Women's Wednesday: Sara Hathaway on Food Storage & War Shortage

Welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast with author Sarah F. Hathaway and co host Chen Gibson, blending survival fiction and fact to bring you entertaining education that will help you dream, survive, and thrive. And now here's your host, Sarah F. Hathaway and Chen Gibson. Hello, and welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast. A little bit of a delayed intro there as I fumbled with my Skype in the way. But because we were chatting up too much before the show. I know, I was like, oh, oh, it's time to go. On, Starah Away, quiet on me. All right. This is episode number three hundred and thirty nine. Hit Chin, what's up? Hey kids? Up? Oh man, we've been we've been having some busy days. So yeah, I know you're just working your little tail off over there. So thanks for lending some of your time this evening to us. I'll be here. The best part of my day right to just chill. I have a nice conversation, good stuff. So Changing Earth today. Obviously, Russia evaded Ukraine, so everybody's talking about that. I've been trying to limit my news exposure to you know, because it's like a dang TV show. On the news, it seems like when it's serious stuff, and it's just frustrating, frustrating the way they they make a show out of everything just so to fill you up with smoke and mirror, so you really don't know what's happening in the background. Ant reality TV now, right. That's what it just kind of semends. Yeah, it's it's legit and it's really affecting people's lives, and I don't know, it just seems like it's a big, big show. But so we're gonna talk a little bit about that tonight. But before we get started, we have been throwing it back and forth what books we want to talk about and where we want to go with that. So we've chosen to do Little House in the Big Woods. And I want to hear no crap from the guys in the audience. Yeah, yeah, now, I know it's like Little House in the Big Woods. So if you're older, you know the book, and maybe you haven't read it because you're like, oh my gosh, it's it's Little House on the Prairie stuff and that's lame, or if you're younger, you might not have heard it at all. But these books are just full of survival information and food storage information and how to survive without everything we have now. It's like it's kind of sitting down and listening to Grandma about how they used to live. Literally like prepper fiction before preption was a category exactly because that's what. It so is it And personally I love to learn as I read. Those are the books I'm going to gravitate towards, and uh, these are great, great books. So uh, a couple of ways you can get a hold of the book and follow along with us. There's actually some free stuff online, but be wary because it is still copyrighted material. Even though it was published so long ago, the copyright is still active in the United States, So I say watch out for free downloads because they might be targeted towards other countries or stuff. You just never know what you're going to get there. So personally, I just bought the e book. But Chin has a cool, uh little program that we don't mind talking about. Even though I kind of took the sale wind out of your sales on it a lit. You don't get any realties or anything. Yeah, I thought it was at least at least the author was good in some kind of stuff. So anyway, it's called Hoopla h oo p l A. It's an app works on a computer too, and it hooks up with your libraries system. And so I had a library card to my local library. I use that membership number to log into the Hoopla and set up an account, and then I just go. I could borrow books just like I would at the library. So when Sarah was yeah, Sarah was talking about a House of the Prairie, so I typed that in a search. It came up and it actually had the audiobook, so I downloaded. I get to keep it or you know, use it for twenty seven days, just like a library, right, twenty seven days. Can you just run it again after that? Yeah, yeah, because we'll be early. I can return it early, you know, because they usually they only have like three copies or something, is what I've kind of felt like they had. So like you can get on a waiting list, just like the library, and they'll send an email when it's available to rent again. You could do a favorites list, so like as you're going through the search and through stuff, you could just put a little ding on there, so you know, you can just go back to a list works great. I've had it for years now probably, yeah, a long time, five six years. Yeah, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, the library and for like road trips and stuff, we download audio books, yeah, because we used to use Audible. Yeah, but the membership has got so expensive. I just I was like, no, we got to save some money somewhere. So this worked great. This, And I mean there's all kinds of libraries that school libraries and stuff that. Yeah, my audiobooks are Audible exclusive unless you're changing her series member. And then yeah, you can go to the Yeah, and I do a book of the month there, so I actually have to change up the book that's there. Note to self. But yeah, so we're doing Little House in the Big Woods. The Little House on the Prairie series is actually a five book series, and we're doing the Little House in the Big Woods first. And in this chapter it's just kind of the introduction obviously, you know, you find out who Laura is. She's living in a log cabin amongst the trees. There's no other houses or people or roads. She's never seen a town, right, never seen more than two houses together. Yeah, and you know what what really was like made me. Really, this was like a hundred years ago. This is how different our world is just a century later. It's so interesting to me. Reggie, growing up, your family, that's all you've ever knowed was your three sisters. Yeah, those people like that's it. And I guess, well, I guess they have relatives come visit. Yeah, like cousins, and right, they have family, grandparents are near. But you know, like Dad goes into town, but it's a it's