ल lady The End Good evening once again, ladies and gentlemen. You're listening to the Hour of the Time, and I'm William Cooper. Today we continue with our lecture series from our conference in 1998 at the Thunder Horse Ranch. Today's lecture will begin a series of broadcasts that we are going to do in a lecture presented by Mr. Jay Reynolds, a farmer from Arkansas who told us about crops and how to raise them and fertilize them and store them and all of this kind of stuff. If you're interested in gardening or if you're a farmer or if you're interested in farming or gardening or raising any kind of plants, especially those used to sustain a family through nutritional or medicinal means, then you need to listen to this and you need to take notes. And if you just want to hear some information from a real good man and a personal friend of mine who has been a member of our organization for many years, he is not just a farmer. He's one of the most intelligent men that I know. He does a tremendous amount of research and helps us put together the documented and sourced information that we use in Veritas on the hour of the time and then on our webpage on the internet and many other places and through many other mediums. So without any further ado, here is Mr. Jay Reynolds and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Well, as I'm talking today, if you've got any questions, don't have a date. That helps me a little bit of a time. I've always had the idea of being self-sufficient. I really liked it. And I think Michael covered that too about how that's part of freedom is being able to take care of yourself. So as a child, my grandfather grew up really needing gardens. He was in Arkansas, Arkansas. And he was composting 50 years ago. A lot of people just kind of started it or came back because originally, when there weren't any chemicals or fertilizers, people had draft animals and barnyards and they would pile stuff up when it got too big and it turned into compost. And they had to put it somewhere. So I'm sure they figured out it made the garden grow. But he was ahead of his time on that, I think. He did a lot of things that people consider new nowadays. He used mulch. He'd make compost. He had cold frames. And I know he was doing that 50 years ago because I could see how he had set it up. He died in the mid-70s, but I inherited some of his books. I've got some of his original books where he wrote things down. Of course, you can tell the book's pretty old because they talk about DVD and all that stuff too. But, um, so when I was, when I started doing a little extra research for the conference, I started thinking about, well, there's a lot of different scenarios I could talk about. You could say, well, how do you grow a garden under enemy fire? But what I'll talk about today is the scenario where it's possible to be on your own. and grow what you want. That, we don't know how that hot body would work out, but it's basically self-sufficient gardening or farming. The idea of farming is more large scale than what I'm going to talk about. But you could, you could expand the ideas as big as you want it. Just generally farming is more of a large scale idea. But, um, what I thought about is what, what we need every day and what we need long-term to eat. And the paper I pass you out first is, is probably the basics that some of the things you really can't do without any one food or else you're going to starve. I did look up starvation. I did look up starvation and what is starvation and what is malnourishment and what is undernourishment. And the, um, the relief agencies has information on it. And basically what it is, um, you may probably know, have an idea about this, which is, your carbohydrates are what give you energy every day. Your proteins are what build tissue and body, muscle. And fats, they, they contain some of the carbohydrates too. In fact, our Western diet is high in fats. Up to 40% of some people's carbohydrates come from fats. And some from sugar too. But, um, in starvation, generally, you will have a low input of all things. If you don't, if you have a low input on just one thing, you can still starve. Even if you have, for instance, if you have lots of carbohydrates and very little protein, you'll have a quashore, they call it. The belly will get big. You've probably seen this, especially in the show. And if you, um, don't have enough carbohydrates, you'll not have energy. What will happen, first of all, is your body will work on its reserves of fat. And for some of us, that's probably not a bad idea. But, over the long term, if, when that fat's exhausted, the body will work on muscle. And you'll lose muscles and become very weak. And at the very terminal end of starvation, the last reserves that the body has will be the bone marrow. And you may live, live, laying down. And that will be the last reserves. There's another component, though, in starvation. It makes you much more susceptible to disease and sickness. So, um, what I did, I went to some references and looked up the highest sources of protein, carbohydrates, and fats that we could grow here in the U.S. Of course, it depends on your climate. It depends on your location. Somebody in Florida could grow things that someone in Maine couldn't grow. There's other techniques to grow things out of balance season or out of climate. But, the basic ones I put are something we almost all know about. Does everybody know what cow peas are? That's, black-eyed peas is one example. I think