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Detroit's Urban Farms: Budget Battles and Milking Goats {Gadling}
Jun 9th 2011 7:26PM While horses are considered an extreme sport so are bicycles, surf boards and motorcycles. I've no doubt the mare was carefully picked for her docility. If you are of pioneer stock (or not) endless generations of your ancestors worked with horses. And some of the women were pregnant at the time, so were some of the horses!
Considering that manufacturing is on a downward trend and a lot of people will likely never have the lifestyle of their parents, learning how to care for livestock and garden are very useful skills to have. Less squawk about how those young women were 'endangered'. Learning such ancient skills to take care of themselves is worth the risk and quite a confidence builder. Try it yourself, you might like it! I can't wait to get my grant and start building my boarding stable!
PETA Launches War Against Donkey Basketball {Asylum}
Nov 14th 2010 12:41PM The people who object to the use of the donkeys in this article know little to nothing about large animals. Animal behaviorists have said such animals like cattle and horses did not go extinct because they were useful for other than meat and so were domesticated. Any animal you use to support your living you take good care of or you don't make a living! The donkeys are no strangers to slick floors and human beings acting like the hominids they are! If the donkeys weren't pretty acclimated to the noise and the silliness they WOULDN'T be rented for such activities! What in the world do you think happens to a surplus of animals, including horses and donkeys that have no use other than a pasture ornament? In this economy they get sold, shipped to Canada or Mexico and slaughtered! If readers are so disgusted by this activity I suggest you call the Bureau of Land Management and scream at THEM for the CRIMINALLY ABUSIVE roundups of the last few wild horses being removed from PUBLIC LANDS! Otherwise you are senselessly wasting your outrage.
High-School Student Suspended for Riding a Horse to School {Pawnation OLD}
Nov 4th 2010 8:51AM I don't know how many people on here own horses, but I do. I currently have three that were given to me. All three beautiful animals, two survivors of abuse, one case is criminal abuse (he's the sole survivor of four). Only one of the three I would have taken to a school like that and she is a beautiful Appaloosa, Thoroughbred cross. Horses now days are considered an extreme sport but if you know your animal you know what they are capable of, Abby is a good horse and had plenty of show experience (Walk trot, English/Western pleasure), including previously being the mount of an autistic child, a school parking lot wouldn't have been a problem. You do have to keep in mind there are always things they'll spook at but a horse like Abby will not over react. I would believe the parents knew their horse or they wouldn't have risked it there. The vice principal needs a chill pill.
The Prepper Movement -- a Growing Network Preparing for the World's End {Asylum}
May 31st 2010 10:10PM Janet,
Why do you have a problem with people preparing for a disaster? Where I grew up, one winter we had a massive snow storm, three to five times the normal fall, up to the eaves of the house (about 12 to 15 feet). Since it was so far back in the mountains my folks would shop for two weeks or better at a time to begin with. With what was in the chest freezer we did all right until the road got plowed and we could go down the mountain to town for more groceries.
Myself, I DO feel like times are going to get hard but I'm not going to try to stock up to survive. I want to start a boarding stable with lots of land, where I can plant fruit and nut trees, a huge garden and a big variety of vine fruits. I'll have a nice little flock of chickens and maybe a couple of Irish Dexter house cows, (half sized beef/milk cows) and even if the whole of civilization falls flat with a resounding thud I'll be close enough to town for mutual defense. I'll even let my boarders have a patch to plant gardens of their own, a ready made circle of friends for mutual support.
If I'm wrong, I'll be making a living from renting stalls to people who have horses, associating with those people and keeping my own horses, maybe breeding some foundation stock Quarter horses.
Of course you are free to continue with your life and deal with what ever happens on your own terms. I'm sure I won't be seeing you regardless.
The Prepper Movement -- a Growing Network Preparing for the World's End {Asylum}
May 31st 2010 9:31PM There aren't that many nuclear power plants in the states, at least not yet. Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State has a resident population of coyotes living on it and do carry traces of radiation in their bodies. The area around Chernobyl has become a haven for wildlife without people around. Herds of wild horses migrate in and out of the area and appear to be very healthy, as well as wild boar and feral cattle. The only major problem appears to be in a mushroom the locals used to harvest constantly in the wild. It seems a single gene / gene sequence has been distorted so that it has become deadly poisonous while retaining all the characteristics of it's perfectly edible origins.
Of course you can flip out if you wish too and literally die of fright in an end of the world as we know it situation. My ancestors learned to live very well on this continent before the advent of Europeans where the first European colonies failed due to starvation. No guts no glory as they say! And no descendants either.
