IT IS NOW A BOOK

YIPPEE!  IT'S FINISHED!  IT'S PUBLISHED!
and it is NOW AVAILABLE!
Alyssa's Story, the complete (100 more pages added) of the 'Are You Ready?" posting on this blog, concerning how we deal with a failed US dollar, can now be ordered as a paperback, hardcover or ebook.
Early readers of the story have described it as informational, easy reading, logistical, enjoyable, and opinionated (go figure). 
Some of you will like it, others will not and consider it hogwash, but I thought you would at least like to know about it.
For a sample of the writing, an author bio, and a story summary, go to www.xlibris.com/AlyssasStory.html.
You can order the book online at www.xlibris.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, Kubo books, or your local bookstore.
Final request: In this new electronic age, one of the most effective methods of getting people to read Alyssa's Story is to respond to the various websites anywhere it asks for customer reviews. So please, if you like the story and its message, make a comment or otherwise spread the good news.

I expect to use this blog to answer questions and field other comments about the story. 
Stay tuned and thank you all,
Mort Stump


   

A Platform

Almost every candidate for elected office attempts to convince the electorate that they will make this or that happen when they are elected. This annoys me because our system of checks and balances prevents one person from running the show. Understand, the president may take some actions that are not subject to Congress's approval or the Supreme Court's judgment. Some of the items in this platform might fall into that category, but for the most part, they could only all be implemented by a dictator or emperor. Fortunately, we do not have one of those.....yet. Give the American people time, they might opt for one someday.
I did not put much thought into these actions, which would align me with the rest of the gang in Washington, D.C. Some of these actions are minuscule, but have meaningful results. Others are astronomical and would have catastrophic, dynamic shifts in the American way of life.
All, however, are designed to save the country. Here then, for your enjoyment and hopefully enlightenment, is the eleven point platform, presented in the Jay Leno top ten style. Would you vote for me if I espoused this platform?

The number eleven action to take to save the country is:
Stop the production of pennies, nickels and one dollar bills.
10. Eliminate upper limit on social security taxes.
9. Change income tax code to flat tax on all income and eliminate all deductions.
8. Eliminate political parties and change nomination process for president to popular vote by all the voters in a single day primary in July - top two vote getter's run off in November.
7. Make killing unborn infants murder.
6. Criminalize homosexual relations.
5. Eliminate Daylight Savings Time.
4. Get ethanol out of our gasoline.
3. Stop borrowing money.
2. Mandate all employees be paid their net pay (after tax deductions) in cash.

And the number one action to take to save the country is eliminate the Dept of Education and repeal all federal laws having anything to do with education. Our schools is where the lie is perpetuated.

I suppose there are a few more, but these are a good start.
I did not explain why these actions work. Ask me and I 'll try to respond.

Merry Christmas, Mort

save the post office

Five billion dollars. Were all our problems on that scale.
That is only 11.4 billion forever stamps. Everyone get out there and buy 38 (two books of forty) and the post office will have the money to meet their obligations. Check the math.
See, we actually can pay our own way instead of the feds having to always save us.
Warren Buffet alone could buy the stamps and distribute them to the poor. Kill three birds with one stone. Save the post office, support entitlement programs, and pay his "fair share".

bad news again

Hi - I get frustrated that I cannot get through to the powers that be, so I will just give it a try here.
Mitch McConnell's latest proposal to allow more borrowing should get him thrown out on his ear!!
One side says not borrowing will cause the collapse of the dollar. The other says borrowing will cause the collapse. Both sides could be right. My gut says the first choice will be less drawn out and painful. I believe the fix is to stop borrowing immediately - the fix cannot wait - it might be too late already. This, however, would require that Congress would have to possess courage and wisdom, scarce commodities in DC right now.
Question: I know it was mentioned in the past, but why isn't anyone suggesting that we eliminate the DEPT of ED and help cut spending by not wasting that money?
Answer: It is the socialists last bastion for controlling our children. Plato, in the "Republic" said the way to control society is to have control of the upbringing of the children. They know this and will hold out as long as they can to indoctrinate our children into believing that the federal government is supreme, that one must turn to the government whenever trouble comes, that the government is our only hope (not God), that homosexuality is not a sin, that killing babies before they are born is acceptable, etc. Getting them to abandon that hold on us would be a miracle. Pray for it.
I hope some Senators and Representatives see this.
Mort

Daylight Savings Time

Hello. Way too long since I posted, but energy savings are on my mind today.
March 13 we push the clocks ahead one hour to save energy. That raises many questions.
If we save energy by moving ahead one hour, if we move it ahead two hours, will we save twice as much?
If we save energy moving ahead, do we lose that energy in fall when we move it back?
If so, we should not move it back, leave it there and we will always save energy.
If we save energy moving ahead, why wait, the sooner we move the sooner we save.
My father could not wait to save energy so he moved his clock ahead February 13 - he's been saving energy a month longer than we will.
And if we would move the clock ahead one hour every month for two years, we would save a day's worth of energy. But then my birthday would be May 18th instead of the 17th, I think.
Some people credit Ben Franklin with the concept of DST. I always thought him a brilliant man. Now I'm beginning to wonder.
If he would have pushed his clocks ahead more often, he might still be alive today.
Okay, I should not knock him. Even though he started it, it takes a government to perpetuate a lie.
Enjoy your savings, while we still have them.
MORT

Timely thoughts

Hello everyone, long time no write.
Have a lot on my mind.
Have actually resumed Alyssa's story. I've been admonished by several wise people that I need to finish the story and get the information out there, before it's too late.
Find myself writing in the past now. When I started I was writing in the future. Well, maybe I still am?
Can't resist a couple comments on our current federal government.
1. Just writing this should get me on the White House list of dissenters - glad to be there with the other 200+ million Americans that believe in freedom.
2. The P.O.D. (Party of Deception, as opposed to the G.O.P.)) has to remember if they put all of us in internment camps, we will no longer be able to pay taxes.
3. Health care plan: None of Congress's business (with one exception-see #4), no constitutional mandate that Congress needs to take care of us, actually insults me that they believe we cannot take care of ourselves.
4. Exception - if Congress has done or is doing something to cause our health care crisis, then they should reverse what they are doing or have done wrong.
5. Our health care crisis is not bad or insufficient care - it's just a problem paying for it.
6. We have a problem paying for everything, and the cause of our economic dilemma is CONGRESS SPENDING MONEY THEY DO NOT HAVE!
7. The single best thing Congress can do to alleviate the crisis is stop spending more money than they bring in - more regulation or government intervention will only hurt not help.
8. P.O.D. might have played their hand too soon. They read the vote last fall as America's permission to advance their Marxist (a purer term than socialist or communist) agenda. They deceived enough voters, but can't keep up the deception. It should backfire.
9. If for some reason a health care reform package is passed, it MIGHT SAVE THE NATION.
Because every Congressperson who votes for it will become an immediate target for defeat in their next election which would possibly drastically change the philosophical make up of Congress resulting in some sense, both economically, morally, and idealogically returning to the federal government.
10. OR it's passage accompanied by the enormous tax increases that will probably follow and/or any move to confiscate our guns will certainly be the spark that will start the next revolution. We are ripe for it, but I HOPE IT NEVER HAPPENS!
11. A more peaceful revolution would be if we all stop paying our taxes. I'm not proposing this, but it is more likely to happen not by choice, but because we will not have the money to pay our taxes. However it becomes inevitable if the dollar fails. (Do I see the internment camp in my future for that one?)
12.What's with the town hall meetings? Congress has the ability to pass health care reform. They do not need our permission. We are not voting on it. Unless it is because they actually pay attention to and base their votes in the Capitol on public opinions and polls. Might be the case.
13. OR it is just business as usual for the party that deceived the voters in the first place. They thrive and survive on continuing to deceive us. Bad habits are hard to break.
14. Besides, it's a diversion - all this fuss about health care steals the limelight away from those things that are really important. The federal debt, Afghanistan, failing dollar, school systems that are indoctrinating our children with their beliefs, and failing morals come to mind.
15. And finally, remember their whole agenda is about control. Call it Orwellian if you wish, but it is meant to take control of our lives away from us and give it to our government. It is about CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

OK, enough said. Just hope I brought a little light into a pretty disconcerting point in the history of our nation.

