Food Scarcity and Cost in the Near Future

"This bay of fertilize would have cost me around $18,000.00 last year. Today we put it in for just over $40,000.00. A tote of Roundup, 275 gallons, last year $4900.00 and today just over $14,000.00. This is just 2 of the inputs for growing a crop. This is not a political statement so do not take it as such. This is real world prices farmers are having to battle." - Owner-operator at Tri-C Farms, Tompkinsville, KY.

I grew up on a farm in Eastern Pennsylvania but I haven't farmed since the 1980s: I claim no expertise in modern farming. But agriculture and associated subjects such as the biology of soil, plant use of soil nutrients, composting, organic and sustained farming, etc. are still interests of mine and I do still read articles about them. Most large farms rely almost solely on chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides to produce the annual crop. Their soil is nearly dead from high chemical use.These inputs are getting more and more expensive as inflation climbs, the current lack of interest in working continues, and petroleum prices soar.

Amish, Mennonite, and organic farms are not in the same dire situation so it might be a good idea to locate those farms now and see if they have an on-farm stand or operate a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. (Search for a local CSA at this site:  https://www.localharvest.org/csa/ ). These farms produce less per acre but with the use of manures, compost, and natural/mechanical pest and weed controls they are not as affected by inflation and petroleum costs. 

Large corporate run farms simply cannot obtain and spread enough manure and compost to support the high yields they must produce to turn a profit. But small food plots can. During the hardships created in Russia during the reign of the Communist Party (USSR days), food was scarce. Central control of agriculture in the world's largest but sparsely populated country did not work very well. To survive, almost every family had a small plot of land outside the city that they intensively gardened to produce fresh fruits and vegetables. With a small plot you can amend the soil with ease and control pests and weeds manually.

You can do the same. I have posted several times about my own gardening and you can go back through the posts here and find those. But today, I'm just going to talk about the wisdom of finding a plot of ground that you can raise some food to help out your pantry. Where? I hear you, sometimes it is hard.

In my own yard I have maintained a 14x40 foot garden for many years.

If you don't have a yard, you'll have to search for alternate locations.

When I was stationed at Fort Polk I had enough room in my fenced in back yard to build an "L-Shaped" raised bed that was four feet wide and twelve feet long on the long side and four feet long on the short side. That gave me a garden of only 64 square feet. But the soil was perfect; made from a mixture of sphagnum moss, course sand, composted manure, and compost from my compost bin. I grew enough food in that small plot, using Square Foot Gardening techniques that I had to give food away. 

When I was stationed at Fort Belvoir I rented a 40x60 foot plot from the county for $30 a year. I raised so much there that I actually started selling the excess at work.

In The Netherlands, I got permission from my landlord to pull up pavers from my back patio and created a 6x14 foot garden that provided fresh vegetables year round. Not enough to feed a family but more than enough to supplement what foods I was buying.

It is possible that you can find a landowner that would be willing to let you use a small plot to garden in exchange for work. 

 

Empty store shelves is a more and more common sight and is not going to get any better any time soon. The ongoing labor shortage, the supply chain bottlenecks, bad weather, pandemic-induced panic buying, etc. are not going away. YOU need to establish your own supply chain; that could be foraging, gardening, buying into a CSA program at a local farm, etc. But you need to do something. When food gets scarce, panic buying will empty the shelves and run up the prices.

Food Bargains - Rock Soup

One of the best ways to provide a good meal inexpensively is to utilize cheap foundations and then build on it. I often think of the old story about "Rock Soup". I first read this story while in elementary school back in the 1960s. Below is a highly condensed, and so not very entertaining, version of the story.

 

    Once upon a time, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day, a kindly looking stranger came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

“There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

“Oh, I have everything I need,” he said. “In fact, I was thinking of making some Rock Soup to share with all of you.” He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the stranger sniffed the “broth” and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

“Ahh,” the stranger said to himself rather loudly, “I do like a tasty rock soup. Of course, rock soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from its hiding place and added it to the pot.

“Wonderful” cried the stranger. “You know, I once had rock soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king.”

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all.

 

So the concept is to take something cheap and add to it until you have something "luxurious". I do this with potatoes, rice, and noodles. In this instance let's talk about noodles. 

Anyone that was ever in the military or a money-less student in collage has probably ate a few meals of Ramen noodles. I have eaten Ramen, or something similar, hundreds of times. And sometimes just a pack of noodles by itself is a nice, light meal or snack. But when I want a real meal, I re-enact the Rock Soup story.

 

This past weekend I bought two servings of Maruchan Yakisoba noodles. These are 77 cents each. You can get Raman noodles for about 15-20 cents a pack. I like these Yakisoba noodles better, even though they are three times the price, because they are a larger serving size, have some dried vegetables in them, and they have a better nutritional profile. 

As you can see, one serving has 510 calories, a surprising amount of fat, almost no sugar, and 11 grams of protein. The biggest downside is the high level of salt. Most of that will be in the broth and I rarely drink the broth so I probably cut that amount to a manageable half.

Whichever type and brand of noodle I have on hand, that is my "Rock Soup", and now I will enhance it like the villagers did in the story. Everyone has bits of leftover meat in the refrigerator or freezer from a prior meal. I will often have lunchmeat that was a day or two away from starting to spoil that I threw in the freezer. I'll get that out, cut it up into pieces, and fry it in a pan to make sure it is safe to eat. Otherwise, I dig through the freezer looking for small prices of leftovers that aren't big enough to be a meal by themself. I cut that up into small pieces, microwave it, then throw that in with the cooking noodles. Then I hit the vegetable/fruit drawer in the fridge and grab whatever is there; onions, peppers, green beans, carrots, peas.....whatever. Throw a good sized handful of chopped veggies in with the noodles. Cook a little longer that the package instructions because you have more solids to cook.