an ardeal and they so far. And he's going for like a while, right, So they have the. Town. They have the dog too. Jack's a big part of her life there, the brindle bulldog. And you know, I'm dealing with that puppy still, puppy training, puppy traded. You got to put the diamond at the. Beginning, yeah, to get the dog. Mm hmmm. So she talks about how Dad would go out and harvest deer in the fall because they were nice and fat. If you if you harvest them in the winter time, they're just not as as fat as they are in the fall. You know, you get more meat that way, which totally makes sense. And then they would hang it up in the tree so that the wolves couldn't get it. Yeah, I was thinking about the bear though. Bears can climb man, so that I would still be but you can shoot the bear. Now you've got more meat. He did well, he was at the bear. Yeah, their meat would all be salted and then packed. And I've done shows on how to make this happen in the past, so there's a So obviously I've been interested in these books for a while, so I've taken some of the concepts from them before, and so you can look for that how to Preserve Meat podcast. Also, the skins were salted and stretched to make leather. Yep. Great way to do it. I've actually done that before as well. And then they were making like buckskins, so we have chemicals now we can treat the leather with. But it's really an ordeal too to learn to do that skill. It's fun. I would suggest he hasn't done it. Try it. It was like the circle of life because he made the h the pouch that held his bullets yep, out of deer skin, right, so it. Was like right, yeah, but he used. That to go hunt deer, so it was kind of like. A circle there making use of everything. Yeah, and then just like how the meats were all stripped and salted, so they soaked in the well. They you know, laid out in the salt for a while. And then he made the cool log smoker. Yeah, yep, from the hollow tree. So that was a great idea. I was like, how how ingenious is that I've done. A block from having to like build it. Yeah, you have, you have to just hollow it out. You put a door in the bottom. He put a little roof on top, and then all the nails. He put dales where he could reach up from the door, and he put dales where he could reach down from with a ladder out from the top. And yeah, such a such an incredible idea. Nowadays we're like, simple, how could I make smoker? Yeah? Nowadays it's like, how do we preserve anything unless it's frozen in the freezer exactly? Even cannings. You know, people are trying to get back into that. But that's but canning requires jars, it requires lids, it requires you know, for meat, you got to have a pressure canner. What happens when the seal on your pressure canner goes, You're gonna have to have other ways. So my biggest takeaway was salt. How important is the salt you know at that point? Yeah, I mean even if things went down, you emptied out your whole freezer. Now you need enough salt to preserve all that stuff, and you need to know how to do it too, So this is a great, easy little way to do it. I was sound chin before the show. Whenever I think of a smoker, you think of like the fire being in one place and then it feeds the smoke into the smoker. But he put the fire right inside of the tree trunk and then used fresh green chips to smoke them because that way it sits in the fight yet smolders more exactly, and they would feed it for days. You know. It's a long process. And then each piece is wrapped in paper. The girls had to be tee the firewell did without the woods. Yeah yeah, and the paper too. I'm like, where's all this paper coming from? So you know, Dad must have brought that back from the from town and then just rolls of it. So that's something else to think about, Like, we wouldn't have paper for wrapping things up really unless you're gonna rip your books apart, you know, or like if you give I don't know if copy paper would work. You know, you need like the butcher paper I'm thinking, right, Yeah, so that's something else to just kind of think about the fish being salted and stored in barrels. I mean, how often do we think of like eating salted fish anymore. It's just the other thing I took away from this was they were always doing something right. Yeah. He was either working, you know, in the forest to get logs or wood, or hunting or fish. He goes off for a day and come back with a load of fish or Yep. It wasn't just like sitting around on a vacation. Playing some videos. We're working all the time because he had to put up the food to make it through the winter. Yes, yeah, I mean that's that's what why I always caution, like when we go if we go into a survival situation where it's like a long term supply shortages and whatnot, how different I mean, how drastically different our lives would have to be pretty instantly, you know. And the other thing is that I thought about, So, so the the man at the house is off in the woods like constantly, almost every day, right, He's almost every day off in the woods. So the girls and mom better know how to take care of themselves because stuff happened. That's why they can't like call anybody. There's no neighbors or the fathers off. That's why Carroll keels like when I did my Top ten Survival Stars, she made my list of top ten because that woman was like hearty. She had she had one experience where like she was cut all bad and everything like fevering. She was all by herself and had to like take cauterize it and like survived till he got back home. It was. It was an insane story. I was like, the first couple of stories that did going off into the woods. I'm like, man, these women got to be tough. Yeah yeah, and they didn't really shoot and stuff back then. So so the pig it was allowed to roam free in the woods until blew yeah, and. Then they would call him back. Yeah depends like okay, you know yeah. So and then they the garden too, because I was always like, how do people grow gardens before we could buy like all this fencing to put around it, like keep the beer away, right Jack Jack the dog. The girl said that they wake up in the morning and see fresh fresh deer