Food Shortages --- Lets get Real

    
                  

    We can't really ignore what is going on in our country no matter how hard we try to act normalish. As soon as we do we have real life bite us in the rear to remind us. So you folks that are trying to just do what you think you have to and not watch the news or hear anything bad just trying to keep those blinders on and head down so you don't have to see or think about it you can just step away and delete now. This post is going to get real."If all you see is what you see. You'll never see all there is to see".

   Now that we have that out of the way.....
   Lets try to skip the health thing that is everywhere you look and dominating / ruining daily our lives in some way.
   We can't seem to control anything right now. We try but it is down right scary even when we are all doing the best we can. There are a few other things we need to be looking at other than the obvious health stuff. As with anything we are dealing with everyday safety and needs. Shelter, water, food, medical, temp control are the main ones.  Some may be losing their focus with all this overwhelming new life.
  There are some things we CAN CONTROL those are the things we can work with. The more we can look ahead and see what is going on and plan the more peace of mind we may have.
 Food -- it was really hard in the beginning. Seems like they have somewhat adjusted distribution. Right now I don't know where or how your getting your food but get and store everything you can. Even if someone gives you something you don't normally use or eat. If it will store do it. You can use it to trade or to help someone else out if needed. For those of you that are reasonably self sufficient on your property I am so proud of you! Please store extra for your family and neighbors if your able to.
     I have talked to some single people that are attempting to provide some of their own food growing. They have grown kids and some room for a small garden instead of the one or two plants of this or that they are growing. I encourage you to expand beyond your own personal needs. If your not physically able to do the work rope / guilt or whatever it takes to get other folks involved in learning to grow or preserve and store the chow.
    We have a world wide economy now days. Like here in the states if there is a freeze in Florida we can usually get something from California. If a grain crop doesn't do good in one state we can get grain from another. What we have going on now is it looks like China has been totally wiped out of their food supply due to extreme flooding throughout their whole country. If it isn't flooding it is drought to the point of locust and grasshoppers taking the rest of the food supply. So what does that have to do with us??  Think about it. Where are they going to get the food for millions and millions of people? I am going to include a link in here so you can watch the video. Skip any advertisements and occasional little repeat of information but watch it. There is no telling how many thousands of people were killed in all that flooding but that country has a huge over population problem still. They still have to feed their people. Don't forget any warehouses they have for products meant to sell in the USA are probably gone also. Masks, medicine, camping equipment, simple everyday things to important equipment for manufacturing.

Largest Floods in Chinese History Wiped Out the Country’s Food & Grain Supply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erONP33MBlA

US: Canned Food Shortages due to Chinese Tin/Steel Supply Chain Failures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBOjxxCOUUc   (about 8 minutes)
this guy is big on the food supply. That is his thing if you listen to his other videos.

  I know when I was trying to buy some Throwback Mt Dew I couldn't because they quit making it and was only making the most popular. The grocery store manager said they didn't have enough cans for production. What in the world do you do without cans to store food in the grocery stores? Canning jars / glass, dehydration, more plastics we are not too sure about in the first place?

    Right now we are all pretty upset with China due to the pandemic and actually the whole society may not give a hoot about us. Still the common poor folks trying to survive are still people. They will be trying to buy up everything they can anywhere they can to feed the masses of people. How that works with politics right now I don't know. I know I have been hearing about China being aggressive in other countries. Maybe it was trying to find more land to supply more food? Who knows! Just remember... there is only so much food to go around anywhere in the world. Other countries are not having perfect growing weather and may not have enough to sell outside their own country.
    I believe the Bible says something about having enough food for 7 years? I'm not to good with those details. Can you imagine how much room that would take and learning how to actually store it so it would be good when you open it? Maybe you have family members or people like family you can work those details out with.

    Get with your other family members that live close by. Some will totally agree your need to go the extra mile to get your supplies in order the best you can. Others will think you are crazy and the government will fix it all. My favorite is God will protect us and won't let anything bad happen. Remember God also gave us brains and the ability to do for ourselves and others also ! For those family members and close friends that don't want to participate go ahead without telling them and plan on having extra if you can for them. You know they will be knocking on your door if your silly enough to tell them everyone is planning for a food supply. LOL

     I think the churches are in a good position to establish a food market for their towns. They can possibly organize growers to grow a established variety of needed foods. I am not totally familiar with the Mormon Church but what I am aware of they are really organized on the establishment of food availability. For that matter anyone with good organization and familiar with town folks could do it. Someone grow veggies, another does, chickens and eggs, someone else do lambs or beef or pigs etc.

