I don't think this is a silly question at all. Of course I've thought about that. I married the first time rather young, and my husband's family did what amounted to subsistence farming. That's a great way to learn how to produce as much food as possible and how to preserve it. Preserving your food is as important as growing it. It's really sad that so much 'common sense' about producing food has been lost in so few generations. I'm not just talking about canning, either. If you really had to survive without buying supplies, today's canning methods require an endless supply of replace-ables like lids and occasionally rings. It's a heck of a lot safer than the old methods where people did die of 'summer complaint' and botulism with some regularity. LOL. In cooler climates you have a root or storage cellar. It not only kept things from freezing, it kept them cool too and root crops held a good long time. One also took advantage of their spring to keep perishables fresh. One of my houses had a dairy trough in the cellar where the spring flow was diverted inside and milk/butter and cheeses were kept in there to prevent spoilage. One sweetened with sorghum, which is almost a lost art anymore, but was commonplace in my lifetime back in the Ozarks. So were wild honeybee trees, but no more with the diseases. You need to think protein sources and that means legumes, dairy (and milk goats are a good idea), fowl. I still live this lifestyle, more by choice now than necessity, but it does save us a mint at the market. I put up hundreds of quarts of fruits, veggies and sometimes meats each year to last us to the next. Even people in cities would be surprised at how much of their own food supply they can grow if they wanted to. Instead of an ornamental flowering tree, a fruit tree is just as pretty and gives you something in return. So do nut trees. I have plenty of both. And I have a bramble patch for berries, and did have an Alpine berry patch. There is no reason one cannot perpetuate a June bearing strawberry patch, btw. You can root runners and they produce them. I have three different kinds of grapes, too. A large flock of chickens, and dairy goats on on the horizon, if I can get my husband used to the idea of more livestock. LOL. BTW, I do make butter, and cream from goats is not like cream from cows. If you want to make butters or cheeses, you'll need a separator. BTW, onions are nice, but leeks and shallots should be planted as well because when the onions give up the ghost half way through winter, I am still using my shallots I dried and braided from last year's garden and the quality is still great, and leeks can be harvested clean through winter. Somebody asked "Are you able to "dispatch" any squieerls or rabbits who threaten your food suppily? You may want to learn to shoot." (sic) Lemme tell you, squirrel and rabbit are wonderful and plentiful meat sources. They aren't just varmints one dispatches from a garden. Fried squirrel and gravy is hard to beat. And, actually the world won't end if a hybrid cross pollinates against a self fertile strain. Sometimes you get less than the original, but sometimes you are pleasantly surprised. The most important thing is if you are planting fruit trees, to be sure that you know which one need pollinating against another, and what varieties pollinate which. Bloom time is important, because if they don't bloom at the same time, you are going to have a problem exchanging pollen. This isn't stuff you sit down, read from a book and then expect to do without practice. The first times at a lot of self-sufficiency skills can be flops. Start honing your skills now. I've worked on it a lifetime and still have a lot to discover. The old Foxfire series of books are a good start.

Wayne, here's the headline...Crystal power Palmtop Nuclear Fusion Device Invented By Michael Schirber LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 27 April 2005 01:00 pm ET The nuclear reaction that powers the Sun has been reproduced in a pocket-sized device, scientists announced today. Researchers have for years tried to harness nuclear fusion to power the world. But its cousin, nuclear fission -- the breaking apart of atoms -- is the only method so far commercially viable. The latest invention is not in the same league as efforts to build complex commercial reactors. The new device creates a relatively small number of reactions, and requires more energy to operate than it produces. The Real Deal (AP) - Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed. Fusion experts noted that the new UCLA experiment is credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it did not violate basic principles of physics. "This doesn't have any controversy in it because they're using a tried and true method,'' said David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "There's no mystery in terms of the physics.'' -- Associated Press But the configuration is so small and simple that its creators think it may inspire unforeseen applications. "I certainly find it interesting that you can heat a cubic centimeter crystal in your hand, then plunge it in cold water and it will cause nuclear fusion," Seth Putterman from the University of California Los Angeles told LiveScience. Putterman's lay description greatly oversimplifies how the compact apparatus works. Specifically, Putterman and collaborators heat a pyroelectric crystal, lithium tantalite, from minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit to plus 45 in a matter of minutes. This generates an electrical charge -- 100,000 volts -- across the tiny crystal, which is housed in a chamber filled with deuterium gas, a heavy form of hydrogen. The high voltage is focused onto a needle-thin tip, which strips electrons from nearby deuterium nuclei and then accelerates them at a solid target containing deuterium. When two deuterium nuclei collide together at high speed, they fuse to form helium. The Sun also fuses atoms in thermonuclear reactions that create light and heat. The byproduct of the newly discovered lab reaction is a particle called the neutron. The scientists detect about 1,000 neutrons per second. Because neutrons are so penetrating, Putterman said that a hand-held neutron source might one-day be used to do geologic surveys or to look into cargo containers for nuclear devices. "Current neutron generators are extremely cumbersome," Putterman said. "They are about as big as a dentists X-ray machine, so you canÂt carry them into the field." Pyroelectric crystals could also provide a beam of ions for use as a microthruster in a miniature spacecraft. The research is described in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature.

