Tag: Grow Your Own

Home Growing is essential to achieving Food Security and the aim of the UK becoming Self-Sufficient in Food Production | The Grassroots Manifesto

Young children are now suffering health problems that just decades ago were likely only to be experienced by a much older and very unlucky few. Obesity not only affects a significant part of the population, but it is also being championed as if it is normal, and we are vilified for daring to speak openly about such a point of view.

Like the rise in so many different health related conditions that are seriously compromising far too many people’s quality of life, the biggest proportion of all of them would be no more than an afterthought, if we were to bring back healthy eating and balanced diets in the form of basic and essential foods.

Sadly, the belief that cheap, sweet, salty, easy to buy, quick to eat ‘food’ is healthy for us is a well-crafted and massively convincing lie. We have had this nonsense repackaged by advertisers and the media in the same way that we are being told that if everyone were to consume healthy, basic and unprocessed foods, it would be more expensive than it is for us to eat it as the apparently luxury we have been conditioned to believe that it has now become.

We have been encouraged to eat the way that we eat and to feed our families the way that we do, not because it will benefit any of us. But because the foods, drinks and treats that we have become addicted to make somebody somewhere VERY rich.

What many of us don’t even realise that all of these ‘wonderful’ foods – and even the takeaways that have become a staple diet for some rather than just being an irregular treat – will have travelled many miles and been constructed artificially using ingredients that themselves may have been made in many different factories. They have traveled across continents before the end product you recognise has even been made.

It’s all part of the con called globalisation. A lie we are told we must celebrate and embrace as the legitimised truth. Because globalisation is all about international trade – which is how wars are stopped and how good relationships between different countries are made.

What the Establishment salesmen never talked about, and their pet media ignored, was the reality that jobs and communities have been lost, as well as the livelihoods that went with them.

Stupidly, we never really questioned the whole process because we were taught to become obsessed with speed of delivery, availability and what we still believe to be the lowest cost.

The reprogramming of our buying habits has contributed to or given the excuse necessary for almost all hope of this Country being Self-Sustainable in Essential Food Production being destroyed.

Meanwhile, the equally destructive EU policies that were supposed to be good for our economy within a so-called single market, also represented an advanced politicised form of the globalisation franchise. EU doctrine on food production has progressively made UK Farms all but impossible to run.

Globalisation was good whilst it lasted. Or rather, that’s what the majority of us are still expected to believe.

However, because of many different reasons that only include government responses to Covid, to Brexit, The War in Ukraine and the idiocy of Free Markets and Neoliberalism in the way that everything has been run, the supply chains that crisscross the world are now collapsing.

Forced change and possible shortages too, are only a matter of time.

As part of the so-called Great Reset or Agenda 2030, the solution to this coming problem that the elites created themselves isn’t to go back to basics and focus on localised supply chains. Indeed, whilst they actively ignore the crisis within UK Farming and in other countries where their counterparts are actively taking steps to see highly productive farms destroyed, they are instead telling us that we will all be happy eating ground up crickets and foods that have been made in a lab.

There is no good or humane reason for People to be treated this way, other than it being part of a strategy or plan to ensure that those who hold power over us now, remove our ability to support ourselves in the future.

As the crisis the Elites have created takes deeper and deeper hold, the agenda they are pursuing will ensure they will have and be able to maintain their grip on power, and we will all be dependent to a dystopian system where these few have absolute control. Unless we use the opportunity, their stupidity and greed has created, to take our own power back.

As part of The Grassroots Revolution and the rejection of everything held dear by the leaders of this dying ‘old world’, we MUST embrace a return to the most localised forms of food production and supply chains.

Food production must focus on healthy, basic and essential food items, using the absolute minimum of additional ingredients, so that our basic diets are home-produced, and this system of production is prioritised over everything else, so that the food we need, will always be available to us all in the cheapest and most accessible form.

Regrettably, because UK Agriculture has been deliberately pointed in the wrong direction for a very long time, younger generations of farmers have no working experience of anything like a truly localised food growing-to-production-to-retail system in anything like the way it historically was and will be needed now.

This means that the process of change will take time and that for reasons outside of our control, certain foods may become short.

