Apocalyptic Apothecary

by Ron Foster

  Simply by using the power of the sun, solarization can rid the soil of most weed seeds, especially those from annual weeds (some perennial weeds, like Johnson grass, may have deep roots or rhizomes that the heat won’t reach).

  The intense heat also speeds up the decomposition of organic material in the soil, thereby releasing soluble nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and magnesium and making them more available to plants.

  Ann had worry for the soils earthworms and fertility but Zack advised he believed that earthworms simply burrow deeper into the soil to escape the heat, and come back to the surface when conditions are ideal. As for beneficial soil organisms, many of them are able to either survive solarization (such as mycorrhizal fungi, which are highly heat tolerant) or rapidly recolonize the soil, such as the bacteria and fungi that parasitize plant pathogens and stimulate plant growth.

  If all went well, they would have a good garden next spring, but this year the land wouldn’t support anyone or augment their diets. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The apothecary lab upstairs turned a small profit and the community service they were doing insured some food to be bartered.

  “Let me show you how this wonderful tool works. I used this on my garden boxes back home but I always had in back of my head it was coming along if I ever bugged out.

  The operator steps up on the crossbar, using full bodyweight to drive the tines into the ground, then steps backward while pulling backwards on the handles, causing the tines to lever upwards through the soil. This action leaves the soil layers intact, rather than inverting or mixing them, preserving the topsoil structure.

  A broad fork can be used in a garden, or practically for one to two acres

  How it Works

  step 1

  Stand the unit upright with digging tines facing down and the handles pointed up. (handles can easily be arranged in four different positions by simply removing the pin and rotating the handles in the base socket)

  step 2

  With your foot placed on the main frame .. push down to the depth you desire to loosen (some users have found in very hard soil presoaking the ground may be helpful)

  step 3

  After the digging tines are in the ground … pull back on the handles. The farther you pull back … the more the soil is loosened as the tines naturally rotate out and upwards.

  step 4

  Drag (don’t lift … saves your back) the digger back towards you a few inches … go back to step 1 and repeat. That’s it!

  The main purpose of using a broad fork or a U-Bar is to loosen the soil effectively without having to turn it upside down.

  It would be helpful in tasks such as removing weeds much more easily. Several layers make up soil, each of which has its own important purpose.

  Fungi, bacteria, and earthworms are all found beneath the surface of soil and actively create tunnels that also add structure to it.

  The structures that they create occur at various depths and depend on aeration conditions and moisture to survive.

  Other tools and methods that are used to loosen the soil, such as double-digging or using a rototiller, can disrupt the natural ecology that is created by the structures.

  Each time you till the soil, soil habitants are destroyed.

  These fungi, bacteria, and earthworms that live beneath the soil are a form of free labor for you and also play an important role by improving the biological fertility of the soil naturally.

  Keep weeds at bay:

  The seeds of weeds can be dormant in your soil for as long as several decades. Whenever you use a rototiller, these old weeds resurface and can germinate once they are exposed to the sun.

  A broad fork won’t mix the soil, which can help you effectively keep the weed seeds in the dark and prevent them from germinating. When you no longer till, you’ll be able to save countless hours which were previously spent eradicating pesky weeds.

  “Now that thing is amazing! Really does a good job! I never heard of one before!” Ezra declared.

  “Yea we like them a lot and they definitely make the job easier.” Ann said watching Rachel take a turn at digging up the dirt.

  “We get these weeds cleaned out and hang some of that chamber bitter to dry in the barn rafters we will have plenty of material for tinctures if we can develop a market for it.” Zack said and went on to suggest they open a sort of a drug store trading post over at Rod’s community.

  “Do You think you can find me a radio?” Parker asked wanting one for his trip back home and promising to scout for Zack on the way out until he got out of range.

  “I might be able to locate one. Don’t forget now, Franklin was the communications man and he probably had everything under the sun to try to live through this apocalypse with but a good heart and the wherewithal to live another day. It still freaks me out that sucker never got off the island and we found him sitting on the shitter four days later deader than hell after the poo hit the fan! Evidently, he went in there to take a crap while we were all evacuating the island, had a heart attack and never got off the throne. That’s kind of a bitch for him to prepare as many years as he had and have all that stuff ready, only for him to fall out day one and not be part of the rest of the story.” Zack said with a sour looking face of the lacking endurance individual that he and Knobby had found still riding the porcelain bus to eternity.

