It is already difficult to enter most restaurants without having to wear a “mask” – that is, any old rag – as the precondition of being allowed within.
You must play your part in the sickness ritual of putting it on to walk inside and then take it off at the table while you eat – then put it on again to walk out after your meal. The point being to make you play your part – unless you are one of the Faithful who bee-lieves that viruses don’t spread at the table but only while you’re walking to and fro.
And that intermittently wearing a disgusting Mouth Codpiece will protect you.
It may soon become impossible to enter without proof of the Jab, if the hypochondria that’s been weaponized isn’t properly treated.
If it isn’t – which seems likely given the new Hypochondriac-in-Chief – then it will become necessary to find ways to eat without leaving home.
One such way is to reproduce your food. Get a few chickens – but don’t eat them.
Eat their eggs!
I currently have seven hens, raised from chicks purchased for approximately the cost of a large, everything-on-it pizza, which you can only eat once. The girls lay at least half a dozen eggs every day, which is enough high-quality protein for two people’s needs without ever having to worry about wearing a Mouth Codpiece or being Jabbed. The eggs canbe added to pasta dishes, made into sandwiches or eaten just as they are, boiled or fried or however you like. 
It’s all delicious And chickens are cheap – and easy.
They can also be kept almost anywhere there isn’t an HOA – and some green space for them to forage. They don’t need much and if you have an acre or so of land, you’ll find you hardly have to feed them at all because they will feed themselves, eating grass and bugs and all the natural things chickens are supposed to eat and which makes the eggs they lay actually “free range” and truly “organic” in the real-deal rather than the marketing sense.
If you have never eaten an egg that was laid the day you ate it, you haven’t eaten eggs. Not real eggs. With bright orange-red yolks that stand firm like a golf ball – unlike the pastel yellowish and saggy yolks you get when you crack open a store-bought egg, which is almost always an old egg.
And the taste is just the beginning.
The nutritional value of fresh, actually-free-range eggs vs. the store bought factory-farm egg is astounding, especially as regards the cholesterol/fat that’s bad for you and the cholesterol/fat that is healthy for you.
That is factual. Anecdotally, I will convey to you that I feel supercharged and ready to work after I eat 2-3 fresh eggs. Store-bought eggs have never done that for me, even the ones marketed as “organic” and “free range.”
These eggs are also expensive – about $6 per dozen. To put that into some context, a 50 pound bag of supplemental feed – necessary during the winter, when there is less forage for the girls – costs about $15 at the mill. That bag is enough to feed the birds for a month – a lot longer than a $6 carton of store-bought eggs will feed you.
The girls don’t need much else – including a rooster, unless you want to generate birds as well as eggs. But think about it before you do it. Roosters can be hard on hens, they eat but don’t lay eggs and they make a lot of noise, which your neighbors may not like and which will also – in a scarcity situation – call attention to the fact that you have food.
Some people think a rooster is necessary to get eggs; this is absolutely not true. Hens will produce eggs even if they’ve never seen a rooster much less been fertilized by one. The only difference is the eggs can’t hatch.
Chickens don’t ask for much given all they give. The main things they do need are: Shelter, forage/food and water. The shelter can be almost anything that provides them with . . . shelter. Something that protects them from severe weather and from predators at night, when chickens – like most birds – go inert. You can build a “coop” out of almost anything – or buy one.
It can be a lot of fun designing a coop! You will probably go through several types, if you stick with raising chickens. I am on my third design, a walk-in model made by me from four sheet of 4×8 and some 2x4s. It has electric lighting and an electric outlet, which comes in handy for a water heater – which is probably the single biggest “hassle” with raising chickens, if you live where it gets cold.
Because the water will freeze otherwise and birds need water. Don’t neglect this or you will soon have fewer birds.
And eggs.
A fenced-in area – or “run” – is nice but not essential. Chickens, contrary to popular opinion, aren’t stupid birds. They know where they live and will stay in the area and return to their home/coop every night to be tucked in by you.
Having chickens is a great – because easy and cheap – way to get started on the road to maskless self-sufficiency. The more you can do to feed yourself, the less you’ll have to submit to in order to be fed!
. . . .