It is therefore essential that everyone who is able use gardens, allotments, window boxes and whatever form of growing space available to ‘grow your own’. So that there will be sufficient basic and healthy essential foods available, whilst we all get behind our Farmers and develop the resources and cooperatives that will be necessary in every area.

We must do this to ensure that we have Food Security for the UK and achieve the National Self Sufficiency that we would have long since had, if politicians had been doing their job, and the greed and self-interest of the few, hadn’t been allowed to flourish and lead instead.

I have covered the subject of Basic Foods and Home Growing in detail within Levelling Level, the first book in the series leading to The Grassroots Manifesto. Here are some of the relevant links:

Surviving The Great Reset: Grow Your Own Food – AND GET STARTED NOW!

Grow Your Own: Take control now. Whilst you can. Whilst resources are available.

Surviving The Great Reset: Basic Foods that YOU CAN GROW

Surviving The Great Reset | Grow your own | Use the wisdom of others

Surviving The Great Reset | Grow Your Own | Using Hydroponics

Levelling Level discusses the wider issues that we now face, how we got here and begins focusing on many of the things that we and our communities have the power to do.

All pages are free to read as blogs with an index to the right of the screen (Best viewed on PC) HERE. The whole book is also available on Amazon for Kindle HERE.

In Part 3 of The Grassroots Manifesto, a series of Public Policies have been suggested for a new people-centric age. This is one of a number that relate specifically to this issue:

The Grassroots Manifesto | Policy 4 | Food Production, Security & Supply | Home Growing | xviii

Self-sufficiency of people is essential to achieving the aim of the UK becoming self-sufficient in food production and providing the Community with Food Security.

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Surviving The Great Reset | Grow Your Own | Using Hydroponics

If the space you have available is limited, you don’t have a garden, window ledge or anywhere else you would immediately recognise as somewhere you could repurpose to grow your own food, Hydroponics could be the answer for you.

Hydroponics is basically growing things in a tray, trough or tank with flowing water, that contains all the nutrients that the plants, fruits and vegetables in them need to grow.

It is an amazingly efficient way to grow food, because of the limited space, energy and input that is required – once you are set up. And the great thing is that you can set up a Hydroponics system anywhere – often with only a very minimal requirement for energy or light.

In some ways Hydroponics is the most practical and most efficient way to grow your own food. Its just that the food that is actually the easiest to produce will not look as appetising as we might like it to be.

The important thing is that you and the people you care for can eat and get nutrition for however long the system and food supply chain change and related shortages might be.

When it comes down to the absolute nuts and bolts of not going hungry for any period of time, having a Hydroponics system working away in your home, might by the best bet you can make on yourself right now, today.

Please do a web search on ‘Hydroponics’, ‘Buy Hydroponics’, ‘Foods you can grow with Hydroponics’. There is plenty to see, read, learn from and buy online.

Once again, the time to be setting yourself up with a Hydroponics system at home is right now. When food is short, it might be short because the system of distribution has stopped or broken down. As most of the equipment you will need will be online, it won’t be any good to you, if you cant get to it or it can’t get to you!

Surviving The Great Reset | Grow Your Own | Using Window Boxes

If you don’t have a garden, you almost certainly have windows. These are great places to grow things you can eat – and they can behave a little like greenhouses do too.

Depending on the size of your window ledge, you may be able to place some trays or troughs along the ledge, or perhaps affix some brackets with a trough or trays just underneath – as long as there is nothing like a radiator or similar in the way.

Do a search on ‘window gardens’, ‘what to grow in a window garden’, ‘setting up a window garden’, to get some ideas of what will be involved.

If your window box is outdoors, you may need to make sure that it is secured against wind or bad weather.

If the only windows you have available look abut a public pathway or road, growing food outside may not be the best plan for you – as your produce could disappear overnight when others who might be desperate can see – and easily reach – what you have grown.

Surviving The Great Reset | Grow Your Own | Using Greenhouses & Glass Boxes

The easiest way to improve growth of vegetable that grow above the surface of the soil, is to grow them under cover of plastic sheets or glass.

If you have these available now, that’s great. If not, do have a look online, or go and visit one of the big DIY chains to get some ideas, and then go back online and find the most cost-effective versions of whatever you have been looking at.

Bigger greenhouses can be heated, and if you can heat a greenhouse cost-effectively when energy to do so is available, it will mean that you can grow some produce that would normally be seasonal, year-round.

