Seeds and Dehydration

To cover the whole spectrum of survivalism, I thought I would share with you an a few articles I happened to find while waiting on the doctor recently. I ran across a copy of "The Heirloom Gardener" magazine, and while I have never heard of it before this, it seems like a good magazine. The Winter issue has a couple articles of particular interest for survivalists. I will not plagiarize the articles, but want to let you know about them.

The two articles that caught my attention deal with drying fruits and vegetables and storing seeds. What a lot of people do not know or even think about is the fact you can dehydrate several types of food in your own oven and you do not necessarily need an expensive dehydrator. This article gives you many of the dos and don'ts of dehydration no matter what you use. A very useful article not just for survivalism, but also for your everyday life.

The seed article discusses starting your own seed bank. Now I am sure the purpose of this article is to allow you to cultivate and store seeds from your own plants, but given the current news about the genetic modifications of seeds that is going on, this may be something to look into and consider. Survivalism is about surviving anything, be it a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or end of the world. More realistically, seeds may be needed should the economy crash and food become scarce. In that case you may find yourself supplementing what you can get with your own garden (when living in the city), or growing your own food out-right (when living in the country). This is also where the dehydration of food can help you too, not to mention that in this down economy where it is money that is scarce, supplementing what you buy with a garden or having dehydrated foods may help you save more of your own money.

From what I can tell, "The Heirloom Gardener" is published in Missouri and I am looking into weather or not it is worth the $12 per year subscription price as I am not really a gardener, but I do like to keep a library of survivalist related publications. Therefore, I thought I might recommend this magazine for my survivalistic minded and gardening readers.

Their website is www.theheirloomgardener.com and while I still have not fully explored the website, it looks like you may be able to find and read these articles online (if I find them I will link them in the comments).

I might also add that there are several companies out there that offer survival seeds prepackaged and vacuum sealed. I have heard several advertisements on the radio and seen a few on TV. This issue is really starting to gather speed, which is another reason I listed it here. I have never personally looked at or tried out any of these companies, so as of now I do not have any to recommend. If you have some ideas please add them to the comments, but please also include you experience with this company. While I will not necessarily delete any comments that I feel are people just trying to make a quick buck, those people do not add anything to the conversation and they potentially can be fraudulent. I do reserve the right to delete them however, if I feel they are getting out of hand.

More to come