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Sure, you can avoid the hypochondria now. But what happens when the government is inevitably bribed to ban decentralized production of food? They’ll say it’s for safety, you can’t trust an individual to safely make their own food. Or maybe for “climate justice.” If they can do it to cash, they can do it to food. Anyone who is unprepared will be forced back into the loop of hypochondriac facism.
I would have a plan in place in the event that my imagination turns out to be correct. Just in case.
Hi Big Daddy,
“But what happens when the government is inevitably bribed to ban decentralized production of food?”
Hmmm, I wonder how such a powerful central government, claiming the authority to do anything in the name of “safety”, came to be? Maybe, Lincoln’s decision to destroy the voluntary Union of sovereign, co-equal States and replace it with a “Union” of vassal States, ruled by a central authority, has something to do with it.
Jeremy
The contrast in the two eggs is exactly what we experienced moving from Mexico to Uruguay (Mexico on the right). Mexican store bought eggs would break if you looked at them wrong, and had that pale yellow yolk. It took a while to get used to the comparative force required to crack eggs here, where they have bright orange yolks and cost $2.60/dozen.
Years ago we had a couple of Khaki Campbell ducks – wonderfully tasty eggs.
Your article’s got me thinking – thanks!
Eric,
My wife grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the former Czechoslovakia. Her family was so poor, they had chickens out of necessity, along with cows, pigs, ducks, and goats. You grew your own meat back then. Nothing worth buying in the stores anyway. So, you would think she would listen to me about getting some chickens. She knows as well as I do about the bad days coming, but so far, she has refused to even consider getting any. I hope when she comes to her senses, it is not too late, and chickens will still be available. The Wise Overlords who run the city of Saint Petersburg, Fl have deemed it acceptable to have chickens on property you own, as long as you don’t have roosters. How nice of them!
On another note, I think I survived Rona. I started feeling bad Christmas Eve, body aches, chills, fever. I was wiped out Christmas Day. I had a headache so bad, I thought my eyeballs were going to explode. Slept all day, and had a mild fever of 99.6. No coughing though. No problem breathing. Blew some snots out of my node for a few days, and was a little weak for about a week. I got it about the same time my boss and another fellow at work got it. Boss was hospitalized for a week. My 15 year old girl complained of body aches. The wife got it, and lost her sense of taste, fever, body aches, and cough. Now, here’s why I think it might have been Rona. My 99 year old grandma lives with us. She got it too. It nearly killed her, much as any serious cold probably would nearly kill a 99 year old woman. She lost her sense of taste and smell, bad cough, bad body aches, but no fever. There were times the wife and I had to pick her up and carry her to bed. She was too weak to move. She gets along pretty good for as old as she is. After about 2-3 weeks of her being sick, my cousin took her through a drive through Rona testing place, and yep, she tested positive for Rona. I know a test means nothing due to the astronomical high rate of false positives, but whatever she had, we all had. It was not a big deal for me, and the kid, but the wife, and my grandmother suffered for awhile. Its been over a month now, and grandma is almost back to normal. I’ve been taking supplements for years, and my vitamin D blood level is 77ng/ml which is what you want if you ever get Rona. I make sure we all supplement with vitamins A, B-complex, C, D3/K, zinc, and quercitin daily. Did the supplements help? Who knows? Did we survive Rona? Who knows? But whatever we had, was not a big deal except for the 99 year old lady. Nothing to be scared of.
since our town has recently decided that people dont need chickens (i think you can ask for permission to have 3), i will continue to go to restaurants without wearing a mask.
no one has asked me to leave or put one on yet
and f them if they do
Awesome article.
I have something like 70 chickens at this point, all kept in wheeled 8’x12′ coops (“tractors”) that I move around my farm once a week or so to fresh grass. My family goes through about 2 dozen eggs a week (I have two very hungry teenage boys) and we sell the rest to our neighbors and make a modest profit on the cost of the food (which isn’t high). The chickens also fertilize under my pecan trees and I get pecans to eat every fall, too.
I do keep roosters in each coop because I think it makes the hens happier and more than once they’ve proven their worth by fighting off raccoons and snakes. That being said, in addition to the reasons listed, one other disadvantage of roosters is that they can be aggressive towards humans. They are BIG birds with sharp claws and it can be very scary when a rooster comes after you. But generally, I do think having roosters are a net benefit.
But keeping chickens is awesome.
