Dear Folks,
Just some thoughts on prior comments, based on some observations. I lived, farmed and hunted on my farm as an adult for 15 years.
1. Corn? Corn is absolutely the last thing you would want to try to store or plant. Corn has very very low nutrition value for its weight. It is extremely hard (and time consuming) to plant and cultivate for the yield you get. And, the plants are very delicate. The seed you would buy would probably hybrid, which means it is sterile and will only grow one year. (The seed it yields will not grow). 99% of all corn in the U.S. is feed corn (sometimes called field corn) and is for feeding cattle. It tastes like wood, and is not for human consumption. What people eat is called sweet corn, and is even more delicate and hard to grow than feed corn.
2. Beans. Beans are what you would want to store and plant. Kidney beans and other large beans are practically the perfect food. They contain protein, carbohydrates, sugar, fiber, vitamins. When planted in properly prepared soil, beans (especially bush beans) are easy to grow and care for. Soybeans are also an almost perfect food. You can also squeeze oil from them. About a third of the planet lives on beans, rice, and a small amount of meat or fish (primarily as flavoring), and they are HEALTHIER than we are! (Rice is hard to grow, but think about potatoes. Pretty easy to plant and grow.)
3. In virtually every survival/outdoor book I have ever read, folks spend about 99% of their time on THREE things. (i) keeping warm, (ii) keeping dry, and (iii) finding clean drinking water. So, whatever "circumstance" you think you will find yourself in, be sure you have invested in stuff to cover these things in spades! (matches, lighters, ponchos, 6 mil plastic, water filters, water purifiers, water containers, something big enough to boil water in). If you get too cold, or too wet, or don't have clean water to drink, you will die very quickly! Then, all of those guns and cases of 7.62x39 you have won't be worth squat.
4. Hunting for big game? Forget it! You would need to hunker down, stay close at home, dig in and hide. Wandering around in the woods looking for a deer will get you killed. If you have to count on big game hunting, then you haven't planned very well at all. You are better off pre-digging your garden, and making sure you have lots of vegetable seeds of the different types that you will need for your garden. You don't need meat to live! (Personally, as soon as the balloon goes up, I'm driving down the road, shooting a feeder calf in a neighbor's pasture, quickly field dressing it, dragging it home with a chain behind my Nissan Pathfinder, and starting up a fire to jerk it. My neighbor can send me a bill!)
5. Instead of big game hunting, think about the fact that birds are really really easy to attract (especially mourning dove and other larger birds) with something as simple as a bird bath and some bird seed. Set it up, build a little blind 15 yards away, and pick them off every morning on the bird bath or feeder with a .177 caliber air rifle. You could easily take 10 every morning in this fashion, since they return about 5 minutes after any disturbance. Then, simply clean and pluck your kill, and put them in a stew pot.
6. A good garden attracts lots of small game, especially if you leave lots of brush and weeds around it. Again, use the air rifle.
7. Got salt? You had better have hundreds of pounds of it sacked away. Cattle salt in bags from the feed store may not be a bad way to go.
8. Buy a huge mineral block from the feed store (the brown colored cattle block). You and your family are going to need the iodine and other minerals in it. Don't worry. They are cheap.
8. Sugar. Forget it. You don't need it. Empy calories and rots your teeth.
9. Trade goods? Cheapest and smallest to trade: .22lr ammo, small airline bottles of whisky (although, if you have a place to store it, a huge bottle of Jack that you could dole out in small bottles would be alot cheaper), cigarettes, coffee, lighters, aspirin, hard round candy, the little Burpe's envelopes of vegetable seeds, Krazy glue, tiny sewing kits, tiny bars of soap like the hotels give you, tooth brushes, and some instant coffee.
10. Once things calm down a little, you are far better off trading a few trade goods to get a few chickens (and then breeding them) than wandering around the countryside trying to kill a wild boar or a
deer.
12. Like it or not, you are going to have to "commune up." One family alone can't survive.
13. Survival is going to be extremely tedious, filthy, gross, horrible and boring. And then comes the plague.
Just some thoughts.
Mannyrock