  Franklin had been repeatedly told by about everyone on the island to unload that damn comm van of his that was mired in the mud but he had refused to do so, saying that gigantic fifth wheel wrecker looking truck he had could somehow pull it out of that mud even if it was axle deep in before the river flooding it’s banks could get to it. Perhaps that’s what had strained his heart nobody knew. It wasn’t until a couple days after everyone had gotten off the island that Franklin was missed and began to be looked for. When Zack went back to the island to cut a deal with Knobby and Nick after the waters had started receding, the “Oh hell no!” surprise became apparent when Zack told them he would be back in a minute and walked into the bathroom building and saw its gruesome secret. There old Franklin was, with his head to his knees, if you could call it that because he had kind of a belly on him, drawing flies and regarding the world with a low profile not fit to be observed. Nick commented as they looked at this tragic event, that Rod would sorely miss his ”sparky” friend who was good with the radios and Zack uttered something to Ann about asking Rod what all he probably had stashed that they might could share. She gave him a harsh look but said it made sense that they were prepper buddies and probably had some reasonable agreement about sharing supplies if one died and the other needed them, so as callous as it was, it needed to be.

  “You know if Rod or the River community gets the flu or any other contagious malady, it’s going to spread like wild fire and with most folks not having any kind of normal immunities, it will be really bad. If everyone’s sick with aches, pains, diarrhea, coughing fits etc. then you ain’t out hunting, fishing and gardening. It’s hard enough to scavenge for one person, let alone a household and if the whole community ain’t got nothing food or medical to spare to help the sick or elderly you ain’t even going to have enough fit people for grave diggers. I don’t plan on having much contact with folks.” Zack said.

  “So, what makes you think that I want to run that pharmaceutical trading post you are trying to talk me into, Zack? I don’t want to have to be around a bunch of sneezing hacking coughing folks trying to get me sick either!” Ezra objected apparently pissed off that Zack and Ann were proposing that they were going to leave him behind all to his lonesome and avoid the coming plagues they foretold.

  “I ain’t telling you that you have to stand at the store counter all day and dispense meds to sick people and get sick yourself. I am telling you that you can do that great service for everybody, make money, stay safe yourself, do community service and get fed! Now then, your new store ain’t nothing but a regular house on the surface, but you can have a pickup and delivery window
right on the side of it for customers, can’t you? That is if you just open a window up? What you need is a paintbrush and a board to write a sign on and pretend like you are a Jack’s clown burgers without the head people talk to. You educate folks, if you are sick yourself don’t be coming or around people or let customers come in the store. Tell folks they got to go to the takeout window and you will serve them from there. You’re just a dispensary if you want, educate people not to be gathering in groups or standing close in line. You’re going to be selling real medicine for real ills that will do a lot of people a lot of good! Thing is, you got to eat, they got to live and it’s a perfect job for you, boy! You deal with the customers, all of you run the pharmacy, you protect Donna and Rachel making the medicines in the back room and you are backup to each other, all of you will eat and society goes on. Knowledge is money! In this world without money, knowledge is food! We put prices on things these days based on what it is we get to eat today and what it might be worth to those needing both. In a trauma situation, if I I’m scratching, I’m itching, I broke a bone, a snake bit me, I used to be on heart medication and need a suggestion, was prone to UTI’s or whatever, the price we ask for the relief of these things although miniscule, is life and death for some! I figured out long ago I couldn’t provide for everybody. I can’t try to catch food and treat the sick all the time and provide for us herbs and sit around and make medicines that we don’t need yet, but what I can do is prepare for what I foresee at a distance.

  Ann and I started out with our custom blend Panacea for general ill and then after that boy got snake bit and I was having difficulty finding anything growing wild I could immediately prescribe; we came up with the what I call “Forest Medicine”! Zack said before telling Ezra, who had been at first skeptical and then began studiously trying to comprehend and understand what Zack put in his mixtures. He had been on meds also post grid down and he knew Zack had made his Woods Walker all around pandemic and snake bite potion the least interactive he could. Now his friend was laying out his new job in this post-apocalyptic life and carefully adjusting it to his and others lifestyle best he could.

  “By the way, Ezra, they may trade you some toilet paper too!” Zack said reminding him that this could be a very profitable way to get what they needed without having to do the scrounging themselves.

  Ezra said he was in and Donna, Dee and Rachel after laying out some ground rules and asking some questions agreed to the plan also.

  .

  9

  BARTER BUSINESS

  “I can remember, Ann, when you would only put colloidal silver on a cut and wasn’t getting into our super charged stuff.” Zack said starting to kid with Ann about getting into their inventory.

  “I just wasn’t thinking. I know we can’t replace that high strength colloidal silver ever again as we all well know by now. Well, we can make us some 10 parts per million ionic stock with my good home low voltage unit but the 120 PPM good stuff is forever gone once we sell it off or use it up.” Ann reminded Zack.

  “Oh, I know that all too well and hate it! I am truly regretting that dark day coming up too fast. I wasn’t fussing, I was just reminding you about when you religiously used the 10 ppm and were quite satisfied with the results normally about the power of silver to ward off infection and heal wounds quicker. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was thinking about stepping on some of that 120 PPM and diluting it in our formulas or what we sell.” Zack said as she looked at him skeptically.

