The following article has been generously contributed by Joe Alton, M.D., aka Dr. Bones, of Doom and Bloom Nation where you can find strategies to stay healthy that include traditional medicine, alternative remedies, and medicinal/survival gardening. For the best in emergency and long-term disaster medical preparedness we encourage you to check out The Doom and Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook and follow Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy on their weekly podcast.
To Survive, How Much Land?
Have you ever wondered how likely it is that you’ll be able to produce all the calories you’ll need on that piece of land you have? How much land for livestock? How about those solar panels you were thinking about? How many square feet of panels will provide you with the electricity you’ll need? There are ways to figure this out, and the answers may surprise you.
Let’s start by talking power. In a collapse situation, you’ll probably be able to rely on the sun and wind and not much else, unless you’ve built a watermill. The best answer might be installing some solar panels on your roof. This is a commonly available option that many people are considering nowadays. Let’s say part of your roof is facing south (the best place for a solar panel) and you get 7 hours or so of sunlight, on average. To get the amount of power that an average home uses in a year, you’ll need 375 square feet of panels. These things aren’t cheap, and that much hardware is going to be beyond the average family’s financial reach. This means that you’ll have to make decisions regarding how to ration the power you ARE able to produce. Look around the house, and you’ll probably see lots of things that are plugged in that you can eliminate if the stuff ever hits the fan. This is part of the planning you’ll need to do now, so that you’ll be better prepared for times of trouble.
How about food? If you have a family of four, you’ll want to provide at least 2000 or so calories per adult, more if you’re a big guy, maybe a little less for kids. The formula is simple: At least 30 calories per kilogram of body weight. One kilogram equals 2.2 pounds, so an 80 kilogram adult would weigh 176 pounds. 30 x 80 = 2400 calories/day. Less for kids, of course. All in all, you’ll need to provide 8000-9000 calories a day to maintain your family of four’s weight.
So, let’s talk about some hard realities. No matter how much food you’ve got stored, it will eventually run out in a full-blown collapse. For your future success, better get that garden growing. Anyone who’s done it will tell you that there’s a learning curve, and you sure don’t want to plant that first seed in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse.
Now, let’s separate your garden out into three categories: fruits, berries, and vegetables, then wheat, then corn. If you went totally vegetarian, you would need a little less than half an acre per person to provide all of those calories. That means a family of 4 needs almost 2 acres of farmable land!
The majority of this land will go to fruits, berries, and veggies. You’ll get the most nutrients in terms of vitamins and minerals from these. To decrease the amount of land you’ll need, consider companion planting. Some organic farmers will plant sunflowers, and then plant peas that will grow up the long stalks. The same goes with corn, squash, and pole beans. Squash will grow low to the ground, pole beans will take the intermediate area, and corn up high. Make sure you don’t put plants in the same family together, such as dill and carrots. They will share the same pests and diseases, which could possibly spread from one crop to the other.
If you stock up on wheatberries and use your handy dandy Wondermill, you can cut the land requirement down a bit. A mix of prepared food storage and gardening will keep you healthy and fed for a longer time. Corn isn’t a very land-efficient crop, but you might need it for your livestock. An alternative if you need to trim that acreage down a bit more is to stock up on bushels of corn feed; that’s about 55 pounds of feed for about $9-10. This is a good idea, but you’ll use a lot of it. It takes 10 bushels of corn to get a hog from weaning to slaughter. Btw, corn prices are going higher; they were less than 5 dollars a couple of years ago.
Don’t forget, you’ll need some land for hog wallows, goats, rabbits and chickens. All of these animals can be raised in relatively small amounts of space, and provide important protein. You’ll need a good 200 square feet for 3 hogs, more if they have piglets. You can get away with less for each of the other animals.
You might have to forget about cows; they aren’t land-efficient. If you want milk, think about goats, especially Nubian Goats. This variety can produce 1800 lbs. of milk a year, according to various sources. That’s a lot of milk! How about eggs? The average family of four will eat 1000 eggs or so a year. To reliably get this quantity, you’ll need about 10-15 birds in your henhouse, depends a lot on the breed and the ingenuity of the local foxes and raccoons.
You could probably squeeze this all in with an acre and a half of land. If you don’t have that much property, now you know you’ll need that much more food storage to make up the difference. This is information I thought was important for me to know, and now you know it too.
Joe Alton, M.D.,aka Dr. Bones, is a medical doctor and a certified Master Gardener for his state. He’s a regular contributor to Survivalist Magazine and the author of The Doom and Bloom(tm) Survival Medicine Handbook, due out early next year. His blog at www.doomandbloom.net is all about medical preparedness, survival gardening, and figuring out strategies to keep you healthy in a collapse.
Uno! Instanto!
And a great article Mac!
Yes, one of the best articles here so far.
Amen to that. Article contains alot of food for thought. Always knew food would run out, but this article summarizes well the issue.
Totally agree. Food storage is a short term solution. To really solve your food problem you will have to learn to grow your own / barter with neighbors that grow their own.
Question is where is the best place for land. Ideally, I’d like to be close to my primary home as a secondary resource.
I found “The Backyard Homestead” by Carleen Madigan at the bookstore. It is a guide to food self-sufficiency. It is about using organic methods in gardening to get the most out of the land you have, raising chickens and goats, etc.
They showed how you could produce alot on less than an acre of land.
Carla Emery’s “Encyclopedia of Country Living” is an amazing book as well, with a lot of detail on a wide variety of topics, from livestock to grains to vegetables. I also found Steve Solomon’s “Gardening in Hard Times” to be helpful (although he is very against intensive techniques like square foot gardening) as well as the books by John Seymour on gardening and self-sufficiency.
KY Mom,
This is for you, Survivor Mike and Mama Bear. Follow these links to prepare, preserve and persevere in hard times. You must be able to grow your own foods at some point and time. 1-2 years after the collapse is the best depending on your food storage regimen.
http://codgerville.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/achieving-true-independence-part-i/
http://codgerville.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/achieving-true-independence-part-ii/
There are other articles on the website that will help to build up your confidence in preparing.
Carla Emory is hard to beat. If you listen to her you can hardly go wrong. Also, look for nancy and Mike Bubel’s Root Cellars book. You will not regret it.
Good luck and God Bless in 2012.
KY Mom, you are absolutely correct. 2 Acres to feed 4 People, is absolutely incorrect. This doctor should stick to being an MD. Now, that having been said, he brings up some fair points, but is completely incorrect on his calculations.