However, the best use for glass or plastic coverings is to secure and keep your food safe from animals, insects or other pests – when you are growing outside.

Again, please do a web search using terms like ‘what to grow under glass’, ‘how to grow under glass’, or ’10 best foods to grow in my greenhouse’.

Surviving The Great Reset | Grow your own | Use the wisdom of others

It has never been easier to get help and advice on how to grow things. Gardeners and the people who already grow their own vegetable and fruits for themselves or on a small commercial scale are often very happy to share their experience and provide tips that will prove very helpful when it comes to growing your own.

There are plenty of blogs, websites and low-cost downloadable books and pamphlets available and you will find these literally by starting with a search of ‘grow your own’.

If you are a fellow blogger and author writing about growing your own food, nutrition from basic foods, growing methods or even if you are selling good, easy to set up and use equipment without looking to cash in, NOT for the apocalypse – but as a long-term thing, I would love to hear from you and share some links. We really will help ourselves if we work together to help all!

e-mail levellinglevel@gmail.com or let’s start a conversation on @levellinglevel on Twitter or Facebook.

Surviving The Great Reset: Basic Foods that YOU CAN GROW

You may be surprised to learn that the number and range of different foods that you can grow at home is surprisingly large.

However, whilst there be the temptation to run off and start growing mangos or something that tastes sugary and nice once its picked, a lot of the options that are available wont be practical either because of the time they take to grown, lack of space or the restrictions placed on you by the environment that is available to you.

The next and possibly the most challenging part of this big step towards what might feel like a very new way of living will once again to focus only on what you need and not what you want.

The aim above anything else is nutrition, so that even if you cannot reach the intake of the daily number of calories that would be recommended specifically for you, what you do have available to eat will always be good for you.

These are the kinds of vegetables that you can grow from not already doing anything – depending on what resources you have available or are able to secure:

  • Potatoes
  • Carrots
  • Lettuce
  • Cauliflower
  • Cucumber
  • Marrow
  • Turnips
  • Swedes
  • Parsnips
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweetcorn
  • Onions

The chances are that there are more options and different varieties of the options that are available to you, that will become clearer to you as you determine what your options really are, and what will work best for you in your situation.

My suggestion would be that you identify which growing systems are available to you, and that you then research which foods it will be easiest to grow in the shortest times possible.

You may also want to consider things like what resources you will need to keep providing on an ongoing basis, so that once you have harvested each crop, you will have all that you will require so that you can grow and harvest the next.

Like everything in life, growing food is a learning curve. Every time you go through the cycle you know more than you did before, and when growing food makes a real difference, it will help you to have already learned the lessons about what kind of growing works best for you and to have knowledge of all that is involved.

The best way to be able to Prepare, Produce and make Provision is to start growing your own right now!

Grow Your Own: Take control now. Whilst you can. Whilst resources are available.

Anything that can happen probably will in some way. So once the idea of something happening has entered your awareness, its probably a good idea to make provision for its eventuality. So that you at least have a contingency plan in place.

However, there is a clear caveat to this. That is that at the same time, you DON’T let the possibility of something happening take over your life. Especially not in the way that you have probably imagined it could happen!

We don’t know what every part of The Great Reset will look or feel like for any of us. But what we do know is that food supply is now at a very high level of risk.

The time to offset the risk of food scarcity and food shortages for ourselves and the people we care about is right now. NOT when the food supply has already stopped.

Your immediate reaction might be that you don’t have any idea how to grow food. It could well be that you don’t have the space. It’s very likely to be ‘I don’t have a garden!’.

None of these issues are likely to stop you from ‘growing your own’, if you really want to take the proactive steps that are available for you to make provision and start preparing for shortages right now.

FOOD AVAILABILITY WILL NOT BE ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD!

Surviving The Great Reset: Grow Your Own Food – AND GET STARTED NOW!

Of all the things you can do to help and provide for yourself and those around you during The Great Reset and then beyond it too, the most helpful will be growing your own food.

Even during the acute stages of the Great Reset, the chances that there are absolutely no basic foods available for any prolonged period of time should be thankfully very small.