The Prepper Movement -- a Growing Network Preparing for the World's End {Asylum}
May 30th 2010 1:59PM It's funny how extremists like to castigate others for being extremist. It is a very real possibility that we will fall into a massive and extremely intense contraction, even a famine as severe as some that struck Europe early in the last century. There are individuals that study the end of a civilization and the causes. We are exhibiting all the signs of such a fall, just like the Maya, the Romans and many others. No, it likely won't be according to Doomer porn with hoards of starving people assailing bastions of valiant preppers. It's never that dramatic.
Most people don't like to think of their lives being disrupted for any reason, I'm thinking you're one. Bad things happen to people whether they're good or not. You can't prepare for everything but you can do the best you can for what you see 'could' happen.
As far as my belief that our comfortable American lifestyle is coming to an end, I hold it because the only thing that continues to grow without restrictions is a cancer and we human beings have inflicted the body of the planet with too many pollutants, too many ecological/environmental assaults and simply too many people. Currently I'm not prepared for a long emergency but I'm getting there and considering where I live people like you will never get this far, you are simply not physically prepared to make it over a desert or any of the mountain ranges you'd have to climb, likely on a bicycle and there's no water sources close enough to the roads, which would have to be cleared of rock falls to remain passable to begin with. If you did manage to get to this valley you'd be in no shape to take anything away from anybody.
Yes, I would feel compelled to feed children but more likely they wouldn't last long enough on the road to make it here. And as far as people like you are concerned, I would not slaughter all or any of my livestock just to feed you. You personally know better, you just can't remove your head from it's safe, warm, darkness to use it for thinking.
Boy, 5, Kills 800-Pound Alligator {ParentDish}
Oct 3rd 2009 10:59AM We have become a nation of urban/surburban dwellers and it shows in the responses to people feeling bad about that gator, that was a female gator BTW. I have many liberal views one of which is everyone should own and know how to use a gun -properly-! I was not raised in a city but in a remote forested area in N. Calif.
1. it is perfectly legal to hunt on YOUR OWN PROPERTY!
2. alligators have recovered from the horrible attrition of the early half of the last century.
3. the boy was not hunting alone! No child that age would be out with a gun and without their parents permission.
4. we have changed the balance of nature by farming and development and the slaughter of large predators which is why in the East so many deer have become pests and a threat to suburban plantings.
The owners of the farm had the right to kill a nuisance gator on their property and that one would pose a formidable threat to an adult!
You can be upset for the gator but it isn't the wisest thing you could do. I would suggest you spend more time being outraged by the practices of modern factory farms and the chemicals dumped on the land, running off and fouling our waterways poisoning animals both wild and domestic with massive toxic algae blooms. But go ahead and be p***ed of at the death of one large gator. The chemicals used on farms are killing far more than a little boy with a shot gun.
Wadulisi
Mike Huckabee Remains Obama's Strongest Challenger for 2012, Poll Shows {Politics Daily}
Aug 21st 2009 7:42PM Truth, has the nurse brought your thorazine yet? Take it and wait the black helicopters will be by to pick you up soon.
Bill O'Reilly Pens Love Letter to Obama in Parade Magazine {Politics Daily}
Aug 7th 2009 2:50PM I'm not an Obama fan but I'm not full of the vitriol of a good many people on this board. I do think he's going about fixing this problem the wrong way. The problem is endemic to BOTH PARTIES and it started over forty years ago when deregulation of big business started. I like a free market but this isn't a free market. It's been taken over by a kleptocracy that pays for politicians from both parties and buys off or silences financial reporters. A lot of individuals here scream to high heaven about redistribution of money and point their finger at the poor. Let me remind you that in 40 year the minimum wage has barely doubled while the money it takes to buy a new car has gone up 10+ times! So you don't like public welfare but you have no problem with corporate welfare? The companies receiving 'stimulus money' for the most part aren't spending it to keep our economy going, they're putting it back into the derivatives market. That's was a big cause in this collapse to begin with.
It's time for a third party that has no ties to big business. It's time to legislate against a revolving door policy between corporate jobs and government service/elected office. It's time for campaign reform. When a company is too big to fail let it pay it's own damn way out of the hole it got itself into because OUR COUNTRY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO GO BANKRUPT TO GET THEIR THIEVING BUTTS OUT OF TROUBLE! We're in the trouble we're in because of corruption, collusion and graft. We don't need compromised political parties accepting money from the corporate thieves so they can legislate in their favor!
You want your country back? Take it back with a third political party, don't bother with this partisan name calling because the corporations use the time to take more money out of YOUR POCKETS! Time to grow up and attend to the business of a clean government, a well regulated business sector and a healthy economy. Leave the name calling in the school yard where it belongs.
Zoo on the Lookout for Mysterious 'Elephant Angel' from WWII {Lemondrop}
Mar 25th 2009 12:40PM There's a screen play begging to be written for this story. Any budding Gollywood writers eager to take a swing?