First off, I have 4 of the animals breeds on this property which were listed above. Cows require about 1/2 acre of pasture per cow. They are expensive to feed over winter, too. A good dairy cow can produce about 5-6 gallons of milk per day. That’s about 17000 “pounds” of milk (why on earth he’s measuring in pounds, who knows). Secondly a rabbit doesn’t take any land. Zip, zilch, nada. You could put several dozen on your porch. Also, if anyone doesn’t know, rabbits are the most cost effective meat animal there is. I believe (I’d have to look it up), it’s right about 3 lbs of feed to get 1 lb of animal. And you take half the weigh of the animal to give you the meat. Fryers take roughly 6-8 weeks to be ready to eat from birth, and gestation on a rabbit is about a month. Breeds like New Zealanders can be perpetually bred, but, they should be bred about every 6 weeks so the young ones have 6 weeks to ween.
Lastly, you cannot live off of fruit and vegetables (unless you count a potato, which is a tuber). It’s simply not possible. You’d have to have a calorie calulator to check your needs, but essentially, it’s not possible to consume the number of pounds of vegetables to give you the right amount of calories. Vitamins and minerals, not that’s a different story. And Corn! Laughable. Corn is one of the least productive (and nutrient dense) crops on the planet. You can easily feed 6-8 people off of one acre of land, but don’t think about planting corn. And using stellar crop management, you could feed up to 15.
Don’t be discouraged by the fake numbers being chucked around here, they’re ridiculous. But do take from the article that it’s important to learn to produce your own food. There will be good years and bad years, too. So plan for that. And keep a year’s worth in reserve (or 7) for those bad years that you get next to nothing.
KY Mom,
Also if you can order up some of the Foxfire books, great reading and some of the tips are very cool. I know everybody on here has a file with all the stuff we saved to the puter, its very important to print it all out I also put all of it on cheap thumb drives for the friends that are late getting started prepping.
DPS
Mama Bear, Cyrus, Davey and DPS
Thank you for the tips and suggestions!
I found the Foxfire books at Lehmans store. Plan to get them the next time we go to Ohio.
I also have Carla Emery’s “Encyclopedia of Country Living” – which is just an all around awesome book of information.
Cyrus – Thank you for the links! Lots of good information there.
Take care and may God bless!
KY Mom
Like Davy said rabbits are great.
You get meat and fur and fertilizer and even niter for your gunpowder. During the summer you can just leave them out in a enclosed yard and they will eat the grass. They eat everything else too so you got to be careful about that. I have Californians and they give about 7 kits each time you breed them and I usually breed them 4 times per year. Thats a lot of rabbits. Lots of meat. Rabbits do tend to just die of many things so you need to have more than one of each sex.
I agree–Cyrus, you have a nice site with good information on it. I love that it is called “codgerville.”
I have gotten the Bubel’s book from the library and learned a lot from it. We are fortunate to have a root cellar in our 120-year-old house, and I have been able to make some use of it….but not as much use as I will if I can get a more successful potato crop (and the apple trees I planted last year start bearing!)
@Davey That settles it, I’m getting rabbits. When I was in the Army down in Texas, rabbit was a semi-regular item on the mess hall menu. It worked for me and it seems like a natural for gently pan frying in Coconut oil.
Check out “How to grow more vegetables than you ever thought possible..” by John Jeavons
He and his staff have spent a couple of decades perfecting low tech systems to produce food, compost and cash crops from very little land compared to the usual estimates of needed land. The key to their success is building the quality of the soil.
I have not tried all of their systems but have incorporated the idea of their systems and the older small farm systems. My lawn is organic so the cuttings feed and mulch my berries in the spring to produce bumper crops and protect the soil from summer heat, the dandelions in the lawn are pulled and can be free chicken food, so can weeds as I work my way around the yard. All weeds go into a 5gallon bucket and into the chicken coop. Weeds have plenty of minerals to feed the chickens and their healthy eggs feed me, their manure mixed with unwanted weeds and old fall leaves and ashes become precious high quality compost that feeds my soil etc. Circles of use and nothing going to “waste”.
Not sure what happen but it will be bad, really bad. We’re doing our best to prep but having already been in a YOYO situation last November, I know it’s true: “too much” is never enough.
Thanks Mac for keeping things up and running here, and also everyone else for your encouragement. Not sure how long we’ve got but I just have to say thanks, while there is still opportunity…
HSL: You bring up a really good point, because corn is plentiful where you are at. Here, Javalina are plentiful and feed on the range. Not so much corn, though I have seen it grown in the far West Valley.
The point being that prepping, like politics, is local in character.
So while hogs are not an efficient way to create meat protein, particularly for me, the abundance of corn in the midwest may not make much difference for those in that location.
I grew up in Indiana BTW.
C: Thanks for the info. Good stuff, much appreciated. You farmers out there ought to write some of this stuff down and guest post; identifying the particulars of the area you live in.
Eventually, all regions could be heard from.
Forget the hogs. Save the corn for the chickens, or tortillas. We have Javalina in AZ anyway.
Raise rabbits.
There is a dwarf cow that will work well for milk if goat milk is too strong for you. I’ll look for that link at SHTF Food and post it later.
Here’s the link for the dwarf cow:
http://www.dextercattle.org/index.htm
Forget the hogs??? No way, A man has gotta have bacon, sausage, BBQ, pork chops, loin meat and fatback. Can you imagine green beans without fatback?
Highspeed loafer.. If a man has to have all that pork, then he’s also asking for death via heart attack, stroke or other dis-eases that are caused by high fat diets. The Bible clearly states YOU SHALL NOT eat swine. 🙂 There is NO need for pork whatsoever. Raise lamb inststead.
@ Stoneage, You need to spend more time in the New Testament. Pork is ok for you to eat. I am not saying I eat all of that meat all the time, maybe once or twice a week. I’ll bet I’m healthier than you and I walk 4-5 miles a day for fun.
HSB: I appreciate your fondness for pork. I like pork too. Nothing like a pork roast well cooked.
I am not a farmer, and farmers are welcome to weigh in here on my argument, as I will gladly defer to them; but my research shows that hogs are not an energy efficient way to create meat protein in a SHTF scenario in America.
The corn you give to your hogs will go a long way towards your chickens.
Durango: grain for animals can be used in limited amounts. For new moms or milking animals it is needed. There are other grains that need far less soil and fertilizer than corn. Unless you have a lot of land and high nitrogen fertilizer forget corn. Check out the library for books on small scale grain growing. Chickens and other animals will do well on millet, barley, quinoa, hulless oats and wheat. Don’t forget root crops like mangles and beets, sweets/rutabegas for winter animal feed and grow extra cabbage to store for animals and people.
For people try potatoes,sweet potatoes, winter squash and dried beans,peas and lentils( which can all be used for the animals also). These are high in nutrition, calories and starch. Using more of these for all and early winter will mean the grain lasts longer.
DK,
I’m sure you are right, but I don’t like chicken, wife and kids do, so we will have both, there’s enough corn to go around. Lots of corn around here.
There was reason for all those prohibitions against pork in the old testament: the pork tapeworm. People who eat pork outside first world western countries still run the risk of being infected and many are. In general, would strongly avoid eating pork outside of the modern food safety systems we have in place today.
