Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am currently in SE Michigan, a few hundred yards from the Raisin River and a few miles from Lake Erie. I was born and raised in California. My husband and I are planning to retire in rural Maine. I grew up with an avid outdoors family, we camped and hunted and went on fishing trips more times than I can count. Learning about the outdoors and survival was more a matter of enhancing our experiences than the actual survival aspect although that was also important. Learning how to make a shelter if we ever were lost, etc. The wild edibles were just a thing that was picked up. When we went fishing, the fish was pretty good cooked in the fire but it was even better if it was stuffed with wild onions. We picked wild grapes, pinion nuts, and learned how to make a frog gig. When the salmon ran, we smoked a lot of salmon, and during hunting season learned how to handle freshly killed game so it would be ok to eat. It wasn't any kind of actual survival training or anything, just experience picked up over time due to natural curiosity and a lot of exposure to the outdoors. I recall my dad showing me how to make traps once for wild turkeys with a piece of pipe and some chicken wire, but he said it was illegal to actually use it. I remember my grandpa teaching me how obsidian arrowheads were made, with some leather to protect my palm, and an antler tine. It was fascinating. He took me fossil hunting, and we hunted for stones for his rock tumbler, and showed me how to gaff for salmon.
No buck skinner or reinactor, just a lot of interest in the outdoors and how to use it if I need to. That part came really later when I started thinking more about survival and preparedness being a useful set of skills to have. There are a lot of people who wouldn't know of a single wild food to safely eat aside from game, and I think that's sad. Folks with no idea how to make a shelter if they are ever lost in the wilderness. Most people don't even know about home canning, and many who do think of it as some primitive and unnecessary hobby (because there are stores filled with food everywhere, don't you know). Gardening is becoming a lost art. My husband's co-workers can't believe that his wife likes going camping, and that we use a tent instead of a camper.
It isn't something really special to me really. But I think it is vastly more than most of the general population can even imagine. The reason I know these things is because I am interested in more than the latest reality television show, or which team is in the playoffs, or who Paris Hilton is currently dating, and the latest issues of People magazine or Cosmopolitan. Most people live very narrowly focused lives. A little expansion would open their minds to a lot of wonders.
Ode yeah it sure did.... Maybe sometime you might look up the Eastern's Eastern National ot the same event for your area, the Great North Sweat, primitive events for 1750-1840 by the NMLRA. Even a google search will get the idea. These all have days iopen to the public, and who knows you might not be the public very long.
I got there from being a modern hiker for all my life, since I could walk, and then getting hurt and not being able, and then by sheer chance of a incidental drive by. When I saw with my own eye the first primitive camp ever for me I did a double take, and turned the car around. That was at the Mt Washington Auto Road. I was allowed to walk in since that event is always open to public, and the next day i was back dressed as best i could to blend in.
I have healed since then, but I do things both ways now. I am waiting for stag horn sumac to push up new this years red cones for tea mixed with wild concord grape as the sweetener, maybe sourer, sometimes it's hard to tell.
In stores there is very little my wife and I want. They are more for quick need, since I can wear out a lot of jeans in a year, and I don't mean minor stains. I mean the cloth is gone. I'ld hate to sew jeans to just work in and wreck, more so deer hide britches...
I'ld rather wear my egyptian cotton waxed frock coat in the rain than a London Fog raincoat.
I'ld rather wear renewable wool than poly plastics. In fact as a mechanic type x pro that polyester is outright dangerous since it melts when on fire. I have a few minor scares from getting burned peeling other techs out of their uniforms still.
If I were King I would tax plastic into extinction
We garden a patch apx 60 x 100 and ear harvest to harvest of it. There is a new strawberry bed here having moved 1/2 of them from the garden. I am not sure what area it is, but the other 1/2 still in the garden is 4' x 100'.
They tell me I shouldn't be upset any if FEMA comes to confiscate my food! I don't have monies for foods I have no idea where they came from or know whats in em. What do you say about that?
if you actually want to know, fema can in an emergency come into your home and confiscate all of your food for their use. if you are not willing to defend against that, then watch out for the jackbooted thugs of fema.