    I know many of us are worried about a lot of important things and feel helpless. So the only other thing is try to think ahead the best we can so we don't jump the rails so bad and do alright.
   If we are lucky the president will accomplish Made In America products and medicines enough things won't get too hard on us. In the mean time we will just all have to plan the best we can.
   Don't forget, those dried beans in the bags at the store you should also be able to use as seed. No we don't know if it is non GMO or how it was grown with what chemical but does it matter if your really out of food in the cabinet? Now if you put your food in the freezer to get rid of bugs I'm not sure if that same bag of beans / seeds will grow. You may want to try it both ways. This spring germinate some that were in the freezer and then some that you left on the shelf. That should show you what would work before going to all the effort outside.

Love
Ranchmama

3 AM Surprise

    Tuesday morning 6/5/2018 at 3 am I woke up not able to breathe real good. I go into my little computer room / office / catch all to do room to get on the breathing machine. Hubby had snoozed off in the living room recliner I noticed as I walked in to do my medicine. I had just finished and thought I heard some strange sound outside. My room in located in the front of the house just off the front door. I kept hearing this strange low shuffling noise. I was thinking, "What the heck kind of animal did we have out there?" I have heard armadillos shuffling in the leaves and skunks before but not the noise this thing was making. I turned off the light in my room so I could step out to the front door and sneak over to turn the outside porch light on. This way I wasn't back lit and whatever it was couldn't see me maybe until I turned on the light outside.

    Well I looked out a little bit and didn't really see anything. Then I turned on the light..... WHOA ! There was some skinny tatted up man with brown hair in a pony tail suddenly at the front of the door! Well crapola ! He had both arms across his chest with each hand on a shoulder making a X. He was mumbling, and I do mean mumbling and chattering his teeth, he was saying something about the cold. His arms were wet from the elbow to his wrist like he was dipping them into the doggie pool we have just outside the door. Maybe he tripped into it but it didn't look like it.

     Hubby was still asleep in the chair, as I backed away from the still closed storm and regular doors, told him to get his gun there is somebody at the door! That is something we keep really handy now days since we don't move to quick. He reached over while he was sitting there to get it. I told him just stay there don't go outside. Call the sheriff ! I kept my eye on the door and when he dialed I talked to the dispatcher. I told him we had someone at the front door that had no business being there. My name , address and a description of the man as a white male, tattoos, brown hair, under 6 foot, thin. Told them we had a gun but we were not going out there. ( We had no clue if this was a honest problem or a decoy to distract with others out there or what. I wasn't about the open the door to check it out ) He said he had two deputies on the way and would stay on the phone with me. I gave him a description of the house and told him the porch light was on. Told him the man had to hop a steal gate and walk a city block to get to the house. Told him the gate was locked and I couldn't get too it to open it because he was in the way. I told him if we go out there I wasn't about the clean up the mess we would have, I figured I would let them take care of that. LOL He told me that's ok they would hop the gate. We chatted and I said where the hell are those damn floodlights I have been wanting when I need them? ! While I was talking to him the "critter" disappeared I told him but given his condition I'm sure he didn't go far.

    I stayed on the phone with him for 23 minutes and he would give me a update every now and then about where they were at on the way. As soon as I saw someone with a really good light ( Better than a mag light .. I need one of those! ) coming down the driveway  I told him they are here and we are putting our  gun down. (Didn't want them to think they had to watch out for us. It was still handy with plenty of flying debris to take care of things if needed.)

    I opened my main door (which has a big window in the middle that isn't exactly a safe thing with intruders) and lowered the storm door screen enough to hear the officer yell out .... stop right there! .... I will shoot!.... lay down on the ground! ..... They found him between our 2 trucks in front of the garage that is too small for extra long vehicles. I thought.... turns out they found him in the back seat of my extended cab pick up ! I have no clue how that happened, we really slipped up. Normally we have EVERYTHING locked up around here except old blue. Somehow we had neglected to lock it up the last time we used it. That is a rare thing and look what happened. 
    Once they had him cuffed and down on the ground I walked out staying out of sight because I didn't want him to see me. I found out when the officer was checking the back of the truck they found him in there. I was lucky he didn't urinate or defecate in my truck. They even checked the back end that has a roll up cover on it to make sure nobody was in it. I told the officer we didn't have any weapons in it for the man to get. We for sure tossed all the water bottles we had back there! LOL We got lucky on not having to disinfect the truck. 

  

 I listened to the officers ask him questions.