tracks, but did they see fresh jack tracks. The jacket control the vegetable garden, so the. Root vegetables, the potatoes, carrots, beats, turn ups, cabbages, things like that, we're all stored in a cellar. We've actually done that many times, been able to store up our root vegetables and last through like most of the winter when we have really good producing gardens. So definitely still doable. Don't need a big space to make it happen. Honestly, Braiding the onions together by their tops is the most spectacular. I picked it up from this book. We had piled them together one year and it's the worst for onions. It just turned into like this mash of rotted onion that you have to clean out of whatever you put it in. That's so disgusting. But when you braid them together that way, they have the greens to help keep them fresh, and it just keeps them all organized. So if you do have like one or two that rot on the way, it doesn't affect every single one of them. So that really does work. The pumpkins and squashes those steak good for a long time. You don't really have to worry about you know, we had bought pumpkins for canning, and I didn't can them, and they almost lasted a whole year in the garage. Wow. Yeah, where in the. Garage, Like it was midsummer, but yeah, exactly, and it gets hot here in the summer, you know, so it was like midsummer by the time. I was like, oh, those pumpkins, we gotta you know. Yeah, yeah, well I guess because the jack landers. It's because you carve them up, because they go bad. Yeah yeah, well once you call them if they get you know, if they get marred or anything. But if you just store them whole, your pumpkins, your squash will last a long time. That's why they're winter why they call it vegetables or whatever. The fish was stored in the pantry along with cheeses and stuff like that on the shelves. Your cheeses if it has like that cheese, Yeah yeah, I always got thrown off by that head cheese. And it's not really cheese, it's just it's uh. Boiled. So you take the head of the pig, you boil it until all the meat falls off. Then she chopped up the meat and season it with pepper, salt and spices, mixed it all in a pot with some or mixed it all with pot liquor. Yeah, and set that to cool, and then that's what they ate. The sausage was awesome too, that she just took like all the leftovers and chopped it all up and mixed it with spices and then they'd roll it into big balls and just leave that out in the shed to freeze. There is no better than fresh sausage, right, Oh, I know it's true sausage. It is true, so good that stuff. Yeah, the pork sausage is so yummy. Yeah, and if you can mix it with some venison sausage, oh, good day. Okay. The hams and the shoulders they were put in a pickle to Brian, so they were actually, you know, more pickled off the bat and then they were salted first and then Brian. So that I've always been curious about that, Like how do you get those big honks of meat? Like, yeah, you're gonna smoke them and everything. You're gonna have to keep them in the smoker a lot longer, but like, how do those big honks of meat stay good all winter? And I'm gonna say it's a lot due to that pickling solution. And then the bladder. Dad takes the bladder, he blows it up, and now the kids have a balloon to play with. So I'm listened along and they're like, dance say the bladder and the pig tail for for the for Laura and Mary. Yeah, I'm like, oh, they're gonna eat the bladders. It's just like a memory kind of you know. Yeah, you use them as a water pouch to you. Yeah, but no, they were using it as a toy basically like Bounce. Was like, oh, thank god, they're not eating it. But yeah, Carrie's air and everything like that's just insane. Yeah, my balloon was like a bladder when we were you know, how far have we come? How far will we come? Away from that kind of stuff? Yeah, exactly. The tail they actually like toasted. It was like a treat. They would fry it, fry it and then eat it and give the girls. The girls. They put put it on a stick and the girls took turns like roasted. I don't know, I know what comes out right below that tail. Like it's inside the thing. And then they took the the the spine basically that part of the spine, the tail, it gave it to the dog. They use like everything. And that's the other thing, Like, what are you feeding your dogs in a long term survival situation? Luckily both my dogs like to eat a lot of bugs, you know, I know my. Dog, my dog eats worms. Yeah, earthworms, Like there's no no, I know we have to start an earthworm farm just to feed the dog. But I don't want to just have to like kill my dogs or something like that. That'd be horrible, you know. So if they can hunt, if they can feed themselves, that that kind. Of thing, my dog will not have any problems, right. Let's see. And then the lart, so obviously the lard was just savored and used and Mama would take the lard and temper it, you know, so you have to cook it so it doesn't burn, but you can get all those yucky pieces out. That's gonna make it go add faster. And talking with Nicole Appellian, I was like, you know, most of the recipes for any kind of salves and stuff that we use have olive oil in it. Like what do we do how do we make olive oil in a survival situation? She's like, you don't, and I'm like, well, what do we use? You use the lard, that's what they would use for everything. You can use it as waterproofing on your clothes, stuff like that. So it was very very important stuff. Also cook and bacon right for I mean like baking, yes, yep, pie. And then on that show Colony, they also used it to make biofuel. Yeah, it was pretty interesting as well. I was like, that's a cool idea. And then we talked about the sausage. So that that takes us through I know, I'm hungry. We should be doing this right before dinner, so that takes us through chapter one of Little House in the Big Woods. Guys, get the book and follow along. We're gonna have some fun wrapping it apart. And I know it's like a Little House on the Big Wood, but I guarantee you're gonna learn from this book because I wouldn't start. Yeah, I was till sir. It's kind of like listen to a