DK…no intention of guest posting but being you mentioned it and Im a farmer…Id say hogs are pretty good converters of grains and greens (especially those that are perhaps too course or low quality to feed to people directly)I raise mine on some grain but also alot of greens,cornstalks,damaged/leftover veggies,grass clippings and of course lots of clean spring water!
If I understand your point correctly then I would have to agree that if I had a limited amount of corn/grain itd be better used directly as a food source for people,rather than feeding it to hogs or any livestock because theyd burn it up and wouldnt give you a reasonable return on the imput…thats why I dont invest in alot of feed for the hogs myself…besides too much grain isnt good for hogs… but thats another rabbit trail to explore at another time.
Ill have to agree with HSL on not giving up(at least homegrown) pork…especially the fatback! 🙂
If things get that bad for that long you need a security force to protect what you have. Consider that point moot because if the US government can confiscate gold in 1933 then it can (and will) confiscate food if many are starving. Remember it’s been, “From those according to their means to those according to their needs”. If you think that individual property rights by law will be maintained under a complete collapse you are mistaken.
Maybe if you lived in a rural state. Maybe if that state used it’s forces to protect it’s citizens you might be ok.
You can go so far preparing but at some point it’s hopeless.
My thoughts, too. Government will do ANYTHING to survive and will not go gentley. I don’t see it going away, ever. Those 30,000 drones will be monitoring food producing subjects, and I do mean subjects, 24/7/365. Perhaps more consideration of government actions should be considered?
Exactly MDO: Which is why WE must engage OUR managers now and get them under control before the Changes.
I have also considered indoor, underground hydroponic gardening using Omega Gardens. Check it out at:
omegagarden.com
I think what everybody is overlooking is the basics here. Does anybody have any idea as to what the logistics are going to be? Phenomenal, monumental even, the government can’t find their own asses with both hands in broad daylight let alone staff and run a project this big. What? Are they going to have the food police out running around everywhere confiscating food from everybody they can find? Likely not! Every time they roll up to a farm house and are met with solid resistance and are taking causalities every time they infringe on somebody, they will get the hint at some point. There are going to be folks that will be willing to fight and die and pay at all costs no matter who is pushing this. There will be a point that it all gets to be too much and it’s time to get down in the dirt. Then there are their own people, how are they going to get them to assault and possibly kill these people? What? Fatally demonizing them for self-preservation? I don’t care how hard you are, at some point is going is going to get to you.
Then there is the Guerillas. Just look at the aspects of the warfare we have been involved in since Vietnam. Guerrilla warfare has nearly kicked our asses every time. People fighting for home and country. Imagine that here! The only battle for attrition is going to be on the aggressor/them. They won’t ever have enough people. Sun Tzu said; if your enemy is entrenched you must to outnumber his forces 5 to 1. If we aren’t entrenched by now we will never be. Use the drones all they want and they will get a lot of them but they will never get “ALL”. Look at what Obama and Clinton are doing right now today. They are negotiating with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Why, because they are our buds? Hell no, cause they couldn’t kill all of them. Even with all of their infinite wizardry and technology, they just could kill them fast enough. Their opponent mostly was a third world guy living in a block hut or a Conex box with an AK and they still got screwed by basic rudimentary warfare. What in the hell do they think they are going to do here with a real bunch of highly motivated pissed off Americans fighting for themselves?
On a final note. Isn’t it suspiciously convenient that 43 year old Andrew Breitbart dies of a heart attack on the eve of his release of the Obama Tapes?
In an end of the world situation, the gubermint would not have the limitless resources it has now. Just the fuel requirements would be staggering. If commerce has largely stopped, how will they pay their goons?
They will try mightily, but will have to deal with limited resources. I’m sure that in such a situation, they would have no interest in imprisoning us all in FEMA camps and feeding us. I fear that detainees would face a much more grim fate.
Hammerun: 43 years young is an awful short life. News from the autopsy might be interesting but would be whitewashed if there is wrong doing anyway.
The tapes will come out anyway. He wasn’t working alone.
“What in the hell do they think they are going to do here with a real bunch of highly motivated pissed off Americans fighting for themselves?”
Its called “The Sausage Grinder”. Get near it and you come out the other side in pieces. They say, “They’re soft.” They say, “They’re too used to priviledged existence.”
Really? “They” don’t know the America I know. Oh, maybe in the cities where you have people that are uneducated about life and think life is 40 hours of work per week and the rest movies and parties. Those people will be drinking out of ditches and dead in two weeks. 90% of the country people that I know won’t just sit by and let it go down. Not only will they protect whats theirs, they will hunt violators. Truly, people in my community will punish anyone that attempts to violate rights under the direction of officialdom.
…and, it is VERY suspicious about Mr. Breitbart. VERY, VERY *V*E*R*Y* suspicous. I think he was “Heart Attacked”, personally. The people he made enemies of are ruthless.
~ Yo Kevin2 ~
You have pretty much got it ‘spot-on’. If it gets that bad? At a certain point you and your family are ‘hosed’ no matter how well prepared you are. If you think that your neighbors are going to politely and quietly starve while your garden flourishes, then you had probably better think that one over again.
My family and I DON’T really intend to survive that sort of a situation. We DO intend to survive long enough to pick the time, place and the manner of our passing. Perhaps we will be able to invite a few of our most deserving adversaries to make the trip with us.
What I don’t intend to do is go down in the dirt with my dick in my hand and a funny look on my face. I thoroughly intend to be a very expensive proposition. After all, I really don’t to be a ‘cheap-date’, now do I?
God Bless and good luck to all who post here.
That is why you make plans NOW to move to more rural areas or towns where you can make friends with your country neighbors so when the feces hits the fanblades, everyone will hopefully by then be more willing to band together and help each other with the daily chores of working a farmable area. Good luck getting people to work together in urban areas where it’s still all about the me, me, me attitude and will continue to be that way down to the last uncannibalized body.
Beefcake: You make a very good point. One that I never thought of but people in small towns are often not very accepting of “city people” moving out there. Most small towns are very close knit. If times start getting tough they may be downright distrusting of new people showing up with their campers. Even if you don’t live on your acreage, stop by from time to time and know the neighbors. Be accomodating to them and offer to help them if they ever need it, ect.
Beefcake, you’ll probably be shot and butchered and eaten as soon as you drive up to your mythical mayberry. There is no such utopian place.
I agree with samstone. This isn’t the time to be “making plans” it’s the time to be finishing up their execution. If you’re not ina rural area, and you’re not in the process to move there now, it’s too late. You should fortify your home and plan to stay there. Unless you have a family willing to take you in, and can be there at the drop of a hat; it’s not the “planning” phase anymore.
One thing that neighbor appreciate: A little encroachment here or there. I have two neighbors that I own land right up, essentially into their back yards.
