My idea is to develop my prepping in relation to whatever changes in climate or weather we seem to be experiencing. This area has a very tricky climate.
I also have to deal with the reality of limited space in which to start seeds. The cabinet I want to get installed for next season won’t be large enough. This is why I am looking for a creative solution to one aspect (and challenge) of gardening here which is seed starting and a shorter growing season.
By developing different coping stratgies for the weather changes, I hope to be better prepared.
Your idea of running row hoops and re-circulating warm water could work very well. I like the cost effectiveness of it as well.
I do believe that Buffalo Bird’s book is part of the solution I am trying to build. I guess you could say I don’t want all my prepping eggs in one basket. The more options and tried and tested methods I can learn, the better my chances are of surviving. And speaking of surviving…
Sadly, the Indigenous people here did starve. My great-grandmother fed a Sioux war party that needed food. She gave them half a hog.
My grandfather was born in 1875 and he and other family members who were alive in that time witnessed their suffering.
This is a quote from that article about how the tribes here starved beyond the usual unpredictability of a hunter/fisher/gatherer society. They didn’t have the skill sets here that Buffalo Bird had in North Dakota and they weren’t treated well by our government.
“During the 1870s, the Canadian government pressured the Indians to sign treaties (known as the “numbered treaties”) which turned over rights to almost the entire western plains to the Government of Canada. In return for signing over their lands, the Canadian government promised food, education, medical help, and other kinds of support.But the government failed to honour its treaty promises to the Indians.
The Indians were confined to reserves, a concept that they did not understand. In fact, they did not understand or recognize the concept of individual land ownership.
The Métis sought clear title to the lands they had been occupying and farming along the Saskatchewan River. But the Canadian government ignored the Métis during the treaty process. In 1880, Lt. Governor Alexander Morris recommended that their claims be recognized, and that Métis still depending on the buffalo hunt and old ways, have land assigned to them, since the buffalo were fast disappearing. But the Ottawa government ignored Métis concerns.
By the early 1880s, the buffalo, which were the main source of food for the Indians and Métis, had disappeared almost entirely because of over-hunting and encroachment on their habitat.
The western tribes, denied by treaty and loss of the buffalo, from being able to look after themselves in the traditional way, now were forced to sit and face slow starvation as winter approached.
Desperate pleas for help from Indian and Métis representatives were ignored by Ottawa.
The Plains Cree were starving, and smallpox was rampant in the west. They needed food & medicine. First Nations people confined to their reserves were even worse off than when they signed the treaties to try to preserve their future. Big Bear and his followers were the last holdouts, but they were finally forced to sign a treaty.”
http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_metis/fp_metis_background.html
UbiqueContributor - May 19, 2021
Isabel
Redneck
LBV