little girl tell about her day, right, that's basically what you're doing. Right, So the the action of the story isn't all that much except for what Dad tells his little stories. Yeah, get the girls make a point with the girls, but the subject matters outstanding, right, Yeah, you're gonna learn, yeah, for sure. So talking about the war with Ukraine and talking about how they used to store their food, potential upcoming food shortages is where my brain always goes to. We've talked a lot recently about you know, crops that are getting devastated in Brazil and our Tina, things like that. So my brain automatically went to, you know, how is this going to further affect the supply chain, How is this going to further affect agricultural prices? Things like that. So I found out that during World War Two there was come there was things like car, cars, tires, bicycles, stoves, rubber, foot wear, shoes, and typewriters were were rationed actually during World War two, and it's because we were just starting to produce synthetic rubber at that point. Rubber came from rubber trees before we had synthetic rubber. So with the rubber shortages, that's why they started limiting those things. And then factories that made cars and bicycles and typewriters things like that were now. Being used for the war, right, the war effort. Yeah, yeah, the war effort. So then things like gasoline was obviously rationed, fuel oil and kerosene, so those are like heating oils and solid fuels were also rationed. So this plays into what we're looking at for this event as well. And then the food products that were rationed were sugar, coffee, processed foods, and the processed foods again because the canning companies were shipping for the war, right, so you couldn't get like canned goods in the store anymore. Meats, canned fish, cheese, canned milk, and fats, and that's because they need those calories, right, So they were shipping a lot of the high fat foods and whatnot over those soldiers. So that's what we kind of looked like there, and so I wanted to look at for the last two years twenty nineteen, twenty twenty or no. Twenty twenty twenty one, we saw less food production coming in overall, right, So it's kind of a good idea to like get the beat of what's going on food commodity wise before we start applying what could happen because of this potential war. So for the most part, honestly, things look pretty stable, like wheat supplies. They expected smaller supplies, reduced domestic use, lower exports, and higher ending stocks for the USA. Production in Argentina and Uruguay went up, but it was offset by decreases in Brazil and Paraguay. Russia's beginning stocks were lower and their exports were expected to reduce even further, and then for the end of the year they were forecasting like increased stock for the USA, Russia, Kaza Stan. I don't know how they came in. They must be like good producers in Argentina. But global stocks were still still forecasted at the lowest level since twenty sixteen and seventeen. So even though they're kind of like holding things stable, we really haven't rebounded since the really hard floods in twenty nineteen. Right, We've been talking about it for so many years, and now it just seems like, uh, when did it really go bad? And it was way before COVID coarse greens. The USA, we had some higher production, but they're expecting lower exports going out, lower ending stocks. Of that, the foreign outlook, they were also producing less and it was kind of holding stable the market. It was consumption was pretty stable because we've had a decline in production in Brazil, Argentina, Kenya, Mexico, the EU and Paraguay, with larger yields in Ukraine. So Ukraine's been really stepping up their corn production and bolstering some of the shortages that were happening. Now remember this is all pre anything happening with Ukraine. This is what the global forecast was before any of the started. Right, I heard I saw on those little post its. I forget the source, but it was do Ukraine with thirty of the world's uh week Yes, like yeah, crow. Uh huh, Ukraine and Russia. We'll get there. Because then I started researching, like okay, how's that specifically going to affect us? So that's your wheat, your coarse greens, you know rice. They were expecting smaller supplies again, lower domestic use, decreased exports, reduced ending stocks. So globally there's been smaller supplies, there's been reduced consumption because of these smaller supplies. And oil seeds, it's like your soybean oil, your canola, your sunflour oil, peanut crops, things like that were lower production or were higher production, but there was a lower cotton seed production. So it's really kind of offsetting itself and then globally, these lower productions made for just you know, we had reduced crops from Brazil, reduced crops from Argentina, and reduced crops from Paraguay. So we're gonna have to keep our eyes on that. USA did pretty good this last year with the soybean harvest, but you know, we can't like suck it up for everybody. And then sugar, because sugar was one of the rationing things on the list. Production in the US has been increased big time, actually in Louisiana, so they're thinking that we'll have to import less because we're picking it up with producing our own and getting the sugar from beets as well. So that's kind of you would only wish that sugar wasn't so much in use. Right, So much better as far as coffee goes, we know what the outlook like that on it. You know, Brazil got hit really hard already, so we kind of already understood that coffee is going to go up and this will probably just make it even worse. Yeah, we got the inside track with disaster. Coffee exactly exactly. What's what's the price is looking like over there? In trepid commanda. Right, yeah, let's see, so livestock, poultry, and dairy. So red meat and poultry production increased, Beef production estimates increased, There was higher there was bigger carcass weights coming in because people were holding off butchering during the pandemic, right, because there wasn't as many workers to work the factory. The butcher. Yeah, the