There is still 2 feet of snow on the ground. As a prepper, you must know what important time of year this is. Its time to start making plans for your GARDEN. Oh you poor gullible fools. You came here hoping for my advice on firearms. Well, I will give you my valuable advice on guns but I am going to put it in its place of importance...at the END.
What? What do you mean, 'you don't have a garden'? Seriously? Your grandpappy that lived through The Great Depression...or worse...Would be really angry with you and just not understand why. OK Rambo, Its time for you to wipe that girly camo paint off your face, be a real man and learn how to feed your family. Its time for you to face your greatest FEAR.....HIPPIES. The masters of growing. When the stores are closed, The deer are extinct, every one of the seeds in your Survivalist Seed Bank didn't grow in the forest as planned and forcing down one more grossly overpriced MRE is going to make you puke wile consumed with guilt that you could have bought 10 times the amount of easily storable food for the same price….or 20 times the seeds. Why, Oh Why didn't you study at the feet of the Heirloom Seed and Permiculture Gurus.I have been called a complex character that they would love to do acid with...or an old soul or less admirable things like loser. Im just diverse. When I want to know the best chainsaw to get, I hang with a logger. Farmers know where to find the parts for my very old tractor. Good old boys to get the truck started. When I cant get the Motorcycle running, I can always count on the sagely advice of old Bikers. When I want the girls to go all week at the knees over my leather pants, I go to....well, that's another story.
If you haven't been introduced to the "OTHER" preppers yet, its time I introduce some of you to the Transition Town Movement. Less guns, More baked goods. You will hear alot of preppers now days using the term "Building Resilience". This term stems from Transition Town.
Survivalist oriented preppers generally keep their prepping to themselves. Its all about Self Sufficiency. Transition Town is more about organising and sharing information to make your town more resilient to cultural shocks. They encourage Localised Food and Energy by organising local farmers markets or putting electric charging stations outside of their businesses. Sure, there is also the flake factor, hemp hacky sacks and sandals…and a lot of posers…But many of these folks are manufacturing Real Food…and they put on a lot of free or cheap workshops to pass on their knowledge to the public.

I noticed a flyer at the coffee shop of our nearest city. We rearranged our schedule to make it there.

I went to a seed saving workshop on the weekend...and found out once again that I am a complete failure. If you have read my previous post, you will remember that I mentioned how being such a loser has turned me into a fantastic prepper. My gross mistakes have taught me alot.
Last year we did alot of food related experiments. Seed saving and reproduction was a big one. We grew over 100 squashes, pumpkins and zukes for storage. We planted several bean species straight from the dry goods section of the grocery store. It was an experiment to see if the store beans were viable seeds. The local beans like Jacobs Cattle beans and Soldier beans were a big success. We multiplied our bean store while learning just how time consuming shelling the beans is for such a small return. Mrs C5 gave me the usual eye rolling and speech, "It took you 12 hours to shuck what we could have just bought for 6$. Not the best use of your time, don't you think?" I gave her my usual cheesy grin and replied,"This is called psychological prepping, Your Highness. We have to get used to this. Its not just a job for 'Brown' people anymore. Welcome to your future".
There is a motivational saying- If you shoot for the moon...you might just hit a really tall light post.
This applies to our prepper friend that I will call Ted. Our attempts at starting a prepper community have so far been a complete failure. We got close a few times only to watch it disappear in a puff of smoke. On the otherhand, We did meet a few preppers and one of them was Ted, our "really tall light post"
and this gentle prepper has become intertwined with our lives and future. Wile pulling into town for the seed show, we drove by his house to drag him out of bed and get him to tag along. Bleary eyed, he met us in his underwear...but realised the importance of an event like this to upgrade his seed collection and told us he would meet us there. I bring this up because another prepper friend told me to think of building prepper community like growing a crop. You nurture the plants and try not to smother them with fertilizer. There is way too much uncomposted fertilizer (bull shit) out their calling itself prepping.

It wasn’t too far into the lecture that that I learned that I had screwed up the viability of much of the seeds I had gathered last year. All my beans were planted together. Worse, we had a bunch of different tomato plants all mixed together. That means…cross pollination. Same thing with the assorted squashes. We learned that just because pumpkins, Zukes and cukes look so different, they are the same plant. (there is three species of squash…and I forgot which is which but something that looks like a pumpkin probably has no relation)Think of a wolf mounting a toy poodle. Hard to get that image out of your head. It really is the same species…but you REALLY don’t know what you are going to get.
So all of these plant species need to be kept far apart.

But it was also confirmed that I had saved the tomato and cucumber seeds correctly. Listen up. This is important. These seeds must be left in a bowel with the juice for a couple weeks to mold. Then wash the icky bits off before drying on a tray This breaks down the protective layer and greatly increases viable germination. We also learned not to dry them on a paper towel as this keeps them moist for too long. As a bonus, cucumber and tomatoe seeds processed this way have better storability. Ten years versus 2 years .
The group that was teaching was from SEEDS OF DIVERSITY. You can look them up online. http://www.seeds.ca/en.php . They put out a booklet on seed saving that is way cheaper and easier to understand than the classic, From Seed to Seed. I think it is for 15$ versus 70$ in Canada for the other. book. http://www.westcoastseeds.com/productdetail/Gardening-Books/Seeds-and-Seed-Saving/How-to-Save-Your-Own-Vegetable-Seeds/
The second workshop was on sprouts. Hopefully you have thought about sprouting your beans and seeds as a means of getting vitamin c and other nutrience over the winter…or hiding out underground. LOL. Lets see you do that with an MRE. I was there for one reason alone. To find out if sprouted seeds still maintain there protein content and yes they do…but now its more like protein on steroids.

My reason is that this years obsessive compulsive interest is getting my chickens off store bought food. I want to ramp up my one person bean, corn and grain production so I can feed my own damned chickens. Unfortunately, I don’t have a convenient way to crack them into more digestible food….thus, I am thinking about sprouting on mass. The idea came when watching the hens scratch through the snow in some desperate attempt to find a single piece if green grass.

So, My sum up. Just like the gun range or martial arts . Gardening requires TRAINING and PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. During the collapse is not the time for on the job training

OK. Im all typed out now and have to go out into the forest to chainsaw down some fence posts. That’s what I learned over the weekend.

Oh yah. I believe I said I would give my sagely advice on guns….

I like guns. I even have a few. They are very useful when you have to kill something. After you get your garden in you might want to think about getting one.