What's your name .. he knew that.
Are you hurt ? Where do you hurt? Moaning and groaning Did you have a accident ? He didn't know.  ( one of the officers went down the road to see if there was a wreck ) No wreck.
Is anybody with you? He got separated from his brother. When did you see your bother last? Shawnee What's your brothers name ? How did you get here ? I don't know.
     I mean this man DID NOT KNOW JACK ! He was still moaning and shivering and groaning curled up in a fetal position on the pavement. I never got real close but I wasn't as worried as before about his returning some day. He had no clue of anything at all !
      One of the officers drove around in his car to check the buildings out around the property for his bother or anyone else he didn't see any tracks in the dew or anyone around.
       Another officer came over to talk to me and said that he was drunk. He had a footprint in the middle of his back. They figured he had a drug deal go bad in Shawnee and someone beat the living daylights out of him and then dumped him like a dog in the middle of nowhere. I mean other than winding up on my doorstep literally you have to admit that is pretty damn funny ! That footprint in the middle of the back pretty much told it all. LOL
    Since he was in bad shape they called the ambulance. Even the Deputies couldn't believe how long it was taking to get them here. They said good thing it wasn't serious.
     The EMT's arrived, a man and a woman. They were all standing around him in a circle.
They asked about why he was curled up like that? Do you hurt anywhere? My back..... EMT raised up the shirt and said his back looked just fine. The other one ran her hand down the middle and the man moaned real big around the lower shoulder area.
One EMT lifted his arm looking for needle tracks.
They asked, ' What drugs are you on today?" he said none.
Ok what drugs did you do yesterday?? None Alright... get up... lets walk to the ambulance..... I can't You walked your way here you can walk to the ambulance. He didn't move. One of the Deputies told him you either go to the hospital or you go with us to jail Which one are you going to do? He suddenly sobered up and decided he could go to the ambulance. I don't remember seeing him walk to the ambulance.

     After he was gone and the deputies were still here I asked him why they didn't just help him up. He said, did you see him suddenly get alert and decide to go to the hospital? He has been in the system enough to know what would happen if he went to jail. We chatted a while and I said I guess you see this stuff all the time. He said it was getting bad everywhere, mainly break ins.  We talked about how bad people were getting. He said his job sure does harden you up to a lot of stuff. Both deputies were very nice, professional acting. I told him I was surprised they got there that fast. He said if it had been more serious they would have driven faster. Since everyone was gone I asked if Heidi Ho could come out and see them. He had made a comment when looking at her looking out the door about her wanting to come out and bite someone. I told them you just have to worry about that wicked tongue and tail beating them up! LOL  I like the cops to know she isn't going to hurt anyone. She came out and everyone loved on her and she was a happy camper.

     They had me fill out a incident report about what all happened. They needed my drivers license and SS number for some reason. Kind of bugs me but whatever. They were going to file breaking and entering charges on the man. I don't know why they didn't get him for trespassing also.  By the time everyone was gone it was 5 am and there was NO WAY I could go back to sleep. NOPE ! Just wasn't going to happen I didn't sleep all day with everything we had to do. Now when it gets night time I can't help but be leery. I just have to remember how many nights that nothing happened. Even though many years ago 20+ years there was a time when my in laws were living here and didn't lock the gate. A car load of men tried to bust in the front door. My older than us now father in law opened the garage door with is 410 ( like that would do anything but tickle someone ) and chased them off some how.  WW2 vet still had it even then! LOL Just his choice of weapons stunk. 

       

     After everyone was gone I told hubby I thought we did pretty good really. I didn't open ANY doors. I stayed calm and called the sheriff. Hubby had a weapon handy to take care of things if needed. I was clear enough thinking to know that he could have "friends" out there with him. I asked hubby what could we do to improve in the future. He said shoot him. I said but what if they have others outside with him. Shoot them as they come in the door. 

     The next morning I had to take a tire to town to be repaired. I have been hunting with the guys enough to know what to look for.. As I went out I checked the middle and side of the road and didn't see any tracks like foot prints or dragging feet. The road was dry and pretty hard packed so I didn't expect much on that.  I looked at the tall grass along the road and didn't see any walking paths or where someone just was pushed out in the grass pressing it down. I checked the other side coming back from town. Nothing like he just fell out of the sky.      

 

       I have been thinking.... since we have windows in the front door like stained glass but clear folks can see straight through to the recliner because of the lamp beside the chair. I need to go outside after dark and just see how much a person can really see out there. We may have to change the lighting up. I also see that the trucks sure do create a blind spot more than I thought. Some kind of outdoor lighting around the yard that shows everything is needed. Something we can see out but we can control so if we want to sneak out they can't see us. There are driveway alarms we could put people high so critters wouldn't trigger them. Most people would say get a outside dog for a alarm but honestly I hate to leave a dog in the elements. Heidi Ho was sound asleep in the back bedroom.  Heck I was just a few feet away and just barely heard anything. I just happened to be wired in a way I notice odd noises. If I had been asleep I wouldn't have heard anything. It wasn't like he was knocking or banging anything around. Hubby always goes out the door armed. He will for sure be more alert now. LOL If he had opened the garage door to someone in the truck I don't know what would have happened.
Love Ranchmama ( Thinking about safety more. Your never prepared for everything )