butcher. It's hard to get butchers. So people were holding their beef longer. So that made for biggest, bigger carcass weights coming in. That's that's good news. As far as the prices go. Pork production has been reduced. It was just the slow slaughter rates in twenty twenty one really took a toll on the pork production. So I'm getting up, I told Brack, I'm like, we're getting a pick like right now. And then egg production is also down, same kind of reasons. They didn't have as much people to work the factories and whatnot. So good time to get your chickens going if you've been putting it off and you can do that, good, really good time to do that. The cattle, the broiler, the turkey, and eggs, their prices are forecasted to increase across the board, just more increases coming. And then for milk and cheese specifically, we're expected to see higher import numbers with lower export numbers, so it's going to drive the price up whenever you're getting it from overseas and whatnot. So that's all from the us DA. They do a world agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate and they talk about, you know what we did for twenty twenty one, what twenty two is kind of looking like, and so that gave us a pulse on kind of where we were before this event really took off. So how will this war with Russia affect us? One of the biggest ways it's going to affect us is with energy, and we all know what happened with the pipeline situations, so hopefully we can just turn ours back on and kind of offset some of the things. But many of the European nations rely heavily upon Russia for energy, and mainly it's through gas through vital pipelines. Also, they are huge natural gas suppliers, Russia and the Ukraine are, so natural gas is used to heat a lot of buildings and they've already seen prices just skyrocketing in twenty twenty one, which caused the UK fertilizer plants to shut down. So this has a you know, a ripple effect, right because as soon as their power costs increase and made it so they couldn't make a profit off making their fertilizers. In that kind of situation, when the price of fertilizer goes up, that goes directly to your farm, which goes directly to your table. And so all of this effects what our food prices look like, what inflation looks like. The one interesting thing that I found out was this led to carbon dioxide shortages. So they produce carbon dioxide as byproducts right of making the fertilizers, and carbon dioxide is actually essential for everything from medical practices to keeping our food fresh as it travels. So how about that, right, It's just like ripples across the whole system. It's like remember when we used to play that game with the parachute and the ball. Yeah, and if one person wasn't like doing their job, I was like, you know. Yeah, between our book of this parachute games. Yeah, oh my goodness, we're going back to at the end of the show. Yes, yeah, yeah, musical chairs. That'd be kind of tough. I don't know about that one. I think you're just taking it a little too far out hit. Oh yeah, that's me. So for food prices overall, they're going to be affected by this event. We've already had crazy catastrophic weather throughout most of the year affecting crops and all these different countries. The prices have already rose sharply in twenty twenty one. As you were saying Beforetune, Russia and Ukraine account for one fourth of the total global wheat export. Yeah, so and if they're not producing, then the countries that you know, produce on the site, they kind of got to step up. Well, we know what Brazil has been looking like, they've had flooding and droughting. Argentina's on fire. We're gonna talk more about that, you know, as the news comes up. So countries like Turkey and Egypt that rely on the Ukraine and Russia for almost seventy percent of all of their wheat imports, they're going to see a big drastic increase and it's going to happen. They'll be going to other sources, which will increase the demand and increase the prices for everybody. Else, you got it. Ukraine also produces one half of the global sunflower oil exports. They're also yeah, they're also the number one supplier of corn to China. And then Russia is the main supplier of all the some of the key ingredients to make any kind of fertilizer. So again, this is gonna just hit the bottom line because even on the USDA, they're like, yeah, we've had some crazy weather, but we have really good growing techniques now and we have really good. Seeds and something right, good chemicals. Yeah, we have good chemicals, so what you know, we can harvest larger yields on the stuff that does do well. And it's like, well, what if you don't have fertilizers to make that happen, you know, or what if they cost a crumbload of money. Your gardens have to go in this year, people, they have to go in and they have to grow good. And I'm telling myself that as much as anybody, because I've been really struggling to get things to grow really big here. So it needs to happen this year. It just absolutely has to happen. Yeah, Transportation, as far as shipping and rail freight. So we're going to see another impact on our supply chain, which is a already struggling right now because of the increase in oil prices and because of the potential for cyber attacks on those things. So that's going to be interesting. Metals. Russia and Ukraine lead in the production of nickel, copper, and iron. These are all essential metals for so many of the things that we do that we produce for the microchips and all that. Other raw materials like neon, palladium, and platinum also come out of Russia in the Ukraine, so prices are already increasing. Their palladiums used for like automotive exhausts, mobile phones, and dental fillings, and neon. They actually use neon for writing the micro but yeah, the lights, but we have led now, but they use it for the lithography of writing microchips. So we're like, we told Russia, We're like, oh, we're going to cut you off from microchips. Russia's like, yeah, we're gonna cut you off from neon, you know, like come on. Russia also supplies the most amount of titanium in