I still say again that if there was an emergency of sufficient urgency to require confiscation of an individual citizen's food supplies, that any reasonably intelligent person would see that coming in plenty of time to make sure their food stores were not there when the authorities came to get them. There are simply too many resources available in government stockpiles for this to be a possibility under just about any scenario except for something of nation wide impact. A major asteroid impact, Yellowstone erupting, Nuclear war (including dirty bombs), that sort of thing. If the flooding problems in the midwest didn't rate confiscation of personal stores of food, and the flooding is an enormous event, then use your brain and be rational here in your fears.
If something horrible enough to warrant such measues ever occurs, the chances are pretty good that you would be dead already. If you survived, you would know it was time to hide your stuff. But I think it is a pretty safe bet that before the government tried to take anything from survivors, that the resources of those who didn't survive would first be salvaged.
if you actually want to know, fema can in an emergency come into your home and confiscate all of your food for their use. if you are not willing to defend against that, then watch out for the jackbooted thugs of fema.
FEMA is not going to go to your house and grab your bag of organic brown rice or tofu. This is about production facilities (farms, processing plants, distribution centers, etc) where large quantities of supplies are on hand. To spread fears or to even think that armed federal agents wants the can of chickpeas you have in your pantry is nonsense.
Ode's post just about sums up what this is about, extrodinary major disaster.
Fear mongering does not become the self sustainability movement.
I still say again that if there was an emergency of sufficient urgency to require confiscation of an individual citizen's food supplies, that any reasonably intelligent person would see that coming in plenty of time to make sure their food stores were not there when the authorities came to get them. There are simply too many resources available in government stockpiles for this to be a possibility under just about any scenario except for something of nation wide impact. A major asteroid impact, Yellowstone erupting, Nuclear war (including dirty bombs), that sort of thing. If the flooding problems in the midwest didn't rate confiscation of personal stores of food, and the flooding is an enormous event, then use your brain and be rational here in your fears.
If something horrible enough to warrant such measues ever occurs, the chances are pretty good that you would be dead already. If you survived, you would know it was time to hide your stuff. But I think it is a pretty safe bet that before the government tried to take anything from survivors, that the resources of those who didn't survive would first be salvaged.
That might be. I envisioned they would hit at or just past harvest. Un- ripe anything does Fema no good anyway.
I am sure i wouldn't be first since what I make is only proven to feed 3 from harvest to harvest, and now it appears it needs to feed 4.
Last years harvest is feeding 4 since a recent past.
Sure, they'd go after the grocery store food warehouses... at first. If the disaster was widespread and ongoing, as a final resort, I would expect them to "go after" those folks (like the Mormons) who stock up years' supplies of cases of freeze-dried and canned food first; also food co-ops. The point is that DHS (of which FEMA s now a part) has been given the right to do so "in an emergency". Who decides what is an emergency - enough of one to confiscate private as well as corporate products? Sure, you can talk about the governor declaring a state of emergency - but who actually tells the National Guard or the local deputies to confiscate locals' weapons or food "for their own good"? And how well do you trust some panicked bureaucrat control-freak with delusions of grandeur? It took a threatened lawsuit to return the private weapons of those who had theirs confiscated in Katrina... long after the threat to their lives and property was past.
While they MIGHT come here (too far to travel and transport back out), what would they do with a herd of cows or a field of collards, after all? Someone would have to gather them, process them... Most city folks only know what a brisket looks like under plastic on a foam tray... When it comes to the fence and stares at them and moos, they don't know what to do with it.
I think some of my friends believe meat is birthed on styrofoam, covered in plastic wrap!
I am repeating myself, but the first thing the authorities tried to do after Katrina was to confiscate the guns. It was done to 'protect the public'.
One of my newly retired friends he built his house with a dirt road leading to it. The dirt road went over a deliberately dug 'drainage' ditch. (No one around here would ever question when or not a drainage ditch is actually functional) He put a small bridge over it. Under the ties, and tucked out of sight, he put pieces of tin. When you drive over the bridge, there is an awful clatter. It sounds like the bridge is going to collapse!
When they appraised his house for taxes, the inspector told him that the value of his home was much less because of the bridge. My friend solemnly told him that he would fix the bridge as soon as he could and before it got any worse.
So there you have it. Lower property taxes and a road that discourages casual visitors!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
59 here, going on 14 I hope. I also have a bad case of Peter Pan syndrome!
SC Granny - you are so right!
