Tfgray’s Weblog

I ran my last piece past a few of my gardening friends, and we all wondered, “Who would buy this stuff?” Anyone with actual gardening experience would know how to get heirloom seeds for a whole lot cheaper. City people and suburbanites would be generally not interested in buying enough seeds to plant an acre, since they wouldn’t have that much room available. It would have to be someone with over an acre of property, not enough gardening experience to know diddly about the vast quantities produced by that colossal number of seeds or the effort involved, not only in the planting and maintainance, but also the preserving, plus the cost of all those canning jars or that humongous freezer you’d need. (“Nutrient-dense foods for pennies!”) Also someone inexperienced enough to believe that all varieties of everything will grow optimally, as promised, in any climate. Dudes and dudettes, if they did, why would there be….well, I went to Victory Seeds and checked the tomato selections. I counted 52 varieties of red tomatoes before giving up in the middle of the “P”s. I didn’t even attempt to count the pink, purple, green, yellow, white, zebra, paste, small-fruited types, or the Livingstons. Life is too short, and I think my point is made. In addition to the above, you’d need someone who responds positively to the pitch, “Grow enough nutrient-dense food to feed your family and friends forever!” As opposed, say, to Nichols Garden Nursery’s spot ad for Plant a Row for the Hungry. Who could that be?

Ask and you shall receive. Tonight on Rachel Maddow, she interviewed Mike Lux, whose article, “Calhoun Conservatism Raises Its Ugly Head,” can be viewed here. John Calhoun, building upon the thinking of the most conservative of the Founders, James Madison, viewed the individual States as the supreme authority, and opined that the Federal Government had no power to enforce federal law, from the Constitution right on down the line. Read it. It will give you deep background on the whole reactionary phenomena that can be described by terms like Tea Parties, anti-Obama, anti-health care, and secession.

But wait, there’s more. Over at Salon.com, Rich Benjaminwrites about the psychology behind the likes of U.S.  Representatives Joe Wilson and Michelle Bachmann. He should know. He’s the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey into the Heart of White America.

As it turns out, as non-white Americans are following the American Dream to the suburbs, white folks, or at least those white folks who are convinced that white folks are, you know, better than others,  and aftraid of anyone with a different complexion, are heading for the hills. That they feel safer surrounded by skinheads, however, is a bit worrisome.

There’s the market for the Crisis Garden. Recent exurbs, enthusiastic about their new country lifestyle, clueless regarding horticulture, and living in fear, calling it “common sense.” Caring only for themselves and their own. Determined that America become the never-was fantasy of an America of by and for the white race, or that they live in a little kingdom of their own, separate from the rest of the country. Let me be clear. Not every resident of such places is racist, or interested in anything other than cheap land surrounded by beautiful scenery, but still, there’s a trend.

But maybe there’s a silver lining, here. People who once despised vegetarians, (and largely still do) are now accepting the notion that vegetables are, indeed, “nutrient rich.” By this time next year, they’ll be up to their elbows in green beans, up to their noses in tomatoes, and dealing with the 3,500 heads of lettuce created by planting the 1,750 seeds of each of two varieties of lettuce. (Actually,those would have bolted months ago.) But still, maybe reality will intervene and they will become aware of a/ the stark, raving abundance of nature, b/ the need to share this abundance, as it tends to rot if you try to keep it all for yourself, and c/ just what a blessing a division of labor can be.

Would it be too much to ask that  their 1 acre gardening experience teach them the hardness of life for the illegal immigrants who pick the crops they currently buy at the supermarket?

Not holding my breath, but I can dream.

I went over to WorldNetDaily to check out the latest hot-off-the-fevered-swamps-conspiracies. Not much new. Still ga-ga over Obama’s birth cert. (Why does the rest of the world have a problem swallowing the notion that the Honolulu Health Department picked a random baby born in Kenya and reported his birth at Kapiolani Hospital, knowing that some day he would not only run for president, but win? Go figure.) Oh, and some fundie Christian says that the Mahdi (the Muslim version of the return of Christ) is really the Anti-Christ and some fundie Muslims say that the return of Christ is really the Devil. Anyone surprised?