So we are looking at 10-15 minutes of preparation and cooking time to make a fantastic luxury-level Rock Soup that tastes great, is very nutritious and costing maybe a dollar to a dollar twenty-five at most.

Mechanical Repairs

 I have mentioned before over the years that one way to have additional money for food is to avoid other unnecessary costs. One area everyone can improve on is self-sufficiency, which saves thousands of dollars annually.  Basic home repair involving plumbing, electrical, painting, woodworking, etc. should be on everyone's list of skills to improve. Basic mechanical knowledge is another.

I have never attended any formal training in mechanics but I do have a solid foundation in the sciences and was especially good at Physics and Chemistry. Physics comes in handy the most and I have a deep understanding of the Laws of Physics to include simple and complex machines (levers, wheels, inclined planes, etc.) and the Laws of Motion. With that knowledge, and 55 years or so or tinkering, doing repairs in the field, and just experimenting, I can look at almost any machine or mechanical device and understand how it is put together and how it works. 

I have a Kubota B7500 tractor that came with a front mounted snow blower. This thing is awesome for moving a lot of snow, very fast. But it came with no instructions. In fact, I didn't even know it came with the tractor as an accessory; it wasn't listed on the advertisement (the tractor was bought from a Used Equipment lot). So I laid out all the parts, studied them and their probable attachment points, and mounted it the first time in about two hours (three years ago). A couple days ago (way later than usual) I decided to get the tractor and blower set up for a forecasted snow storm coming our way.

The big snow is still up in the air but regardless, it is way over due to get the snow blower hooked up. My B7500 tractor stays up on the farm property for maintaining the roads and woods during the warm months. I went up yesterday to unmount the flail mower and the belly mower, loaded it on the trailer, and brought it down to the house. Then I had to unmount the brush guard and belly mower front mount. Next is to mount the snowblower drive train frame.

This is the frame that the snow blower gets attached to. The cylindrical part is a coupler that joins the Power Take Off (PTO) shaft from the tractor to the PTO shaft that attaches to the snow blower. When I turned the PTO shaft coupling, the bearings felt dry and crunchy, not a good thing for bearings. It has no grease zirks so I spent the next hour disassembling the shaft coupling into its seven internal parts. I have never disassembled anything like this but figured it out as I went. There are seven internal parts: two split rings (I had to go buy a special tool to remove them), two locking collars that hold the shaft tight to the bearings, two bearings, and the shaft itself.

 

Below is what one of the two bearings looked like. They, unfortunately, cannot be taken apart and repacked with grease, which was my original plan. So I had to drive 30 minutes to the nearest Equipment repair shop to get two new bearings. Online the best price was $27. At the shop, they had two bearings in a box of customer returned items and the shop charged me only $16 for each. So I saved $22 right off the bat.

The tool shown is the split ring pliers I needed to remove the bearings. It comes with various tips for different size rings and different angles. Once I removed the split rings I needed to remove the locking collars, which has Allen screws being used as "Set Screws" to clamp the locking collar to the shaft. These were stuck in place and it took careful tapping with a hammer on a pin punch and prying to get the collars removed. The shaft came out with one of the collars and then I punched out both bearings.

I spent another hour cleaning all the parts with a wire wheel, a file, and sandpaper then solvent to get the burned grease off the parts. Then tapped in the new bearings, added the locking collars, then the split ring and presto, a brand new coupler.

 Eight bolts attach this frame that supports the two PTO shafts and the snowblower itself.

 Fully mounted and ready for the snowblower and PTO shafts.

 

So, all in all it took me about five hours to do this installation, which included removing the mower mount and brush guard, repairing the PTO coupler (one hour drive to the equipment sealer and thirty minutes to go to a car parts store for the split ring pliers). Total cost was $32 for two bearings and $37 for the split ring pliers (which will get lots of future use); $69 total. Had I taken the tractor and snowblower to the tractor shop to have them do all the work, this would have been over $300.

Time, knowledge, and a willingness to get my hands dirty saved me $231 on just this one repair.

Winter Car Survival Kit

 4 January 2022 Headline:

"Motorists are finally rescued from snowbound I-95 in Virginia after more than 27 hours trapped in their cars when Storm Frida dumped more than a foot of snow and closed 55 miles of the busy freeway"

It happens. I commute, weekly, from Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, to my home three hours north in Pennsylvania. I have, on more than one occasion, had to pull off the road because of unsafe driving conditions and spend the night in my car. I was comfortable because I was prepared. Are you?

Horror stories from I-95: People growing desperate without food, water, gas and phone batteries are going dead.

NBC correspondent Josh Lederman reported on Tuesday morning that he was stuck on the highway overnight with his dog.

He said that traffic came to a halt around 8pm near Stafford on Monday night during his trip back to DC and he hadn't moved much since then, nor had he seen any emergency vehicles.

'Once it got to be 9pm or 10pm, I realized we were going to be here all night long,' he told Hoda Kotb on a Today segment Tuesday morning, and added that he has been eating the few granola bars and pack of gum he luckily had in his car. 

'We started to see a lot of drivers turning their cars off to conserve gas, people running out of food and water, kids and pets holed up for so many hours, people letting their pets out of the car to try to walk them on the street,' Lederman added, noting that he was worried there would be a medical emergency if someone ran out of gas in the 26-degree weather.

Make a cold weather emergency kit and store it in the backseat of your car. NOT THE TRUNK!

If you have an emergency on the road there is no guarantee that you will be able to access the trunk.

 

This is a link to a previous post I wrote on car emergency kits: Click here or cut and paste the URL below into your browser.

https://eatbettercheaper.blogspot.com/2016/11/vehicle-winter-safety-kits.html