Destiny Survival

Archive for July, 2009

            The U.S. government has revamped its Web site on disabilities, and it now includes a section on emergency preparedness.  Click here to take a look.  I’ve also got this link on the Links of Interest page under the Survival Health category.

            Believe it or not, late July and early August is the time to start planning and taking action for fall gardening.  While you may be in the harvesting and preserving mode, you can keep on gardening and add to your food supply with new crops of several vegetables.  You don’t have to limit yourself to a spring crop of lettuce or carrots.

Not only does gardening provide you with food for survival, it teaches you valuable lessons that help develop a survival attitude.  A gardener should always be analyzing, evaluating and looking ahead.  As a gardener, you do this all the time without giving it a second thought.  How are those beans doing in that location?  Why are the tomato leaves turning yellow?  What are organic solutions for insect problems?  And so on.  You’re asking questions, seeking answers, and applying those answers.

How does this apply to fall gardening?  The first step to take is to evaluate how the season has gone for you.  What succeeded?  What has failed?  How can you make better use of available space?  Should you try different varieties?  What can you do differently next season or for the remainder of this season? 

Because climate is so diverse throughout the country, I can only give general tips and offer more questions than answers here.  Check with your local university extension service for growing guides for your area.  The experts in your local area know about frost dates and weather patterns you’ll experience.  They can make recommendations as to the best vegetable varieties for you.  They will also be familiar with what problems you might anticipate from insects and diseases.  Realize their solutions to these problems conform to conventional gardening methods, and you may need to look elsewhere for organic or natural solutions.

            A first fall frost date is very important to know.  For example, if you want to plant something that takes 55-60 days to grow, do you have 55-60 days left before a killing frost?  Can you give the plants protection to get them past that first frost?  Have mulch, plastic or floating row cover on hand.  Do you have a cold frame or greenhouse?  If you’re container gardening, you have the advantage of being able to bring containers into a garage or greenhouse if frost threatens.

Try growing plants that like colder weather, such as kale, cauliflower or broccoli.  Try a crop of lettuce, especially if hot weather in spring causes it to bolt too soon.  Be sure to keep seeds and young plants well watered and fertilized, just as you would for a spring planting.  Use mulch to keep soil cooler and more moist if it’s too hot when you plant.

Whether you plant transplants or seedlings depends on how much cold the crop can tolerate and the time left before frost.  Vegetables that tolerate frost include beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chard, collards, garlic, kale, lettuce, mustard, onions, parsley, spinach and turnips.  Vegetables that don’t tolerate frost include beans, cantaloupes, corn, cucumbers, eggplants, okra, peas, peppers, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes and watermelons.

One important fall gardening task sounds merciless, but necessary.  Pull up old plants that are no longer producing well, such as tomato plants that have passed their prime or are diseased.  Avoid putting diseased and insect ridden plants in your compost.  Ask yourself what you can put in the space left behind by the uprooted plants.  Maybe you want to start adding soil amendments like organic matter there and not bother with planting anything in that spot.

            Since pumpkins and several squashes aren’t ready to harvest until fall, make sure you keep everything that’s still in your garden well watered.  Of course, anything you plant, whether transplants or seeds, needs watering as well.  Don’t count on the weatherman’s predictions for rain.

When weather gets colder, listen for frost and freeze advisories and warnings.  Before a hard freeze, root crops such as carrots and radishes should be harvested or mulched.  Harvesting of mulched root crops can often be extended will into the winter. If your winter is mild, you may be able to continue harvesting until spring.

Plan ahead.  Consider what plants will make it through winter where you live.  For example, I plant yellow potato multiplier onions in early September, which gives them a chance to become well established so they’ll get through winter and produce next season.  If you enjoy perennials, are there shrubs or bulbs you can plant before long?  What can you buy now for planting next spring?

            Fall doesn’t have to mean the end of your survival gardening efforts.  It simply means that as the seasons change, so does what you grow and how you garden.

            As we keep hearing on the news, the economy is showing signs of recovery.  Yet the same newscasts tell us unemployment is still on the rise.  How can it be both recovering and declining?

A friend often asks how people will live when unemployment benefits run out.  That’s a real concern.  Are the federal government’s pockets bottomless?  Nearly all the states are running budget deficits.  California is suffering most notably and making welfare and other cuts.

            Much of what we now take for granted in the way of dependence on government programs got started during what I now think of as the First Great Depression of the 1930’s.  What was it like then?  How did people cope?  Who prospered?  Who failed?  How was America different?  What are the parallels to today?  Many believe we’re in another Great Depression.  Even Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke said in a recent town hall meeting the financial mess is like that of the Great Depression and maybe worse.