the world as well, so that's essential for all the aerospace industries and stuff like that. So Elon Musk I'm sure is up in arms. So basically on the horizon, we're looking at more inflation and slower growth due to all of this turmoil that's happening. There's definitely cereal grain concerns. The prices are already skyrocketing because of the weather, because of the labor shortages. So there's gonna be a big impact on wheat and bread prices. That's from the World Trade Organization themselves. And then it's going to be shifting markets as far as like where people are getting their product. But hopefully we're able to shift things around enough to make sure that you know, we're feeding a world here as. Much overcome that, it's like who's good enough property to grow wheat? To step up? Yeah, France, France is stepping up and some of those markets, like. You can't grow that in your garden. I mean maybe you can make a muffin. No, you have to have like a wheat farm now to get. A good alternative flour making. Yeah. And you know, I just did the article last week about how much they're cutting down the Amazon and everything like that. Well, that's where these things are happening. You know, they plan them over to grow food and stuff, So we have to keep a balance at the same time as we're feeding the world. Right, it gets really really tricky to figure out what is that balance. But I'm quite sure it's not drinking roach milk. That's been That's what everybody says, like, Oh, come on, I'm gonna buy you some chocolate roach milk. At least you're getting me chocolate. Yeah, I'm gonna give you chocolate roach milk for prepper Camp. Here have shirts got roach milk? They have it in California. I could get some shipped out here. Oh my goodness. I hasn't hit any kind of Texas shelves from what I've seen, but I saw it in California. Nasty roach milk. Yeah, mind, I don't know. And why would you ever make a modern day Why would you ever think about drinking that? And they're not milking roaches there, it's actually like roaches. Like almond milk is not actually like a milk. It's just ground up almonds and water. Well that's still okay. Anyway, it's not talking. Let's go come on, that's disgusting. So if you guys, you know, you have more input on what you know how this is going to affect us. We have to just watch this kind of evolve, see what's going to happen with so many of the players. My biggest caution to everybody would be understand that everything today in our world is about smoking, mirrors and greed. So be careful of jumping onto any bandwagons that want you to just spew hatred forward. You know, try to try to walk in the light and see that bigger picture so that we can understand what's really going on right now. What's what's really going on is when everything started with the with the virus and whatnot, I was like, hey, everybody, eyes on your freedom. And that's one of the reasons why I'm not on Facebook to this day, because yeah, you know, because I was throwing off off there for my views. But in the meantime, eyes on your freedom. You know, this could be the emergency declaration. They need to go the step further. So Big Picture just. Dropped an Easter egg into the chat the live chat room. Check it out. I'm not I'm not check it out. All right, Let's go ahead and jump into some changing Earth news. Get off this serious stuff into some natural disasters. All right, changing Earth news. Did you like my segue there? I love it. So the Sun has been relatively quiet as far as like active CME Sun, sunspot, low classy stuff, just really really minor events. We do have a pretty large corona hole that's intensifying. It's going to create low lying geomyn medic magnetic storms tonight and then tomorrow. Yeah magnetized. Yeah, I got magnetized to the top of my mouth. And really the Sun's been quiet for a week, so it's interesting to see how much like the volcanic activity kind of slows, the earthquakes kind of slow when the Sun is quiet. So it's it's interesting stuff. February twentieth we had three hundred and ninety earthquakes that we're two point zero or higher, the biggest of which was a five point six in the Philippine Sea. The UK just got hit with Storm Franklin on the twentieth, heavy wind and rain, severe flooding in northern Ireland. It just comes days after Unice, remember came through it killed three and then they had oh what was the other one? Right before that began with a D and you were making fun of how how lame the word was. It's like, uh storm Dougy or something. Buddy Dudley that. Yeah, so they have Dudley, they have Unice, and then now they got hit with Franklin. Right after that. Unice actually killed three and left one point four million people without power. So they've been they've been getting hit with storm after storm up there. The fires in Argentina are still burning. Nine percent of the entire provident. Of the entire province has burned. It's a total of one million, nine hundred seventy six thousand acres. That is extreme. I was like as bad as California got last summer. Pretty much. In Indonesia there was more flooding. Four villages were completely flooded out from heavy v rainfall. And then in Paraguay there was a severe storm that left eighty thousand people without power. On the twenty first, we had four hundred and two earthquakes that were six point or the biggest of which was a six point three in the South Pacific Ocean up bah Or down by Antarctica in Italy. ETNA produced these really this really cool eruption. It shut down the second largest airport in Sicily, and you can like see people skiing down the mountain with like the volcanic the volcanic smoke rising in the background. It was kind of cool. Yeah, that ash went six point two miles in the air. Brazil got hit with a heavy storm, roofs torn off, communities flooded. Russia got hit with a severe blizzard on the island just above Japan. Indonesia got more flooding on the twenty first, and some seriously large hail damage. That's probably the story of the week is major hail damage across the world. On the twenty second, there was four hundred and twenty three earthquakes that were