Ooo...a Fair!

My wife continues to amaze.  Instead of just using facebook to play free games and see which pretty girls from high school have gotten fat(not many, despite what Hollywood wants us to believe), she has actually used it for Social Networking purposes.  She's become quite adept at using the Group feature to find local groups and individuals with whom she shares interests, and actually interacts with in the Analog World, and not just the Digital World. 

One such group is the Tri-City Agrarians, which isn't so much a group, as a bulletin board where folks with Agrarian interests can post and share:  I've got chickens/eggs for sale, I've got too much rosemary/oregeno and would like to trade for asparagus.  My wife actually used to facebook to hookup with a local lady she knows in both her Homeschooling group AND the Agrarian group that has two peach trees in her yard, and is allergic to peaches, so now my wife has secured first dibs to harvest theses two peach trees when they are ready, which is pretty extremely kick ass, because my wife makes great peach butter and canned peaches. 

Yesterday evening, we attended a Preparedness Fair, which was hosted by the local Ward at the LDS Church right down the road. 

Not being a very religous person, I don't have much negative to say about the Mormon's, and quite a bit of positive.  Living in the North-West, you do have to deal with occasional young man doing their Missionary Work knocking on your door.  They are unfailingly polite, and respond well when you are polite too them.   If anything, their dedication to walk house to house and deal with some of the verbal abuse I'm sure they doo take is impressive.  As is their church-wide systematic approach to prepping. 

The 'Preparedness Fair' consisted of about 12 booths located in their gym/cafeteria room.  It was a very neat look 'inside the walls', and there was a fair amount of information to be gathered up.   One booth talked about 72-hour kits, another was for first aid kits, with both of them stressing how you could use stuff you already had the house for building those kits, like using an old gallon milk jug to hold 72-hours worth of food.   We already have nice back packs, but this might be a neat easy to carry supplement, if you have time to grab more than just the back pack.

Let's see...there was a gardening booth, and there was also a table full of food samples set up, where they were showing you different recipes you could make up with Mountain Home freeze dried/canned products.  The Extension Office from Washington State University was there, testing pressure gauges and seals on pressure canners, so my wife brought her gauge from the canner I bought her for Christmas to verify it was working good.  They also had one of the canning machines set up, demonstrating how easy it is to transfer your bags of beans and rice into nicely sealed #10 cans for LONG term storage.

Yes, there was a booth set up for 'Spiritual' Preparedness, and Yes, Rawles often talks in a similar vein on his site, so, you smile, you say thank you, and then you move on to the booth demonstrating different cook stoves/solar ovens you can make at home.  After the canning demonstration, I think this was the booth my wife and kids found the neatest.  Given all the sun we get here most years, solar ovens are very viable option.  I see us building and playing with one at some point this summer as form of Home Schooling Science Project. 

Best of all, I think my wife got a few names/numbers, which might lead to us getting access to the inner sanctum...the local cannery itself...need to keep our fingers crossed on that one.