I asked them if they needed a little more space. They were mowing right up to the property line. I told them it doesn’t matter. Use what you want. Just remember its mine but I don’t care, I’m not using it.
One neighbor had trouble with muskrats in his little pond and had no guns. (How do you migrate to the country and now own a gun???) He mentioned something about it and so I invited him over. We shot targets for a couple hours. He’s actually a pretty good shot. I sent him home with one of my decent 22 bolt guns and a box of shells.
Neighbors appreciate stuff like that. Do you think they’ll stand by and let the jackboots smash your throat? …or let you starve or die when you’re down? No, they won’t. They will remember.
You can’t protect it all yourself. Just remember that you will be treated as you have treated others in most cases.
I’ve been a big advocate of helping others during a SHTF scenario, however, if you don’t know them, forget it. You could be committing suicide. Be VERY wary of outsiders.
Davy Crockett comes to mind.
Go down fighting!!
Kevin and Markie both, GOOD POINTS.
This is why Rawles recommends to “live the prep”, to make your BOL location your living location. The problem is, many people can’t do this. They don’t have the money for land, live in a town, kids in school, etc. Can they make it, living in town? Maybe. You look at a situation like Bosnia, or like Russia when they went through horrible decades becoming the USSR, some in the country made it, some didn’t. Some in the cities made it, some didn’t.
We like to think we’re tipping things in our favor by having land, animals, crops, like-minded neighbors, but ultimately who knows? We just don’t know and all we can do is try our best.
Rawles lives in a 4500 SQ FT Townhouse on Malibu beach on you KOOKS money.
Kevin2 & MadMarkie – You two are RIGHT ON ! The scenario that will unfold will be all we can handle in defense of what you currently have. Even if one may have an entire military complex stored below ground, protecting it will the primary, exceedingly exhaustive effort.
Just listening to Rush L while doing my damn taxes today, I hear the fools in Congress spending time listening to a Georgetown student whining about the need for taxpayer funded contraception. The USA is disgustingly infected with liberalism.
People , listen to me: You better make certain you get your shit together. You might not be able to secure and defend much more than you can carry or haul if what I think is going to go down, DOES.
Most of you on this site are aware of the insanity around us. But the hordes of dinkbats, druggies, libs, freako’s, are going to be your biggest obstacle to your longevity.
God Bless all trying to survive. The enemy is within your defense perimeter…keep that is mind.
LOL. YOU LOON all the problems in the world today are the result of conservative actions.
god and jesus are PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS NOT DIM WITTED REICH WING CONSERVATIVES THAT LISTEN TO RUSH THE DRUG ADDICT LIMPBONE.
It does need contraception. Anything that keeps liberals from breeding is good
Cntct71M,
In the perimeter? The enemy runs the show…
Libs will be the first to go to fertilize the earth.
I’ll just eat the old fucking neighbors. Fat lazy bastards. I’ll never run out of food. ha
Just kidding.
Seriously.. keep a few cases of bird shot and some bird feed….the birds and squirrels will keep you alive for a long time. No worries.
I am not too worried about a government who under normal circumstances cannot find my neighbors marijuana plants or discover and add my retreat to the property tax roles. Being off grid and not even building a driveway to it has served me well. I am less concerned about my neighbors who have lived off the land for generations and still heat with wood, harvest their own meat, and garden. Sure we will face external threats, but being able to control access to our cluster of mountain homes by controlling one bridge makes it easier for our patrols to handle trespassers who come over the mountains.
I have not changed my lifestyle one iota, yet have been able to build a retreat that provides its own heat and electricity, water and food. I know the edible wild plants and game in our area and we will work together to fully utilize what is around us before tapping into several years of food storage. We even have silver coins buried as they have been valuable after rebuilding from collapse for over 3,000 years.
Surviving the coming crises is like surviving a bear attack. I do not have to be faster than the bear. I only have to be faster than the next guy. Once the elderly, city people, and those who live where there is little water are no longer here, it will be easier for the remainder to prosper. My concern is not for myself as I have lived a great life. My goal is to do everything in my power so that my children have that same chance.
May God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
And the Ammo to shoot the idiots twice
good point! how do you keep acres of food hidden?
live on 10 acres in the woods like me.. problem is hiding it from the bears, the deer… but can eat them too!
Our community is nestled in a mountain holler with only one bridge into it. The road being at the bottom of the valley, the few outsiders who travel down this dead-end road cannot see what it going on at the homes above them very well. I purposely did not build a road to my own off-grid home so only a few neighbors have actually seen it. Forest gardens are not planted much in rows like factory farms. Except for the orchard, we tend to stick stuff here and there where we can get light through the tree canopy. Our ‘acres of food’ are further down in the valley and will have its own security detail once we close the bridge. Maybe the feds will get that a time or two, but will consume a lot of time and fuel doing so.
Sounds wonderful prepared pastor
I live just north of all blacks in buffalo, ny. When the shooting starts and wrol…it will be lots of fun.
A concern is will you become what you fear? Assuming you lost everything and your kids are hungry, very very hungry. What would you do to feed them? Individually your more likely to become what you fear.
Think of the movie “The Postman”. There is safety and threats in numbers. The advantage the generally moral people have is organization. A band of criminals tends to self destruct. Moral people may survive. Regardless individuals stand little chance and will either become prey or forced to become a predator.
Everyone you cannot feed in eye site that cannot feed themselves becomes an enemy. The only question is who has the greater numbers. I’m of the mindset that the dependent far outnumber the independent. The dependent will feed upon the independent. The dependent with what remains of government and it’s resources (dramatically decreasing but far greater then yours) just takes what you have.
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
The only reason the government confiscated people’s gold in 1933 is because the people LINED UP and gave it to them. Smart people shut up and don’t tell. Yes, food is a bit harder to hide than gold is, but the same principal applies. First thing you need to do is get the heck outta dodge.. Find a place in the boonies where no there is no one else for miles. Then grow your goodies. Can it and store it. SHUT UP about it.
Nothing is ever hopeless. There is always hope. It is my opinion that if anyone is thinking of actually staying in the USA, they need to re-think that strategy. It is a bad one. I am seeing many folks with an ounce of thought capability starting to head out and come to places that are warmer and land is cheap. Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Columbia, Chile, Ecuador.. Many places are far easier to do your own thing in than the US.
Don’t have the money to do that? That’s because you are still in the USA. Get out of there and maybe you’d be able to keep some. 🙂 Sell everything to some unwitting dupe (i.e. someone who thinks everyting is A-Ok) and use the proceeds to buy 5 acres in the tropics for $10 or 20 grand. Heck I know of a place right now where you can get 5 acres of RIVERFRONT property for $25,000 USD. 275 feet of riverfront with access to the Caribbean sea. i.e. GREAT fishing.