we all know the rest of them know. And, if you look at, um, your protein sources, they usually will come from the seed of a plant. That's, they're usually the highest in protein. And that's because that's the, um, food reserve for the, for the plant to starve again. And, so, I looked at all the beans, which is one source of those, and the common grains that are easy to grow. There's other grains, but, um, they have some problems. Um, for instance, you can grow oats, but if you've ever fed horses oats, you'll see that that's a whole grain with a hard husk on the outside of it. And, it's very hard to mill on a small scale without special equipment. You can grow oats real easy, though. And, if you're going to feed animals, that might be a good choice. But, I've found that, I've found so far that wheat and corn are the easiest to handle. Corn is by far the easiest. You can just wring those off with your hands or some little equipment. Wheat is a little harder. But, if you look at it, um, I've got cornmeal and wheat here. The, um, wheat is much higher in proteins. And, let's see, your, um, carbohydrates are pretty comparable. Fats are pretty comparable. But, the protein is much higher in wheat. So, if you can grow wheat, and most places can grow wheat, that's probably one of your best choices. The store is real good. And, we're all used to eating bread. And, other things. So, what I'm doing here is giving you choices. And, giving you, uh, an idea of what's available. What, you have to make your own choices. For me, cow peas, I live in Arkansas in the south. Cow peas are a really good choice. They grow quick. They, um, cow peas are probably a 60 to 70 day crop. Whereas, wheat is in the ground for a long time. The other beans are probably pretty close to cow peas. But, I can get two crops, or maybe three of those in a year. In a season. Um, one thing, as far as proteins go. There are different, there's different elements that are in within the family of what we call the proteins. And, it's best to get a whole range of these. You need all of them, really. So, what you'll find in one bean, or one grain, won't necessarily be in another one. So, um, as far as protein goes, it's best to make things. That's why, in the southwest, you'll see corn and beans together. Um, in the orient, you'll see soybeans and rice together. Or, or fish and rice. Or, a combination. That's known as complementary proteins. And, there's some good books on that. Um, but that's what you need to look for. The combination. Any one of these would probably not make it, you wouldn't make it good. I mean, just one of them. And, it's always good anyway, if you're, if you're, um, growing things to not rely on just one crop. Because, you might have one insect that wipes one out. You can always do another one. And, along in here, I'll put potatoes and sweet potatoes. As you look, they, they have low proteins. And, they're not as high quality as others. But, they're a good source of carbohydrates. And, they also happen to have some vitamins. I've got another page coming up. It will show you that they contain some vitamins that grains and beans don't contain. So, they're kind of dual purpose. You get both vitamins. Some significant ones. And, also, also your, um, protein carbohydrates, too. If I was going to choose beans, though, I would take a close look at soybeans in the upper right. Because, um, if you look, they beat all the others in protein. And, if you look down at the bottom, I have on here that the, um, they contain all three. But, then, they also contain a complete protein. Which, you can't get with any of the other crops on here. So, soybeans are pretty neat. Now, soybeans come in different varieties. There's some that are grown especially for oil. There's some that are grown especially for soy milk. And, there's some that are, those are generally not that good to eat by themselves. Just like you would kidney beans. So, if you're going to grow soybeans to eat for yourself. And, just foil and cook. You need to find what's called an edible soybean. And, they're not always easy to find. There's, you'll have to look in several seed catalogs. Some that I know of that you can find it in is the Vermont Bean Seed Company. And, they have almost more beans than any other company I've seen. And, they've got two. They've got a yellow and a black. I've never tried the black or the yellow. Do you have a phone number under it? No, I don't. But, they, they do have an 800 number. What state is it? Vermont. Vermont. Alright. Yeah. They're called Vermont Seed Company. But, um, I believe they've been bought out. Most of the smaller seed companies. Even the garden seed companies are being bought out. And, conglomerated. And, luckily, most of the grain, the dry type beans. Almost all of them are open pollinated. In other words, they're not hybrid. Your green beans, a lot of those are hybrid. But, your, your outer beans, almost every one of them are open pollinated or non-hybridled seeds. So, they say real good. Beans are on no brainer for saving seeds. We all know how to do that. That's part of the, part of the process. Are you going to cover getting and talk about the necessity of acquiring open pollinated seeds for all of the different vegetables and where to get them? Yeah, I've got a, I've got a whole page on that. Good. I'm only giving out a page at a time because that's less distracting. Yeah, I don't care. Uh-huh. It might be a no-brainer. I've never grown hard seeds. Okay, well, here's some