500th Blog Post

Today I am celebrating my number 500 post on this blog. Sorry for the slight premature vacation last Wednesday.

I wanted to talk about preparedness by working on being self sufficient. Those of you who have been regular readers for a while already know that I am a fan of hydroponics for this purpose. 

I am still in the experimental and research stage for hydroponics, so I don't know all that much about it from personal experience. I still have toothpicks holding some lettuce plants over plastic yogurt containers of water. 

I like aquaponics even better than hydroponics because you don't have to worry about finding and buying nutrients for your plants if you use the fish water for the plants. The cycle is kind of beautiful. You feed the stuff that comes out of the fish to the plants and the stuff that comes out of the plants to the fish.

I believe that aquaculture and hydroponics and similar methods of raising food are the way that humans can keep eating in spite of climate change. 

Climate change has caused strange weather all over the world and this will only get worse. Agriculture is very dependent on weather. Having unpredictable weather is not good for keeping a good food supply going.

Most of the people in the world now live in cities. When you live in a city you can lose touch with nature and understanding of what it requires for you to be able to go to the market and get food to eat.

Most of the city people in the world today do not realize how serious a threat to their continued comfort and even existence, that climate change presents to them.

It is not our grandchildren or even our children who need be concerned about climate change. It is us. 

Unless you are deathly ill, with one foot on a banana peel an the other in a grave, you are already facing the consequences of climate change. It can make you starve to death, or at least be very hungry in the near future.

Hydroponics and aquaponics are ways that we can grow a lot of food regardless of most things the weather may be doing to us. That does not mean it will be easy. 

We have been so thorough about wrecking the Earth that we have squandered world oil and gas resources in a short time and are now starting to run low on them. We need fuel to run lights and heat and pumps to do hydroponics and aquaponics. 

We have to use ways of stretching the resources that we still have left, to grow enough food for the people of the world, when the weather makes it impossible to grow it outside in the traditional ways.

Growing plants is the most common spiritual gift. Most of the people in the world have that one. There is a good chance that you have this spiritual gift. You probably have a "green thumb" whether you are aware of it or not. You will never find out unless you try growing things. 

You are denying yourself a great pleasure that could some day save your life, if  you do not try growing plants. I think hydroponics or aquaculture are practical ways to use this spiritual gift. It does not matter whether you have a religion or belief system. You are hard wired with your spiritual gift or gifts anyway. Make yourself happy and grow something.