While we’re thinking about prepping, let’s segue from bugging out to staying put, with the following premise: In a world where we can’t trust factory farms, Big Pharma, or any regulatory agency, a family that makes most of its own food and medicine has a vastly better chance of surviving and thriving than one that’s dependent on the dubious kindness of rapacious strangers.
If this strikes a chord, you should know Marjory Wildcraft (she of the perfect name). In another time, she would be a village shaman, showing up as needed with herbs that she foraged or grew herself, ready to advise on health, food, and general self-reliance.
It’s clearly time to relearn that old wisdom, and Wildcraft’s Grow Network has become a clearing house for people who crave more control over the foundational parts of life. Here’s some material from the website:
Marjory Wildcraft has been featured by National Geographic as an expert in off-grid living, she hosted the Mother Earth News Online Homesteading Summit, and she is listed in Who’s Who in America for having inspired hundreds of thousands of backyard gardens. She is best known for her DVD series Grow Your Own Groceries, which has over a half million copies in use by homesteaders, foodies, preppers, universities, and missionary organizations around the world. She was featured in an article that won Reuter’s Food Sustainability Media Award, and she recently authored The Grow System: The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living—From Growing Food to Making Medicine.
More material from the website:
Stopping The Destruction Of The Earth Commercial agriculture is the cause of planetary desertification, polluted rivers, and ocean dead zones. We show people how to grow half of their food in their backyard in less than an hour per day.
Averting The End Of Modern Medicine As We Know It The World Health Organization is forecasting that, by 2030, minor cuts will kill and all modern surgeries will be too risky due to antibiotic resistance. We show people highly effective herbal techniques to treat infections without pharmaceuticals.
Stopping The Torture Of Innocent Animals Commercial production of meat is barbaric. We show people how to humanely produce half of the protein needs for a family of 4 in less than 10 minutes per day.
Preventing Extinction 92% of heirloom seed varieties and 87% of heritage livestock breeds are completely gone. We show people how to create a legacy for themselves with deeply meaningful work in backyard breeding of useful plants and animals.
Ending Modern Disease The root cause of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity is malnutrition. We show people how to create living, mineral-rich soil that produces deeply nutritious food.
Other topics:
3 strategies for growing food in the city
Protect your family and finances
The 7 shortcuts to finding a safe haven for your family
How to find like minded neighbors and build self-reliant communities
The mental health employee benefit that can grow your company
How to ensure your employees are well nourished
There’s a big page of courses like this:
Here’s an in-depth interview that’s a great starting point:
There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. This sounds like a paid promotion, but it’s not. No money or any other consideration is changing hands. I’m just a big fan. And my wife (a Grow Network member) is enraged that our homeowners’ association bans chickens and rabbits.
It is Sunday noon 3/12 on the West coast. I am sure you have been delving into and perhaps being overwhelmed by the river of opinions about this coming week.
As a paid supporter of your work, I speak for myself and perhaps for many or all of your readers, we would find it a most welcome read if you might find time this afternoon to give us the "Rubino"outlook for this coming week.
First of all, I’ve never heard of this eponymous person and I thank John for introducing her and her website.
Just the perusal of her website topics makes me feel like partaking any of them is like drinking from a fire hose. But that may be only because I’ve just started dabbling in growing my own food. It seems to be both simple - being natural - and complex in that there are so many details that seem to matter.
But what is also evoked is an interesting way of looking at what seems to be a global trend, which is population reduction. A kinder and gentler form, that is.
Global de-population has long been a controversial subject because to many it has sinister and even anti-religious implications. And yet, it is also the most intuitively obvious reason for so many of the world’s problems. One could argue that all of them fundamentally stem from resource depletion caused by overpopulation.
Although apocryphal in certain ways, nevertheless the halcyon days of the recent past were largely because there wasn’t so much demand on resources and the manic imperative of economic (i.e., financial) growth that it has caused problems. There was less reliance on technology, although even that is subjective.
I think most people realize that at some level, but there isn’t much consensus on dealing with the population growth that has developed.
To some the answer is greater economic growth, the unleashing of free market capitalism. That group actually supports ever growing population, ironically as the way to solve merely “apparent” resource limitations. Another group are the green meanie “Davos elites’ who think a world of feudalism is the answer, and want to reduce global population by any profitable means necessary (e.g., wars and poisonings).
And then there is a third group, “the naturalists” like Wildcraft, who have a diametrically opposite POV: self-reliance - the opposite of hierarchy - and meaningful local relationships.
What’s interesting is that de-population is occurring already, but voluntarily, and largely because many people are gravitating toward that simpler and more natural life.
Hi John,
Another great article. Thank you.
It is Sunday noon 3/12 on the West coast. I am sure you have been delving into and perhaps being overwhelmed by the river of opinions about this coming week.
As a paid supporter of your work, I speak for myself and perhaps for many or all of your readers, we would find it a most welcome read if you might find time this afternoon to give us the "Rubino"outlook for this coming week.
Thank you in advance. Craig H.
First of all, I’ve never heard of this eponymous person and I thank John for introducing her and her website.
Just the perusal of her website topics makes me feel like partaking any of them is like drinking from a fire hose. But that may be only because I’ve just started dabbling in growing my own food. It seems to be both simple - being natural - and complex in that there are so many details that seem to matter.
But what is also evoked is an interesting way of looking at what seems to be a global trend, which is population reduction. A kinder and gentler form, that is.
Global de-population has long been a controversial subject because to many it has sinister and even anti-religious implications. And yet, it is also the most intuitively obvious reason for so many of the world’s problems. One could argue that all of them fundamentally stem from resource depletion caused by overpopulation.
Although apocryphal in certain ways, nevertheless the halcyon days of the recent past were largely because there wasn’t so much demand on resources and the manic imperative of economic (i.e., financial) growth that it has caused problems. There was less reliance on technology, although even that is subjective.
I think most people realize that at some level, but there isn’t much consensus on dealing with the population growth that has developed.
To some the answer is greater economic growth, the unleashing of free market capitalism. That group actually supports ever growing population, ironically as the way to solve merely “apparent” resource limitations. Another group are the green meanie “Davos elites’ who think a world of feudalism is the answer, and want to reduce global population by any profitable means necessary (e.g., wars and poisonings).
And then there is a third group, “the naturalists” like Wildcraft, who have a diametrically opposite POV: self-reliance - the opposite of hierarchy - and meaningful local relationships.
What’s interesting is that de-population is occurring already, but voluntarily, and largely because many people are gravitating toward that simpler and more natural life.