But that doesn’t mean the choice of what could be available over weeks or possibly months, isn’t very limited. Or, of that which is available, specific foods are not available either as regularly or in the quantities that we have become used to, or that we would like them to be.

As you read this today, many and indeed most of the ‘fancy’ or rather the highly processed foods that you are probably telling yourself that you need will still be available. Either on supermarket shelves, in chillers or in a frozen form.

But that availability is already changing.

Items you normally buy each week might already be missing one week and then back the next.

The number of items you are experiencing this temporary shortage of is probably already increasing.

The next thing that could happen is you could go online or walk into your local supermarket and find that the deliveries of all the things that you consider to be important hasn’t come in for your next shop. Then it doesn’t appear for weeks.

This could happen at any time. And it will.

AND IT IS NOT JUST A MATTER OF WHAT YOU CAN OR WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD.

Surviving The Great Reset: Why we need to be able to Prepare, Produce & Make Provision

Because of the way that the system around us has been developed to keep increasing and funnelling profits at the few, more and more of the lessons for life and good living – which are more often than not metaphorical – are being hidden from view.

Not only that. Very regrettably, because this whole system only works or benefits financial interests by becoming increasingly big, it means that the supply chains that get food to us – like the example of the production of the dairy products from cows – get more and more spread out over our Country, or even across borders too.

Supply chains involve more and more processing that involves more and more people and interests that we do not experience or see. And all the time this form of centralisation has been happening, the very stable, short supply chains that would mean all of the food that is grown or produced for us locally and where we can be in touch with the whole process, has all but been completely wiped out.

We are now in danger because we have become over reliant on a system that is already beginning to crash. And it’s a system that has been rebuilt so that it supports the way that big business works.

Why do we need to survive The Great Reset?

The uncomfortable bit about change of the scale that ‘The Great Reset’ will be, is that all of the things we take for granted are going to stop, at some point, at least temporarily.

Locking yourself away in a cold-war era bunker with a year’s supply of everything, your own power and water because you can financially afford to do so, might be taking it a bit far.

The best way to get your head around this is to think about or list ALL the things that you actually need to be able to bring into your home, or that automatically come into your home each and every day, and then consider how you would feel if any one or all of them were to suddenly stop.

Let’s just have a quick run through of the things we need, that come or are brought into our homes in this way, each and every day. Let’s start with the immediate essentials:

  • Food (BIG HINT – this isn’t takeaways, or anything pre-prepared by anyone else. It’s the basics – it’s what we actually need)
  • Water

Then the things that we might use each day, that are important, but would not always be essential during a crisis:

  • Electricity
  • Gas
  • Solid Fuel (Wood, Coal etc)
  • Accommodation
  • Toiletries
  • Transport to obtain or access essentials

Then the things that help to make life easier, or improve quality of life:

  • Phones & PCs
  • Internet & Broadband
  • Transport for other purposes
  • Essential Clothing items

The things we don’t actually need, but want:

Okay, so if you’ve read this far, you probably already know and understand that its never a good idea to criticise taste or appearance.

The point is that beyond all of the above – which really is a sliding scale down from absolute essentials to stuff that should provide us with a happy life, to the rest that makes it a good life, there is a colossal section filled up by things can be very different, but which each and every one of us like or want.

NONE OF US need these things. Things like takeaways, £subscription TV streaming services, trips to coffee shops, the latest phone are all things that we want. They are things WE do not need.

You will know what yours are, once you look beyond the lists above.

Once you recognise what you really need if everything stops, then you can begin to plan ahead and insulate yourself against the risks from what lies ahead.

At best, by doing so, you will make a very difficult time much easier to bear and potentially even help your community or help others.

At worst, you may be able to stay away from social problems and civil unrest, if the worst should happen and frustration boils over into anger when no help comes, and others haven’t done anything to prepare.

Grow your own

Whilst we will discuss the need for UK self-sufficiency elsewhere, circumstances that will demand that we are limited only to what is available and what we genuinely need, will encourage those of us with access to gardens, allotments and even window boxes, to start growing our own food.

Real localism is set to take off (and return) in a way that we have never known before, and whilst the way that commercial farming will have to be refocused to provide foods in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible ‘from farm to fork’, the new localised marketplace and economy will provide opportunities for everyone to sell or exchange foods and goods that they have grown and produced.