Macbirch, As for you saying, "I think it can be beneficial to avoid focussing too narrowly on just one aspect of the environment" I would have thought plastic bags has nothing at all to do with water or even Climate Change. You have created dozens of red herrings for goodness sake. They are way way off the subject. I am still waiting to see if you have anything to say about the original post - water. "I've never heard the greenies complaining about the over-packaged cheap toys that fall apart the first time you use them " Macbirch they do it all the time for goodness sake! Here we have the lowest umemployment in decades, an unprecedented economic boom and you are still complaining about China taking our jobs! I suppose you prefer to keep them in poverty. At least I addressed matters that you have brought up even though it is a giant leap from our Australian water crisis to China. You still have not made one point linking the water crisis with the problem of China. This is a classic illustration of why we have such a crisis. Because so many folk cannot get their imagination around it; even gardeners. They would prefer to moan and groan about lentil eaters, bike riders, plastic bags and Asia for goodness sake. It appears you would rather we lived in luxury while the whole of Asia stayed in poverty. India recently was actually an exporter of grain when fifteen years ago there was massive starvation. If you had read what I said, I made a reference to Japan. Macbirch about my age, I will take a punt and guess that I am either close to your age or even older! You may be too young to remember the slagging Japan got in the fifties and Korea got in the sixties for manufacturing substandard goods. Not now. Becoming an expert in manufacturing takes time. Besides they also have a right to improve their lives. They might not be perfect in doing it but over time they learn. Meanwhile here in Australia, too many blokes sit on their hands, moan and groan about Asia racing ahead, plastic bags, lentils and bikes while and all our geothermal, solar and wind power experts and discoveries move overseas because Governments will not give them the proper funding etc. and prefer to live in denial. We have more sunshine than any country and yet our solar expertise has to overseas to much wiser countries. So much of our irrigation expertise went overseas to places like Israel, California, and even India before we saw the light (which is just recently). It is interesting that now just about every government including George Bush and John Howard admit that the biggest issue facing the world right now is Climate Change. The only reason Howard is now interested in water is because he realises there are votes in it. Water is Australia's most important resource on this the driest continent on earth and the increasing lack of it is causing a huge crisis. This debate has been going on for years but only recently governments have taken...

maifleur, my meat processor doesn't buy any animals and process them himself or even raise his own, he only processes meat for people who raise their own and then pay him to process it to their specifications. So, if I sell you half a beef, I call Carl and tell him that I have a beef coming, half of it belongs to Maifleur and then you call and tell him how you want it packaged. I have people come to the farm specifically to see "their" animal and the living conditions before they commit to buying beef. And, by using a custom slaughter facility, I can confidently tell them that the animal they see is the animal they will get back, because Carl has no animals of his own, only those who are raised by and packaged for other people. Those of us who have done business with him for years, and with his father before him, know and trust him. As for migrants and immigrants, Michigan is the 2nd most agriculturally diverse state in the country, behind only California, so those of us in agriculture are acutely aware of the importance and value of those workers and how difficult it is to even find enough of them to work. When I was a teenager one of my summer jobs was picking cherries for 40 cents a lug. I have also picked asparagus, pickles, apples and tomatoes. Today's teenagers don't want to do that, and more jobs such as fast food service are available to them today that were not available to me. There has been years when apples rotted on the trees and cherries became over ripe because there were not enough workers to pick them and the food pantries can only glean/store so much fresh produce. Annie