Talk about Shrinkflation.

The very first thing that went through my head is just how much did this contraption cost?

Thousands no doubt.

If you want a workout honey, grab a mop and a bucket and get busy.

Yep, yet another thing telling me that I’m getting old and feeble.

The last few weeks I come home from work, without actually busting my ass hard mind you, take my damn boots off, flop down in my recliner and the next thing I know,

My apologies to the author and you my readers also.

I should have posted this several days ago but I have just been crazy busy.

Worse than usual.

I believe this is part 5, I will have to go back and edit this after I post it and add the links to the previous articles at the bottom.

YOU SHOULD ALL BE DOWNLOADING AND SAVING THIS INFORMATION!

INBREEDING DEPRESSION

This was the first article I originally shared and the response was the impetus for the rest of the foodgrowing articles. I was moved to write it because I take a long view to preparing for survival and there’s more to it, survival, in the long term than the short term. I also left it period correct for when it was written in 2015. 

******************** 

Over time there’s been a few posts concerning aspects of survival, post TSHTF beyond beans, bullets and TP, so I thought I would throw out something for your consideration. 

Have you ever felt you had something in the bag only to wake up one night at 2 am, in cold sweat, with the realization the bag has a hole in the bottom big enough to drive a Mack truck through? 

Or how about recognizing that as far as you went, it wasn’t quite far enough? 

Another one that hits home is, You don’t know what you don’t know. 

With the three above thoughts in mind the following is a discourse of an overlooked facet of extended (measured in years) survival when you are doing it all, or at least most of it, on your own. I am going to examine a relatively narrow aspect of the act of growing and producing your own food. 

Conditions are presumed to be so dire we aren’t going to be running down to the local garden supply or pulling up our favorite online vendor to order plants or seeds. A natural response to this situation is the growing of heirloom or open pollinated varieties (plant varieties that breed true) allowing us to collect seed for future years production. There is a hidden danger here though. 

Let’s set this up. 

A group of people are some amount of time, it doesn’t really matter how long, into their post apocalypse survival. Their energies are mostly expended in protecting home and hearth and producing enough food to keep them alive. 

Spring rolls around, they get their asses in gear, tear up a chunk of ground and stick some seeds in the soil. Harvest comes and they’re set with another winters supply of food. They carefully set aside some of the harvest to collect seed from. This process is repeated each year, they plant, harvest and save some of the harvest to save for its seed. 

After a few years they notice their plants aren’t thriving as well as they use to. Each year seems to be a little worse than the last. One year they experience an almost total crop failure, they don’t have enough yield to last to next harvest let alone have enough to save some for seed. Their examination of all the common causes, horticultural practices, soil conditions, irrigation, disease, pests and several other factors runs to a dead end and they are now in a world of hurt. 

…… 

This is where we can get hurt by something we didn’t know we didn’t know. When we collect seeds from our own plants and use those seeds for the next years crop and do this year after year we can create a condition known as inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression is a fancy way of expressing we didn’t maintain genetic diversity in our plants and seed. In a nut shell (and this is a big topic) inbreeding depression over time eventually results in a reduction of germination, plant vigor, yield and seed development. In other words, crop failure, the very thing our group of people above experienced. 

Many people who grow a garden purchase fresh seed or starter plants from a variety of sources every year. These sources in turn acquire their seed for resale or the growing starter plants from a variety of growers. Even folks that propagate a lot or most of their seed will periodically get some seed from somewhere else, if nothing else through a seed exchange with another gardener. Some folks that garden in high density areas will even find their plants are pollinated by their neighbor’s garden. This ensures a fairly healthy amount of genetic diversity in our seed stocks and plants. 

Once we become dependent on only our own efforts to procure our seed we can be facing an eventual brick wall in our growing efforts, the result of an ever narrowing genetic line of parent plants leading to our inbreeding depression. 

Many researchers agree it is better to avoid or minimize inbreeding depression rather than dealing with its effects once it reaches deleterious levels. One means of combating this problem is to maintain several different genetic strains of seed each year over the course of several years. Instead of collecting seed from only one of our plants each season, collect seed from several plants each season and keep each seed sample separated and cataloged. Repeat this process every year. Now we have a seed bank with a range of genetic lines spanning several years. 

Lets say we end up with seed from 2004 through this year. This next winter everything goes to hell and we are left to fend for ourselves. We are now in a position to draw seed from several genetic strains and across several years when we plant. 

In 2016 when we get ready to plant we draw seed from 2004, 2009 and 2013 stocks. The year after that seed from 2005, 2006 and 2015 is grown. We never plant the same year groups of seed and lineage more than once in a short period of time. 

We also track the planting location of each years seed and the genetic strain giving us the opportunity to control the plants we collect seed from. We are now able to harvest our seed from a group of plants of known lineage, and protect the genetic diversity of our seed collection efforts. Through careful monitoring we can control the genetics of our plants and seed, much like we track bloodlines in livestock. 