I'll try to send something sooner next time, Mort

Chapter Twenty-One - Mortality (conclusion)

One of the last jobs of butchering was rendering the fat. Hog fat was kept separate during the butchering process and then melted in the kettle. It then re-solidified when cooled as lard. Amazingly, unless exposed to summer-like temperatures, it kept very well. We used the lard for frying, making piecrust, or some other uses if butter-churning had lagged behind.
Beef tallow was rendered the same way. Somewhere in their past, perhaps at some folk life fair, Jean and Dianna had both learned how to make candles. The cleanest tallow, that with the least blood or meat clinging to it, was melted separately for Jean, Dianna, and me to make candles. It was a hot job, but I was glad to help. It was fun and a wonderfully warm job during the winter. Finding the right material for wicks was challenging. Baler twine was plentiful, but too thick. Shoestrings were the right thickness, but who wanted to waste shoestrings on candles. We tried twisting straws or other plant stems, but they burned too quickly. We had a small ball of packaging string; you know, the kind you used to wrap packages. It was nice and round, the right thickness, burned at a decent pace, and the hot fat clung to it fairly well. However the supply was soon exhausted. We had to settle on spitting the sisal baler twine and retwisting it. We tried the same thing with plastic twine, but it burned kinda funny, so sisal was the best choice. We certainly had plenty of it, but sometime in the future, the supply would run out because of all the other uses we had for baler twine, like our braided ropes.
“One day,” Jean had said, “we’ll have to find some fibrous plant or weed that we can make wicks out of.”
“We’ll have to experiment next summer,” was my response.
After settling on the wicks, the trickiest part was getting the candles started. Poppop had handcrafted a dozen candle holders that eight wicks could be fastened to. The first dip in the hot tallow was the most difficult because the wicks didn’t have enough weight to make them go down into the fat. So we used a thin stout wire to force each of the wicks into the grease. It was a job we did as a team; more hands making it easier. Even then, when you pulled out the wicks, there was barely any coating on the infant candles. Every dip after that became easier and easier, as long as we waited long enough between dips, so the fat had solidified enough onto the wick to prevent it from melting off the wick on the next dip. That was why we also had to be careful not to get the fat too hot or we’d be melting the candles away faster than we’d be building them up. Grandpop was a big help with that aspect, carefully monitoring the heat. It was neat to have him find a way that he could contribute and for me to spend some time working with him. Plus he really seemed to enjoy it.
We probably had to dip the candles 12 to 15 times until we got the thickness we desired or the level of grease had gotten too low in the kettle to dip. Our finished candles weren’t always works of art. They smoked a little too much, smelled a little, and could have burned more slowly. Our flashlight battery supply would soon be exhausted and even the rechargeable ones would not last forever. So our candles became a valuable asset to the community during the months of fall and winter when we only had nine to ten hours of daylight. In addition, artificial lighting was preserved exclusively for use in the barn where no flames were permitted.
When we had finished dipping all the candles, all the dirtier, poorer quality fat and tallow and any grease leftover from frying (remember, we threw nothing away), was added to the remaining grease in the kettle for soap making. Most of us had never seen soap being made. Dad said Poppop used to make homemade soap when Dad was growing up and Grandmom used to help her aunt make soap for years. But that was years ago and neither of my grandparents remembered the precise formula and method. Fortunately, Wayne came to save the day, because he knew how to make soap.
“There’s a catch,” Wayne said when first approached about lending his expertise. “We need lye to make soap.”
“That figures,” lamented Harvey, “we couldn’t think of everything when we started to stockpile supplies for the collapse. I’m not sure where we even could have bought lye.”
“Could have checked the pretzel factories,” Jeremiah offered. “They use lye for some pretzel products.”
“Or a plumbing supply store,” Aaron said. “They use it for unclogging pipes.”
“Then we have some,” Dad announced.
“Where?” Joe wondered.
“In our bathroom and kitchen cabinets - Liquid Plumber, Drano. Most products made to unclog drains have sodium hydroxide in them – lye. I’m sure we brought three or four quarts from our house. Others could have too. Remember, cleaning agents, soaps and chemicals were high on the list of priorities of materials to salvage.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Jeremiah agreed. “I’m sure I had one or two bottles. We can check our inventory in the upstairs kitchen. Wouldn’t they be stored there?”
“Yes,” Harvey answered, “there might also be some up at Butch’s.”
“And when we need more,” Joe added, “we can have Titus trade some of our meat or flour or even the soap we make for more. Or we can make our own salvage run; check out what’s left behind in the stores in town or in abandoned homes.”
It was a touchy subject. Trading was one thing; others could use some of our produce including the soap we’d make. But was just going into someone else’s home or store and taking what was left behind appropriate, ethical, or moral?
“I guess there are a couple theories concerning scavenging,” Dad said. “Some would say you have to do what you have to do to survive.”
“Others say it would be stealing,” Barry interjected.
“But it’s on abandoned property,” Jeremiah countered.
“It’s just laying there, going to waste,” Bruce offered. “You know how our culture abhors resources going to waste.”
“Not to mention that our situation demands we waste nothing,” Jake added. “And I don’t mean only our little group, but all of society. We’ve wasted too much the last couple generations. That’s part of what got us into this mess.”
“Sounds ethical to me,” Harvey concluded. “Not immoral either.”
“Definitely appropriate,” Joe concluded, “besides, we’d take those resources to turn them into products that we’d eventually share with any folks that needed them. Only makes sense to me.”
All eyes turned to my grandparents and Wayne. I guess this was one of those issues where even my parents and their generation, already in their 40s and 50s, looked to the previous generation for wisdom. The question didn’t even need to be verbalized.
Grandpop spoke first. “You do what you have to do,” he said. “It would be best is we could trade for everything we need, but we might not always be able to do that.”
“Especially if you can’t find the owner,” Grandmom added.
“Choose the crew carefully,” Wayne proposed, “that would venture out on any scavenging missions. Choose men with sound judgment. Have them take trade goods with them and seek out the remaining neighbors first. They should announce who they are, what they’re looking for, and what they’re intending to do with it. Don’t take anything the neighbors might need in the future, but take what they agree to part with. Mention we have things or will be producing things that they might need someday. Use the trade goods as peace offerings. If our men feel it best to compensate the owners – leave them some money. I know the money is practically worthless and that the owners might never return to claim it, but if it brings peace, then so be it.”
“Then so be it,” several echoed.
Turned out scavenging, while important and necessary, wasn’t that big a deal. Many abandoned homes and stores were well emptied when the scavengers arrived. However, there were items that were left behind, like drain openers that were thought of as useless or worthless by their previous owners, but became useful and worthwhile in the hands of the industrious and ingenuous members of our community.
So Wayne helped us make soap. It took a lot of boiling and stirring and somehow adding the lye to the boiling fat enabled it to solidify when cooled. Later when the supply of lye ran out, we learned that wood ashes could be substituted. I don’t know why they worked and it was a more difficult and trickier process, but it gave us the same results –soap. The stuff actually worked, too. It didn’t smell that great though, so we tried adding perfume, after-shave, or cologne (some things we really had no other use for) to a couple batches to spice it up a little. That made it more pleasant to bathe or shower with, which was the homemade soap’s primary use. But soon we were using it for laundry and dishes as well, so we could save all the laundry and dish detergent we had on hand for sanitizing the milking equipment when Larry’s commercially produced cleaners would run out. Down the road, we even had to use homemade soap for that job as well. For the ensuing months it was an ongoing burden – finding homemade products to replace the ones we had been able to purchase just a few months ago.

To be continued……..Mort

Chapter Twenty-one - Mortality (cont)

