mulch. No need to till! Build fertile soil by annually adding amendments such as compost, worm castings and mulch directly to the top of your garden beds.
- Plant or graft as many perennials like fruit, nut, olive trees, berries, and grapes as your lot will support.
- Use attached greenhouses, solariums, & cold frames to extend your growing season, produce multiple crops, and protect from predators.
- Raise chickens, rabbits, geese, guinea pigs, sheep, pigs, goats and cows for meat, eggs, dairy & wool.
- If you live where wildfires are a threat, set up goat pastures for firebreaks.
- Get your zoning laws changed to allow backyard agriculture (if necessary.)
- Grow your own livestock feed.
- Save heirloom & open pollinated seeds to grow true reproductions of your favorite plants.
- Preserve harvests by canning, drying, and pickling.
- Build a root cellar to store potatoes and root crops.
- Expand your knowledge and use of local wild foods and herbal remedies.
- Join or form a community farmer's market and/or a local food co-op.
- Learn to cook from scratch the way grandma did!
- Make your own shoes, clothing, hand tools, and other useable, practical goods.
- Repair, re-use, and recycle everything.
- Work from home or live close to your job.
- Support your local economy by buying from local businesses.
- Eliminate credit card debts by living simply & within your budget.
- Making a shopping list & stick to it.
- Pay off your mortgage early by adding extra principal to your monthly payments.
- Barter and trade goods, labor & services with friends and neighbors.
- Save money on health care costs by making certain you and your loved ones get plenty of outdoor exercise, filtered water, nutritious food and rest.
- Harvest rainwater by funneling your rain gutters into barrels or tanks. (Filter well before drinking!)
- Modify your plumbing so that gray water from sinks, showers and tubs flows into separate pipes from toilet water and may be reused to water fruit trees, grapes and berry bushes.
- Set-up a composting toilet and use composted "humanure" to fertilize trees and bushes.
- Use solar and wind power to heat and pump water & provide electricity to your home or business. This can pay for itself and provide your family with added security during electrical grid outages and price spikes.
- Properly placed shade trees & extended roof overhangs will help keep your home cool during hot summer days.
- Solar oriented windows (with insulated shades) will help warm your home during cold winter days.
- Tankless, "on demand" water heaters save heating fuel costs and work well.
- Add extra insulation & caulking to your attic, walls, and floors to save money on energy costs.
- One way to super-insulate your house is by retrofitting with straw bales and covering with clay plaster.
- Other ways to improve insulation include double layered outer walls, earth-jackets & underground homes.
- Train draft horses, mules, donkeys, and oxen for work and transport.
- Walk, ride a bike or a horse, carpool or use public transit whenever possible.
- Perform your own automotive maintenance & repairs when possible.
- Convert diesel engines to run on vegetable oil (as they were originally intended.)
- Organize with neighbors to have electric railways installed between the town centers in your region. Transportation and infrastructure are critical to your family's economic well-being. It's a common misconception to assume you'll be better off living remotely in the mountains. History reveals that those who live closer to waterways and town centers have more opportunities during financial hard times.
- If you live at sea level consider moving your home to higher ground in case the melting ice caps raise ocean levels.
- Help educate your community. In the future your family's financial freedom will be more tied to your neighbor's as fuel prices, resource shortages, and debt force the global economy to re-localize.
- Use emails, gardening clubs, potluck gatherings, church, synagogue, local government, 4-H, high school agricultural programs, and other neighborhood opportunities to exchange tips and information. Knowledge and communication will help insure local economic stability and security.
- Develop a home library of essential how-to books and information. Websites and other magnetic media are quite vulnerable to power-grid disruptions.
If you feel frightened or overwhelmed after reading this article: pause, take a deep breath, and rest assured you're not alone. We're all in this together!
Each new positive action you take will bring you, your family, community and country one step closer to financial freedom and security. So make a list, prioritize, then take a step, then another step, then another... ;-)) Sure beats waiting around for the government or the so-called "experts" to fix things. (Remember Katrina!)