If you have enough money to provision for a couple years, then you have enough to buy a small piece of property (a couple acres) in a 3’rd world country and start really planning on survival. Why pay for heat when the sun provides it free of charge. Why live on one crop per year when tropical climes will provide 2 – 3?
Do you really need that 17 cubic foot fridge? TV? All that junk that created this mess. NO you don’t. W have lived in 500 square feet on 12 volts with 4 – 95 watt solar panels for 7 years. We do have a generator, but if that goes on every 2 weeks, it’s frequent.
Yes – we means with my wife and 2 children. Both kids are well adjusted, smart (Street and school) teens that DON’T argue or give attitude to their parents. They know what respect is and practice it. They actually get along with one another. They are 17 and 19 now. One has moved out and is operating her own business and doing quite well. Neither one has a JOB mentality.
My wife and I couldn’t have a better relationship. We went back to the basics and it did us GOOD. We haven’t had cable TV for closer to 10 years. Doesn’t mean we don’t watch shows, it’s just a pick and choose and NO advertisements. They are all available on line or on DVD’s. WAY better IMHO.
Yes, there are 12 volt refrigerators. (look in a marine store) YES there are 12 Volt coffee makers and other appliances. Inverters will look after the rest, but I don’t suggest you use them much – they are power hogs.
A Propane or Hydrogen (make your own) stove will cook your meals much faster than electricity plus they come out better tasting. Worst case scenario, you can use WOOD to cook with. Nothing like a chicken smoked over birch.
There are many ways you can prepare for what is coming. I’m just offering a few. If you can find the book from Reader’s Digest called Back to Basics.. I’d buy it. 2 copies if you can.
Yes, you need a couple acres to grow food on. But there are tiered gardens as well. It’s amazing how much you can grow on a city plot, it you plan it right. THe French do it all the time. Terraces are awesome. Better to get out of the city, but if you feel you are stuck, do the terraced garden thing.
Is your US citizenship really worth dying for? No, it isn’t. There was a time, but that was a century ago. The USA has not been the USA since 1933 when it became a bankrupt nation with the corporation of the United States of America being it’s trustee.. They are 2 different entities. Another story though. I recommend you give up your US citizenship. You’ll save a BUNDLE on taxes and have peace of mind. Do it now while you still can. You’ll have to leave the USA, but like I said.. Tropics are warm and cheap.
I could go on but I’ve said enough already.
All the best in your Preps.. It is necessary and smart. And the very worst that would happen is you are wiser and have a bunch of food. Can that be a bad thing?
Musings from the Stone Age….
The Founders of this country wasted thier efforts on cowards like you.
@ Justme.. Obviously you are stll recovering from public school. 🙂 Me too.. but when I went to school I was taught that my country (NOT the USA) was free. I see what is going on today and find that it is NOT free, but a only a lapdog of the USA (not free either). All your BS terrorism laws are adopted without thought or asking the people. I did what I could to stop it and was flogging a dead horse. I finally realized after 15+ years of peaceful protests and opting out of the tyranny that is becoming, that nothing can be done – it’s time to get out while I still can. Not cowardice – a well thought out plan. When nothing can be done from theinside and you are not willing to join them, you have to make a decision.
The founders of the USA told YOU (and every other individual in the uS of A (small u is intentional) to not let the shyte that IS happening happen.. But the people bought the lies and now the country as it was is long gone. Not my responsibility – YOURS. YOU (uS people) didn’t stand up to the tyranny – or too few of you did. After all it’s too easy to sit there and take it.
Have you been paying attention? Do you really think the minority (people like us that are actually preparing for the coming SHTF) stand a chance when martial law takes over? No they don’t. The well being of my family is much more important to me than any glorified flag waving patriotic crap. The US used to be a country to look up to and admired – even emulated, but again, that was a century ago, now you are nothing but the world’s bully and there is no stopping it. YOU have let it slide. YOU are personally responsible for the bulls%&# that the rest of the world now has to put up with. YOU (US people) are the cowards because you didn’t stand up before this all happened and take those bastards out. It’s not my responsibility because I am NOT a US citizen, nor would I ever want to be subject to the tyranny that is the US government. I thank my creator for that every day of my life. And to think there was a time I considered becoming a US citizen because I believed the same crap you’ve been fed all your life.
How much have you done to change your government and how much has it helped? You need to realize that whatever you do now is moot. They have you by the short and curly’s and there is nothing left of the USA that was in 1933 when it went bankrupt. Why? Because the people did NOTHING about it. They lined up and gave away their gold. They got lazy and believed the propaganda the government were touting in the schools and media.
Do YOU ask for a pat down rather than go through the radiation machine at airports or have you opted to not fly any more? Do YOU question your police when stopped for ANY reason? Do YOU ask for your rights when they are clearly being violated? I do every time. Risking jail or worse – and that is everywhere I go.. not just my home country and when passing through yours. Border guards do not like me.
GOD first, Family second. Country third. If it’s a country you can believe in. The USA is no longer that country. My home country is no longer either. And to think it can be changed back.. well.. Dreaming is a good thing. Sometimes dreams can become reality..
It is also sometimes a good thing to be on the outside and flank rather than the inside and get trampled…
I will not be a pawn. That, my friend, takes more courage than most people in the USA can muster.
I said get out – I did’t say stop fighting for what you believe in.. Sometimes retreat and regroup is a better strategy. It will all be told when the republican primaries are held and they pick the two that will represent them for your “election” this year. If they pick anyone other than Ron Paul, your country is toast.
I pray they do pick Dr. Paul. He is clearly the candidate of choice when thepeople get their say. And if they don’t I pray that you and your countrymen DO something about it because it would then be obvious that the will of the people does not matter.. Is the USA a democracy or a republic? TOO many people thnk it’s a democracy.. I know it was founded as a republic. Says so in your constitution and yout declaration of independance. unlike most of your population, I have read both and understand what they mean.
I would then conclude that the founders of YOUR country are rolling in their graves because NONE OF YOU listened to them…. Now look what you’ve got.
Not a coward – but a realistic individual who believes in freedom for his family so much he left his home country to seek it out. BTW if you haven’t figured it out – that would be Canada, soon to be the 51’st US state. In reality we already are. You guys lied cheated and stole our natual resources through the free trade agreement and now Canada is toast. We bow to your every whim.
It took me 15+ years to figure out there was nothing I could do about what was happening other than taking action for me and my family. Too many sheeple out there and the propaganda express is too prolific. You know it’s true because you heard it on Fox, right?
If you want to survive. and then be able to DO something about the coming chaos – I still recommend you get the heck out of dodge. At least you will still be alive to come back and help pick up the pieces, if there are any pieces left.
Does that make more sense?
The average fruit tree takes approximately 3 years to begin producing. Just something preppers need to know. You can’t run down to the local garden center, buy a couple of 3 foot apple trees and expect an orchard next season. They’re more of and investment that should pay off later.
