This wet weather has been harsh on gardens. After your tomato plants rot out three times in a row it’s time to give up. Not everything in the garden is doing poorly, but it looks pretty bad.
Commercial orchards are not doing well. In general most have had significant loses. Due to micro climates some have done well. On the flip side others are almost totally devastated.
The wild fruits are a mixed bag. Locally blueberries seem to be doing fine. Raspberries are not doing well. My pin cherries don’t ripen. They either fall off the trees while still green or go right from green to brown. I haven’t eaten any of them. There’s hope yet for the blackberries.
The hazelnuts are actually looking pretty good. Time will tell how they turn out in the end. I’m told that beechnuts are doing poorly. They are an important food for wild animals.
My sunchokes look good. They are my emergency backup survival food. Sunchokes seems to thrive in harsh conditions and nothing seems to kill them. They are more invasive weed than cultivated plant. The plan is to dehydrate as many of them as possible this year. They are good in soups and stews.
My plan is to stock up on things that keep at the end of the growing season -no matter the price. My guess is that prices will only get higher as the months go on.
-Sixbears
Walmart GV dry pinto beans 8 pounds was about 5 dollars in January, yesterday almost 7 dollars.
ReplyDeleteGV white rice similar AND the rice non exports of India hasn't kicked in.
Tempus fugit
Michael
If I buy another pinto bean my lovely wife is going to scream. Beans, I've got. :) It's all the other stuff that will need to get refreshed.
DeleteBuilding Back Better.
ReplyDeleteNo Malarkey.
We will pay a bit more in the US. Some of the poorer countries are in deep do do.
DeleteAnd more than a few of those "poorer Countries" already hate the USA and are enjoying the open northern and southern boarders. I've seen plenty of "approved" nu Mass Propaganda, err Mass Media that the bulk of the "undocumented" are military aged males. Nary a woman or child with them. Odd eh?
DeleteAnd at least one of them is known to have nukes. Oh my.
When a nation has nothing left to lose.. Hatred is an easy response.
It's the African countries that are in the worse position. They rely on grains that aren't getting shipped out of the Black sea anymore.
Delete6 Bears it's interesting you see the Africa in isolation with the middle east.
DeleteIt's no accident of history that the middle east has always been in food insecurity and the heartbeat of many of the troubles of the world. Terrorists and now nuclear armed nations in that area.
A recipe for disaster even across our once safe Atlantic and Pacific "Moats" that have protected America from the ravages of war since or civil war in 1861.
Russia is dealing well shipping food to those countries that don't attack them. The world is noticing that doing beats propaganda and again the USA is losing face with the world by continuing to refuse any diplomacy in their Ukraine proxy war against Russia.
I'm sure Comrade Misfit disagrees but honest dealing and real fair trade beats bluster from a rapidly fading empire run by madmen with aging nukes.
Maybe if we stopped pumping billions of dollars and weapons into Ukraine the Ukraine might stop escalating attacks that forced the cancelling of the grain deals.
But then again, I don't believe in leprechauns and gold pots so I should stop believing that madmen care if others suffer and die for their dreams of military disassembly of Russia.
We may yet get a false flag nuke in America to "Rally the People" AKA Remember the Maine or 911.
Michael, it is no surprise at all to me.
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up in farm country out in Idaho. There are lots of Mexican farm workers , the farmers very much depend on them to do all the shit jobs that most gringos flat won't for the most part. They tend to be young to middle aged. Mostly because the work is just to hard for old folks and women. So yeah lots more come across the border that are young.
We like our food prices low in America. This close the borders crap , is very detrimental to farmers , to grow their crops and harvest them.
Back in the day we used to allow Visa's , give them transportation (buses) to the areas where they also had labor camps set up for housing.
Then bleeding hearts decried the poor living conditions in those camps and they were all banned. I suspect landlords and realtors had a hand in this too.
I guess we fat assed gringos gotta starve a bit or have to pay much higher for food. I suspect that big agri business has a hand in causing this too. In order to drive out the last of the family farms who can't compete .
We are forever hearing Trump scream about closing the border , yet he is famous for bringing in and hiring H1B immigrants for his business enterprises. Such hypocrisy is rampant on both sides of the political spectrum
Spud while I agree about the labor issue having lived in the Yakima Valley I disagree that thousands of pure male military aged souls being bussed across our country is for labor.
ReplyDeleteIn the Yakima valley we had whole families working together until as you said "Bleeding Hearts" said it was cruel to have them working like that. They came here BECAUSE they were paid better than at home for a BETTER Life than they had at home.
H1B immigrants HAVE SKILLS that seem lacking in Americans so thus it happens. Skills like WORK ETHIC.
We have brought that vacuum of talent upon ourselves friend. And nature fills it, OR business go "Woke" more worried about "MY Pronouns" and shit and fail to do their business properly and die off as recent events seem to show.
I'm a gentleman farmer and know how much work it is to eat well. Eating lower on the "Hog" is less work but diet boredom, eh?
When the "Fat Gringo" line workers stop working because their efforts don't feed their kids well the nu dark ages will suddenly appear.
Carbon reduction, as the Vice President said on live TV (more than once) is Population reduction. Coming soon to a town near you.
My apples aren't doing well at all this year. Non will make it to the table I fear, and the neighborhood will have to wait till next year for my hybrid apple. This year so far they're about the size of a small plum.
ReplyDeleteI hear you John, I remember Grandmother telling me that's why they had such an extensive larder and dried-canned fruits.
ReplyDeleteBecause you could have too much, too little or none at all as the years passed.