We have Community Gardens here in Anchorage. mostly old folks form the 'housing' across the street. C St & W 15th Ave - Google Maps What you don't see is the massive 'homeless' camps just to the north of the gardens in Chester Creek. Every year for the last three years they have decimated the gardens, despite the fences....free food, ya know?
As much as I dislike the disgusting POS drunks that live in the woods, they are still HUMANS, , though many lose sight of that.
ah, but you and I only have to put up with those folks till Halloween, @DKR... After that it is to cold for most of those Lilly-Livered SOBs to live out in the raw bush... They either head South or to the nearest DoGood'ers Shelter...
4 years ago we took a cruise to Alaska and one of the stops was at Anchorage and I was shocked to sees many -looked like homeless young people just hanging out in the little park in the city. Does the city turn a blind eye to this blight
I used to do a weekend long cooking class on the farm a couple of times per year. It was based on my old school summer kitchen, a open fire pit and all cast iron....... with the Various Dutch ovens being a central feature. The very first part of the class was making fire.... Can't cook anything if you can't make fire! Catch was the students had to make the fire with either a fire bow or a steel file and a chunk of flint. There would usually be 20-25 people come out pitch a modern tent and set up all of their gizmos like portable tent air conditioners and little ultra quiet generators. I have nothing against that stuff and it is great if you have it and can transport it and power it. I charged no fees for the class, my thinking back then was that basic knowledge should be freely shared. My opinion on that has changed a lot since then. So the actual cooking was baking a cake from scratch in a dutch oven at the fire pit, A loaf of bread in a cast iron pan in the wood range oven, Flat breads, Sourdough Breads, casseroles, stews, roasting meat on a spit, and about 30 other from scratch basic foods prepared in the summer kitchen and cooked over the fire pit, in or on the wood cook stove or in the stone and clay oven. Not primitive by a long shot and not modern by a long shot either. The one thing I learned quickly with the very first class was that there is a REAL and General lack of basic cooking skills in pretty much everyone under 40 years old (At that time I would say everyone under 50 now). In general no understanding of basic things like the difference and function between baking powder and baking soda or how sourdough starter reacts with the other ingredients to make fluffy sourdough breads. Something as simple as frying a egg properly over a low heat....... No the pan does not need to be red hot to fry an egg LOL. The looks of wonder and awe as I picked the herbs for seasoning from the herb garden rather than opening a container of dried herbs, I do dry herbs and keep them in recycled glass jars but it is hard to beat beat fresh sage leafs straight from the plant or Thyme or Oregano or Marjoram or Cilantro or or or. I like to believe that those classes gave some knowledge, understanding and maybe a little skill to some people that could not only apply in a times are really hard environment but also in day to day cooking life. Then there is the economics of it. There was always someone that could not grasp the Dutch oven from scratch cakes. "Why go to the time and effort of making a cake from scratch and baking it a dutch oven or the clay and stone oven, when you can buy a cake in a box add a couple eggs and some oil and have the cake for 89 cents in half the time, with 1/20th of the effort?" Really not much effort, time is relative and the cost of my cake is around 9 cents And I have never seen a Cinnamon and Honey yellow cake with sweet honey butter crumbles topping it offered in a box I don't know what it is now but my annual cost of groceries at that time was around $350 per year, the average household cost of groceries was $8,730 per year. Now granted then like now, I produce around 97%-96% of our food and pretty much only buy Sugar, Powdered Sugar, Brown Sugar, Flour, baking powder, yeast, tea and coffee. I have more recently started buying cornmeal as it is much cheaper to buy it vs growing it and milling it. Pretty easy to see the rise in prices at the store over the last couple of years. My annual grocery bill is up to $1,100 per year now days! I don't know where that 8% inflation they speak of is but it sure seems a lot higher than 8% to me! TIME everyone then and more now claim they just don't have time to prepare and cook meals from scratch!!! BS total absolute BS. there are 168 hours in a week. Most people do not even work 40 of those hours anymore and a whole lot do not work any of those hours. We live in a time where everything is easy and takes less time than any other time in human history. Yet everyone is always so very busy and has no time........ Yeah BS, lets just call it what it really is people are less motivated and lazier now than at any point in human history and do a lot of pretending to be so very busy........... or they are just really bad at managing the 168hours per week they have to work with At the time I was doing the classes, I was working 100-110 hours every week, week in and week out producing food for 250 families in my version of a CSA and still had time to do the weekend classes now and then, sit on the porch or at the elevator shooting the shit with friends, cook my meals and get probably not enough sleep. I very often start the outside fire pit, load up the dutch oven with anything from a stew to a casserole of some flavor and about the time I am done prepping the meal the fire has burned down to a lot of hot coals and like this morning I had time to troll the Monkey with this post and am wrapping up so I can go bury the dutch oven (Halved Red taters, Ham, some milk and butter, a few stalks of celery and a handful of cheese) in the hot coals and head out to finish clearing the vegetation out of that water way for the North Arm Woods pond. When I stop working at around 2pm because it will be getting miserable hot in that area, I will have a dutch oven full of a hot and hearty meal ready to eat and enjoy while I wait for the sun to move over and the work area to be shaded again at around 5pm and will head back out and keep scraping until about sundown and come back and have the same meal for supper and maybe troll the Monkey a bit more this afternoon or this evening when I call it a day
I agree many under 50 don't or can't cook and rely on others to cook for them --fast food, prepared food pop in microwave, and restaurants. My wife taught all 3 sons how to cook got to say they cook very well. Oldest son does most of the cooking in his family, middle son his wife does all the cooking and he is the master of barbecue, youngest son cooks very well and does most of the cooking I think hs wife can cook but he enjoys cooking. If and when the SHTF these people that don't have basic cooking skills are going to be hurting it's much more cosy effective to cook your own than have someone else do it for you. That goes for basic repair skills plumbing. electrical, wood working etc.
@johnbb You must have been there in the early summer time, as after HOLLOWEEN most would have migrated south for the Winter...Although AncorTown does have a few DoGooders FlopHouses, they are not really setup for longterm warehousing of impaired Alaskans.... Many of those young folks you saw were likely there to work in the Fish Processing Industry, and likely waiting for the Salmon Runs to start. College Kids could make enough working 14hour days, to finance a YEARS WORTH of College in one summer, and the usual deal was, You Stay the Whole Season and We Pay your Ticket back the FlatLands...
they looked like they were pot heads but I'll take your word they are there to work you should know you live here
We had one worker get on the plane in Anchorage one year, What a hoot She still had calluses on her legs and knees I guess from pole dancing. She acted the ass like when the other flyer got up to use the facility's she laid out across all 3 seats. He returns sees this goes get help from the stewardess She gets into some name calling the lady stewardess a Bitch. Enter the captain, Lady you sit up and shut-up or I'll have you arrested when we land in Houston. Funny stuff those flying stripper hoes!
Talk about potatoes, friend bought a place way out in the sticks in Maine. Started to get ready for a garden, neighbor came over and said. Can't plant potatoes here. I will pay you not to raise potatoes and give you all the potatoes you can eat. He had a huge seed growing operation for some potato company and the seed had to be certified as disease free. All he needed to loose it all was to have someone grow a potato that had a disease or even throw one out to the compost pile. Short blurb on MickyD french fries.
The muni gives free food, free medical, hotel rooms, cable tv...and you drink/smoke dope if you want. Working taxpayers not happy. 7 million/month on these slackers...is issed away.
Use 'anchorage homeless camps" as a search string They have become brazen - pitching tents on the sidewalk in front of the Walmart on C st.
Not willing to wade thru the trash, needles, excrement and general stench - too many nice garbage cans to raid...
