i spoke briefly about a gun bill a few posts back. im stepping back to talk about it for a few minutes. even though it seems be be treading water, its worth mentioning still because it isnt out of the pool yet. senate bill SB-2099 will require us to put on our 2009 1040 federal tax form all guns that you have or own. it may requre fingerprints and a tax of 50 bucks per gun each year. in november our president promised he was not going after our second amendment rights. it took only a few months feb 24th to get HR 45 introduced. this bill will become public knowledge 30 days after it is voed into law. it is an amendment to the internal revenue act of 1986. this means that the finance committee can pass this without the senate voting on it al all. the full tex of the proposed amentment is on the us senate homepage. http://www.senate.gov/ you can find the bill by doing a search by the bill number SB-2099. please call your your represenatives and let them know that the american people will not put up with this BS.
congress is now starting on the firearms confiscation bill, if it passes gun owners will become criminals if you dont fully comply. itsvery important for you to be aware of this new bill hr45 blair holt firearm liscensing and record of sale act of 2009. even gun shop owners dont know about this because the government is trying to fly it under the radar. to find out about this go to any government website and type in HR45 or google hr45 flair holt fire arm licensing and record of sales act of 2009. you will find all the info there.
basically this would make it illegal to own a firearm- any rifle with a clip or any pistol unless it is registered, you are fingerprinted, you supply a currents drivers license, social security number and submit to a physical and mental evaluation at any time of their choosing. each update change of ownership through private or public sale must be reported and costs 25 bucks. failure to do this and you automatically lose the right to own a firearm and are subject to up to a year in jail. there is a child access provision clause on page 16 section 305 stating a gun must be locked and inaccessible to any child under 18. they would have the right to come and inspect that you are storing your gun safely away from accessibility to children . this fine is punishable with up to 5 yrs in prison.
if you believe all this is bs, just go to the site given and look it up and read it for yourself.
a lot of obama lovers want to call bs on anyone opposing all these new bills being introduced into congress. they insist that the folks protesting these bills are making things up as they go about whats in these bills. ive got news for them, there are atleast a couple million people that marched on washington the other day protesting these bills. i dont know about you but i wouldnt spend a bus ticket to go march unless i had read these bills and knew these outrageous proposals to be true. if we lay down with the lion, we are bound to be lunch at some point. the lion is now chewing one of our arms off. at what point do we do something about it. if we dont stand up for our rights who will?

PLANS FOR NEW WELL LAID PLANS
due to the new developements, our bulk food items are switching gears and going in new directions. since im not allowed gluten items anymore. when i first suspected the gluten allergy about mid summer i went ahead and planned for some alternative bulk foods to get me atleast through the winter . ive got a small crop of sorghum planted to supply an alternative flour, not near enough for the winter, but atleast enough to take the heat off that 5 bucks for 4 cups of sorghum flour from the store. i also went ahead and put in a flour corn crop, which is doing nicely, and also buying back popcorn to grind for cornmeal needs. there is just no way to store back that expensive stuff from the store. looking into milo aka sorghum seed as a cheap source. something else i will probably have to change is to upgrade my hand grain grinder to a finer grinding machine.
after a long day of building house, running sawmill and mourning the loss of my precious hound of 12 years, these are all the thaughts ive got for the night.

ima fat survivalist
what can i say, a huge ammt of americans are fat folks. the worse off the economy gets the more im headed toward getting into shape. ive knocked off 50 lbs this year, and doing some major exerciseing trying to get my broke down body into shape. i could stand to loose another 100 lbs easy, so im actively working towards that goal. ive picked up a total gym, i do 100 squats a day on it, 100 arm and ab lifts, and 80 back exercises. this is a good start for my body, and after 2 months i can already see the difference in the size of my muscles and the shape of my stomach and legs.
if your a fat survivalist, its seriously time to drop those lbs and get in as good a shape as you possibly can. if not for your sake then for your family. they are gonna need you and your muscle,. not you with a heart attack. we are all going to need to be in tip top condition to get through whats coming.

well laid plans have been for naught.
been dealing with some stomach issues for quite a few years now. ya know how medical doctors are, want to give ya something to treat a symptom instead of fixing the problem. after many years of research on what might be the root of the stomach problems, and researching childhood artheritis causes i ran across the gluten connection book. after reading through it a lightbulb came on for me. i quit eating gluten for a few weeks, and WOW!IBS issues are gone! energy is coming back, acid reflux is gone, joints arent hurting near as bad and all those muscle cramps and charlie horses are gone!
which brings us to those well laid plans. as ive mentioned before, we do food storage for hard times. i usually put back whole grains, which means ive got quite a bit of wheat berries put away. oops. with both my daughters having childhood artheritis and various other health issues and stomach issues, we are suspecting they may have the gluten sensitivity too. so our livestock will eat well atleast. but we have to rethink our food supply storage. i feel so much better, im not even disappointed.

Lets talk about some of the new bills being put through congress. this new health care bill is a joke. it speaks of limiting tests, rationing health care, and fines for not keeping insurance. it speaks of not allowing illegal aliens to partisipate in the gov health care but doesnt exclude illegal aliens from going to the er and getting free health care like they do right now. how will that help the new health care to stay afloat? does anyone know how many illegals are actually in the united states? double digit millions. all getting free health care now and in the future if this health care bill passes. illegals working in the US will be exempt from being fined for not haveing insurance, and be exempt from paying health care taxes while in the us, while still workin the system and getting free health care .the citizens will meanwhile be fined for not having some sort of insurance whether they can aford it or not.
we will have to pay a counselor to counsel grandma on how she wants to die, instead of just getting grandma to sign a livingwill stating whether she wants on machines or not etc.
if you have a terminally ill family member, the gov will decide whether they get any further treatments to prolong thier lives. a comittee will decide whether baby sister with lukemia gets to take kemo or die. no matter how much money you might have to pay for the treatments. can you say rationing? if your child is in a coma and the gov decides they are sucking up too much money they can decide to unplug your child and you will have no sayso in the matter.
the new healthcare bill will provide families with inhome parenting training. excuse me? it will also require all employers to pay insurance on part time workers and thier families. employers supplying insurances other than gov ins. will be taxed higher for this service.
I THINK WE AS AMERICANS NEED TO STICK UP FOR OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AS FREE PEOPLE AND SAY NO TO THIS BILL. WE NEED TO START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR OURSELVES AND QUIT LETTING BIG GOV. SLOWLY TAKE ALL OUR RIGHTS AWAY. WHILE WERE PLAYING WII GAMES AND WATCHIN THE BOOB TUBE OR PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON THE COMPUTER, THE GOV IS INCROUCHING ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND TAKING THEM AWAY. WE THE PEOPLE CREATED GOVERMENTS TO SERVE US NOT US SERVE THEM.
THE CONSTITUTIONS SECOND AMENDMENT IS THERE TO SERVE US AND KEEP US SAFE FROM OVERPOWERING GOV. IF WE DONT HAVE A WELL ARMED MILITIA IN THIS COUNTRY A TYRANT WILL STEP IN AND TAKE CONTROL. HR 45 BILL WOULD BASICALLY GET RID OF OUR WELL ARMED MILITIA. WHICH LEAVES US AT THE HANDS OF EVERY CRIMINAL IN BIG GOV OR THE LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD. IF THE GOV SUCCEEDS IN TAKING AWAY OUR GUNS THE ONLY PEOPLE LEFT WITH GUNS WILL BE THE CRIMINALS! I DONT KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT I DONT WANT TO BE LEFT DEFENDING MY CHILDREN FROM A HOME INVASTION WITH A BASEBALL BAT WHEN THEY COME IN WITH GUNS. TAKE A LOOK AT ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES THAT BANNED CITIZENS FROM HAVING GUNS. THE CITIZENS ARE DEFENCELESS AGAINST CRIMINALS AND CRIME IS RAMPANT. PEOPLE ITS TIME TO GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND, BOOBTUBE, WII, AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHATS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY!!

so we were talking about different ways to preserve the harvest. lets speak of the squash family. any type of WINTER squash, pumpkin , spaghetti squash all preserve well by sticking in a cool dry place. the cellar is the best spot for all of these. if you dont have one, they will last a good while tossed under the north side of your house out of the sun. ive had a few hundred lbs stored in tall laundry baskets in my laundry room for two years with good results. most of your winter type squashes are better after seasoning for a few months in storage. you should sort through and make sure you dont put any blemished ones in cellar storage. take your damaged ones and either chunk and boil and freeze, or boil and put on the dehydrator or string up or lay out on trays in the sun to dry. or you can boil puree' and can up in jars. adding some cinnamon , butter, and sugar to your puree' makes a killer fried pie filling.
SUMMER SQUASH
summer sqush will not keep past a week unless refridgerated, frozen, or dried. you have the option of blanching or not blanching before drying in a dehydrator, oven, or out in the sun . dried as a snack, or topping a salad or rehydrate by pouring some boiling water over it and waiting a bit for it to plump back up, after rehydrating you can then dredge in flour and fry or add to casaroles etc. blanching and freezing or pressure canning are your other two options. cold cellar is not an option for summer squash.
ONIONS AND GARLIC
onions are pretty easy to deal with, you harvest them , leave them in the garden in the sun for a few days till thier outer skin dries out good, then hang in the dry area of the cellar, in the attic, or in the barn till needed. these will usually last quite a while as long as they are put where they wont freeze come cold weather. when they start getting questionable, peel them and chop up, seperate the rings and toss on the dehydrator or on a tray in the sun. its not really feasable to can just onions, but they can always be chopped up and tossed in a stew to can.same goes for garlic.
BROCCOLI, CABBAGE, AND ALL THE COL. CROPS
broccoli and colliflour need to be soaked in salt water before processing to get all the bugs and worms out. once this is done blanch these for a few minutes and chop up into uniform size pieces and throw on the dehydrator, you can also pickle these with a store pickle mix or by fermenting process. these do not can well other than pickling. you can also blanch and freeze these. cabbage can be stored in the cellar for quite a while, made into sour kraut in a fermentation process, or dehydrated, or canned. brussell sprouts will keep for a good while if you just pull the entire plant and replant in dirt down the cellar, they can also be cut in half blanched for a few minutes , drained well and put in the dehydrator or in the sun to dry. just about all the other col. crops can be dusted off and put down the cellar, where they will last well into next spring. they can also be sliced up , blanched and dehydrated, or pickled or just canned.

BEFORE ELECTRICITY

before the invention of electricity folks had to use alternative ways of preserving thier perishable foods. some of those ways included, cold smoking, drying, salting, pickling, and canning. some vegetables were left burried in the gardens until needed for dinner. some were dug and put down in the cellar.
CORN
lets start with drying. before dehydrators folks had to get a little imaginative with drying techniques, specially in the wetter non desert climates. if your corn crop was almost dry and ready for harvest and it takes up raining, folks would harvest that corn on the wetside and hammer nails through a board so that they stuck out the other side. they would then shuck thier corn and stick one cob on each nail in the barn to dry. that was for feed corn, cornmeal, or homony use. if you were harvesting your sweet corn and wanted some to use later in the winter months, you would blanch your corn on the cob, let cool and drain well, then lay them out on a rack or do them like the feed corn to dry, if you dont want bugs on it you will want to cover it with some sheets or flour sack cloths or simular. once completely dry, they popped them off the cob and stored in bags or jars in a dry place, usually the attic or hanging from the rafters of the house. corn dried in this way will rehydrate when boiled or soaked in hot water for a while, good for soups and the like. some folks chose to blanch then cut the corn off the cob into a sort of cream corn, this was spread out in shallow trays to dry with a cloth cover, if it didnt get dry enough the first day, it was brung in the house until the next day then set back out to dry more for that day until it was dry as it was likely to get, sometimes drying for up to a week. if the weather was wet during that week, they would use the rack suspended over the wood heater to get appropriate dryness. same went for blanched corn being dried on the cob. set out close to a fire, or over a fire on a high rack to prevent cooking but allowing to dry slowly.
GREEN BEANS
green beans were preserved a couple of different ways, they were either dried by blanching for a minute then patting dry with a towel, then with a needle and stout thread they were poked through the middle and strung up like popcorn, hung to dry in the shade or the attic for the winter. green beans were also salted by layering in a crock , a layer of greenbeans, then a layer of salt, till the crock was full. as you might figure, these had to be soaked in quite a few different changes of fresh water before cooking. the other way was to pickle. usually this was accomplished by either using vinegar or fermenting with other vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, broccoli, coliflour, onions, bell peppers and a few other choice vegies. i havent done much research on fermenting past how to ferment cabbage into krout, or cucumbers into pickles. when i pick up a recipe for fermenting these vegie combos ill pass them along to yall. this fermented food is very nutritious and high in vitamins, which folks really need during the winter.
ill hit on a few more vegetables in the next installment.

AMMUNITION
Has anyone knoticed the ammunition shelves in all the local stores lately? if you havent you may not even get a chance to do any hunting this coming season. its just about all gone, and getting scarcer every day .i dont know about everyone else ,but this poses a major obsticle for my family. we are really into hunting, but will have to really conserve our ammo this year. if you happen to find your caliber ammo id suggest picking it up before deer season comes around. id also suggest picking up any 22 shells you can find if you have a 22 rifle. they are a small caliber bullet, but they will take down most game around here with a well placed shot, with the exception of bears and possibly cougars.
the 22 shell will also be indisposable when it comes to takeing care of predators attacking your livestock and chickens etc.
i gotta change the subject for a sec.
as the economy gets worse, more and more folks are dumping thier pets out in the country, they either show up at my house or they wonder into the woods and become feral. when i was a kid we heard rumors of wild dog packs attacking folks. this could become the case as more and more animals are dumped. wild dogs are not afraid of people, they are more likely to attack you than any other wild animal.short of two legged predators these are the ones you need to worry about as things get worse. i know we are all soft hearted when we see an abandoned dog, but we cant adopt all the abandoned dogs. please dont leave them to go feral, its better to put them out of thier missery, as they will suffer and either starve or become a potential danger to your family your pets and your livestock in the future. you will need plenty of 22 shells for this, save your bigger ammo for food if possible. they not only post a danger to your family but they also tend to carry more disease like rabies and distemper which could be a very bad problem in the future also , depending on availability to meds to treat these diseases.so the next time you have an animal dumped at your place of see a half starved dog or cat in your far pasture. please do it a favor and put it out of its missery, so it doesnt potentially cause you more missery in the future and doesnt have to suffer anymore. this also goes for your own pets, folks if you cant feed your pet, the best thing to do is put it out of its missery. most pets that are dumped starve to death, they dont know how to kill thier own food, your not doing them a favor. please put your unwanted pets down. because every time i have to put your dumped pet down it breaks my heart too.
for the folks that live in this area, im pretty sure we already have a pack of wild dogs hanging around here close, if youll listen after dark , you can hear them, they are not coyotes. the coyotes sound totally different. youve been warned.
back to ammo, we need ammo to hunt, we need ammo to eat if things really go bad with the ecomony, we need ammo to defend our homes and family, crime is already on the rise around here, and we need ammo to defend our livestock against these future threats of pets gone feral. please take 20 bucks out of your paycheck each week and try to stock up on the calibers for the guns you posses. if you can find them. there isnt much more heart breaking than to go out to feed your livestock and find them all slaughtered or worse, ripped up and still alive screaming in pain. get your bullets now!

A couple of weeks ago my mother in law and i were talking. She wanted to collect some of the families
favorite recipes and put into a little book to give to the grandkids as xmas gifts. So we wrote a letter and
sent it out to all the elderly family.We requested all kinds of recipe., Including how to make vinegar. How
to make homemade lye, and soap. How the old folks used to cure hams., Simple recipes they remembered
growing up during the depression.This got me thinking that maybe i should post a little of this info for
your benafit. Lets talk about vinegar. Vinegar is made when alcohol is exposed to the air for an extended amount of time. There are enzymes
floating around in the air commonly called 'vinegar bugs' . Anytime this enzyme makes contact with
alcohol it reacts simular to yeast making contact with sugar, It starts growing and causing the alcohol to
bubble. The enzyme processes alcohol changing it into acid, When all the alcohol is all processed into
acid, you have vinegar. (this reminds me, i really should be racking off wine this evening instead of
writing, but i gotta write when the urge hits) So anyway ,i was thinking we could walk through the process
of making vinegar. Vinegar can be made with just about anything you can make wine out o, from rice to tomatoes to
grapes and pears. The best time to make vinegar is in the spring and summer ,when the temps are
warming up in the 80* range. This is also when all the fruit is starting to come off ,so very convient. We
have pear trees, so i will go with pears for these instructions. When processing your pears for canning,
collect your cores and peelings in a clean container made of either, staineless steel, glass or stone crock.
Enamel could also be used, but the former mentioned containers are best. If your enamel has any chips,
use something else. Once your finished peeling and coring ,cover your scraps with water, stir the contense
up good, add a few cups of sugar and a packet of yeast. The sugar and yeast arent necessary, but they
do speed things along and probably make a better product. The sugar and yeast will start the fermenting
process up faster. Stir this all in good and put a cloth cover over this container. Wrap some rubberband
or tie a cloth on good, so bugs cant get in and contaminate your brew. In 2-3 weeks your brew will have
probably stopped bubbling. At this point you have an alcoholic beverage. If its apples it will be called
hard cider. You can drink this if you like ,or send it on into becoming vinegar. If you want vinegar, you
have to put the cover back on and let this sit. Possibly for months, making sure to change your cloth as it
get soiled from dust etc. Check the brew when you change your cloth. It should start forming a scum on
the top. Dont disturb this scum. This is called 'mother of vinegar' .Its the little beasties, or enzeimes that
transform alcohol into an acid. These buggers form an island in which they float and eat from. If they are
stired under they will sufficate and die.So leave that yucky island be. When your vinegar is finished this
island will sink to the bottom., There is no more alcohol left for the mother to eat. You can now rack off
and bottle your vinegar. If you dont want more mother to form on your new bottles ,then you can
pastureize your vinegar in the new bottles by putting it in a hot water bath for about 5-10 minutes. I
wouldnt go that far as live healthy mother is very nutricious and healing to the body. You can use your
vinegar once its racked off. The bottom jelly left over is pure mother. This can be scooped out and saved
also for your next batch of vinegar. If you are planning to use your vinegar for preserving vegetables, it
would be a good idea to get some litmas paper and test and compare its level of acidity to store baught
vinegar. Perserving vegetables in too low an acid vinegar will cause spoilage.So thats your basic vinegar
recipe. Some of the old folks would float a piece of bread in the fruit and water. The bread was a yeast
substitute when yeast wasnt available..