Do any of you use a 5 gallon bucket with poultry nipples on the bottom to water chickens. Drop a small heating element inside for winter, I saw one that used only, as I recall, 35 watts. Just wondering, I have yet to get setup, the price of lumber is shockingly high.
If you have time, pick up free pallets. Get a crowbar and take them apart, pull the nails. Make your own glu-lam lumber if you have some clamps. Wood glue is pretty cheap.
If you can find a good source of identical pallets, you can easily build all sorts of structures for animals. Pens, coops……
Just watch for pressure treated ones. Don’t want those near the critters.
Grab the plastic mesh top ones whenever you can. They make nice greenhouse and animal pen flooring.
duckduck – pallet animal pens buildings
There are some good pallet-into-furniture vids out there too
Great article. I’m looking forward to the many positives that come out of the “reset.” The transition will be tough for most but I think society will have a healthier concept of what government is and what should never be.
I apologize for excessive commentary, but here, if you’d like to LOSE your lunch instead:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/well/live/double-masking-covid.html
“I like layering my masks. When I walk the dog or exercise outdoors, I wear a regular mask to comply with area mask rules. When I want more protection for short errands, I wear a better mask. When I’m in a taxi or on a train, I double-mask.”
There are already some saying three is better.
Again, cling film, completely impenetrable by ‘Rona. The only way to be absolutely sure.
Hey, if the vaccine (that isn’t) can kill people in the name of saving some and that is OK…..
I just read some propaganda pushing wearing four masks. Supposedly works better against the newest boogeymen, the “mutants” and “variants.” Reminds me of the 6 minute abs scene in the movie There’s Something About Mary.
The director of mini-health in my state, NC, put out a statement, which among other whoppers, explicitly advises everyone who is healthy to assume they have WuFlu and are a danger to others. This is what we’re dealing with. Lunacy.
One of the central tenets of communism is the idea that no one should own a means of production. I think the very opposite.
EVERYONE should own a means of production.
At very least, one can produce the daily necessities.
Food can be produced plentifully, even in harsher environments, if the proper work is done.
Free and abundant electricity can come from wind or the Sun or rivers or streams, anywhere in the world!
…And great Zeus has given unto humanity, free, life-giving water since the beginning.
Even hydrocarbon fuels can be produced by the individual, no “fossil fuel” needed!
Humanity has such potential, but it is often squandered.
Type ‘aquaculture’ into duckduck.
https://morningchores.com/diy-aquaponics-system/
Tilapia and trout are good choices if you do a fairly large system. Feed fish>Fish crap>feeds plants>plants clean water for fish.
Put a maggot farm above the fish pond. Toss any dead thing (roadkill, squirrels, mice(not poisoned) in the bucket and the maggots feed the fish.
Some of the small aquaculture set ups can be set up in a large closet or corner of the garage if in a very cold area.
Yes, Anon! As soon as I take care of a few other things in life, aquaculture is certainly on the list. Been hoping to get started for years!
We’re with you, Eric! My GF bought 5 chicks last spring, and they’re already efficient egg-laying machines! As a bonus, they are quite a diverse lot, with each chicken laying eggs of different color. Not that it matters for taste or nutrition, but it saves on Easter egg dyeing supplies. 😉
Eric-how are your ducks? My three duck ladies are loving life, especially after I got them a doggie/kiddie pool along with a deep Rubbermaid bin to swim in back in the summer. Three eggs a day since Sept. Even through winter. So many we have to give some away to friends. Animal husbandry is amazing homeschool education and teaches kids things they just won’t learn any other way.
Hi Zek!
I lost one, but the other is doing great! He’s a guard duck and shepherds the girls around, watching out for hawks and such. I had planned to take a video to accompany this story but we got an unexpected 5-6 inches of snow last night and everyone’s hunkered down… including me!
Sorry to hear you lost one. I like how your other drake is a guard duck! Ducks have amazing vision.
I agree – this is schooling kids will never get! Hopefully it inspires them to love biology and the sciences!
Had a nice coop I made myself. Started w/12, lost a couple. Locked them in at night with metal fence covered with chicken wire. Had game cam pics of every critter in the NE trying to get to those chickens, it was amazing. The racoons would spend an hour trying to get in, coyotes and foxes less. Bears would climb trees trying get in.