RightWingMom,
We bought some young fruit trees (7ft tall) two years ago at our local garden center and transplanted them. Last year they had produced some fruit.
We were surprised and happy. 🙂
We hope for even more fruit this year.
KY Mom
I just bought some fruit “trees” and I know it will be a while before they produce fruit. That’s assuming that they will. 🙂 Hope we make it until then.
One exception I have found is fig trees. My little fig trees have grown fast and always produced well.
Someone considering starting to grow fruit, might want to give blackberries a try. My two blackberry bushes have grown very well and have produced several smaller bushes. We get a lot out of these.
Blackberries can also be trained to provide security as they are evil to try and climb. Use blackberrys & other edibles as hedging where appropriate.
I’ve had great success growing strawberries in baskets instead of pretty flowers by my front door. Look at “decorative features” and make them edible if you can. Like wise install rain butts to all guttering.
It takes 3-7 years to get soil up to full productivity organically. Sod’s law says at least one crop will let you down in a survival situation, so have more than one “staple” (the Irish potato famine provides us all with an example as to why).
Research companion and square foot gardening now. Rabbits and guinea pigs provide lean meat from a much small space than beef cows.
learn your locale now for food foraging, but don’t depend on it – wild meat especially will disapear fast. Look at what was planted historically in your area (say in the 1800’s) – it’ll give you a good insight into what grows well without all those modern gadets and fertilzers in your soil.
Think of alternate grains to perhaps your current diet e.g Quinoa is rich in calcium, and you may not have a milk cow. We’ve become very wheat/corn dependent they aren’t always the most nutritous option/easiest to grow in every area.
Build your heirloom seed collection from plants in your locale/garden now. Let your critical food plant stocks adapt to your local climate. A bean you grew well in your garden last year is more likely to grow well next year than one from a supplier’s can on the other side of the country. Research and practice seed saving now, as it is a skill.
i have a pear tree that has begun to produce and about 3 or 4 apple trees growing in the side of the road nearby…
thats the beauty of decades of people throwing their apple cores out the window on a road trip at least around these parts… apple trees are growing on the sides of all roads and highways.
It’s really too bad that toilet paper doesn’t grow on trees, with all the shit paper and piss bottles that people throw out of cars onto the roadways.
not alot of shit paper and piss bottles around here.. sorry to hear theirs so many dirty disgusting morons in your are
3 deer will wipe out an orchard in one night. Living in the wild ain’t easy. The bugs are bad enough on crops but when you add four legged rascals it is damn near impossible to raise anything unless some real good fences are in place. Of course once all the meat is gone in the stores the wild game will also cease to exist from hunting.
You talking about 10′ deer or real small trees. I live where the majority of apples in the country come from. There is no such thing as a fenced orchard, I’m at a loss for words here if 3 deer ever wipe out a 7000 tree orchard in one night……. I’m sorry that’s just an idiotic uneducated statement!
It really dosent take that much room if you have good windows on the south side of your house.
I grow most of my food Inside in pots and I live in Wyoming where it is frozen half the yesr. But you got to get started on it because like said in the article there is a learning curve. I grow potatoes, carrots, beans, lettuce, tomatoes sunflower for oil and citrus. I have rabbits that I keep indoors and let them breed at the end of winter so by the end of fall I have nearly 100 of them to slaughter and can. That way I can just keep enough grass and hay for ten during the winter. Might not be the best but there is enough for a fammily of four.
Joe:
Would you give us some details on growing potatoes indoors?
I understand the process of layering on dirt as leaves appear, but how heavy is your container, what other dimensions, how much light, what lowest temperatures at night and what sort of harvest did you get?
We already do a lot of container (dirt and hydro) indoor gardening for fresh produce between garden harvests and dehydrate as much as possible for the year from the dirt garden.
I do it 2 ways. One is in plywood boxes. The other is in those big plastic totes they sell at Homedepot. They probably hold 25 or 30 gallons. If you are using the totes drill holes in the bottom. The plywood boxes are 24 x 24x 24 inch. Put about 6″ of potting soil in the bottom and you can fit about 7 or 8 seed potatoes. Cut the potatos a few days before into small pieces with one good eye and stick them in the soil. Eye up Then cover with about an inch of soil and soak the soil. If you can see the potatoes after you water put more soil on top but not alot. Just enough to cover. Generally you dont need to water them for a while. Just put them somewhere out of the way and wait for them to sprout. After they sprout move them closer to the window. They will grow fast and as they grow you want to put more soil around the stock. This will create more room for potatoes to grow. Do this every 6 inches untill the pot is full. After the pot gets full I use rabbit poo as the fertilizer. Works great. I use earlies and just keep rotating the pots so there are potatoes all year. Just reach into the pot and pull out potatoes. After they flower dump the pots, harvest the rest of the potatoes and give the rest to the rabbits. The temperature is not so important as long as it dosent freeze but the warmer it is the faster they grow.
Well… duh.
You’re eventually going to have to start growing more food, but the author misses something: there’s no way in Hell that you’ll be able to do it all alone. It would take all of your time and then some.
This is where having a solid community comes in.
The inescable delima is that a collapse that extends beyond your years supply of food will kill you. Do you really think it can get THAT bad and you can sit there eating freeze dried turket tetrazzini and drinking powdered milk for a year while merrily planning and planting a garden without your starving nieghbors taking what you’ve got? It is a popular fiction that you can somehow survive in a SHTF situation that causes most people to die. And what are you going to use the solar panels for? TV? Freezer? Lets get serious; IF it gets THAT bad you are going to die and your food stash and garden will belong to the biggest guy on the block (until the smartest guy kills him and takes it from him). Your last best hope is that it won’t get THAT bad. You better hope this disaster or whatever the SHTF event is that it gets better really quick and you don’t even need a 30 day supply of food.
We learn from history but the problem is that history is written by the survivors and winners. You can have a disaster that kills 90% of the population and when you read the history you will read what a “survivor” did and assume that is what would have saved the 90%. But more likely everyone pretty much did the same things and it was pure luck/chance that made one person a survivor and another a statistic. In WW II the average survival time for a machine gunner in battle was 17 minutes. Do you remember the first gulf war highway of death? Would you have wanted to be an Iraqi tank operator? The point is when TSHTF anything and everything standing head and shoulders above the crowd will be a target. The better prepared you are the more people will be coming to take what is yours.
No one can predict the future and I am not saying don’t prepare for hard times. What I’m saying is don’t go overboard and understand that within a few hours or days of whatever catastrophy occurs everything will change; all the old rules will be out the window and the new rules won’t be pretty. If you are old, very young, overweight, disabled, ignorant, weak, dependent on modern medicine, etc, you will die first. Most of the rest will die later. You are using the wrong paradigm for your planning. You are preparing to live as you do today in a world that will be nothing like it is today. So either it won’t be THAT bad and it doesn’t matter what you prepare for or it WILL be THAT bad and your extensive preparations will make you a target and guarantee you an early death.