Death was not an uncommon experience for us. We had been killing a hog a week for a few months now and had butchered several small steers as well. We still had not tackled a larger animal because of the warm weather and the fact that at this point Joe had not perfected methods of preserving that amount of meat.
One morning Larry discovered a cow lying dead in the pasture. She was part of the nursing herd, those that we let the calves suckle instead of us milking them. Why she died, we didn’t know. That herd wasn’t attended as regularly as the milking string, making it less likely to notice any sick cows. She was old as far as cows go – eight or nine years as best Larry could recall. With no other evidence of disease or injury, we could only assume old age was the culprit. We weren’t about to do an autopsy to determine cause of death….. or were we?
“Shame to see her go to waste,” Harvey began.
“Absolutely,” Joe agreed, “we shouldn’t throw any meat away.”
“But how long has she been dead?” Dad wondered.
“Hard to say,” Larry answered, “she’s not stiff. She’s not bloated from the fermentation going on in her rumen of the last feed she ate. Couldn’t be more than two, three hours. Four at the most.”
“Then I say we tackle it,” Joe concluded. “The meat can’t be bad yet, depending on what she died from. Let’s have a look and if anything looks suspicious, then we’ll abandon the meat. At least Patsy and the cats can have some.”
After hanging the cow in the tree next to the ground cellar with the head up, skinning it wasn’t really that hard. At least not with the skill that Joe had. Next he removed the entrails, carefully inspecting them for signs of infection or any other indications of disease. Nothing seemed abnormal. But when he pierced the diaphragm to remove the heart and lungs from the cow’s upper cavity, gallons of blood spewed into the tubs we had positioned under the animal for the waste to fall into.
“Whoa, that’s not normal!” Joe exclaimed. “This cow must have bled to death. It wonders me what caused it.”
After removing the organs and examining them, he continued, “Look at the heart. Now I know why she died. It’s not easy to see, but there’s a hole, I guess you call it an aneurysm, in a large vessel right where it goes into the heart. Not a gaping hole that your thumb would fit through, but a slit no more than half an inch long. Big enough, however, for all this blood to be pumped out.”
“If it’s an artery,” Josh chimed in. “If it’s a vein, it just leaked out.”
“Either way – she bled to death,” Harvey concluded, “fast enough to make the meat safe to eat, I’d say. Everyone agree?”
No one disagreed, so the cleaned carcass was sawed into quarters and carried into the ground cellar to cool. Much of the fat and tallow was removed from the meat and stored separately in buckets to be rendered later. Under normal circumstances, like the beef we were to slaughter as winter progressed, we would have cleaned up the liver, kidneys and heart and prepared them for supper on the days we killed any livestock. This time, however, because we weren’t one hundred percent sure how long the cow had been dead, all the organs as well as the head and hide were hauled for disposal to a far corner of the farm where no livestock were pastured.
“The skunks, possums, and vultures need something to eat too,” Dad had said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t use the hide, though. Don’t know if we could have turned it into leather or not.”
“We can’t waste the salt we have,” Larry said.
“I know,” Dad agreed. “Maybe someone will show up one day with the knowledge and ability to tan hides. Commercially they use tannic acid; we might be able to use oak leaves.”
“I read once,” Jake added, “that the Indians used the organs for tanning. Some chemical in the organs, when rubbed into the cleaned hide helped the process. The Indians didn’t have salt or tannic acid, but somehow they made soft buckskin. Maybe one day we’ll have to experiment.”
So for the next few days we ate old tough beef at every meal. Joe did learn some things from the incident.
First, he wished he’d have been better prepared. Second, meat won’t keep real long in the ground cellar. At 55 degrees it’s a great place for the meat in the summertime, but the meat’s actually preserved better outside in the winter and the months around it. Third, and fortunately so, the drying racks actually worked. We successfully dried some of the meat that Joe had skillfully sliced by hanging the slices next to the butcher stove on the racks we had used to make the dried apples. Joe knew how to make beef jerky, but lacked the ingredients and the electric dryer he usually used. The dried beef would have to be a weak substitute.
One of the hind quarters was roasted the first day over an open fire outside. Some of the other large pieces were cooked in the kettle of the butcher stove; it certainly made enough heat for the drying racks. Once the meat was cooked and deboned, we packed it in jars and added boiling broth to enable the jar lids to seal by creating a vacuum when the broth and jar cooled. We cooked and canned two full kettles of meat, using most of the jars we had lids for. Joe kept the leftover broth cooking after screening out any small pieces of meat and bone. We carefully separated the meat from the bones, and then using a small hand food grinder, ground it like hamburger and tossed it back into the kettle with the broth. He added a little salt, pepper, our home ground cornmeal, and a little wheat flour until it had cooked to a pasty consistency like the mush we made. We poured it into pans to cool and set-up, and then fried it in the morning for breakfast. Like I said, beef every meal. It really wasn’t that great; later batches we made that winter were a bit tastier because pork was added as well. It became a staple for two mornings after butchering. It was called scrapple, because it was made from the scraps leftover from butchering.
Also, Joe wished he could have made bologna with some of the meat, so steps were taken to have what he needed ready for the next time. Aaron rigged up Joe’s power driven meat grinder with the motor we had used to fill the soybean bin. Then Joe was able to grind the beef, add pepper and salt and a few other ingredients he had saved. The mixture was stuffed into bags that Sandy and Mom had sewn into tubes from old clothing or towels. When these tubes of meat were smoked, they kept for weeks, especially in winter. I don’t know why, but it was called summer bologna or summer sausage and unlike some of the other food we had, it was delicious. We ate it as a luncheon meat or fried it and made a milk gravy with it.
Eventually Joe started making regular pork sausage when we butchered hogs. We usually just fried it as patties, but it also made pretty good milk gravy as well. In freezing weather it kept indefinitely or could be kept a day or two in the springhouse by putting it in a sealed bucket in the cool water, but Joe knew it would keep longer if smoked, like the summer bologna. But we needed casings into which to stuff the pork sausage. The casings we used came from a job no one was thrilled to do. We had to clean the pig’s intestines. Grandmom remembered how to do it and thank goodness, out of the 60 some people in our community, there were a few people willing to tackle the task. At least I didn’t have to. The benefit was great, however, for once the sausage was inside a casing, it could be hung on racks to smoke and then it would keep for days if not weeks if necessary.
In order to smoke any of the meats another project had been tackled. There was no smokehouse on Harvey’s farm, but Joe had one at his old house. One day during the second week of November the men using, Brutus, took a hay wagon, tools, and blocking to Joe’s house and retrieved his smokehouse, cement blocks and all. Somehow they were able to tilt and lay the structure right onto the wagon without it falling to pieces. The smokehouse itself was six feet by eight feet and nine feet high, so it fit in a standard hay wagon. Once again, with some thinking, planning, muscle and extra effort we had taken another step toward meeting the food needs of our community. It was neat watching Joe tend the smokehouse. After starting a fire, it had to be tempered or smoldered to make the fire smoke all the time and not get too hot; you didn’t want to cook the meat, just smoke it. Joe used green wood (not dry), or wet sawdust and sometimes he even had to throw water on the fire itself.

To be continued…………Mort

Hard to Imagine

Following is a question and answer session between a gentleman at an election rally and a presidential candidate. You pick the candidate, they’re all the same.

Q = questioner
C = candidate

Q: I understand your health care plan will provide health care for everyone in the country.
C: That’s correct.
Q: Well it’s about time. My daughter just received the immunizations for uterine cancer that the media, medical community, and the insurance companies touted so much. Our doctor billed us over $600 for the three shot series. I’m still fighting with the insurance company over getting it paid. How would a cost like that be handled under your plan?
C: Everyone would receive it at no cost.
Q: You mean the doctors won’t charge anyone anymore? And the pharmaceutical companies will give us the vaccine for free?
C: No, not for free. We will pay for it.
Q: We’re paying for it now. What’s the difference?
C: The difference is, the government will pay for it.
Q: Where’s the government going to get the money? They’re broke. There either going to have to get it from us or China.
C: From employers
Q: I thought you pledged not to raise taxes on middle class Americans, those earning less than $200,000 per year. There must be millions of small businesses and farmers that make less than that. Would you still tax them to fund your plan?
C: Well, it wouldn’t really be a tax – more like an involuntary contribution.
Q: Sounds like a tax to me. And where are employers supposed to get the money to pay your “involuntary contribution”?
C: From their profits.
Q: Oh, that’s right. You believe companies make profits they don’t deserve. Did you sleep through all of Economics 101? Companies get their money from the consumers, that’s us. Every cost they entail, including taxes, drives up the cost of their products and services to us. We would end up paying for your health care plan. The consumer always pays. So, who’s going to administer your plan?
C: We have insurance companies doing that now. They can continue.
Q: You’re kidding, right? The same insurance companies who drive up the cost of health care now and have used the money we pay in premiums to contribute generously to your campaign? For your plan to succeed, the extra costs tacked on by the insurance companies have to be eliminated. They’re not part of the solution; they’re part of the problem.
C: Next question.


Next installment, I have some of Alyssa’s story written…. Mort

No Easy Fix

I said there is no easy fix………but you could try these:

1. Promote industries that produce items we really need like food, clothing, building materials and improvements to our infrastructure such as water, sewer, electricity, roads and railroads, especially if we now import those products.
2. Secure the dollar by eliminating credit – financial transactions need to be made in cold cash, coinage is best even if the metals used are steel, zinc, nickel or copper.
3. Provide incentives for renewable energy sources, especially solar, home grown fuels, and our garbage.
4. Establish neighborhood/community schools in churches, homes, community centers, etc., run by their owners (parents) by completely closing ALL public schools for a couple years.
5. Insure non-interference by government in business, agricultural and financial free enterprises by eliminating as many central regulatory agencies as possible, without compromising the safety aspects of those regulations as applied to the workers and the consumers.

Sorry, I said it wouldn’t be easy. It should be no surprise that the words chosen to begin each of these recommendations were also the ones used by James Madison when penning the Preamble to the Constitution. It would take some super leaders to actually have the intelligence and the courage to take such drastic steps. I guess we can hope.

Next installment?????????????? Mort

The ten main problems with society

The ten main problems with society
(ignorance/greed and their manifestations)

1. We are a nation of consumers instead of producers.
2. A fiscally irresponsible federal government which has our country 9.4 trillion dollars in debt.
3. Control of the economy (like the stock and commodities markets and credit) by the Federal Reserve and other banking type industries.
4. A valueless dollar, not because it cannot buy as much as it used to, but because it is not backed by anything of real value. (ex.-gold standard)
5. Our dependence on oil and the way our economy is driven by oil.
6. Acceptance as a right to entitlements, even if you don’t work for them.
7. Belief that the government is the savior of the people.
8. Our litigious society and the unwillingness to accept responsibility for our own actions.
9. A state enforced school system that purports the above values, fueled by a system of higher education that supports that indoctrination.
10. Failure of churches and families to instill the proper values.