But I digress. What really caught my eye was the banner headline across the top of the page.

New Survival Seed Bank Lets You Plant a Full Acre Crisis Garden!

Crisis garden? I’ve been gardening for, what, 20 years now, give or take, and never heard of a Crisis Garden. Crises are sudden events. Gardens take a while to produce anything. WTF? So I checked it out. Boy howdy. These are not just any seeds, they are super seeds, heirlooms. Not hybrids. Free yourselves from corporate domination comrades fellow patriots! Even better, they come in a waterproof plastic jar so that

You can actually bury this unit for 20 years if you like and still have your seeds when you need them most….Indestructible Survival Seed Bank Can Be Buried To Avoid Confiscation.

Yes, you read that right. Confiscation.

Oy. Not only is Obama coming for your children, he’s after your tomato seeds!

Enough To Feed Friends And Family Forever!
Now you can grow all the survival food you will ever need anywhere in the country with a kit that contains a special seed bank of hard to find, open pollinated… super seeds, grown by small, fiercely independent farmers.

Okay, they go on to list 22 heirloom varieties, which actually are heirlooms, but you can get them from any number of places, from Seed Savers Exchange, from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, from Victory Seed Co, from Amishland Heirloom Seeds, from Nichols Garden Nursery, all of whom were in the heirloom seed business back when those on the Right were demonizing them as hippies, not lauding them as “fiercely independent farmers.” Hard to find? Not if your internet hookup links to Google as well as WND and you can spell ”heirloom.” From Solutions for Science, the guys advertising on WND, the bargain price is only $149 plus $15.00 S&H…but only “until we run out.”

“When this hits the street,” they continue, which presumably will happen after they run out, “For the general public, the price will be a fat $297.00 – no discounts… even to FEMA or military personnel. Take it or leave it.”

Not even FEMA or military personnel? Like FEMA is going to buy retail? Okay, given their record in Iraq, I could see the military paying $279 for $100 bucks worth of seeds, but still…. I spent a little time with the Seed Savers Exchange catalog and a pocket calculator and the total came to $103 for comparable quantities of the 22 varieties, with a few substitutions: Siberian Tomato for Druzba, Waltham Butternut Squash for Pink Banana, Country Gentleman for Stowell’s Evergreen Corn, Oaxaxa Green Dent corn for Reid’s Yellow Dent, Bloomsdale for Nobel Spinach, and Showell’s Fancy Cukes for White Wonder (Although they say that the varieties have been specifically selected for superior performance, the fine print on the SfS website states that they have the right to substitute varieties in case of outages.) Okay, they throw in a book that tells you everything you need to know about gardening, a little bottle of nitrogen fertilizer to make the seeds start faster, and that spiffy plastic cannister… Just in case you need to bury your seeds so the gummint can’t confiscate them. A normal person would just go with the packets, rather than buying hundreds or thousands of seeds of each variety, and freight in at about $60.  I did a little more work with the old calc and came up with a profit margin of close to 900%, assuming they were buying their seeds in relatively small quantities of 5 pounds or so. If they’re buying wholsesale, the profit is astronomical.

I called their toll-free number and asked when the seeds would be shipped if I ordered. “They’ll be shipped within two days,” I was told, “We do all our shipping by FedEx, and you’ll receive them within 3 to 5 days.” I considered saying, “Dude, it’s September. Nobody plants in September in this hemisphere,” but bit my tongue. I checked with Carol, down at Nichols Garden Nursery. Seed harvest is barely started and the new seeds are just starting come in. Those grown this year will be dated 2011, those dated for 2009 planting were harvested in 2007**. SfS claims that their seeds will last for 20 years in that spiffy plastic canister, but in my experience, three years is about the max. According to Carol, putting the paper packets in a jar in a cool dark place works just fine.

Moving right along, I checked out the 2-CD vid on preserving food for only $39.95 + $5 S&H. Although it promises to have canning knowledge available nowhere else, including Grandma, I’m sticking with my copy of Putting Food By, which can be had for as little as $8.03 on Amazon. What’s interesting is that, although I’ve been canning and freezing for years, and have been aware of the food industry’s dependence upon oil and cheap labor for decades, I’d never before thought of my activities in apocalyptic terms. These guys apparently think of everything in apocalyptic terms, especially if said terms can be used in a sales pitch.