  “Are we getting that low already?” Ann asked wondering if he had cut some kind of deal or bargain somewhere and depleted their stocks.

  “No, we are still sitting on the same amount of inventory but remember I had to have that talk about how I thought everyone should conserve what medicine we had and explained to them, that our products could easily be diluted to make enough to share with others and still be highly efficient.” Zack said thinking about doing some different kind of trading himself.

  BARTER BUSINESS

  A 4-ounce bottle of 120 ppm colloidal silver can be turned into say 16 ounces of 30 ppm and still be 200 % stronger than most of the 10ppm solutions sold by other manufacturers which a whole lot of people were used to buying from expensively and might have stored in their preps.

  (Or let’s try this, another way of saying or thinking about it is, if you mix 4 ounces of Serenity Silver TM 120 PPM colloidal silver, plus 4 ounces of distilled water, you get 8 ounces of 60 ppm colloidal silver or you are left with two full 4 oz bottles. One for you and one 60ppm 4 oz. bottle for your buddy. Next, mentally mix you up 8 oz. of 60 ppm colloidal silver, plus add 8 oz. distilled water, then you would get 16 oz. of 30 ppm or four 4 oz. bottles of 30 ppm) This is plenty powerful strong for most needs; want to take it all the way down to 15 ppm? Take the 16 ounces of 30 ppm, add 16 ounces distilled water and you now have yourself a whopping 32 ounces of 15 PPM! Now you have bulk!

  With 10 PPM being the most common concentration sold under many bestselling well known labels widely accepted customer base at this concentration selling on the market for an average of ten dollars per ounce…… you have a product now, that you yourself have control over that is 50% better than the leading brands offerings and you would have an estimated, grid up retail barter price value of $320.00! (32 ounces X $10.00 = $320.00)

  That’s quite a tidy return and trade advantage you get on your own initial investment for four ounces of lab tested Serenity Silver. Far more of a profitable return than you could possibly get back, in say investing in four ounces of bullion silver depending on the market. Try making change out of that these days!

  The Serenity Colloidal Silver has amazing medical as well as exceptional barter potential properties because you bought the real thing for your preps. (Lab tested True Colloidal not all Ionic silver) at a fair price that can be stretched and adapted to many survival and medical needs situations. I know of no prep that is more flexible, has the longest shelf life, highly competitive barter profitable, all the while having a positive influence on your own health whether you need it in an emergency or not.

  What sets the company, Kings Mountain Herbals, a cut above the rest is that most of their purest, or most concentrated formulations, can be subdivided into various sized quality supplemental doses that exceed their commercial counterparts in strength as well as volume.

  Let’s take alloying gold, for example, in the jewelry business a bar of 24k gets you 10k, 14k,18k, 22k etc., all standard acceptable trade practices as long as marked, sold and valued for what they are.

  In a barter situation, or when there is a shortage of hard money available in a community, people have for centuries devised numerous ways to pay for goods and services and make their own change. A link could be taken from a gold chain or a standard coin could be made that was divisible like a piece of eight from the pirate days.

  The owners of Kings Mountain, being preppers themselves, are familiar with historic barter practices as well as the more modern appearances of preparedness coins which are usually minted in silver and that are meant to be divisible, or cut up to make change in smaller denominations or weights.

  These coins have deep channels in them and are made to be severed with a knife and hammer, cold chisel etc.

  A bit better, or a more modern manufacturing method employed, is this silver bullion bar example.

  Snap Bullion? from the Elemetal Mint is an innovative way to investing in Silver Bullion. The Snap Bullion 2 oz. Silver Bar, the first in a new line of Snap products, is a silver bar designed to separate into four half-ounce "Snaps". Each bar consists of two ounces of .999 Fine Silver. When separated, each Snap contains approximately a half ounce of Fine Silver.

  Getting back to the products Zack and Ann had in their inventory, we can evaluate their famous Panacea Blend similarly, but we are going to think about it in the two-ounce bottle form. If you add 2 ounces of water to the original bottle amount and dilute it once, you would have (two) two-ounce bottles available now of a h
ighly respectable, hard to get and very valuable 60 PPM colloidal silver, but what happens to all that wonderful Heal All herb it contains you might say or ask. Well, I will tell you, because through a very special scientific technical process, the powdered botanical Heal All is concentrated at a 10x potency before it is dissolved into, and synergized with, the colloidal silver so you now have potency wise after diluting the solution, a 5x Heal All extract or 5 times the strength of most tinctures of this sort of herbal supplement. That means, in strength, it is still 5 times, ounce for ounce more powerful and useful than most 1-1 alcohol based Heal All formula tinctures!