Bibliography/Sources:
- Transcript of President Bush's 2008 SOTU speech
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript/
- Heinberg's brilliant essay, "What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out? http://www.energybulletin.net/38091.html
- President Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union address that "America is addicted to oil."http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/
- Peak oil historian / energy analyst, Richard Heinberg's Museletter: http://www.richardheinberg.com/peak_everything_economics
- Food Growing, Animal Husbandry, Medicinal Herbs & Health - List of Online Sources
- Design a rooftop garden http://www.container-gardens.com/Container-gardens-rooftop.htm
- Harvey Ussery writes instructional articles for Mother Earth News. He and wife, Ellen, practice an integrated approach to raising poultry which includes orcharding, vegetable gardening, and vermicomposting (worm castings for fertilizer.) http://www.themodernhomestead.us/
- To read a variety of informative postings from market gardeners & others living on the land, sign-up at: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
- OrganicToBe: Organic recipes, garden/farm skills, news & opinions: http://OrganicToBe.org/
- Causabon's Book: Sharon Astyk's ruminations on an ambiguous future: http://sharonastyk.com/
- Path to Freedom: Pioneering a journey towards self-sufficiency - one step at a time: http://www.PathToFreedom.com/
- Mother Earth News: free e-newsletter guide to living wisely: http://ipost.com/motherearth/prefs?utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email
- Hen and Harvest: free homesteading e-magazine: sustainability - good cheer - better food: http://henandharvest.com/
- Post Carbon Institute: Reduce consumption - produce locally; free e-newsletter: http://postcarbon.org
- Michael Pollan's New York Times article: "Unhappy Meals"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
- Rainwater Harvesting http://www.harvesth2o.com/
- The Humanure Handbook http://www.chelseagreen.com/2005/items/humanure
- The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes, by Atheena & Bill Steen http://www.caneloproject.com/
- Renewing Husbandry, by Wendell Berry http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/160/
- James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, lists ways for us to survive the housing bubble implosion and an uncertain energy future: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/01/disarray.html
- Survival in Times of Uncertainty: Growing Up in Russia in the 1990's http://www.sott.net/articles/show/147683-Survival-in-Times-of-Uncertainty-Growing-Up-in-Russia-in-the-1990s
- CBS News warns that a NASA climate scientist said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." This should raise ocean levels. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/13/tech/main3613698.shtml?source=mostpop_story
- Transition United States: Bringing the head, heart & hands of community together to make the transition to life beyond oil: http://transitionus.ning.com/
- Transition California: Rebuilding community resilience and self-reliance. http://www.transitioncalifornia.ning.com/
- NBC's Brian Williams reports on how the federal government response to the Katrina disaster was mismanaged. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14559053/
- Energy Bulletin: news clearinghouse & "leading edge" thinking: http://energybulletin.net/
- The Future of Food: "must-see" documentary on our genetically modified food system: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/
- HopeDance magazine: Radical Solutions Inspiring Hope: http://hopedance.org/
- More modern homesteading articles: http://ChihuahuaValley.net/home.html
- More modern homesteading links: http://ChihuahuaValley.net/homesteadingLinks.html
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Greetings Neighbors,
We've been encouraging our friends and neighbors to plant fruit, nut and olive trees (use gopher baskets!); get vegetable and herb kitchen gardens growing; and set-up backyard chicken coops, milk goats and other livestock. In other words, we can all benefit from practicing old-fashioned self-sufficiency skills now.
Stocking food, water, & medicine is a good idea too -- but more of a temporary solution. Food and fuel prices are on a long term upward trend (although gas prices are temporarily down.) This will require each of us to think long term and develop solutions which are ecologically sustainable.
DW
Load Up the Pantry
by Brett Arends
Wall Street Journal Online
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
These are trends that have been in place for some time.
And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.
The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.
Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.
The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.
A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.
You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.
If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.
The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.
Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com
Copyrighted, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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