If you already collect your own seed, I would suggest you consider purchasing (or acquire by some other means) some seed each year to increase the genetic diversity of your seeds. I do this each year to augment my seed bank and introduce a wider range of genetic diversity in the seed I am storing. 

If you don’t already collect your own seed I urge you to purchase seed from at least couple of different suppliers for the next few years (or however long we have) to build a seed bank that lets you start out with a wider range of genetic diversity than you have from that one pack each, of the veggies you currently grow. If you aren’t invested in collecting your own seed I suggest you take up the practice against the time when you won’t have the opportunity to purchase seed like you do today. 

This practice has the added benefit of helping protect you from a germination failure. Normally, with most species I grow I will get somewhere between 70% ~ 100% germination rate. There have been years though, where I have experienced one hundred percent failure of a certain seed group. Had I only kept that one seed group I would have lost at least that particular genetic strain and if my seed collection was narrow enough, perhaps that entire plant species. 

Protecting the viability of your food supply is as important, long term, as any other component of your survival efforts. 

foodgrower 

Qualifying statements: 

We currently grow or produce nearly ninety percent of our annual food needs for a family of six and could push this to one hundred percent without too much effort. This includes veggies, fruit, beef, dairy, poultry and bees. We grow several times over one hundred percent of our needs of several crops for sharing with our local community. We garden entirely organic. If you don’t garden organically you need to think about it because you will not be using inorganic fertilizers and bug sprays for long after a collapse. 

The above discussion covers a vast topic in a small amount of space. In the interest of brevity I deliberately left out a lot of fine detail and discussion that would take us down a lot of rabbit holes. It was not my intention to completely explore the subject but to expose the idea for consideration and offer the reader a means of dealing with the problem before it becomes a fatal issue for their long term food production. 

The above mentioned time lines and/or seed year samples planted (three) are used strictly for illustrative purposes and are not intended to suggest a time line for inbreeding depression to occur nor represent a suggested number of seed samples or pattern for planting in any given year. 

I have completely ignored the impact of topics such as long term storage and seed viability, undesirable crossbreeding and attempting to collect seed from hybrids, which can have a major impact on our efforts. 

Here are links to the previous articles.

Clever though.

So I can sit and swing while the world burns too.

WTF?

He called me a little bit ago.

He had made it to his destination a half an hour earlier and was on his way with a friend to get some much needed food.

He sounded beat but was happy to have made it.

I am very glad.

Now I can quit worrying about the asshole like a Catholic Grandmother.

Once again I am stunned and humbled.

An extremely nice guy got a hold of me last week and offered to give me another little John Deere riding mower almost exactly like the one I had given to me a couple weeks ago.

The really amazing part is that the gentleman lives hundreds of miles away and he showed up with it today. That and a few other goodies too!

This one is actually in better condition overall, the engine is half tore apart though.

If you know me, you know what that means.

ENGINE SWAP!

If you look closely, the newer one even came with a bagger set up!

WOO HOO!

That alone is a hell of a score!

I also got another starter to replace the cracked one .

Even though the gentleman came almost all the way from freaking Canada, he has a daughter down here close by so he got to visit her. I tried to give him some money just for the fuel he burned but he wasn’t having any of that, he merely told me to Pay It Forward.

He also gave me some old Monkey Wrenches and most of a Walk Behing Push Seed Planter.

I had to Google it to find out what it looked like when it was complete. Even though it is missing the front wheel, this little cutie pie is in excellent condition.

Did I say cutie pie?

Why yes I did. This thing is just cute as hell!

A quick Image search and this is what it looked like when it was complete.

At first I thought it might be part of an Allen Bradley set up.

I actually have the frame and rear wheel for one of those too.

I am still trying to get over the generosity and this mower and feel very blessed to have someone think enough of me to go to such trouble.

We had a real nice visit, the guy has some fascinating background that I would love to expound on but I am going to keep that to myself to protect his privacy.

I can tell you that I learned quite a few things today talking to him about what it is he does.

Quite a few.

Heck of a nice guy.

I consider it a privilege and an honor to have met him.

I still have another project that I need to kick myself in the butt for and get done, I haven’t forgotten another example o EXTREME generosity, that 220 volt, 3 phase motor and brand new VFD project that I need to get finished up.

It’s just that this mower deal is kind of a priority at this point. It’s Mowing Season and I need to get one of these put together and working so I can drag it over to my Father In Law’s place and get his lawn under control.

He is 80 years old, has Old Timers and has a yard big enough to throw an apartment building up on.

He is no longer able to take care of it and there is no damn way I am going to do it even with a self powered walk behind.

So stay tuned, as I get time I am going to have a little Thrash Session and get these engines swapped out ASAP.

That’s what my wife said about me earlier today.

It’s been a busy one at that.

First thing I had to drive over to the Farher In Laws 35 miles away because he had told one of her sisters that it felt like one of the front wheels on his car was “wobbling”.

He isn’t even supposed to be driving for starters.