Then we had a very late winter, nothing growing, and the bears came out with nothing to eat. You guessed it, the bear(s) destroyed the metal fence, and ate all my chickens in one night. Not a scrap left. HD fence bent to the ground.
We got thousands of eggs from those chickens.
I have not rebuilt (yet).
Hi Chris,
In re bears: That’s why this time I sunk the fence six inches in the ground… and poured concrete as fill. Good luck, Mr. Bear!
hmmm, I’ll send you a pic to your email tomorrow. not sure how to ‘build back better’. haha, hate to use that term.
If you’re a tinkerer with some mechanical ability, another way to enhance self-sufficiency is to get a 3D printer. Mine is running right now, making a replacement bracket to mount our mailbox, which a government snowplow destroyed yesterday.
There are lots of free 3D modeling programs, and printers are cheap. Mine was around $2k, but you don’t have to spend that much. I sold my CNC machining centers when I retired, but I can still make all sorts of brackets, inventions and doo-dads. If I can model it I can make it.
Roland
I have a friend who has a 3D printer and was not impressed. I’ve yet to use one, BUT!..
I do believe that decentralized production is the next industrial revolution.
Yes, you’re not going to hold tolerances like you can with a CNC machine tool, and surface finish can be disappointing. And of course with affordable printers you’re limited to plastic. On the other hand, there are things you can do that are impossible with machining, like making a hole through a piece that is larger out in the middle of the material than it is at the entrance and exit. Don’t know of any drill bit that can do that!
Home gamer machines are usually FDM and not all that great. Also FDM takes a lot of hand finishing to make a pretty part. However there are other processes not currently in the home use line up that do better on part finish.
Anyway the professional machines are expensive. The FDM machine at work was six figures as I recall. Of course it’s a pro machine designed to be run hard with a big build envelope and material choices. If you really want to spend there are the sintered metal systems.
Hi Brent,
Yep, I’ve done a few projects for friends, and the first thing I tell them is that it’s not going to look pretty like an injection-molded part. Except for the side that’s against the glass – it’s like a mirror. I don’t find the textured finish as objectionable as I did at first. In fact, I now almost always use a layer height of 0.2mm instead of 0.1, since it makes a big difference in cycle time.
Since the point of my original comment was self-sufficiency, I’d argue that looking shiny and perfect isn’t any more important for homemade parts than it is for home-grown apples.
I’ve had my machine for about eight years. Accuracy is pretty good, and repeatability is excellent. If a feature needs to be held within a thousandth or two (say, for an interference fit) I always chop it out of the model and run a (relatively) quick test print first to check the fit. Fastener holes always have to be modeled larger than you would drill them or they’ll be too tight.
I’m sure I could improve the results by running a temperature tower every time I get a new spool of filament, like you’re supposed to, but setting up such a system remains on my “one of these days” to-do list.
I don’t have any fantasies about metal printing being practical for hobbyists in my lifetime, but you never know. Trade publications make some fantastic predictions, but I don’t see how they’ll ever eliminate finish machining for things like bearing surfaces.
I am considering making Ford Maverick parts. Turns out that the white inner gauge cluster support part for the ’74-’77 is disintegrating on many cars. I have one from my ’75 that got wrecked. It’s been stored away under pretty good conditions for car parts since 1994. I pulled it out and I could start modeling it. It would take a good deal of hours to model.
There are a lot of hidden parts like this where it won’t matter what they look like and can even be modified to make up for the lower strength if needed.
I did a quick duckduck and see that 3d printing lost wax for molds is a thing. Seems a good stopgap to make metal parts while waiting for metal printers to get affordable. Also would be able to make parts larger than the printer bed by assembling several pieces.
Have any of you 3d printer people ever tried?
I’ve made many prototypes for parts that would either be investment cast or die cast with a method where a special SLS resin is used to make the ‘wax’ for the part to be cast. I can even refer you to a supplier in MN that does it. And if you want finer detail like for gears and other small parts there’s a place in PA that does those. Had a few gears done there. Each has their special SLS process for the parts in their wheelhouse. It will cost however. Expect not to pay less than $500 for whatever you want made.
Eric, there is another source of nourishment that grows in your area as well as mine. That would be wild asparagus. They usually grow along roadsides, train tracks and fence rows. I think the best time to look is at the end of April into May. The asparagus that is sold in the grocery stores are as tough as corn stalks and taste like it too. The wild version is tender and has excellent taste. Not to mention the nutrition and can be stored in the freezer for future consumption. The big plus is, it is free only requiring your time to gather it.
I second the asparagus. Once you get it established, you cant kill it! Look for pods that are the seeds. Just throw them on the ground and after a few years, start harvesting.
“I second the asparagus.”
Best comment of the week.
You can probably can it, too. It obviously won’t taste as good as fresh, but it’s more secure than frozen, since its preservation doesn’t depend on electricity.
I third the asparagus. One of my favorites. I’ll give it a shot, Allen.
Almost 40 years ago, a woman where I worked [in Indiana] went to Florida and bought back some wild grapefruits. They were so different to the store bought ones, so much tastier.
There are about a dozen or more asparagus spots along the back roads here and there. Some are prolific, others stand alone plants along ditches. One spot I know of has the most asparagus I’ve ever seen, used to go there, but it is a wild area, there are moose, badger, mountain lions, coyote, fox, deer, and skunks, gray wolves are out there too.
Deer eat asparagus, they steal it from me then. lol
An asparagus honey hole to avoid, it might not be a pleasant experience on a bad day. Although there is a lot, it is not easy picking.
You feel the fear.
Always pick asparagus when the spears are fresh out of the ground after a day or two of growth. Mile after mile of asparagus stands are out there, you just have to look.
Can’t be killed, you can spray it with 2,4 D, it always comes back. Grows the vegetative growth to death, can’t kill the root.
Bacon wrapped or steamed with butter, also with garlic.
Always eat asparagus while in season, never buy commercially grown asparagus.
Some sweet corn varieties are gene split with bacillis thuringensis dna sequences of the organism, Bt is a bacteria that turns the intestines of a corn worm to mush.
You get a nice ear of worm-free sweet corn. Plenty of genetic research does happen.
Call it vaccinating sweet corn seed to avoid pests that make your corn worthless.
Unfortunately, Covid vaccines aren’t as efficacious, they’re actually deadly and should be avoided at all costs. They ain’t going to do a damn bit of good and are doing far more harm.
https://www.nimss.org/projects/view/mrp/outline/7
Had a skunk living under an out building, you could see him but always at a distance, never close. His tail wore the paint off the siding where he entered and exited daily.
Gotta get rid of the skunk, the dogs will get sprayed or bit, tough to shoot, don’t want to trap, rabies, have to rout the skunk. I thought to myself to just go and urinate right where his entrance is at. I did just that, the skunk never came back. Can’t take the smell, malodorous to the skunk, there he was, gone.
‘They know where they live and will stay in the area and return to their home/coop every night to be tucked in by you.’ — EP
Sounds like the paternal indulgence BigGov exudes toward its self-managing human livestock, at least the ‘compliant’ ones that buy the BS.
In today’s mind-warping example of alternative facts, ‘Serious departures from democratic norms were a core factor in driving the United States to its lowest in eight years on a global corruption index in 2020, watchdog Transparency International said on Thursday.’
‘It called the U.S. president’s attempts to pressure election officials and incite violence in order to change certified vote counts as “among the most serious departures from ethical democratic practice.”‘
https://news.trust.org/item/20210128070441-ssjbd
So there you have it, folks. Third World scenes of old-school paper ballot stuffing and high-tech ‘adjudication adjustments’ on the Dominion Democracy Suite don’t hurt a country’s transparency rating. After all, that’s the very definition of ‘managed democracy’ — ensuring that vetted Establishment candidates win while vulgar populist insurgents are kept out, regardless of the actual tally.
But try to invoke the constitutional rule of law to challenge crude, broad-daylight fraud as Orange Man Bad outrageously attempted, to the horror of Romney Republicans, and suddenly you’re ignominiously demoted behind Bhutan and Uruguay to 25th place, down from 23rd in 2019.
Ouch! Ouch! The MSM weeps in pain as it slags you. 🙂
What does that have to do with the topic?
Everything. Dude’s critter problem is like our giverment problem. Everyone is trying to break into our coops and steal the chickens. Mexicans at the border, Marxists in DC, welfare slaklaws voting freebies, et al.