two point zero or larger, the biggest of which was a six point zero in Bolivia, but Tonga also had a five point five, so we still have our eyes on that volcano, even though things look to have calmed down. Australia, Queensland got hit with nineteen point five inches of rain, one dead and ten missing. And it's oh, oh, how long did it? That was in the one day on the twenty second, one day, Yeah, and it's supposed to rain into this weekend. It didn't stop after the twenty second. So oh, those two feet. Of rain oh yeah, major major flooding going on there. They're they're like maxing out their flood precaution stuff right now. In the USA, on the twenty second, we had a heavy thunderstorm hit northern Texas. There was hail up in Wise County that was the size of tennis balls. So you know that's breaking your windows, That's that's doing some damage right there. Japan, in northern Japan, it got hit with a blizzard. Supporo got twelve inches of snow and they had one dead and a highway pile up. But Sapporo, I mean the beer and everything. In the UK, they're still doing cleanup from Dudley. Those three storms that came through. They had to evacuate some of Manchester. In Brazil, there was intense flooding there again on the twenty second and Oblivia. These landslides and mud mudflows just came down into this community and killed four people. Twenty people were missing in that event. Man The mud and everything just came in and destroyed this town. Sarah, I just googled rain an acre. The volume of one inch of rainfalling on one acre of ground equals twenty seven thousand gallons. It weighs one hundred and thirteen tons for one acre. That for one one inch one acre, and you said it was ninety nineteen inches. Holy crow, right, these are unprecedented events. It's like, I know, I don't like you look at it and talk about it so much that you're like, yeah, yeah, more flooding here, more flooding there. This is like seriously out. Yeah. And the areas that are getting it are just getting like severe flooding, and then other areas are just completely droughted out. It's it's definitely the changing Earth at work, Like yeah, okay. So on the twenty third, there was four hundred and two earthquakes, biggest of which was a five point five in Columbia eighty four mile an hour winds came out of a cyclone Eminati. It hit Madagascar. That's the fourth major storm cyclone to hit them in one month, and the last one that came through killed one hundred and twenty four people just three weeks ago. So they've been getting battered down there, to say the least. In Spain, they had a major wildfire in their national park, cap de Cruz National Park one thousand and seventy two acres burned, and then there was more flooding in Indonesia because they had two of their major rivers overflow that left one person dead, destroyed just tons of homes in two different areas of the country. There on the twenty fourth, there was four hundred and nineteen earthquakes two point zero or bigger, biggest of which was a five point five in South Sandwich Island's Chin, Australia on the twenty fourth, So that was the twenty second we were talking about the nineteen inches come down, right, So by the twenty fourth they had twenty seven inches in the past three days and it still wasn't showing signs of slowly. There was three people killed already. And this is is just south of where Ellen's at. In Japan, there was ninety seven earthquakes in four hours at Mount on Take Volcano. Guatemala, Vulcan de Fueg had a minor explosion, and in Argentina, violent storms hit, heavy rain, flooding. There was hospitals that were flooded and large hail came down, breaking all kinds of glass. I would say it was like in between golf ball and tennis ball size. So like I say, hale is kind of. It was big this week. On the twenty fifth, there was four hundred and seventy earthquakes. Biggest which was a five point eight end San Islands. Yeah, they got it for two days in a row. The biggest actually of the day though, was in Indonesia. There was a six point two earthquake that was seven miles deep. It left seven dead and injured eighty five people in that event. Indonesia there that is the natural disaster capital of the world. I think Malaysia got unusual February flooding after heavy rain, so they don't usually have this kind of weather happening in February, but who does. We just had a big freezing storm, so not normal. In Turkey there was severe storm Hattet hattaigh Hat taih h a t a y major damage of like just rip these roofs square off it. It was pretty crazy to watch, pretty severe winds. And then in the USA on the twenty fifth, the northeastern end of the United States had severe winter storm that came in caused dangerous travel conditions. There was nine states affected and the snow was anywhere from two point five inches in New Jersey to seven point five inches of main. So just an interesting little side note. In Brazil, they have this coastline that's just north of Rio desian Naro and it's among four percent of the world's coastlines that shrink by sixteen feet or more each year. Sixteen feet. It's crazy. The erosion has destroyed more than five hundred buildings in that community and it's flood of fourteen blocks. And they say, like it's partially due of course, the earth is changing. The earth is gonna change, right, but they say it's partially due to like changing river patterns and stuff like that for mining and that kind of activity that it's caused the erosion to happen even faster out this beach. So it's like the beach is just moving into suburbia. It's kind of interesting, all right. Overall, earthquake activity is down in the past twenty four hours, the past week. The past twenty four hours, we just saw one hundred and twenty four of them, the biggest of which was a five point one in Russia. And it's also down the past week with only nine hundred and twenty two, so it's bringing our monthly numbers down as well. The volcanoes are still sitting at twenty five actively erupting volcanoes for the fifth week in a row. I was like, did they just fall asleep and they're not. They're not. Actually, yeah, exactly. Minor