            One of my readers recommended the book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, by the late Studs Terkel, and I’m finally getting around to reading it.  It’s fascinating and hard to put down.

It was published first in 1970, when there were many who could directly relate their life’s experiences of those dismal times.  Therefore, the book features brief accounts from individuals of various ages and walks of life.  There are stories of former hoboes, songwriters, an industrialist, a psychiatrist, a failed presidential candidate, and many more.  Studs Terkel has a way of making history come alive.

            I can recommend Hard Times, by Studs Terkel, to give needed historical perspective and insights on survival.  Click on the image of the book below.  The Amazon.com page appears featuring the book, and you can order your copy today.  Don’t miss this chance to bolster your preparedness mindset for what we’re living through now and for what we may experience before long.

            I’m not in the habit of featuring survivor rescue stories here, but what follows shows the importance of ham or amateur radio in a remote area where cell phone service was unavailable.  The bottom line:  Have more than one means of communications available for survival situations.

This comes from the ARRL Letter, Vol. 28, No. 29, for July 24, 2009.  ARRL is the Amateur Radio Relay League.  I’ve omitted links that appear in the original story, but links for further info on ham radio appear below.

Ham Radio Helps Out With Mountain Rescue

It was a quiet afternoon on July 11 and Rich Lippucci, KI6RRQ, of Vista, California, was monitoring the Catalina Amateur Radio Association (CARA) repeater on his base station.

"I heard someone come over the repeater, calling, ‘Is there anybody listening?’ I responded and the caller said he was on his handheld transceiver hiking around the Mt Baldy area. He was about 2.5 miles off road and resting at the wilderness San Antonio Ski Hut. A few hikers had arrived from farther in the backcountry–one of their friends had broken an ankle and was a mile or more up the trail and they needed help."

Mt Baldy is the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains and the highest point in Los Angeles County.

Lippucci asked the caller for his call sign and name.  "He told me he was Kirk Gustafson, KE6MTF," he told the ARRL. "I asked Kirk if he had a cell phone, but he told me there was no cell service where they were. I told him I would coordinate emergency services over my landline and asked for his exact location. He did an excellent job; he had a good idea of where he was and wasn’t sure which county he was in, but he did have GPS coordinates."

Using his landline, Lippucci called 911 and was transferred three times until he was connected to Chelsea in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s dispatch center. "Chelsea coordinated the rescue with the San Bernardino Fire Department who sent a foot patrol to the area," he said.

"The Sherriff’s office dispatched a helicopter to meet someone at the ski hut to take them to where the hiker was down. It took a little less than an hour for emergency services to get above the location in a helicopter, but they were not able to land the helicopter due to the rocky terrain at the ski lift."

Lippucci said that while the foot patrol and helicopter were on their way, the group of hikers had brought the injured woman down the trail to the ski hut, stabilized her leg and determined it was probably not broken. They still did not feel they could carry her out as the trail down from the wilderness ski lift was so steep." The ski hut can only be reached via a steep three mile hike and 2200 feet elevation gain.

The dispatcher told Lippucci that the helicopter would perform a skid rescue where a crew member suspends a bed basket from the helicopter; the victim is secured and pulled back up to the helicopter. The dispatchers asked Lippucci to relay back to Gustafson, asking if the group needed anything, such as food or water. Gustafson relayed back that they didn’t need anything.

"After about 15 minutes from arriving on site, the helicopter and its crew got the victim airlifted out successfully without further complications," Lippucci said. Gustafson took a video of the rescue with his cell phone.

Gustafson and Lippucci — both ARRL members — have been in contact since that Saturday afternoon. "Since the incident, Kirk informed me that the injured lady was around 40 years old and that there were up to 15 hikers hanging around the ski hut, some of which were search and rescue volunteers on vacation," he told the ARRL. "They had some kind of radios with them, but their batteries where dead.

Kirk said when he got out of his car to start his hike, he grabbed his handheld transceiver radio and GPS. His friends told him ‘That’s just extra weight–you won’t need that.’ He told them, ‘I go nowhere without my radio. If I need to call for help, the only way I would be able to let them know where I am is with GPS. I’m bringing them.’ I don’t think they will say that next time!

Kirk said that one of them decided they need to look into getting a ticket and radio and that the search and rescue folks said they were going to look into getting ham radio licenses." Lippucci said that ham radio saved the day: "A handheld radio, hitting a local wide-area repeater, was what was needed when cell and landline phones were not available.