There is no easy fix
Collapse and start over would be the easiest, and probably inevitable.

Maybe next installment I’ll suggest some ways we could try to fix them.

To be continued……. Mort Stump

What are you going to do?

The way things look on the economic front, it appears I may not be able to finish Alyssa’s story before the great collapse occurs. That would not be good as I still have so much to share. Perhaps in the future I’ll just run an outline of the rest of the story containing some of the more necessary details we will need to survive. If I see that this medium that I’m using to get this message out is going to die, I’ll try to quickly get something out.
A few weeks ago I commented on the foolishness of the economic stimulus package Congress passed. There has been a lot of talk and advice given about what individuals should do with that money. After hearing much and thinking some more, I’ve come up with a few options depending on your situation and your attitude.
1) If your main concern is the welfare of the United States:
Maybe your best choice is to send the check back or tear it up (I don’t know which of the two creates a bigger or more bureaucratic bookkeeping problem). Anything you could do to limit the amount of money that the US treasury has to borrow would be a step (no matter how small it would be) in the right direction. You could also buy one or two thousand forever stamps. That way the money still goes back to the treasury, but you actually get something in return, albeit when the post office closes the stamps will be worthless. Of course you could sell or trade them to other people prior to that. You know if we bought 50 billion forever stamps, that would put 20.5 billion dollars back into the treasury - might help a little, but just for a while.
2) If you’re well enough off and your main concern is the welfare of others:
You should donate the check to non-profits, the money would still be spent by someone and possibly achieve its purpose. Additionally it would give you a small tax write-off assuming the IRS is still in business in April 2009.
3) If you are barely making ends meet now, making your main concern the survival of your family:
You should purchase as many REAL goods as possible with the cash. Items like fuel oil, coal, food that can be kept safely for a long period, seeds, garden tools, soaps, toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, eyeglasses, rubber boots, raincoats, winter gloves, ammunition, batteries, hand powered generators, candles, matches, metal cooking pots. Purchase them before hyperinflation drives their prices through the roof and /or supplies have been cut-off.
Some are advising using the check to pay as much of your debt as you can, but what difference does it make if you owe $48,800 instead of $50,000? Will it really hurt you if you owe a bank money when it goes under? Isn’t it much better to owe them than have them lose your money in the collapse?
Turn your paper dollars into something real as soon as you can. Yes, and if the end becomes very imminent, I would think someone trying to insure his family’s survival might even use credit to buy those real things. I would even consider buying some items on credit now and plan to pay the card when the US check comes in May or June. Although if things snowball faster than most expect, we shall never see that check.
4) If you are of means and want to preserve as much as you have:
Assuming you have the bases already covered mentioned in #3, buy gold or silver with the check. You can’t eat it, but it will have a real value regardless of what happens to the dollar. My sincere wish is that people of means will be able to aid those of us who do not heed the warnings that are being plastered all over the place.
Sorry to paint such a grim picture. But truly, as rough as the going might be for awhile, the final outcome might not really be that bad. Our world is in need of a major cleansing, and what’s coming down the road might just do that. Please don’t feel pressured by any of my opinions. Consider the facts, draw your own conclusions, and take whatever steps you decide are necessary.
I’ll try to get back to Alyssa’s story, but in the meantime, God bless you all.

To be continued??????? Mort Stump

Chapter Twenty-one - Mortality

“Joan Wolfe, Wayne’s wife, passed away this morning,” Butch announced.
“How? What from?” Joe inquired.
“She awoke at the usual time,” Butch answered, “appeared a little sluggish, ate about the same breakfast she normally did, and then lay back down. It was her normal routine, not unusual for an eighty-nine year old. About an hour later, Clare went back to check on her, and she was gone. What from? We’re not really sure. Our best guess is some complication from her diabetes. She had been on insulin for years. When her supply ran out, we managed her sugar pretty well with her diet, but evidently her system couldn’t take it. At least it appears she went peacefully.”
“That’s good,” Dad said. “How’s Wayne taking it?”
“So far, really well,” Ben responded. “He’s been expecting it for some time now; he knew he could lose her any day. Right now he has other things on his mind, which is what brings us here. He needs your help.”
“Of course,” Harvey replied, “how can we help?”
“Joan always wanted a big church funeral,” Ben continued. “Had her scriptures and hymns all picked out; even discussed the plans with Reverend Schneider. She and Wayne often talked about it. Wayne says it was important to her, that he had promised her he would carry out her plans, and he intends to do so.”
“Rightly so,” Harvey agreed. “What’s our part?”
“We need to get the grave dug ASAP,” Butch answered. “There’s no undertaker around with embalming fluid; she should be buried tomorrow. We assume Steward’s backhoe is still at the church cemetery. Would you accompany us to the church to run the backhoe and could you spare a couple gallons of diesel fuel in case its tank is dry?”
“I will,” Harvey said, “but are you sure the backhoe still works?”
“No, we’re not,” Butch continued. “We’re planning on taking charged batteries and jumper cables. We’re hoping your mechanic, Barry, can go along as well, and bring his tools. And if we can’t get it running, the men at our farm are gathering shovels and picks, so we can dig the grave by hand if we have to.”
“Do we know where the gravesite is?” Harvey asked.
“Wayne drew us a map and there’s already a stone there; shouldn’t be a problem,” Butch answered.
“Sounds like a plan,” Dad said. “I guess the minister needs to be notified some way as well?”
“Right,” Ben replied, “we thought it would be a good idea if we took your moped along on the wagon so one of us could track the Reverend down and let him know.”
“Good idea,” Harvey said. “Your wagon will be pretty full. How many of us do you need?”
“Just you and Barry,” Butch answered. “It’s dinnertime already. It will probably be after dark until we get back. Your men need to be here to get your work done; we’ll have enough hands.”
“Then let’s get started,” Harvey said.
“Oh, one more thing Wayne could use some help with,” Ben added.
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
“Well, the women are helping Wayne getting Joan ready for the funeral,” Ben continued. “You know, talking out what she’s going to wear, fixing her hair, and the like. But he plans to build a coffin for her, and I believe he fully expects to carry out his plans. Your dad’s really good with woodworking. It would be great if Harold would come up with us to give Wayne a hand. We have the lumber, hardware and the tools. Maybe your father-in-law could come as well. I think it would be good for Wayne if the task wasn’t so solitary and that he’d be in the company of two fellas nearer his own age who could talk things through, if he needed to.”
“Kinda like years ago, when a widow, together with other women family members and friends, would have to devote all kinds of time to the funeral and wake preparations,” Dad said. “It kept her mind off all the grief she was bearing.”
“Yes, like that,” Ben agreed.
“I’m sure Poppop and Grandpop will be glad to help Wayne,” Dad said. “They’re probably getting things ready for dinner. Alyssa, let’s go find them.”
We found my grandfathers with the kitchen crew and shared the news with all the others there. Everyone was glad to comply with Wayne’s wishes and to follow Butch’s plans. The funeral came off without a hitch. We used Brutus to haul some of us to church. Others rode bicycles or rode on the two wagons Butch had hitched up, one of which bore the coffin.
It was a dreary, drizzly day; maybe the way it should be for a funeral. The church was cold and somber; not how I was used to it being. It usually had a warm, bubbly, cheerful, and friendly atmosphere. Mel played the piano for the hymns. She was good, considering the pressure. Though it wasn’t the same as organ music. Of course, Reverend Schneider had successfully been located. We even found Joan’s closest living relative on a farm north of town. It was her youngest sister and a nephew and his family. They sure were glad we did. Countless hours had been spent by thousands of people the last few months, worrying and wondering how distant family members had survived. It was good to have closure for at least one of those families.
That evening I heard Mom, Dad, Jean, Harvey, Poppop, and Grandmom talking about funerals.
“You want to be buried at church?” Jean asked Harvey.
“Why do YOU want to know?” Harvey joked. “I plan on burying YOU first.”
“In your dreams,” Jean replied. “I’m serious, where do you want to be buried? We never did get around to buying plots at the church cemetery like we talked about years ago.”
“I know,” Harvey said. “I’d just as soon be buried here on the farm.”
“Me too,” said Poppop, “hope that’s alright with you, Grandmom?”
“Machts nichts aus,” she replied. “(Makes no difference) where we’re buried; been here for over 55 years. Might as well be here on the farm. Either of you have a spot picked out?”
“I kinda like,” Harvey answered, “at the far end of the meadow, up near the top of the hill, near the pine woods. It’s peaceful; you have a nice view of the whole valley and the farm buildings.”
“Like you’ll be able to see anything after I’ve planted you there,” Jean quipped.
“I know mother,” he replied, “it’s the thought that counts.”
“I like that spot too,” Poppop said. “It’s close to a couple of our deer hunting stands. I shot a few deer up there.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dad agreed, “good memories.”
“Now ain’t that an important reason to pick a burial sight,” Mom countered. “But in the meadow? You want cows stomping on you for eternity?”
“Don’t worry; you won’t feel a thing,” Dad answered, “I’ll put you in extra deep.”
“Oh, so you’re burying me?” Mom whined.
“Planning on it,” Dad replied.
“Don’t worry; we’ll build a fence around it,” Poppop said. “Maybe even a stone wall. The old limestone quarry is only a few hundred yards from there.”
“Uh oh,” Harvey said, “I wonder how that vein of limestone runs. I don’t want to hit limestone clunkers every time I go to plant one of you.”
“Listen to him,” Mom said, “he’s planting us.” Turning to him she added, “I’d much prefer to sing at your funeral.”
“And so you might,” Dad acknowledged. “I wouldn’t worry about the limestone, Harvey. It’s been years since that pasture ground’s been plowed, so I can’t say for certain, But the field just next to it is shaly loam soil – wasn’t formed from limestone.”
“And,” Poppop added, “in the driest summers you can see a distinct line in both the meadow and the field where the limestone soil switches to the shale. You know, on the shale side the grass or crop planted there dries up much earlier. On the limestone side it stays greener for a couple weeks longer. Your spot for the cemetery is on the shale side of the line.”
“That’s settled then,” Grandmom announced, “another crisis solved. Who wants to be first?”
Of course it was a rhetorical question. We’d have to wait for the future to give us the answer.
“Makes me wonder about the quarry, now,” Dad continued. “If we want to grow crops without commercial fertilizer, could we find a way to mine the limestone like they did a century ago, and then burn the stone in a kiln to make lime to feed our crops?”
“I guess we could,” Harvey replied. “Another project, for another time.