advice. You grow them to their limit. They'll actually dry up. The whole plant will dry up. And you can, at that time, you can pull them up. One idea is to pull up a plant of, you get a 50-gallon barrel or a large trash can. A barrel works better. Take that whole plant in your hand and feed it on the inside of the barrel. And they'll just shatter and fall down in there. You don't want to leave them too long after they're dry, though, because, say, you've got a range. It would contend to mold the seeds. You want to kind of catch it just the right time when they mature. So they should be real hard. Oh, yeah. They'll be completely hard. Usually the plant will come to the end of its life cycle, and that would be it. Now, there's beans that are grown for green beans, and they're generally not good for seeds. So what you'll have to do is kind of look at the catalogs. They'll describe which are good for which use. Look at the length of time that it takes to bear. If you've got a long season, you can grow a long season. If you only have a short season, that's what you need to look for is a quick crop. If at the end of that you may still have some of the beans that don't come out of the pot, the next idea is to put them in a burlap bag or a flexible, large flexible bag and feed that, too. And that's a threshing process to get those beans out of there. It's kind of fun. Eventually you'll end up with trash and stuff. You don't have to sift through it. You can use to thresh grains and beans. It's kind of a fun process. I think it's neat. But you can use other things, screens, different sieves. For instance, I've grown wheat and taken it all the way to bread. Not in a big plot. Probably about four times the size of this barn. Just enough to an experiment, really. And here's the way I do it. Your best high-potene wheat is winter wheat. The other wheats that are available would be spring wheat and summer wheat. They're more for your lighter baked goods like cake flour or... Well, that's one of the purposes. There's another one, durum wheat, which is for pasta making. You could probably make anything with any wheat, but some of them are a little more suited for one thing than the other. But the hard-bred winter wheat is probably the easiest one. And the neat thing about it is, you plant it in the fall or late summer, depending on your season. And it grows a short height, maybe four or five inches, maybe more. And then it grows dormant for the whole winter. And it'll sit there. You can even graze cattle on it to an extent during the winter. Not too much or else it'll be killed, but done. You can let that grow through the winter. Then the spring wheat will come back to life and start to grow. And that's what you see. If any of you drove out here, you probably saw wheat fields all over. And what I do for harvesting, in my area there's nobody growing wheat commercially. So there's no threshing collines. And we might not have that available anyway. So what you'll need to do is, when it dries, in order to tell when it's dry, the wheat will have, it will first enter the milk stage, which you can squeeze the grain and it'll be milky inside. Next, it'll get to the dough stage, which is where it's soft, but not milky anymore and not hard. The next stage is fully ripened. And that's something you'd have to just get a feel for. If you harvest it and it's not ready, you're not going to get the use out of it. It's just probably, if it was milk, it would probably just shrivel up and be worthless. If it's not dry enough and you sort it with too much moisture, it's probably no mold or rot. So, what you need to do is get a feel for it. If somebody grows grain around you, you've got it made. But for me, I have a weed eater. You probably all know what a weed eater is. And it has a metal blade rather than a string. And I'll go down through the field, cutting close to the ground, and cutting that down when it's to the right stage, dried up. And after that, I put it on a big floor, concrete floor, and tromped on it, beat on it with sticks. In the old days, they used to run the horse or cattle around on it to loosen the grain. Then from there, you have to remove the stalks, which is the long stalks. And what will be left will be a combination of wheat and chaff. And the chaff is the protection for the wheat kernels as they mature. And you'll take that. And for me, it was the easiest to use an electric fan to winnow it. And that's a procedure you might have seen on TV how the people in Afghanistan will toss it up in the wind. It's the same idea. The fan works great. It's really good. It's consistent. You can do it any time you want. But you can do it in the wind. And at that stage, you're blowing away the chaff. And the wheat is falling to the ground. It'll still be a little dirty. It'll be chaff. My land was sort of sandy, so there was still some sand in there. So the next stage was to use a chicken wire. You pour that on the chicken wire and get some more straw off. The next stage was a little finer wire to get a little more of this stuff out. The next stage was just as big as the grain. And that's fine, except that doesn't get the sand out. So the final sifter has to be something that the sand can pass through, but the grain can't, like a window screen. And that will get the sand out. It's important, because if you go eating that sand, it's hard on the teeth. So that's the way we did it. And, you know, I meant to bring a sample out to show you just what it looks like. It's not perfect. What