Gonewiththewind: I agree with alot of your assessment. If you are the only one with food, it won’t take long to be overrun. I have said before on here that anyone would be welcomed by my campfire. We live in a small ranching community, I know all my neighbors and most everyone in town. I couldn’t let them starve without trying to help. Could I feed everyone? No. But as a community we could feed ourselves for a long time, if everyone worked together. I believe it would take that regardless just to protect ourselves, otherwise we’d be picked off homestead by homestead.
Most ranchers whether preppers or not are looking forward to a day when things get reset and go back to the law of the land not the lawyers.
Why don’t you just commit suicide right now.That was not a question.
Your message is one of cowardice and hopelessness.Most, if not all, of your theses are based on going into the fight all set up to lose.Your figures and statements regarding survival rates are fallacious and preposterous as well as totally anecdotal.
To give up before the fight has started is not what men who fought and survived battles would do.Seventeen minutes of survival for a machine gunner? I have been in prolonged battles where all of the machine gunners survived. Korea and Viet Nam were not WW2. Things change as does the quality of training.
What you have opted to take from History is the negative with total disregard to the survivors.
You sicken me.
Of course someone would respond in this way. I expected it. It is the epitome of “the wrong paradigm”. Good! Go fight the good fight. Don’t listen to me or my ideas buy two more guns and another case of ammo. Buy another years supply of food. Who ever takes your shit from you after he takes your gun from your cold dead hands will be very happy. If you cannot understand the pure logic behind the concept that if you have wealth (food, guns, water, whatever) in a lawless time while all around you people are dying of starvation then you are fated to learn it the hard way.
Your gut reaction was wrong. The purpose of my comments were to make you think. Of course I knew some people don’t think they react. That is why some people die first and most die later…
Everyone needs to get a little real. Lets take the Gov worst case. A massive sun spot event kills all the power in the US; population drops by 90+ percent over two years. How many hostile people do you think the average survivor had to deal with. 1000. 100. 50. Nope, try somewhat less than 4. Start with 300 million. If half the people shoot the other half, that’s 1 and you are down to 150 Mil, then 75, then= +- 40, 20 10. At ave 5 you are down to 10 million and that’s 97% die off. Now that assumes, nobody starves, kills themselves, dies from plague etc. I submit its those causes will get most people. Yes if you are on I 80 just outside Pittsburgh, not so good, I do not think the “Hordes” will be a problem to very many people
All you are saying is that we are all going to die, either sooner or later. Only the toughest will survive because they took everything.
Your erudition will allow you to predict the rest of what I would write.
Again in a true TEOTWAWKI situation by definition most people aren’t going to make it. The prevailing theory here is if you just prepare enough and have enough guns and plant the largest garden YOU will survive. But it is probably the opposite. It is no coincidence that the most stolen cars are also the most popular cars. So when you build your perfect retreat and you are prepared for anything you will be target #1. In the first few weeks and months the most often “traded” thing will be those perfect retreats. You can’t protect it from a committed more powerful force. The same will be true for the lesser setups like the ltille house in the woods with a basement full of food or the house in the suburbs with 5 gal buckets of food in the garage. These things will be like magnets to the hungry and aggressive non-prepper.
A better way is to plan for a “disaster” and not the end of the world. Have 30 days worth of food and water in your house. It is far more likely that we won’t have the worst possible scenario and all we need to do is get past the initial confusion and shortages until order is restored. Then as a backup have a number of small caches that you can get to if you really need them. If the worst happens you can lie low, wait out the riots and mayhem. I’m not saying this is a “great” plan. What I’m saying is in a worst case scenario you will probably die, most people will probably die and the more you have and the better set up you are the more likely you will be targeted. So there is no “great” plan, not even a good plan, luck might well be your best plan. Lie low, evade, survive, have some stuff well hidden, be paranoid, look bad like a drunk homeless man, be/act crazy like someone who talks to himself, have nothing, smell bad, keep moving. If it really comes to a disaster of biblical proportions you probably won’t make it but in that kind of situation it is NOT about having more guns or food, etc.
If I remember correctly most LRRP people ended up dead and captured. Fight all you want but for the average person 45 days without modern facilities will be a death sentence. Too many weak and sickly for starters plus very few know how to survive. Population density of a half million a square does not make living likely. Best bet would be a semi rural area with two acre lots where everyone knows everyone and/or are related to most everyone in the area. That is the only way you will survive. As a team.
You have stated two different points and melded them together as though they are one.
Your first point about most LRRPs dying is completely wrong. A high casualty rate, yes. But most, absolutely not.
Your second supposition is probably very true.
Does anyone have data regarding how long prepared people would last??
Be well
How long will anyone last? A very difficult question without more information. Here is an example that should send chills up your spine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
In this case the government intentionally made survival more difficult. But it is interesting to understand that most of these people lived a life of prepping, they had stored food but they never saw this coming. Had they placed many small caches in secret locations they would have survived. It was their preps stored predictably/traditionally that attracted the government looters to them. What these people needed was more paranoia and more sneakiness.
It is also useful to study how they prepped; what they grew and how they stored it. Very low tech but effective until Stalin decided to punish them. Do not forget that Stalin was a Marxist/socialist and Obama is a Marxist /Socialist.
If it gets that bad . every fence post will have a head on it…if you cant take the smell smear some essential mint oil under you nose,everything is good.
Gone – Very good post on what reality is likely to be and on survivors’ bias.
When I was a kid in the Starving Seventies, I only knew foraging and fishing. I knew what a garden was, but gardens tended to be very short-lived, eaten up by pests we didn’t have the money for pesticides to control, and by hungry kids, it’d have taken 24/7 guarding.
I found an old sweet potato patch, and over the space of a week ate the potatoes in the ground and then learned the tender leaves are good too. Killed it off, and other saw me harvesting from it so they helped kill it off too. If I’d known, I’d have been able to use my urine and rinsed seaweed from the ocean, mulch from various places, and built it up,. maybe enough to keep the whole group of houses in sweet potatoes. Of course it was a racially mixed group of families so some were friends and some were enemies. If I’d known farming techniques, I’d probably have been quite the little farmer, but it was not to be. Even if I had been, because then I would have stood out, I could have gotten my head bashed in one fine day.
Nope, when we crash, there’s a fair chance we’re going right back to hunter-gatherer for a while. Better start thinking “tribally” in all aspects, from any but You and Yours are The Enemy, to the tribal concept of, when the time comes, to perform a noble and expensive-for-the-enemy death, for the good of your tribe.
Gone,
From what you are saying, all we have is hope, which doesn’t feed me or keep em warm. Action does. While you raise good points, you are also condemning everyone on here to an eventual zombie death of some sort that hope is powerless to prevent. If I have some freeze-dried turkey tetrazinni, then that’s what keeps me going. The whole idea behind preparing is to increase that hope. There are other factors to consider. Only if someone does not take steps to blend in does the risk of losing all the preps increase.
