Short answer: No.

Long answer:  we have a small garden for the growing of vegetables, and if we had the funds, we would be packing up and moving out to the country to farm full time.  But let me tell you about a family I met just tonight.

Standing in line at our local grocer, the people in front of us had three shopping carts of groceries.  It totaled out to about $460.00.  The only, and I mean only, prepared food in their carts was one package of Oreo cookies and two boxes of cereal.  They had cleaning supplies, bathroom items, dog and cat food, canning jars, aluminum foil, and a few other non-food items.  They had ten and twenty pound bags of rice, flour, and sugar. They also had one, ONE, item of produce: a single hand of bananas.  They didn’t have any meat. They didn’t have any canned goods. They didn’t have any eggs or sausage or deli meat or any of the hundreds of different things that folks buy from the store every day.They didn’t even have a single can of soda.

Being me, I had to ask about their shopping carts.  I sometimes find myself stopping at the store every day just to pick up milk and wind up spending twenty bucks or more on things for dinner.  These folks looked like they were stocking up.  Since it Florida, this is what I said: “Wow, do we have a hurricane coming already?”

The cashier, the manager who was bagging things up, and the couple all started laughing.  “No, honey. We only come shopping once a month to stock up on staples. You were just lucky enough to be behind us in line.”

We continued to chat while the cashier kept cashiering.  It turns out that these folks own a farm just a few miles north of town and don’t need anything else.  They come to town once a month to buy all the things that they don’t make themselves.  Otherwise, they grow their own. They raise their own chickens (and eggs). They grow cattle (for beef and milk), ducks, all their own vegatables, citrus trees, goats, etc., etc., etc.  All on sixty-five acres that have been in their family for three generations.

They are extremely self-reliant people.  They grow their own.  The things they do buy, they pay for in cash.

That, Sheila, is what we mean by “Simon Says: I Grow My Own.”  Even if you are only growing some carrots or have a tomato plant hanging in your window, we should all try to get a taste for growing our own food.  We should all know how to do it, we should be planning on doing it, we should at least be ready to try.

Updated to add:

Campbell Soup Company is giving away packages of seeds both to you (the individual asking for free, non-genetically altered seeds that are the same “Jersey” tomatoes used in their tomato soup) and to FFA’s across the U.S.  This isn’t a plug for them, they aren’t paying us to mention it.  We usually buy seeds from a few, select, heirloom, companies knowing that it helps keep old varieties viable.  But if you are interested in free Campbell soup tomatoes, more info can be found here.  There, I just took away one of your excuses, go plant something.

You’ve mentioned gun rights and shooting in passing, do you all actually shoot?

Signed,

Curious in TX

Hi Curious in TX!

Short answer: Yup.

Long answer: Both Ted and I learned to shoot at a rather young age, both starting with a .22 rifle, a plinker. Ted’s dad was Chief Investigator for a county (that sees a good bit of the drug trade) in Lower Alabama, former Navy corpsman, and former undercover narcotics officer in southern California. My father is a former Green Beret, and a former State Trooper. So it was inevitable that we’d be taught to shoot.

Ted remembers shooting cans, buckets, melons, bottles, pinecones, and small game out his aunt’s house in the country. Snakes were .410 shotgun fodder everytime they went fishing. His dad would set up moving targets for the boys, milk jugs filed with water that were slid around on clotheslines stretched at odd angles.

I remember my father and uncle up at his cabin, splitting logs with dad’s nickel-plated S&W .44 magnum. We kids would set up milk jugs full of water, empty “coke” cans (in the Southern patois, “coke” stands for any soda can), anything we could find and practice knocking it down. Later, in my teen years, we had a good bit of acreage through which ran a seasonal stream that was positively infested with cottonmouths. Each weekend saw us starting at one end of the stream, walking down to the other end, shooting snakes as we went. I recall using a very old, very reliable German Luger once to plink one that was lurking about under our bridge.

Our current “arsenal” includes the following:

Ted’s primary carry piece, the Glock 23:

My primary carry piece, the Glock 27:

The obligatory .22 rifle (albeit a Mossberg), on which our kids will learn to shoot:

Ted’s pride and joy, a beautifully preserved SKS:

My “gator,” the unflappable Hi-Point .40 carbine:

And my cowboy gun, a beautiful Marlin 30-30:

The Glocks are…Glocks. Dead reliable, never jam or stovepipe ejecting shells. I think you could probably fire them in the vacuum of space, but don’t care to volunteer to test it.

The Mossberg is likewise old reliable. It was strictly purchased as fun gun, and for teaching the kids to shoot.

The SKS is awesomeness in gun form. It kicks like a bloody mule with that 7.62x39mm shell, but is beautifully accurate, especially in the hands of an artiste like Ted.

The “gator” (HiPoint carbine) is pure fun, I tell you. It shoots the same .40 round our Glocks use, which makes bulk ammo purchases rather sensible, and due to the length offers almost no recoil at all. Which, of course, makes it hyper-accurate. When the goblins come through the door, this is what I’m reaching for.

We regrettably haven’t yet fired the Marlin, mainly due to lack of free time, but it’s been checked over by a local gunsmith and pronounced clean and ready to go.

So, those are the basics, anything purchased going forward will strictly be for pretty’s sake, ie. this beauty:

Or this gorgeous beast:

I tell you what we need, a good shotgun. Ted wants a pistol-grip, I’m not so picky, other than a desire to spend less than 1K on it. Any suggestions?