activity is down one to sixteen volcanoes showing minor activity, but unrest rows to forty one volcanoes showing unrest. And that's one of the biggest numbers that I've ever seen watching the the volcanic activity. So that was pretty interesting as well to see that number pop back up. But yeah, so we got some crazy stuff going on. Does not over yet. Winter has not let gone yet. I also found it amusing that we did last week's show on spring cleaning and then like two days later we got hit with a huge winter storm. I was like, Karma, dang it. Do you guys have an ice storm this year in Texas? We did, We just had one. Yeah, we just didn't get like the amount of snow that we did before. But it got cold and it was cold for you know, three or four a's where it was frozen on the trees and everything was just froze up. I was at it with the chicken water again, trying to figure out, you know, how to get it thawed so I could get them fresh water and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I had my share of snow this year. So yeah. Yeah. South Carolina doesn't usually get a bunch too, right, so that's kind of unusual. Yeah, up in the northern part of the state and up in North Carolina, the western part of the state, they got tons of snow. Got well for them, I mean it's all relevant, but for them they got lost snow. California actually got a little bit more rain, but they got that one system that came through and like that's it. It doesn't really I don't know that it's going to help as much as they would have hoped. Yeah, so love to see. But I mean they got a serious amount of snow when they got snow this year, but that's really like all they got. Oh I saw another thing, So where is that That same calculator for inch rain? Yeah, so inch rain on an acre is twenty seven and change, right, gallons twenty seven thousand. An inch of snow on an acre is is two thy seven. Hundred because it's fluffier, Yes, it's fluffy, less less gallons. Yeah, for an inch of snow versus an inchurin. Interesting it was interesting. Yeah, things I learned just listen to you talk. So yeah, so counting on the snow to bring. Your water is not as productive product of. His the rain, right, and sometimes when they get just too much rain, it just runs off anyway because the ground's not capable of holding it yet because it's so you know, drought written. It has to like come down gently, not just in a mad dash. That's really all they've gotten. So that's interesting. Across there. South Dakota and North Dakota did pretty good this year as far as their farming numbers. Louisiana did really good, so looks like they pulled it out towards the end of the year, which is good news for us going into you know, kind of this this time of unrest. But yeah, when you watch global demand spike for things, you're gonna watch at home demand spike too. So yep, yeah, I would definitely recommend making sure that you have enough can goods. If you can buy the long term food spy, you have have the money to do so right now. It might be a bad time, not be a bad time to invest. You know, you're getting money back at tax time or anything like that. If you've got any kind of extras. Buy the food now, because anything you can store away now, you'll thank yourself for later. I can pretty much guarantee that from looking at the weather patterns for the year, the crop outputs, the supply chain bs and now. This crazy people. Crazy people to be happening, right right, Yeah, I just don't know where they think they're going to go with everything. So it's interesting. But I have been reminding people that if you want to clean house, usually you have to start at home first, So be careful to wag your finger at other people when you know the the home is kind of stinky, you know. As far as the leadership of our country girls. So that's really all I want to say about that, because that's a whole other show. And one we enjoy having a podcast. Yeah, we enjoy having the podcast. Let's just talk over the phone exactly exactly. So, but yep, it always helps to start at home first. Alrighty, Well that's what I got for today. I was I was happy to do this show actually because not only did it get me back to read Little House in the Big Woods, which is an epic learning experience of a book, but it really encouraged me to do the numbers on what our yields look like for last year. I hadn't done that yet. That was good. It was good to see, and it was also frustrating because you've seen how much the prices have gone up, but the yields are still there. So it kind of begs to question why. You know, Yeah, I've had that a couple I've had that conversation a couple of times locally. Just yeah, and it has to be you know. Go buy it. Go go out and buy like a two by four. Yeah, and look at the price of that stupid stick of wood and tell the like two years ago why it was like a fraction, like a fraction. Yes, go buy, go build your chicken coop now, and just you're gonna have to take out a mortgage. Yeah, And you know it's not the people who are cut in the wood that are getting paid that, you know, So where is it? Not the landowner that's selling it? Exactly? Where is the problem. And that's why I kind of made the comment about you got to start at home and clean your own house before you can waggle your finger at your neighbor. You know already, guys, I want to leave on a positive note that things are gonna be great because we're all gonna pray really hard and and carry lots of positive energy into our world. We gotta be the little lights at the end of the tunnel who keep your head straight, stay focused, stay calm. Thank big, Go out of my front porch and waggle my finger. Yeah you're going to waggle, darn you. Get off my lawn cage. Get out here, all right. On that note, we're out of here. If you want to check out more about me and Chin and our awesome show, head on over to changing her Series dot com. You'll find everything about the books, the audio drama of the podcast, social media links, everything you want and more is there. It's all ready for you, so go check it out Changing her Series dot com and until next time, remember dream, Survive, Thrive,