I hope and pray it doesn’t get THAT bad. Fill in the blank for whatever “THAT bad” is in your mind. If the situation is so bad that at the end of a year there is no electric or other utilities, no law and order, no food, no stores, etc. then a lot of people will die. The worst case scenario, like a nuclear war, a end of the world kind of pandemic, a meteor strike, etc. will kill most people. Many will die right away or within a week or two. Many more will die within a couple of months. Most will not survive because by definition life as we know it is over and we don’t know how to live in the life we don’t know.
I say prep for surviving 30 days in your home. Also, place some 30 day caches of food and necessities in various locations, Have a place to bug out to and a plan B, C & D. Plan to survive the initial “die off” but that will probably be pure luck. Plan to lie low until after the second die off; the one where people starve to death or are killed for their belongings. (They could also die as a direct result of whatever the catastrophe is, i.e. radiation, disease, invading soldiers, etc.) If you are still alive at this point in the disaster then you “may” be a survivor; someone capable of living off the land in the new reality.
But again my main point is plan to survive for 30 days until law and order is restored and the “system” resets. Because if it doesn’t; if it is really a TEOTWAWKI situation you will probably die.
Very astute, and well articulated.
GWTW: WE are in the Last Days for however long they last. It will get THAT bad eventually.
Those of you who are SFR homeowners with a piece of ground can expand that space by building underground rooms to grow using solar and wind power for electricity and full spectrum lighting.
Life is three dimensional. Use your space that way too.
I am planting a garden this summer after years of prolonging it. Not looking forward to it at all, we lack decent soil and rainfall to have a garden to brag about.
I would recommend checking into your regional livestock/acreage ratio. It changes in each area. Would also recommend a good pair of fencing pliers and a self designed branding iron to claim livestock that has wondered off. You will need a way to be able to identify your animals if they mix in with other herds.
I will be cutting every fence I see after a collapse and allow cattle to herd and find water sources, food and natural weather protection on their own. They don’t travel far from adequate food and water.
I’ve always been a hardcore hobby gardener but devoted to English-garden-style perennials. Last year I got serious for the first time in my life and put in a substantial (500 sq. ft) vegetable garden. EVEN with all the tools, really good loam soil, a compost bin, a good chunk of knowledge, a love for the work, and a strong back, it is extremely challenging to grow what you need. I had a decent year, but was really shocked with the results, especially my potatoes.
I calculated we could survive for 25 days solely off what the garden produced (on the bright side, the retail value was $800, which was a nice surprise). At least I now have a shoebox stuffed full of heirloom seeds; as with Golem, they are “my precious.” I need to get off my butt and do the final edit on the article and send it over in the hopes of winning big prizes from Mr. Rawles (and hopefully not blowing my OPSEC in the process). 🙂
And this year I am digging up even more perennials to put in veggies.
Mama Bear: good luck on the article,
i look forward to reading it:)
Mike (and all) a suggestion,
Square Foot Gardening, By Mel Bartholomew. Interesting read and maximizing space for maximum growth. Also adresses the soil, and water problem you have. Also look into Gutter gardening (google) you’ll get good ideas.
Mike,
Look into making self watering containers for your plants. They can be made inexpensively from a Rubbermaid storage container. I learned how to do it last weekend and have the ‘stuff’ now to make some. I plan on making four large ones for some papayas, and a smaller one for some cucumbers. I live on a tropical island. This is the dry season. I’m thinking those self watering containers will be just the thing! They also conserve your water and fertilizer. They only reason you’d need to add water is caused by the plant respiration. I’ll let ya’ll know how it goes.
mike,
Just bite the bullet and start the garden. LOL its kinda fun bud, I have been doing it for a long time. But I just got into the heirloom stuff, make sure you by some hybrids for you first couple of yrs the heirlooms really take alot of work. I posted on the prev.article. Daisy also has my e-mail addy if you need to get in touch.
DPS
I just really don’t have a green thumb. I am probably the only one on here that could kill a dandylion if I tried growing it. I think that is how you spell those weeds. I am going to try one though. Canning too. Then will feed it to the inlaws first. Just in case I did something not up to specs.
There is a mean ole bitch that lives down the road. I really don’t like her but good lord can that battle axe garden. I will have to stop in and ask for some help from her. Don’t like the idea but will have to do it none the less.
mike,
Make friends with her, LMAO she may do all the gardening for you and just trade her some meat”get your mind out of the gutter”
Have you found out more on the H.J. genarator yet?
DPS
@ mike -I really laughed reading your post! Maybe that ole battle axe who lives down the road isn’t such a bitch once you have something in common and get to know each other. I had a similar experience some years ago, and the “raggy-ass” as I used to call him, taught me things not just about raising food, but other stuff that I still use today. I should also mention we were friends until he passed. Maybe your experience will be different than mine, but here’s hoping you have good luck and make a new friend.
DPS:
I really need to know how to do it for myself rather than rely on someone else’ abilities. I may not have to do it, but I want to know that I can do it.
The HOJO motor is in the planning and research stages. This spring when it warms up a bit, when the weather is too bad to work on hay equipment but too nice to be inside I will start working on it. I will try a small one first just to see what it does.
Fed Up: Maybe she is misunderstood. I don’t know. But we don’t have much in common. She is anti gun and walks her dogs on a damn leash in the country. I love anything that can explode and take my dogs to the bar with me. If they need a leash I failed in their training. I don’t kennel a dog, i train it to stay home and listen.
I have never had any dealings with her but know her neighbors real well and they would concur with my original assessment of her.
mike,
I hear that man you gotta learn to garden, but if you can pick her brain most older folks have some really good tricks. Also hit Mother Earth news site. Them old hippies can sure make stuff grow, besides I’m kinda a old hippy myself..LOL
DPS
Any heirloom planted in the vicinity of another heirloom will produce a hybrid. That’s the way it works. They cross pollinate each other for better or worse usually for better. Hybrids are a much better bet just for the disease resistance. Most heirlooms are not disease resistant and do not produce real heavily. Play the odds. The obsession with heirlooms is silly unless you just want to experiment with them. If you really want to produce alot of crops go with the hybrid. By that I do not mean the GMO variety.
Mikey: I hope you are not in eastern Colorado……You cut my fences or those of my neighbors and you will be dancing from a rope while we finish off a beer and laugh at your poor life-choices. Don’t you think we have developed our water sources, grazing and wind breaks on our own land???? Also not too high on our list of outlaws are those who steal and slap a thieves brand the unbranded calves……you are a slicker.
Mikey, take out a lot of life insurance……if they find you.
jim steel: I have been down to your part of the country, good fencing must also not be high on your list. