They will or freeze to death. Not a good alternative
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I read this year should be OK because of sufficient storage of nat gas, but next winter (and probably future winters) could get ugly. I suppose so much of this depends on how cold/mild winter ends up being.
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For decades the local university (uw-lacrosse) use to burn coal for all its heating needs. They would get it by rail car from out west (wyoming?) and i’d think it was very cheap. Well then nat gas came along hard and heavy (decade ago?) and they got rid of the coal. I can’t imagine from an economic perspective that was a good idea these days!
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Economics isn’t one of the heavy suits of most universities anymore. Nor is providing students a good education. I’m glad the John Sherman Cooper Power plant still burns coal here to make electricity. But the school both I and my child attended moved from coal to electricity sometime in the past 15 years or so.
Anyhow, back to shortages. Price increases for flour and meal and baked goods, vegetable oils, and such are still going to go up from current prices. And bare shelves may continue to be the case going forth, just as they got cleaned during the pandemic.
This time the shortages may be real, not just from panic hording.
(Or the high prices may prevent as much future empty shelves-- inflation really hurts the retired and working poor-- and some may have to choose between eating and staying warm this Winter.)
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gets bad enough ill close this place down and go live in the desert for the winter outside of Phoenix where my sons at. can easily live out of a camper in winter down there.
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I prefer the word “prepared”. Somehow, those in charge have turned the word “stockpile” into somewhat of a cuss word. Seems “they” are teaching that it’s wrong to “buy excessively”. It’s an odd concept to me to think that we shouldn’t prepare and even “poor people” (in America) can prepare with a little forethought.
I believe that this is basically a new concept. In the past, before the automation of so many things, preparation was not only encouraged, it was expected.
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the government has stockpiles of food/ medical supplies for disasters. ‘‘they’’ can kiss my arse! 
id rather rely on my own self preservation than the government. besides they will only help the rural people after they help big cities if they help at all. government is only about preserving itself lately. they’ve forgotten a long time ago who they work for.
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Last week I bit the bullet and ordered gas for our propane tank. To my surprise it’s actually lower than when I had it filled last December. It costs about $2.85 a gallon, and we’ll need about 175gal to fill it, so it’ll run us about $500 this time.
Yeah, it’s a lot, but best to be getting it before the prices go back up, and I imagine they will since winter’s coming on. We had our first freeze of the year this morning, earliest I can remember. Got to 32 up on our hill, but our garden’s down the hill, so I imagine the tomatoes are done. I picked what I could yesterday, got another 18lb, which puts us at about 300lb this year. So glad we had a good harvest.
I’m out today in central KY, about to go to our favorite orchard and pick some apples and pears. Only 69c a lb today, going to get some Gold rush and Pink Lady’s, mostly.
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Out and about myself…but there are zero apples still on any trees in the Lake Cumberland vicinity so far as I know.
Off to Tennessee in the morning for a few days.
I can ‘amen’ that! The farm census folks kept hounding me last year if I grew this or that.
I finally told them I had six apples trees and a 3 x 10 foot garden just to get the ^(^^
off my case. None of their %$#%#%#% business if I have a food forest of a small orchard.
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you did right. tell them nothing! i dont know if its them but there is a gov. organization thats is keeping a list of small farmers/ gardeners and encouraging people to register their gardens on their web site under the guise that they can share their experiences with other gardeners. inform your friends. they make it sound all great and such. we know better nowadays.
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The self sufficient person is a threat to s&%&%&$%m. So, if you make it obvious you have stuff, they’ll be looking for it someday.
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Got back about an hour ago, ended up getting about 50lb of apples, 10lb of pears. Most of them (20lb) were Goldrush, the rest were Stayman, Suncrisp, Liberty, Pink Lady, and Evercrisp. The pears were all Harrow Sweet.
That’ll hopefully last us into/thru winter.
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I just got back from my trip and I have lots of arugulas, tatsois, radishes, and Japanese mustard, very. Old. But for some reason I don’t have any lettuce.idid throw a bunch of seeds down. But I now have enough greens to eat for a while.
However, all of my persimmons are gone.
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Sorry to the folks that liked my post…steve, farmgirl, subdood…
it got ‘cancelled’.
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Blueberry,
It got flagged, but not removed. Another moderator ignored the flag. A comment, “The self sufficient person is a threat to s&%&%&$%m.” isn’t an overtly political comment.
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mine too and i didnt say anything political. i guess the American way isnt accepted anymore. damn shame! they cant handle the truth!
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Yeah… I’m not disclosing what I grow in my garden to USDA, and since we sold the beef herd in 2019, there’s not much reason for them to look at me as a ‘resource’, unless they’re looking to start eating folks’ horses.
I’ve been shelling & drying cowpeas and shell beans for the past 2 months. But, I’ve also been buying some dry beans and rice, and a big jar of peanut butter almost every time I went to town, all summer.
I needed to have planted some collards & rutabagas 6 weeks ago… but when it’s near 100 and dry as a bone, it’s hard to even think about planting Brassicas…
The frost predicted for last night arrived - Weather Channel says it was 32F here when I checked at 7 am. That’ll be the end of the garden.
Wife and I hit the garden yesterday afternoon and picked most everything that was left- two 27-gallon totes over half-full of ripe tomatoes, two totes half-full of green tomatoes, a 2.5 gallon pail each of jalapenos & nadapenos, 3 gallon pail of cayennes, three 5-gallon pails of assorted sweet peppers. Trying to find a home for most of the tomatoes & peppers… have a couple of friends who want a bunch to make salsa - but may end up having to see if the Salvation Army soup kitchen can use them.
Picked the last of the okra & pole beans, and ended up with a gallon ice cream pail of snapped beans and a quart of shelled beans from those that were overmature.
Waded through the head-high johnsongrass, pigweed, and johnsongrass to find the 8 or 10 winter squash that managed to produce. But! I had a ‘volunteer’ delicata type squash that came up by the back porch, that we let run out into the back yard - and produce it did… 16 squash averaging 5 lbs each.
I cut and hung a few pepper plants - pepperoncini & Baby Bells - in the hay barn to dry or pick off later, if I get around to them. Dug and potted up a couple of nice Trinidad Perfume pepper plants and my Habanada (overwintered last year) that were still loaded with peppers, and will try to overwinter them indoors to get an earlier start next year.
Gotta find my potato fork and start digging sweet potatoes… that job will be slightly easier than last year, since the deer ‘found’ my garden in the last week, and have been heavily grazing the leaves off the sweet potatoes and pounding what was left of the cowpeas.
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Which one… Oh well. I understand that the mods want to keep the peace and so do I really (Blessed are the peacemakers! Matt. 5:9a). Growing Fruit is actually the only board that I try to keep up with outside of a work board that I am obligated to keep up with. I like it here and I don’t want anyone to leave because someone made a comment that they didn’t like. It is sad that some people don’t seem to have the ability to agree to disagree and move on, but it is what it is. 
Anyway, back to growing more food… I am in and out today gathering the last of the harvest, including seeds. I still have a lot of collards, turnips, beets, and other greens out there that I am overwintering (hope they do well again this year). Still working on getting my overwintering onion planted. After this post, I plan to go out to the hoop house, that’s just a stone’s throw away from my back door, all cleaned out and assess the situation. There are thousands… dare I say millions of lettuce, celery and kale seed in there that need to be harvested. Then I need to clean it up a bit and plant it out. Fun stuff. 
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