How To Prepare For An Unthinkable Crisis!

Even the innocuous-sounding Gardening with Heirlooms is subtitled Growing Nutrient-Dense Foods When All Hell Breaks Loose. (Want a less paranoid alternative? Try  John Jeavon’s classic How to Grow More Food Than You Thought Possible In Less Space than You Can Imagine.) And it’s not just preserving surplus garden produce anymore, it’s “learning how to make your own survival foods as soon as humanly possible.” Dill pickles as “survival food,” from those 90 White Wonder cuke vines? I have three vines in my back yard, two of them long, skinny european-style salad cukes (yes, you can pickle them) and a volunteer standard pickling cuke. Not counting the cuke a day habit we’ve developed, those in the fridge, those still on the vine (I figure another month to go on cuke production.) and those I’ve given away, I just checked and there’s 16 quarts and 14 pints of pickles back there in the closet. Ninety plants? You’ve got to be kidding. And lets not forget the “New ‘Crisis Cooker’ [that] Lets You Prepare Hot Meals When The Power Is Off!” It looks remarkably like a very tiny charcoal grill with a windscreen around the base. But it’s not just any grill that can burn wood, charcoal, or propane, it’s a Crisis Cooker! The price of the Crisis Cooker is $159.95 plus $22.50 shipping and handling for a total of $182.45. All cookers shipped via FedEx, just in case the world ends in the next three to five business days. (Buy now or die!!!)

But if you want your Crisis Garden to really pull you through, you have to get the “Superfertilizer” otherwise known as seaweed emulsion or Liquid Kelp. One quart at SfS, $29.97 + $10.95 S&H. Elsewhere, Amazon.com, for instance, you can buy a gallon for less than that. A quart, elsewhere, goes for less than $10. Are you seeing a pattern? I am. (In my search for liquid kelp, I came across a competitor, selling a “Patriot Garden Kit,” 2000 seeds from 20 heirloom varieties for only $64.95.) See the pattern Mr Beck? It’s right there in front of you…

I’ve long been a fan of gardening, and personally think that everyone should at least stick a tomato plant or cuke vine in a flowerpot on the porch. I’ve been convinced that the world actually would be a better place if more people grew at least a part of their own food, preferably without assorted -cides, (pesti-, herbi-, etc.) but this is nuts, and sad. Rather than doing something because it would actually make the world a better, more livable place, these guys are encouraging you to do it for the basest, most selfish, reasons and trying to terrify you into doing so. I can only assume that the next products on their website will be the “Fortress Fence,” motion sensors included, to “defend your precious crop against the hordes.” Or maybe they’ll call it the “Freedom Fence.” After that, I suppose the next logical step is dealing weapons, followed by selling speed so you can stay up all night, keeping watch.* For an explanation of the psychology behind this, click here and please note that the italicised comments in the beginning of the essay are given as an example of demagoguery and do not represent the opinions of either myself or the writer of the piece.

*They already sell a vid so you can Learn How You Can Make Powerful Herbal Medicines Secretly in Your Kitchen.

It’s the secretly that gets me. I’ve been mucking around with herbs for decades and nobody’s ever given a rat’s ass. What have they got in there that you would need to do in secret? A recipe for crystal meth?

As it turns out, there’s plenty of scare stuff in the sales copy. Government bureaucrats out to get you.  Your local pharmacy closed by a crisis. Big Pharma out to convince you that herbs are poisonous and you have to buy their stuff. He’s selling The Truth here, not those lies the other guys are telling you. Hopefully, by the time you get to the sales pitch, you’ve already forgotten the disclaimer you had to agree to to get into the site, you know, the one about your constitutional right [his words] to dose your family and animals with whatever you want, but not the right to sue the guy who told you to dose them with his home-made remedies if things turn out to be not quite as advertised.

**Correction: Original sentence stated this year’s harvest as being marked for 2010 and those of this year’s planting as having been grown last year. It’s actually a two-year time lag.