Then of course the Sister In Law is to scared to try and test drive it around the block so I can either confirm that there is an issue or at least get some kind of idea of what I’m supposed to be looking for.

Did he hit a curb?

Can you grab the wheel and see if it wiggles?

Oh fuck no.

So I drive all the way over there, take a look, take it and him out and thrash on it out on the highway because he never gets over 25 miles an hour or more than a mile and a half away from the house.

Not a damn thing wrong with it as far as I can tell.

Tell him such and to quit worrying about it.

Jumped the Sister In Law’s ass for being so lazy and came home.

Then I started in on the wheel bearings on that little trailer.

Jumpin’ Jehosephat it was way worse than I thought.

Real bad.

As bad as it was, it could have actually been worse!

At least the inner bearing race wasn’t heat welded onto the spindle.

Not that it came off easy mind you.

But I did get it off finally.

Then over an hour up at the parts store .

No numbers left on anything except one bearing race and a freakin’ Newbie behind the counter.

A more experience guy that I usually deal with finally had mercy on us and found sets of bearings and races instead of trying to find them individually.

Of course the spindle was messed up and I had to clean that up before I could put it back together.

I got almost all of that really bad side back together and discovered that the grease cap on the end didn’t fit this side anymore.

Apparently dragging the thing God only knows how many miles without an inner bearing had caused the hub to tilt on the spindle and had basically turned the inside of the hub like a lathe against the nut and opened the hole up.

I was screwing around with that when The Wifely Unit came out to see what was going on.

I stopped and explained what I was trying to do when the thought occurred to me that there just aren’t that many people around anymore who have my particular skills.

You know how you are doing something that you have done so many times before that you don’t even really think about how you are actually doing it?

Like that.

If you really stop and think about it, there aren’t that many of us left and it’s getting fewer and fewer by the day it seems.

She must have picked up on what I was thinking because she looked at me and told me that I was part of a dying breed.

She went on to say that she was really glad that she was married to a guy who could do things.

Fix broken stuff, make things work that nobody else she knows would have the slightest idea of where to even start.

I told her it felt good to be appreciated once in a while but that what she said was true.

Just to drive the point home I guess, The Universe yanked my chain a half hour later.

Just for fun.

My Brother called me and said his daughter, my Niece, was stranded at the local Sonic Burger joint with the new to her 2018 Subaru Something Or Other that wouldn’t start.

Even better, HER daughter was with her.

Unfortunately My Wifely Unit had run to the store so I called the Niece and told her I would get there as soon as she came home.

My Brother is a Finish Carpenter, with a life long history of not knowing shit about cars.

So he called me, of course.

I snagged up some tools and shit and ran up there.

Turn the key, clicky clicky.

Dead Battry.

Got some stuff out, checked the voltage, 11.8 volts. No Bueno.Hoked up the cables and let it sit for a while and yakked with the Niece.

Finally told her to crank it while I reached in and revved the old Small Block.

Vroom.

Unhooked the cables, checked the voltage again, 14.3.

You needs a new Battry dear.

Told her to expect to pay at least $150, asked if she could afford that and was told yes.

OK then.

Said hello to the Grand Niece who had her face buried in a phone the whole time and sent them on their way.

She stopped at an Auto Zone on the way home and they swapped it out for her.

Come to find out, her Fiance had been sitting at home on his ass this whole time, ten minutes closer to her than I was.

Because he don’t know shit about cars either.

There is absolutely no need for me to tell anyone that this country is fucked, just on the premise that nobody knows how to do Jack Shit anymore.

Oh sure, there will always be someone in the comments who will tell us that they have Kick Ass kids who know all kinds of stuff and how to take care of them.

What’s that, One, Two, Three maybe?

Out of HOW MANY?

It isn’t just “The Kids” either. I couldn’t even begin to count how many full grown adults who don’t know Fuck All about what used to be Basic Knowledge back in the day and that goes for Women and the Art of taking care of shit that women used to do every freaking day.

Baking, sewing, shopping, food preservation, none of it.

Yep ,

The Last of a Dying Breed.

Seen a few minutes ago leaving Sandy Oregon

At least forty cents a gallon cheaper than anything I have seen in Vancouver.

There’s a whole lotta truth right there.

I found this at My Patriot Supply Blog via a link from Mathew at BACON TIME!!!!!!

It’s dang near 7 A.M. here on the Left Coast.

That would be 9 in South Freakin’ Dakota.

Cederq was supposed to hit the highway this morning headed to Idaho.

Say a little prayer for our Road Warrior.

If anything comes up he is supposed to get in touch with me.

I will let you know if he does.

In the mean time, here is a little traveling music for him.

Heh.

Lock them in a round room and tell them to pee in the corner.

It’s like they are wearing the Official Outfit of Grandmothers.

Between the lies being shoved in our face on a daily basis by the Legacy Media, and the absolute Shit Show Circus Clown government we currently have, I have no idea what to believe anymore until I actually see something happen.