I'll have to do is, at the last, I sit down and listen to my shortwave radio and pick out the little pieces of chaff that just didn't get out. And probably, before we make the bread, you'd probably put it out on the table and pick out any last little thing. So, it's not as precise. You'd really be lucky if you could have a combine in the area to do it for you. But you can grow wheat. I mean, anybody, I think you can grow wheat anywhere. So, of course, that's pretty self-explanatory. Peanuts. Peanuts. Anybody ever grown peanuts? You haven't? That's only one person. Grown peanuts. Are they hard to grow? No, they're not hard to grow. Certain soil. Yeah, you do. You don't necessarily have to have a certain soil, Bob. There's ways around soil. Now, a peanut is an unusual crop. Most people have no idea how it grows. It's a legume in the bean family. So, that's why it has a high protein here. It's V2. Now, I didn't really realize it. But Michael was saying he does, he's not very much in favor of peanuts. He thinks that a lot of people are allergic to it. But I know a lot of people eat peanuts. And I guess if you have the choice, it's better than nothing, right? So, for peanuts, you've all seen peanuts. They look like beans, and they are. But that bean doesn't grow up in the air. It grows on the ground. Peanuts, generally, you plant them. They'll grow up. And then they'll start to flower. And that's where it gets real interesting. The flower will grow along the stem like any other, like most plants. But then, after pollination, they will peg. And what you'll see is you'll see an extension of the flower move down pretty fast, too. And when it hits the ground, it will keep growing into the ground. And that's where the peanut is formed, on the ground. Not too deep. Maybe four inches at the most. I guess it depends on your soil. It's grown dead there? Yeah. Yes. They're grown on the ground. You said you didn't need a specific soil, David. I have to beg a difference on that. You certainly wouldn't want to grow peanuts in real place. Adobe? Well, there's a way around it, though. And because I do have part of my garden in a sandy soil and part in a clay soil, what I do is, when I plant my peanuts, I cover them with a mulch, which is sawdust. And that simulates a soft soil. It allows the peanuts to produce in the sawdust. As much as anything. And you can improve clay soil, too, though. So, that's another answer. But that will help anything that has trouble, either in seeding. For instance, in clay soil, it's difficult to get small seeds to come up. Sawdust is a choice. I sometimes plant right on top of the ground. And rather than cover with soil, I cover with sawdust. It allows the small seeds to push through real rooty. But you can't improve clay soil. You can improve clay soil. You can totally change the soil. In five years, when I started this garden, till now, the soil is probably three quarters away to Dental's Food Cake. Uh-huh. And sawdust we're using, you know, you're not talking about fresh sawdust, are you? No, you can use fresh sawdust. But I'm using sawdust, which is from an oak mill, generally oak, but a little pine. It is true that some sawdust, especially when it's green, what you've got is a pure carbon, high carbon material. And when you put carbon on soil or wherever you put carbon, it will tend to want to rot. And in that process, it takes energy to reduce carbon, to rot carbon. And the energy that will be used will be nitrogen from the soil. So if you have a very green sawdust that has this ready to start that process, and you put sawdust on the ground, you can't pull nitrogen from the soil for a while until that breaks down. It's worse if you incorporate, if you fill that sawdust in, it's worse. So the first year I tried that, I had a problem. My whole garden was yellow. And I had to add some fertilizer to it pretty quick or else we wouldn't have had anything. But it's a good source for mulch, sawdust is. It's fine, it's uniform. I'll be talking some more about mulch later, but if that kind of answers the question for now. So anyway, your peanuts, they're a fairly long crop. You have to figure at least 90 days to 100 days. I let my peanuts grow as long as I can until it frosts. It's probably the last thing that I pull out of the garden in the fall. How does that sound, Bol? I was going to Michigan, it takes a fairly long season. Yeah. Do you know, have you had anything about peanuts since you've grown before? Not necessarily much. They also make very good, but I don't know if it's good. Even the tops, probably, right? If you pull a whole plant, it's going to stay, and it's going to be a few nuts and all. Yeah. Well, I was talking about using oats for feed. I can buy wheat right now. So when I grew my wheat, I harvested enough to probably fill a five-gallon bucket and fresh it down that far. The rest of it, I baled up, just like you would bale up hay and use for rabbit feed. They loved the stalk and the top and all. It was a good food for them. By the way, if you want to know how to make your own hay bales, just fill a wooden box. Put your fan of wire or string down in the box and start stomping as hard as you can and get it in there and then wrap it up. It looks just like any other hay bale. You can do it without any equipment at all. Just a wooden crate. You put wheels on the back? No. You grab it in there? No, I just took it in the wheel. Forked it. Use a pitchfork and fork it in there. In a lightweight. I can carry it. I can carry it with one hand. The bale gives what? A hundred pounds or something? No, you pull it out. Just pull it out of the box. The bale gives about a hundred pounds. You can do it. I use small. I made it small. That's the neat thing. I have a small bar. I couldn't use big-sized bale. They probably wouldn't even fit it in the place that I had. So you can make your bale any size you want. If you're small and you can't handle a big bale, use a small one. We don't recommend it for you to do it. No. We'll vote on it. Let's see. Sweet potatoes. How many people don't eat sweet potatoes? I think that's it. You know. You know. You know. They are fantastic. Most people like to eat sweet potatoes. Of course, like when it comes to survival. Doesn't matter. When you get hungry, you'll eat it. But sweet potatoes are a powerhouse. And when I come to... You can look here. Carbohydrate is right up there with most beans. Not quite wheat. But the nice thing, they contain some good vitamins. And they're sweet. So they add something that not many other storable crops would add to the diet. There's not... Can you think of many other vegetables that are naturally sweet and store by themselves? Probably not. So... Now, sweet potatoes produce a lot in a small space. I don't have any figures with me on it. But they're right up there to the top as far as tons per space or pounds, whatever you've been growing. So sweet potatoes, I love them. Now, does anybody have an idea of how to grow a sweet potato? I know the vine. Right? It's a vine. And how do you get the vine? From the tail? Right? Then, if you have a good sweet potato and leave it there, it will eventually start to grow. You can help it out by heat and moisture. In fact, commercially, they'll take the sweet potatoes and put them in a warm soil and get them to sprout. You don't plant the potato. Sweet potato, you don't plant the potato itself. You plant just a piece of that vine. And believe me, it'll strike out there on its own so fast. Just two or three days and they seem to start to grow. So, one problem, though. Sweet potatoes that are commercially in the stores are usually treated with a sprout inhibitor. So, they're difficult to get started. And they're also pretty expensive to buy the plants by mail order. I've seen price 12 sprouts for $6. And that's outrageous to me. There's really a lot of profit there. So, if you can make an experiment. And I've never really tried to sprout the ones from the store. But I seldom ever see that sprout like you would a white potato. You can get that seed and sprout all the time. I've grown my own since. I bought sweet potatoes one time. Usually, by the end of the winter, we're down to the little bitty ones. But they sprout and grow. Well, even on the side of the carrot. And we eat the big ones first. There's a problem with that, though. If you're going to save your sweet potatoes, you have to be careful that you don't accidentally select for a small size. You could accidentally do that. If you only ate the big ones, and the only thing that was left over were the small ones, you might accidentally be selecting year after year for smaller and smaller sweet potatoes. You don't want to do that. So, really, the best idea is to select a mother sweet potato or a bunch of them for the next year's crop. That would probably be the best idea. How does that matter? Of course. The larger they are, the more food, right? So, how do you save the potatoes for the next year? Okay. I'll get to that later. For storing crops and preserving. I have a whole section on food preservation. Let's see. Anything else about sweet potatoes? In harvesting sweet potatoes, don't wash them. They keep better if you don't wash them off. In fact, most all vegetables that are of a fresh nature that you've got to store fresh, it's better not to wash them. They seem to have a natural skin or a natural something on the outside that helps to preserve them in nature. When you wash that, you're not only scratching it, sweet potatoes are very fragile out and coming out on the ground. You might have seen potatoes being dumped out in the dump truck. You can't do that with sweet potatoes. You really should take them in the field, put them into a box that they're going to be stored in. Handle them once and not anymore. Another thing about sweet potatoes, it's best to have a curing process which will partially dehydrate the skin and make it tougher. Because in long storage of sweet potatoes, the biggest problem is moisture loss. They'll lose the moisture and dry out. So what you want to do is toughen that skin. And there's different ways of doing it. What do you know about mold? Have you ever seen them cured or cured them yourself? Not so much. We did a lot of that when I was younger, so I forgot about that. Well, commercially, I've seen that some people will make them, cover them up. Generally, the conditions you want are about a week, one week at 80 degrees and keep them dark. And a fairly good moisture. You don't want to bake them and you don't want to completely dry them up, but you want to slowly toughen that skin is what you're trying to do. As far as storage, just to give you an idea, sweet potatoes need to be stored in a warmer place than regular white potatoes or Irish potatoes. Sweet potatoes are a long crop, too. They'll run for 100 days. It's about the quickest one I've found. Put the storage in the basement like you have or 70 degrees somewhere in there. That's not a good storage in the shower. I believe I have a storage temperature in later, but if I don't, I'll tell you what I do. I keep them on the shelf in the house. And I think that's probably just as best as you can get. In other words, they probably like about the same temperature you like. But not any hotter. Split peas are about the same as beans, corn. I don't know. Does anybody have no idea how I'm going to deal with corn? I don't know if I've never tried to say that. Well, it's real easy. You just let it dry completely, completely in the field. Now, notice that there's a difference between sweet corn and drying corn. Sweet corn is, if you've ever planted sweet corn, you'll see the seeds are all shriveled up, kind of flat, and not much to them. That's because they're a different type of corn. Your grain corns fall into two categories. There's a flint and a dent. And if I can remember, your L&M hot corn. They're all separate. They're different. And they're for different purposes. Your flint and dent are sort of interchangeable. They're both types of grinding corn. And, by the way, white corn does not contain vitamin A. Yellow corn. And according to, yellow corn does contain vitamin A. According to Michael Cottingham, red and blue corn, which is popular here in the southwest, they contain vitamin A, too, even though they're not yellow. Vitamin A is something that's yellow, or orange, or red. But blue corn has it, he says. Grinding corn, well, that's, you just have to get a grinder, or, well, we saw miles yesterday, you can rub the rocks together and something else. But you dry it, and then how do you get the kernels off the pot? Either, either completely by hand, you can, they become pretty free on the husk. And you just turn, turn it with your hands like this. Now, there's machines, nice to hold, that you can, cannot turn. And there's all kinds of grinders out there. I use, I use a grinder, it's called a Vitamix. Some of you might have one. It's, it's a super high-speed blender. But it requires electricity, so, you have to go on plan B if that fails. But the Vitamix is neat. You can grind any grain, spices, you can grind. You can make, make the bread right in it. If you want to, it'll need it for you if you're lazy. So I guess that's about all I have to say about this, unless y'all have some more questions. It's bound to be something. Uh-huh. Would you want to buy any seed in the area in which you live, so it could be more hard at your time? Or when, you know, you know, films, right? Yeah. The question is, do you need to have seeds that are suitable for your area? And that's for sure. If you look in your, in the better seed catalogs, they will tell you what area they're best for. Like that, especially corn, I notice. But the suggestion I have for you, as far as selection, is to talk to the old-timers, people that do it in your area. You're counting extension office, which is part, is between a state agriculture agency and usually connected to research at the state universities. Those people are trained to do this. They're paid to do this. And you might as well take, make something out of the taxes you've been paying. You remember the good retailers? Yeah, I sure do. I'll get to a food preservation, a whole section on that later on. But what you want to look for is, in choosing a variety, you want to have something, number one, that is high-yielding. Of course, the more you yield you've got for the amount of land and the effort, the better. You want it to be adapted to your area. Some have some plants, some varieties need less inputs. Like some will grow on less fertilizer, less water. Some are more susceptible to insects. Some are less. It's a pretty hard choice, but if you go by what the most successful people in your area are doing, you'll come out pretty good. The soil can be variable, though. If a fellow a mile away has a different soil than you, that might not be the right choice. So, the Extension Agency can also help you if they do free soil testing. And that's a must. You've got to test your soil. You really do. And so, make use of them for your advice. So, the old-timers, if you can make a friend of an experienced gardener, you're halfway there. Yes, Bill? I think the question is really important. You have to understand what the situation is going to be. If you're just planning for a situation where there's never going to be a breakdown of the societal infrastructure, or the ability to ship things from one point to another, all of that is really good. But, Jim, it's the fan, which I sincerely believe is going to happen. The seeds you bought yesterday were the last of these you're ever going to buy from anybody. So, you need to have open pollinated seeds, and you have to be able to not only know which seeds to plant when, and what soil, and which ones of those seeds are going to grow in your area. But, you have to know when those plants are grown, how to harvest a certain amount of those seeds, so that you can have a crop the following year. So, you know, all this stuff about seeds, if you don't have that foremost in your mind, you know, no matter what you know about all this other stuff, it's not going to make any difference. And Jay just covered, as he said, some open pollinated seeds later. But, I think that is the most important thing for you to learn, if you're going to be growing your own garden and your own crops, is how to get those seeds, which ones you get for your area, what's the plant, and how to harvest the seeds at the end of a growing season, so that you have a crop the following year. If you can't do that, you're going to be in October after that next crop. Well, along that line, Bill, I had never, until a couple of days ago, looked at one of these prepackaged, long-term storage seed cans. And I looked at it, and they had some pretty good choices that are probably generally good to grow anywhere. But, if you have a special condition, they might not be the thing to have. You might really be better off selecting your own seeds for your area. I was thinking, what would be an example? Alaska. Alaska. Those people have to have some special seeds. They have to be special. And, what I saw in there probably wouldn't work in Alaska. Kay got a letter from a friend the first week or so ago. But, Quint was trying to put in a legislation, sterilization of all seeds. The latest I heard on that line is a genetic process of manipulating the genes within a seed so that it will absolutely not germinate in a second generation. You cannot save that seed genetically. It's programmed to never be reproduced. Which, it's an idea to control that you have to go back to that seed company all the time. Yeah. It's not just the seed company. There's a whole lot of it. It's complicated. The other systems, there will not ever be a self-sufficient population. That has to be submitted to control whatever you're going to do. That's the real purpose. Yeah. For that time. That's why I am here. I will say one thing, though. If I was going to save seeds, or if I was a... I do save seeds. I usually, right now, I buy my seeds for the next year. I buy seeds ahead for the next year. Way before they put them away or whatever they might do. But, I would say that there's a lot to be said for hybrid seeds. There's no question that, in general, they yield higher. So, how about this idea? You always keep a year's supply of hybrid seeds for your first crop. You always keep another year's supply of your open pollinated seeds for that backup. If you feel you won't ever get a chance to buy seeds again, or they'll be limited. That way, you might be able to get more yield. Because their hybrids will yield more. Almost any case. If they're suited for the right area. There's been cases where they sent... They sent to some third world country. They sent a hybrid seed saying, look what it did here in the U.S. And it just didn't suit their area. So, it was really worse than what they had before. But, if you get the right hybrid... I'll try to... I'll think of an example. It's peppers. It's hard to beat some of the hybrid peppers. They're so much better than... In some cases, than the open pollinated peppers. That's just one example. They really do... They're made for that. They're made... The process of a hybrid... I'll go into that a little bit. A hybrid seed is... Taking one plant with one characteristic. And another plant with another characteristic. And when you cross-pollinate one to the other. That's taking pollen from one. Putting it into the female part of another. That's the process of cross-pollinating. When you mix those... Cross those two. You can get the best of both. That's the aim. Like if you have a plant that had a good quality of color. Or taste. And you have another one that had a very vigorous growth. Neither one of them had both qualities. When you combine the two... You get one with good taste. And good growth. So that's the purpose behind hybrid. And also for some reason... Almost invariably... When you cross different... Different strains or genes... You'll get an improvement. For some reason... That's almost always true. There's some purebred with... Even for animals... That's even true in a lot of cases. So... Why don't they produce baby animals? Okay. They will produce seeds. You most... I'll qualify that. There's different types of hybrids. And it gets pretty deep genetics. But... What will happen is... After... After the first generation... You don't know what you're going to get. Because... It becomes mixed up. You might get... A plant that's... As good. Or it might revert back... To one of the other parents. Or it might be worse than both parents. So... You're... You're throwing dice. For instance. And in some types of hybrids... And I won't get into it... Because it's very hard to explain. But in some types of hybrids... They're sterile anyway. So... Like a mule... For instance. Um... In some cases they are. Most of the time... They will... They will grow. And so... If you had no other choice... I would go ahead and go... I would even go ahead and save hybrid seeds. If I had no other choice. Because you... Most cases you'll get something. So... All is not lost. I guess God... God put something in those seeds... That makes them want to grow. They may not be exactly what you want. Who knows? There's a chance that you could... Get something better. Most of the... I would say most of them. A lot of the improvements... Were made by accident. The red delicious apple... Yeah. That was what they call a sport. Somebody planted the seeds... It grew up... And it was a red delicious apple. And... They take... A branch... They took a branch from that mama tree... And the guy got... Big bucks for that tree. And... Then... They grafted on it... And produced them by the millions. Have you ever heard of the... Art Institute? It's out of Maryland. A-R-K? Yeah. No, I haven't. I think it's got a web page. That's right up to see. And... She will... For 90 bucks... The lady that's in charge of it... Will... Uh... Print up... To your area... Tailored for your area... And your soil... And your climate... All the... Kind of seeds... That you should buy... That will do well... In your little town. And... She's got a book on... Self-sufficiency... And... She put me in touch with the... Seed Savers... Of America... Yeah. I haven't heard of them... And I've dealt with them before. And we're down to... 15% of our seeds... Are now... Full-composted... But 85%... Are hybrid. And it's... Diminishing rapidly... Around the world. Yeah. It's a neat... Neat idea. And what you say is true... That... Um... Now... They... They speak of... That we've lost a lot. And... In some cases we have. But... There's things that have been lost... That have been found again. One person saved that. And... From then on... It could be... Reproduced. Okay. Um... You know the... You know they advertise those... Um... You know... If you're going to be a bushy... That it can... Yeah. I saw one. Um... Somebody said... That there's a bunch of sprouts... That when you... Um... Put seeds... And beans and whatnot... You know... Light things... In a vacuum with nitrogen... It kills the seed... So... I tell you... I... I... I question that too. I really do. Um... I know that seed is alive. It is actually a living thing. It... It's slowly... Dying. But it's alive. It has to breathe. It may take all the air out. Or... It may take nitrogen in it. So... The seeds can't breathe. So then they... Yeah. That's... I... I don't know if I noticed. I don't think. Well... Jack has one. Does it say... Say the link... Does it actually state the link to the storage? It's supposed to be... The hand... It's supposed to be good for about 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. Uh... The pack must... Uh... See the pack... Uh... Individually... And then they're much... In the air. But they still count red. That's true. Yeah. I... I really can't answer that. And... And one other thing I noticed... Um... It... To me... It looked like... I didn't... Open the package. But just... From my experience of knowing how much seed... Um... It seemed skimpy. For the area that they said it would plant. And... I would... I would double it. If I would plan on planting a... If they said it was... We'd plant one size garden. I would probably have two cans. One hand. Because... Seeds will tend to... Lose their viability. And... They won't all germinate. But... Some will. So... You're safer... The better you... The more you have. How about... Are you going to give them the test... A little bit. Uh-huh. Well, I guess... Unless anybody has any more questions... We'll go on to the next. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Is it very... Taking them in a refrigerator... Or freeze or something... If you're going to hold it in a long time? Well... If you have a refrigeration... That's best. Keep them up. And I... I think I have something on that later... Seed saving... Written down for you. But... One thing that seeds do like... Is constant temperature. If... If you can't keep them... Frozen or... And freeze in wool garden generally... If you can't keep them... Frozen or... Are cool... At least keep them constant. That's better. The Sark Institute... Recommends that you... Save your seeds... And you dedicate them... You dry them... Get some of the... Descent that comes in... Revivement repair models... Or whatever. Put them in mason jars... And then put them in the freezer... And they'll stay good... For a Bible... For 20 years. Well... That's good. I do know that I save... Seeds in the freezer... And it doesn't hurt them at all. Do you like me now? They can be a big help... Especially for... An early start. And ladies and gentlemen... Unfortunately... That's... It. For tonight. So... Tune in tomorrow... And we will continue... With Jay Reynolds... Wonderful... Outstanding lecture... On gardening... And farming... And seeds... And storing... Your crops... And how to plant them... And take care of it... And make compost piles... And all that kind of stuff... He's just begun... You have no idea... The tremendous depth... Of this subject... That he's going to cover... So... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... He's got it... We'll miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... Don't miss it... A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while. But February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride. Something touched me deep inside today. The music died. I can't remember how that music died. So bye-bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. And then good old boys would drink and whiskey and rye. Singing, this will be the day that I die. This will be the day that I die. Did you write the book of love? Do you have faith in God's love? It's a Bible telling me song. How do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your most old soul? And can you teach me how to dance real slow? Well, I know that you're in love with him. Cause I saw you dancing in the tent. You both kicked off the shoes. Then I dig those really blues. You both kicked off the shoes. I was a lonely teenage, drunk and fuck. With a pink carnation and a pick-up truck. But I knew I was out of luck through the day. The music died. I started singing, bye-bye. That's American Pie. I drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. You've been listening to the Hour of the Time. I'm William Cooper. Ladies and gentlemen, for your information, 101.1 FM Eager will cease broadcasting one week from today. Intro to the Story to the