Many thanks to the CARA club for their awesome reach in Southern California on 2 meters. Thanks also to those on the air that where very gracious to respect the traffic and keep communications open during the rescue. This is such an excellent example of the benefits of ham radio. If people had to hike out of the wilderness, get to their cars and find a cell signal, they might have been pushing up against the loss of daylight hours. Any rescue would have been significantly more difficult in the dark."

Lippucci told the ARRL that 911 and the Sherriff’s office in San Bernardino accepted the ham radio call without hesitation. "They used a ham radio operator to relay questions to Kirk through me, to gain all the information they wanted and needed to put assets on the emergency," he said.

"It was as if I was calling about something in my own backyard, even though the problem was several counties away in the mountains, with people I didn’t know. I am proud to have had the opportunity to use my license in service of an emergency situation. As a CERT member, this was the very reason I got my ham radio license in the first place!"

– Information provided by Rich Lippucci, KI6RRQ

            You can click here for info on getting started in ham radio.  You can also check out the ARRL’s Web site at http://www.arrl.org.

            Starting today DestinySurvival will feature an item from Amazon.com each week which is helpful for survival in some way.  If you’re not already aware of it, there’s quite a bit offered by Amazon.com for camping, gardening, and a whole lot more.  I keep finding new things all the time.

            I’ve written numerous posts featuring Amazon products.  You can find nearly all of those products by going to the page for DestinySurvival’s Amazon Picks.  On that page you’ll find a listing of categories.  When you click on a category title, you’re taken to a page displaying the Amazon products I’ve found so far which best fit into that category.

I’m adding to those category pages all the time.  I’ll pick each week’s featured favorite from those categories and place it on this page’s sidebar.

            This week’s featured favorite is the American Red Cross FR350 Emergency radio.  It’s an AM/FM/shortwave wind-up radio with emergency lighting and the means to charge a cell phone.  View a previous post about it here.  Click on the picture of the radio to go to the Amazon.com page featuring the radio, where you’ll get more info and can place your order.

            If you’ve found a survival related product from Amazon you don’t think has been featured here, let me know, and I’ll check it out.  It could be the next DestinySurvival Amazon Pick of the Week.

            Authorities around the world are expressing concern about the swine flu and are making plans for vaccinating many of us, whether we like it or not.  However, now the CDC here in the U.S. is saying we shouldn’t let swine flu make us forget about regular seasonal flu.  In fact, they’re so concerned, they’ve said all children aged 6 months to 18 years of age should get a seasonal influenza vaccine every year.

            Vaccinations are becoming more of a hot issue as time goes on.  A number of childhood disorders such as autism, ADD/ADHD, SIDS and others have been linked to vaccines.  Naturally, the mainstream media trots out scientific studies that supposedly debunk all of this.  They say there’s no evidence that vaccines are harmful.  Do you trust them?  We’re talking about your children’s health.

As if recommended vaccination for seasonal flu isn’t enough, now there’s a plan afoot to use 12 thousand children in the U.S. as guinea pigs for a swine flu vaccine.  The problem is that this vaccine contains squalene, an adjuvant or vaccine booster that is suspected of causing symptoms like those suffered by soldiers returning from the first Gulf War.  The effects of this will be greater than letting the flu take its natural course.

            If you’re among those who don’t want your children to get vaccinated, you may be wondering what to do.  What about daycare or school vaccination requirements?  What if your job situation calls for you to have had certain shots?

            Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has written a book to help you say No to vaccines.  It’s called Saying No to Vaccines, and she’s not trying to be balanced, since there’s plenty of pro-vaccination info already out there.  She arms you with documented info to help you face the 25 most common reasons given in favor of vaccination.  Discover how to take advantage of medical, religious and philosophical exemptions legally.

            The medical establishment has been good at manipulation, fear tactics and intimidation.  You don’t have to give in to that.  This isn’t about being contrary or rebellious.  This is about what’s scientifically correct and safe for you and your children.  Don’t merely take the word of this blogger though.  Get a copy of Saying No to Vaccines and decide for yourself.

            Click on the picture of the book to be taken to the Amazon.com page featuring Saying No to Vaccines, by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.  This is an important issue that’s not going away any time soon.  When a matter of health hits this close to home, you need to do what you have to do for the survival of yourself and your loved ones.  Take that first step to getting the information you need by getting Saying No to Vaccines today.

For further reading:

Was swine flu deliberately released?

Will thousands of children be used as swine flu vaccine Guinea pigs?

Click here for a list of components said to be in the H1N1 vaccine produced by Glaxo.

Find out more about squalene here.