The Preppers Lament by Ron Foster

and wait a few minutes and end up with something like cereal if need be, but that ain`t even close to oatmeal from what I gather. As far as I know the stuff might taste like grass, but I will eat it and be thankful for it when we get to that level.” David explained, regretting that he couldn’t do more than share some of his precious iron rations with his survival neighbor.
     
    “Iron rations were my last line of defense preps and could be considered a make or break starvation solution while Julie and I were trying to make it through a tough winter.” David said while hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that he could make up for the loss of some bucketed and canned grain now by producing and growing his own replenishment come summer .
     
    “I remember you telling me about us needing to plant a bit of that wheat and oats rather than eating it up awhile back David. When do you plant and when do you harvest that wheat grass stuff anyway? I never known anyone to grow it down south and closest thing I might know would be Rye that is raised around here.” Mike asked trying to grasp the amount of seed and labor it would take to even raise an acre of the commodity.
     
    “We have ourselves a wheat cook book and a farmer’s almanac for reference is about all I can say on that subject. I have about three hundred pounds of the stuff stored around here to experiment on or get creative and process further.  Come spring we will give planting some kind of wheat a shot. What we got to have us Mike is some kind of grain crop as a staple to preserve and put away for hard times as well as supplement our daily diets with. The land around here is not good at all for growing vegetable crops and we don’t have much fertilizer to help it along. I have tried to raise corn before here and other places and if you don’t have a ton of fertilizer for this poor soil and plenty of rain, you are just wasting your time and energy. At least wheat is lot like growing grass and we can do that I hope. I have some canning jars stocked up, but I don’t have very many to spare. We are going to have to try and dehydrate or sun dry what we can with the fruits from the vegetable gardens.  I have never tried sun drying myself before, but I have some muslin and mosquito netting to try out in order to keep the bugs off of the veggies while they are baking and drying under old Sol. I also got some of those dollar store plastic picnic, white netting looking food table tent things to try. Hopefully I won’t need to try my hand and patience at that lost art of air and sun drying. I have a truly modern approach to solve my preservation and drying needs though utilizing two small electric food dehydrators that I can run off my marine batteries and solar panels. I also have a Sun Oven that has dehydration capabilities which I haven’t tried out yet for that purpose, but I have the directions and recipes that came with the oven and I have watched a lot of YouTube videos on the subject. I want us to try our hands at making some jerky in the Sun Oven using some of the deer meat this go round. We shouldn’t have any problem doing it I don’t expect, that is if we get it sliced nice and thin along the grain”. David explained trying to envision the ramifications of trying to plant a crop in spring and hopefully being able to store something for next winter from the gardens as well as put up any kind of meat some way or the other. If he and Mike couldn’t through their toil and labor produce and preserve some kind of surplus from the gardens this summer, then they were going to have nutrition problems aplenty no matter what kind of meat they could secure from hunting or trapping efforts.
    “Damn, first thing I want to trade for if I can find them is a few live chickens” David mused, mad at himself for not preparing properly to raise a flock someday. Other than previously buying 25 foot of chicken wire on a very limited budget, his plans for having the