To be continued….. Mort

Chapter Twenty - Agronomics (conclusion)

We did receive a few dozen eggs from an unexpected source. The Tuesday after Larry had finished combining the soybeans, Titus Weaver returned for another load of hay. True to his promise he brought sweet potatoes for Poppop. He also had a passenger, Sam Burke. Sam brought with him a crude drawing of how he makes power driven hay mowers into ground driven ones. After a little discussion on how we adapted our equipment to sow our wheat, Sam, Larry, Aaron, and Dennis headed up to the equipment shed to show him the equipment and check out his plans.
Titus had very little produce to trade that day. His fields were pretty well cleaned out, yet food was in demand so it didn’t take long for him to move his wares. At least he was able to barter eight dozen eggs from one customer to trade to us.
“Wonderful!” Dad exclaimed. “Now that we have a flour mill and Jean is baking bread, I could sure eat a scrambled egg sandwich.”
“You have a mill up and running?” Titus inquired.
“Yep,” answered Dennis, “it’s slow and has to be tended continuously to function well, but we’re grinding wheat and corn.”
“Any neighbors bring you grain to grind?” Titus asked.
“No, not yet; I mean we grind our grain for Butch and Clare up the road, but no one else has brought any grain to grind. Don’t know that we’d want to anyway; that would tax the machine if we did too much for other people.”
“Yes, I suppose it would,” Titus answered. “However, Sam should take a look at its design and pass it on to some of our mechanically minded brethren.”
“Sure, he should do that,” Dad agreed.
“I see you’re getting your corn in,” Titus offered.
“Yes, little by little,” Harvey said. “It’s a lot of work, but with all the extras around here, we’ll get it done. The challenge is where to put it all. We couldn’t fill silage bags, like we usually do; didn’t have the fuel to spare. How is your community bringing in the corn?”
“Almost the same as you,” Titus replied, “shocking, picking and husking by hand. But we filled silo as well.”
“You filled silo?” Harvey quipped. “Where you find all that fuel?”
“Only used a little,” was Titus’s answer. “Two members of our community had stationary ensilers stashed away in their sheds; you know, the kind that chops and blows the stalks right into the silo. They were once driven by belt from the belt pulley that older tractors had. Both had been converted to be driven by gasoline engines that took just a few gallons per silo. We moved them from farm to farm, until everyone had their silo filled. All the other work we did by hand – cutting, loading on the wagons, hauling in with the horses, and feeding into the ensiler. Sure gave us a valuable source of feed, and all those townsfolk pitched in, too.”
While we were loading the hay on Titus’s wagon the conversation led away from farming when Titus asked, “Everybody know what today is?”
“Sure, it’s Tuesday,” Jeremiah responded. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the first Tuesday,” continued Titus, “after the first Monday in November.”
“Why it’s election day!” a somewhat surprised Harvey replied. “I guess we forgot because for once we didn’t have to listen to all those annoying commercials for months ahead of the election.”
“By golly, your right,” Dad added. “It’s a meaningless election day, however. Today we were supposed to elect county commissioners, school directors and the like. We even had nominees to choose from. Pennsylvania was able to hold its primary in May, prior to the collapse.”
“With no state or county government, there’s no one to run an election,” Barry said.
“But with no government or schools, who needs those public offices anyway?” Joe asked.
“Well, we don’t need them right now,” Dad responded. “Don’t know what the future holds.”
“Do you suppose the current officials just keep their positions, even if there’s no job to do?” Harvey inquired.
“Suppose so,” Barry agreed. “I wonder what all our government officials have been thinking the last five months?”
“I reckon most of them got a wake-up call,” Joe replied.
“How so?” Titus wondered.
“Well,” Joe explained, “most government officials, with a few some exceptions, felt the people existed for the government – not the government for the people.”
“Like Lincoln said,” I interjected.
“Like Lincoln said,” Joe continued. “government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. Too many elected and for that matter, appointed officials, thought the government came first and the people, second. That the people could not exist without the government; that we could not take care of ourselves; that the government was the savior of the people.”
“I guess that proved out wrong,” Barry said.
“Sure did,” Harvey agreed. “The government couldn’t save squat; couldn’t even save itself.”
“But we’re still here,” Josh chimed in. “The people still do exist, without government.”
“The people will always exist, as long as God wills,” Titus said. “It was the rest of that line from the Gettysburg address: ‘shall not perish from the earth’ I believe it went. Governments wax and wane, are born and die, but before and after government are the people.”
“People that are better off without government,” Barry announced.
“Some would agree with you,” Dad said, “those with enough food, water, clothing, and a roof over their heads. But what about those who are cold and hungry right now?”
“Those who were foolish enough to depend on the government for their well being,” Barry countered, “got what they deserved.”
“Or were too lazy,” added Bruce.
“Whoa, that’s pretty callous,” bemoaned Titus.
“But realistic,” responded Harvey.
“Anyway, Barry,” Bruce said, “you wondered what our elected officials were thinking. I wonder what they are doing.”
“Same as before….. nothing!” Jeremiah quipped.
“Oh, no,” Josh offered, “they aren’t doing nothing. In fact it gives me great comfort to presume that some of them, hopefully the ones that got us into this mess, are doing the same things everyone else is doing: finding their own food, carrying water, chopping wood and forking manure.”
“As unkind as that might be, I guess you may find comfort in that thought,” Harvey replied. “Although I’d wager that the officials most responsible prepared for themselves secluded hideaways, like some tropical island, with all the things they’d need to be comfortable for years. But I imagine the vast majority are in the same boat we are and need our help.”
“Which you’ve demonstrated well that you’re willing to give,” Barry said.
“And many others have also,” Titus added.
“You finding people generally cooperative?” Dad asked.
“Unbelievably so,” Titus answered.
“But food is not in short supply yet,” Joe commented. “Spring is a long time from now.”
“So it is,” Titus responded. “We’ll just have to conserve what we have, look for alternative ways to produce food, and keep the faith.”
“Yes we will,” agreed Harvey just as Sam Burke, Larry and the others joined us.
“If Sam’s ready, it’s time we get this load of hay home,” Titus announced, “although I hate to leave this stimulating conversation.”
“We’ll hold the thoughts until you return,” Dad said. “That’s if you’re planning to come for more hay. Or do you have what you need?”
“I believe I’m set pretty well for the winter, but some of my neighbors might have tighter supplies. Do you still have some to spare?”
“We have a good supply, but the pasture stops growing now,” Harvey replied.
“And it won’t take long for the cattle to graze the rye and other grain fields off, so we will have to feed more hay. It’s close figuring, but we should be able to part with four or five more loads.”
“Well, we might be back for some then,” Titus replied. “Anything we should be on the lookout for you?”
“Ideas,” Larry answered, “especially any for making electricity or fuel and for converting other machinery to ground drive. Sam gave us quite a few already, but more are welcome. He can fill you in on the way home.”
“All right then,” Titus answered and down the road he went. No sooner had he reached the end of Harvey’s meadow and disappeared from sight when Butch and Ben came down the road from the other direction.
As Butch eased his Clydesdales to a halt it appeared he wasn’t his usual boisterous self. He dropped the reins, planted his elbows on his knees, looked sadly at my elders and softly announced, “Got some bad news.”

To be continued......... Mort

I'm still around

Hello faithful readers. I need to apologize for neglecting my blogging duties.
Things have been very busy for me the last couple months.
I haven't given up. Alyssa's story line still exists and I have a little bit written.
I just need some push to make the time.
Joke of the week: tax rebates.
First thing I thought of was - How does increasing federal debt cure the disease,
which is: TOO MUCH DEBT?
They don't have any real money. They'd have to create more - exasperating the cancer.
Second thing - We'd only spend it on food and fuel anyway. How does that stimulate the economy?
Then my elementary economic mind came up with this: Even though our debt is the problem,
the real cause is the belief that government is our savior. In no way shape or form should the feds be setting interest rates. Those rates should be market driven - good supply and low demand should produce lower rates and vice-versa. You know the drill. Our federal government needs to stop borrowing money, period!!!!!!!
Which brings me to presidential candidates. With the possible exception of Ron Paul, is there any candidate, red or blue, who recognizes what the function of the central government is?
Seems like all the candidates are spouting what they would do for us - they should be saying what they are going to stop doing TO US!!!
They don't understand the root of the cancer; they just say things to get elected.
Here I am writing when I said I have no push or time.
Keep looking for the signs.
I'll get back to you.
To be continued.............. Mort

Anniversary

This is my 53rd post - been at it for a year.
Don't look for any posts the next two weeks - I'll be away.
I'm not sure I'll be able to continue when I return, especially as it appears that no one is reading. If you are reading, please let me know - I need a confidence builder.
Mort

Chapter Twenty - Agronomics (cont)

Wheat sowing continued into November, when the weather was cooperative and as fields were cleared. The other major agronomic activity that fall was harvesting the soybeans. Larry had over forty acres and we had saved enough fuel to enable the use of his combine to strip the pods from the beanstalks and clean the beans from the pods. He didn’t waste fuel on the road by driving back and forth from the farm to the field. We towed the combine to the field with the Clydesdales and only started the engine to do the actually threshing. We also hauled the fuel to the combine instead of coming back to the farm for fuel. The horses could also haul the beans back to the farm with the gravity bin wagons. In good years, soybeans dry well enough in the field to keep from spoiling, and this year was no different. The beans were stored in a metal bin that Harvey usually filled with an electric driven auger. With some adaptation, the boys rigged up a 12-volt motor to run it. It ran a lot slower than usual, but still got the beans in the bin. Even at the slower speed though, it ran a battery dead in about 30 minutes; good thing the windmill could recharge a couple at a time. The bin held 2000 bushels. When the second to last wagon was being unloaded the bin overflowed.
“Over 2000 bushel,” Harvey commented, “with maybe another 250 bushel in the last two wagons. All from forty acres means the yield was over 55 bushel per acre. That’s the best I think I’ve ever had. The Lord has blessed us.”
He’s blessed us indeed,” Dad agreed. “In that bin we have soybeans for food, feed, seed or fuel.”
“Fuel?” I asked, “we wouldn’t burn them would we?”
“We could if we needed to,” Dad answered, “they are loaded with energy. Dennis and Aaron are working on a way to squeeze the oil out. We can burn the oil in our diesels, we think. The remaining pulp, called soybean meal is a great source of protein.”
“For us?” I asked.
“Us, or the cattle or hogs. I didn’t hear their plan yet; we’ll see the results sometime, if it works.”
It wasn’t a problem having the two wagons remain loaded. They could just be parked in the wagon shed as we had others to use for the corn. However, one problem we did have throughout the whole harvest was flat tires. The first one wasn’t a big deal; Larry would just go “borrow” one, wheel and all, from a piece of equipment we weren’t using. That way the tire would not have to be removed from the rim, the tube repaired, remounted, and then inflated. That method was fine for the first few, but eventually Josh and Barry, using the repair kits for the inner tubes and the 12-volt air pump Uncle Bruce had brought, mastered the task of repairing tires. All along, we had been able to repair any bicycle flats, hoping our supply of glue for the tire patches would not run out. Down the road, to preserve our usable glue for bicycle tubes, we had to put sand in some of the implement tires to keep them inflated. It was an extremely laborious and painstakingly time consuming process that took patience and perseverance to accomplish, but the men got it done. At least for this harvest season, we still had glue and could patch inner tubes. And one BIG tire we did need to fix – the drive tire on the combine.
“Thank goodness you didn’t drive into anything that made a hole too big to repair,” Harvey said to Larry after inspecting the flat tire they found one day when returning to the field. “I knew something was wrong as soon we crested the hill and I saw the combine leaning to one side.”
“Yeah, it’s only a nail or something,” Larry agreed. “We’re lucky too that it went flat at a good flat spot in the field, so we can safely work at it. But what a mess the calcium made.”
Calcium was the word farmers used to call the water that was pumped into tractor or combine tires for added weight, which would give the tires better traction in different situations. Water alone would freeze in the winter, ruining the tube or maybe even the tire, so calcium carbonate, chemically speaking, a salt, was added to the water to keep it from freezing. Unbeknownst to Larry, when he parked the combine for the evening, the hole was very near the bottom of the tire so darn near all the calcium solution had seeped out, making a soggy mess.
“We’re not going to fix it here,” Harvey said. “Don’t even have the tools we need to get the tire off the combine. We need to go back home for stuff.”
The word stuff has a lot of meanings. In this case, it means all the tools and equipment one might need to get a job done, without having to make a return trip home for some “stuff” you forgot the first time. I had seen Dad do it many a time; he’d fill the pickup half full, but only use five percent of it. It was more critical in this instance, with the combine being broke down about 25 minutes from the farm at horse speed. On the wagon they threw chains, five different jacks, wrecking bars, toolboxes, pipes, solvent for loosening rusty bolts, sledge hammers, post irons, the 12 volt air pump, six charged batteries, the inner tube patches, even a brand new tube Larry thought might fit if the old one could not be repaired; and blocking, tons of wooden blocking and long heavy boards to keep the combine from falling further into the ground when the wheel was removed. They weren’t going to have to come back for anything.
Finally, they filled the wagon up with brawn; ten men climbed aboard to make sure there would be enough help. A combine drive tire isn’t small or light; it must have been about five feet high, over a foot and a half wide, and weighed about 300 pounds even without the calcium. Even with all the forethought and muscle, it still took a good part of the day to complete the tire change. It must have been close to three o’clock when the repaired tire and wheel were back on and the combine was being lowered off the jacks.
Larry said, “I’m glad we’re done, but I never thought it would take this long. I’ll only get a few acres combined today.”
“What would we have done if we wouldn’t have been able to fix the tire?” Dennis asked.
“I gave that a little thought,” Harvey replied. “We have some tractors with roughly the same size tire, but not the same wheel mounting. I guess we could have made it work, but I’m glad we didn’t have to. Darn lucky it didn’t rain either.”
And it didn’t rain, especially not that October; it was unseasonably hot and dry. Horrible weather for shocking corn, but great weather for harvesting beans; I think Larry finished November 3rd. Finally, that very next week in November colder weather came, and so did more people. Some to stay, but a lot were neighbors looking to trade for cows. They were in the same boat as us; they had some feed, food, a source of water and had taken in families that didn’t. Several cows had freshened in September and October. By now there were more hands to milk and care for the dairy animals, but also more people to drink milk as our numbers had exceeded 60. All in all though, we could spare some.
“Just rubs me a little,” Larry announced one evening, “that we’re giving away our livelihood.”
“I know,” Harvey agreed. “But don’t fret; I don’t think our total numbers are down at all. We’ve had fifteen calves born since the middle of August, and I believe we only traded or slaughtered thirteen so far.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Larry responded, “and I know the neighbors need food.”
“Also, it relieves us from some work and saves us feed,” Jean added. “Think about it, what good does it do anyone to have a cow if they can’t use the milk? And besides, the cow isn’t gone; it’s just eating and being milked somewhere else - still a good use of a resource. Be satisfied that we’re doing our part. People will remember, when we need help.”
“You’re right,” Larry replied, “I’ll have to remember that.”
But what could the neighbors trade, that we could use? Food, fuel, medicine? It didn’t much matter; few had anything valuable to trade, with two exceptions. One neighbor traded an antique corn sheller that became a real time saver. We had been shelling corn by hand with a small ring-like tool that you had to turn the ear inside of. It knocked the kernels off, but at only one ear at a time, it kept a person quite busy – took maybe a half an hour to shell a five gallon bucket full of corn. The newly acquired sheller had a large crank with a heavy flywheel that one person could keep spinning while another fed ear after ear into the machine. The cob came out the other end and the shelled corn slid down a screened chute. Dirt and fines fell through the screen and the clean corn fell into a bucket. Only took two workers about five minutes to shell five gallons. It was fun, too, and Poppop had another use for it. We could hull the walnuts with it. Beat rubbing the hulls off by hand.
The other valuable trade was two dozen chickens. As the length of daylight shortened, egg production fell sharply. We tried to keep it going by using a car light and battery to make the chickens think it was still light out, but that had minimal success.
“It works in commercial operations,” Mom complained one day. “I just don’t know what we’re doing wrong. The new chickens aren’t laying any better than ours were, but at least five percent of 40 is more than five percent of 16.”
“Just an egg or two extra per day?” Dad asked.
“Yep, that’s all,” she answered, “but it’s worth the effort just to expand our flock. They’ll start laying again with the longer daylight at the end of winter. We’ll be happy for the eggs then.”

To be continued………….. Mort

STRUGGLING

One of the premises of “Are You Ready” is that this country, if current fiscal policies do not change, is doomed to an economic collapse that, of course, would affect the whole world. Many people pooh-pooh that possibility, having faith, (or is it gullible ignorance?), in our federal government. But many economists think the collapse is inevitable. More information is on Andy Sutton’s website: my2centsonline.com. Educate yourselves and form your own opinion.

I tend to also view the current economic situation as dire. In my story, I used a war in the Middle East and China playing their financial trump cards as the catalyst for the collapse. The cause of the forthcoming regression, however, might not be one of such a grand scale, but instead be very subtle. We can read what the experts write and listen to the media’s perception of the way things are, but that doesn’t mean we can see the signs.

On a personal level, I see the signs and I’m struggling. My wife is self-employed and none of my three employers provides health insurance, so we as a family have that bill to pay. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has just requested a 9.9% increase from the state insurance board for our plan. That’s $885 per year – after taxes. My wife pays 15.3% social security taxes, none of which we ever expect to get back. Roughly calculated, including the tax breaks we receive on our 1040 schedule for paying our own insurance, she would have to earn $1125 to actually receive the $885 to give to BC/BS. At $100 per day earnings, she would have to work eleven more extra days next year to enable us to afford health insurance. Perhaps the Fed or the impotent Congress can legislate the earth to revolve slower around the sun like they get the earth to spin faster that Sunday in March when daylight savings time starts – enough to add eleven days onto the 2008 calendar?

So last week bread at our local grocery chain went up 10%, with other foodstuffs comparably increasing. My first tank full of heating oil was 10% higher than last year’s highest price. With the recent record high crude oil futures, I expect to pay even more for the next. In spite of those record highs, gasoline prices remain somewhat stable, but I can’t see them staying there for much longer. Our electric company’s agreement with the Socialist State of Pennsylvania to limit rate increases expires in 2008. We’re looking for 10-20% increases then. Yet none of my employers are offering the 13.7% increase in wages needed to earn 10% more (after taxes), actually required to give you the purchasing power to offset these forthcoming price increases. All in all, it’s becoming very, very hard to make ends meet. This is not news to most of you.

I’m not bragging, but for the last 16 years, we’ve been very faithful in our giving to the church. I’m actually ashamed to say – that as of right now, we’re failing to do so to the extent we have in the past. Is it me, my lack of faith, or just a consequence of a failing, inflationary, recessional economy? We’re a couple months behind in our rent, owe my brother $400, my daughter $1000, and my son a couple hundred. Should we drop health insurance so we can pay our other bills? Should we let them repossess the car so we don’t have to make that payment? Are we really going to be forced to stop giving to the church? The savings necessary to stay afloat go beyond keeping the thermostat at 62 degrees, burning more wood, changing over to energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs, and driving less. Other people have to be in a similar situation, don’t they? Yes, I know I’m just supposed to give the problem to Jesus and TRUST him for a solution, but even with faith, it’s becoming more difficult and more difficult……….

How are you all handling it? What methods are you using to make ends meet? What do you see coming? Please let me know!

Maybe next week, I can resume Alyssa’s story………….. Mort

Chapter Twenty - Agronomics

“Looks like all the illegals didn’t make it back to Mexico,” Uncle Jeremiah said when he first saw the Diaz’s. Thank goodness only a few people were near enough to hear him. However, my father was, and shot him that look that you never wanted to get from Dad.
Aunt Lois wasn’t as subtle; even before Dad’s glance had a chance to reach Jeremiah’s eyes, she smacked the back of her husband’s head.
“Schwetz net su dumb,” she said in the dialect. “That’s not a nice thing to say at all, especially in front of the girls. I don’t ever want to hear anything like that again!”
“Ah, I was only joking,” he responded.
It’s good it was only he and Lois, Dad and I, and Amy that heard it. I was pretty sure Amy and I weren’t adversely affected by it; we wouldn’t be scarred for life. But grown-ups need to be more careful what they say around impressionable adolescents. He said he was joking, and I believed him. Our family was a bunch of wise guys, good at joking and teasing, especially politics, but we didn’t always stop and think about the damage it might do. There had been so much talk in the media, like radio call-in shows, about the immigration problem, or at least what some people called a problem. People just like to ride the waves on an issue; becomes the popular thing to do. When some movement gets started, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, regardless of what they really believe about the issue; if they would just stop to think about it.
In any event, comments like that didn’t reoccur, at least any that I heard. But I wondered if the problem could resurface as more and different people joined our community. Bottom line, we made the Diaz’s feel welcome, just like we did any other newcomers. Beyond their cooking skills, they were a valuable addition to our crew; always willing to pitch in, learn new things, and boy could those boys play soccer!
That’s right, we hadn’t given that up; we played every Sunday afternoon. Enrico and Luis had to be on separate teams though, to keep it fair. Benny, as we called their father, was pretty good, too. But we had good players to even it out. Joe loved playing both with them or against them; either way, it was challenging.
Even though we had to wait for the corn to dry to harvest it, that didn’t mean any other farming had not occurred while waiting. Sometime in early September, Larry and Harvey had planted rye in a ten acre wheat stubble field that had earlier been pastured off by the cattle. The fast growing grain could be pastured in late fall if they needed it, but would certainly provide the first new forage n the spring. The planting was possible because of three things: they had a good supply of the summer’s rye harvest remaining to use as seed, they had successfully adapted two pieces of farm equipment to operate without tractor power, and Butch’s Clydesdales.
Larry estimated he had enough rye seed to sow 60 acres, but was determined to only use one half of it, so their would be some preserved for next fall’s planting. When he sowed the ten acres that left him enough to seed another twenty later in the fall in the harvested cornfields that he hoped at least a few acres might be harvested for grain somehow next summer. We would see.
The two pieces of farm equipment that were adapted were a field cultivator and the grain drill. A field cultivator had tines in it with two inch wide shovels on them that dug in and loosened up the earth as it was pulled through the field. The grain drill had a metering system to accurately drop the seed into small seed furrows created by the drill’s disks, which ran through the soil as the drill was pulled. It wasn’t a problem for Butch’s horses to pull the equipment; the problem was disengaging them. Both the field cultivator and the grain drill worked when they were in the down position and didn’t work when raised up. They were designed to be raised and lowered by hydraulics powered by the tractor. Before tractors and hydraulics were the norm, some machinery had a ground driven hand clutch or a lever system to raise and lower the piece, but the boys were not able to locate either of those on any old machinery that could have possibly been fitted onto our equipment to adapt them for use with horses. By good fortune, Larry had some handjacks, a hand powered, screw type mechanism that would lengthen or shorten depending on which way you turned the screw. When the hydraulic cylinders on the equipment were replaced with these handjacks, by shear brute strength, Larry could raise or lower either piece of equipment to the proper operating or transporting height.
He didn’t want to do that very often, so once the field cultivator was in the ground, it stayed there until the field was finished; similarly with the drill. It gave Butch a chance to show off his horse handling skills, making sure they didn’t walk into a situation where the machine would have to be lifted and steering them precise enough to not overlap the seed with the drill or leave skippers (areas of no seed). He and his horses did admirably; even Dad, Jake and Larry took tries at it, and learned well. One team could easily pull the drill; it was on rubber tires and rolled easily, but the cultivator was another matter. Larry’s field cultivator was twenty feet wide and he usually used a one hundred and ten horsepower tractor. While the correlation is not exact, we only had six horsepower, so no way could they pull twenty feet. Speed through the field is the other component in the equation, so the horses, going slower could still accomplish the task when the cultivator was narrowed. Larry’s machine had wings that were folded up for transport; they were taken off. And then, six tines on each side of the remaining frame were removed, bringing the working width down to about eleven feet. They tried it that way, with the intent of taking more off if the job was too difficult.
The first time through the field was the hardest as the soil had not been tilled since October the previous fall, it had been driven on by the combine, tractor, baler, and wagon, baked by the summer sun, plus the cattle had been treading on it in all kinds of weather making it very hard. I don’t know if Butch ever had his six horses hitched as a single team before, but with some chains, our braided ropes, some keen thinking, and the work of all, they accomplished it. Then Larry started them out only lowering the cultivator a little at a time, until the point was reached that the horses could pull without out over-straining, but still do a good job ripping up the soil. One time over the field was not enough to make a good seedbed. Back and forth through the field they went a second time and even with Larry setting the machine deeper, it pulled easier and put good tilth in the soil. But for final seedbed preparation, which required a third trip, Dad added a spike toothed harrow that we used in the garden that leveled off a nice even fine seedbed.
Because the farmers had successfully completed the task of sowing rye in September, when October came and we had cleared some cornfields, sowing wheat was accomplished as well using the same procedures. Harvey and Larry’s farming operation only had about one third of its acreage in hay. With the emphasis on pasturing, some acreage would need to be shifted to some kind of hay crop. Hay was hard to harvest, but easy to pasture. Unlike corn, there was no practical way to manually harvest grains like rye, barley, wheat, and soybeans. We would try some by hand, but needed to cut down on those acres. The necessity of that shift mandated that Larry plant timothy as well in every field of wheat he sowed that fall. Timothy was a grass that was planted in the fall, was excellent horse feed, really easy to dry, not so bad to harvest, and would first produce a crop the following summer after the grain had been harvested and the straw cleared off the field. So to get a crop next year and subsequent years (as timothy is a perennial), it needed to be planted this year. Larry had traded for timothy seed. The grain drill, in addition to having a compartment for the wheat, also had a seedbox for the grass seed. It took very little extra effort to plant the timothy in the same trip we made to sow the wheat.

Chapter Nineteen-Corn (conclusion)

And corn as a supply of food was becoming evident, based on two developments. Shortly after the corn harvest started we ran out of oatmeal and cereal - no more Cocoa Puffs. And all through the fall harvest and later that winter, more people starting arriving; people we didn’t know – a couple from Bedford, a family from New Jersey, single women, single men, some older than Dad, and quite a few children. They arrived at different times and in different ways. Most walked; a few came on bicycles, a couple even still had their cars, one even came on horseback. Some looked well and brought goods with them, but many were very thin, dirty, poorly clothed for wintry weather, and carrying few belongings. Their arrival was always a cause for suspicion. Questions would go through our minds. Are these good people? Is one a thief? Are they sick? Are they running from something? Will they fit in? Do they understand our culture?
They had questions too, but in almost every instance it was the same one: Can we work for food? Harvey and Jean always had the same answer: First you eat, wash, and rest. Tomorrow, there’s work. Some would pridefully argue they should work first, all would smile. Most would express gratitude immediately; a few would be skeptical and cautious in their acceptance of the farm owners’ graciousness. All would eat, they didn’t all stay. A few chose to settle in at Crystal View, some just moved on. Some came with skills, some had none. Either way we had work for them - in the cornfields, in the barn, in the butcher house. Plenty of help to bring in the corn crop, but also to help shovel feed, move fences, fork manure, milk, cook, sew, do dishes and laundry.
With the increased number of workers, we could even devote time to woodcutting. Harvey’s furnace, Poppop’s woodstove, and the cook stove in the butcher house took a lot of fuel. Up until now they had been using the supply of firewood they had on hand and burning scrap that had accumulated over the years. That supply had reached its end. Now that there had been a frost and the cooler temperatures were prevalent, crews could venture into the woods with less annoyance from the bugs or fear from disease carrying ticks. It took some skill to chop and saw trees up, but it was one that could be learned. Even some of the youngsters could tag along and help by picking up the smaller pieces of sawed branches, stacking the firewood, or loading and unloading the wagon. The crews also spend timing cleaning up fallen branches and dead trees in the fencelines along the edges of our fields.
All these extra workers came with a few challenges, too. Where will they all sleep and use the bathroom? What about meals? Because our houses were getting pretty full and there was a concerted effort to maintain some privacy for the owners themselves, the newcomers were asked to sleep in the top of the barn. We had bedding and mattresses. Like the barn floor wasn’t already overfilled, there was no heat, and what kind of privacy could they have? Fortunately, Harvey’s barn was built in an “L” shape, so one wing was devoted to single women, the other end to single men, with families in the middle. Hay bales were rearranged into makeshift walls or pieces of the plastic from the silage bags that Larry was feeding from were hung as dividers. Small dressers or end tables, boxes or crates from the two houses were provided for the newcomers to keep their few belongings and toilet articles in. Eventually, the milking herd was housed underneath and a little bit of heat from the cows would help, but realistically, it was just like camping out in winter. Our guests needed good sleeping bags or plenty of covers, long underwear and heavy clothing, all of which we were able to find in our inventoried goods. As an added benefit, moving some things out of Jean’s upstairs kitchen made some more room for Lois’s infirmary.
There was one certainty; as expressed by Harvey and Dad in a huge sign at the barn’s main entrance with reminders at other doors. The sign said:
NO SMOKING OR FIRES IN THIS BARN
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD CANDLES
MATCHES OR LIGHTERS BE FOUND HERE
IF YOU BURN DOWN THIS BARN
YOU BURN YOUR HOME AND FOOD
No matter how cold it got that winter, the ban was never lifted. At one point the residents had learned to heat up bricks or stones at an outside fireplace, built far enough away from the barn to provide some light for bathroom trips during the night. They would then put them in their sleeping bags or under the covers like in colonial times. Harvey and Dad allowed that. Also, Barry, Uncle Bruce, and Dean installed a few car headlights in the barn to make some light during the evening and early morning.
There was a schedule made for showering, and as far as toileting, once again, the boys had exhibited some forethinking. A double outhouse had been built about fifty feet from the barn doors, right next to the manure pit. It was not only convenient for those sleeping in the barn, but also for all of us working around the farm. A lot less water to carry to the bathrooms in the houses. Also, it was ecologically sound. For instead of digging a hole and having our wastes go into the ground, the boys had designed the outhouses so the wastes would flow by gravity right into the manure tank, and then eventually be hauled to the fields to fertilize our crops.
Feeding everyone became our major concern. One of the first things was a change in the eating schedules. As soon as our number exceeded 30, meals had to be served in two shifts, your shift being determined by what time of the morning or evening you were needed at your assigned duties, like milking or dishes. I also noticed how happy the newcomers were to have milk with every meal. They might have not drunk milk for months and even though I was almost tired of drinking it all the time, it made me realize I lucky and blessed I was to have some.
As our oatmeal and cereal was gone, we had to come up with a new breakfast menu. Fortunately, the boys finally had a working flour mill built and running. They had carved two millstones from pieces of a concrete feed trough we didn’t need to have and then incredibly created a drive for it by using Larry’s hay rake in reverse. I mean, normally a tractor was used to power a nine foot wheel with six arms and tines on to rake hay. The boys hooked up a gearbox to rotate one of the millstones, hooked up the power take off shaft to the gear box, and then by walking around the hub and pushing the arms on the rake, transferred the power the opposite direction to make the millstone turn. It was rough for one person to do it alone, but two, three or even six people could hop in to drive the mill. Maybe some day they might be able to drive it with oxen or water, but at least for now, it worked!
They had successfully made wheat flour and were ready to tackle corn next to make cornmeal. That was good news at Butch’s farm; they had been smashing corn with bricks and hammers for over a month. With wheat flour, in addition to baking bread, cakes or pies, we could now make biscuits for breakfast. They didn’t need sugar, very little leavening, and were delicious with all that butter we had. They were also the perfect companion for the gravy we could make with all the meat we had, now that we had flour to thicken it. Our wheat supply was finite, so when they had mastered the art of making cornmeal, some could be added to the biscuits or used straight to make cornbread if we had some eggs to spare. The trick with making cornmeal was roasting it properly first. We accomplished this by spreading the shelled corn on cookie sheets on top the butcher stove whenever it wasn’t being used for cooking or laundry.
Roasting and grinding corn became a steady chore for several members of our crew. Of course some times the cornmeal would be cooked and served as mush, which was similar to oatmeal in consistency and served hot, often times for supper.
“I love mush,” Dad said one evening at supper, “especially with this blackstrap molasses on it.”
“Well I don’t,” I replied, “you can have your mush and your blackstrap. I can barely eat it smothered in butter. You know that blackstrap will be gone one day; we don’t grow sugar cane around here.”
“I know,” he answered, “maybe by then we’ll have some honey or trade for molasses or syrup. It’s to my advantage though, that hardly anyone else likes it, so my supply will last a while.”
“That was your theory with candy in the house, too,” Mom chimed in. “You’d buy kinds, like black licorice, that no one liked.”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “that way it would last weeks, instead of all the munchkins eating it in two days.”
“Oh, you’re the most loving father ever,” I crooned.
“You got that right,” he answered. “Now mother, if everyone has had there fill of mush tonight, it’s going to be pretty cold tonight. You can save the leftover for breakfast.”
“Of course dear,” Mom replied, “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Any leftover mush would be poured into a pan and if put somewhere cold enough, would ‘set up’ overnight. It could then be sliced into blocks and fried for breakfast. Maybe it was a little better that way; at least I could handle it, again with butter and a little pancake syrup which we had fortunately managed to conserve.
One other way we were very glad to eat cornmeal, probably never thought of by anyone in our family, was brought to us by a couple with their two sons who arrived from New York City. The parents were cooks in a Mexican restaurant and could they do things with cornmeal. Not just tortillas, which were excellent, but also other dishes with our homegrown beans, beef and pork. They were immediately assigned to the kitchen crew and were glad to be there. Their names were Benito and Rosa Diaz.
To be continued………….. Mort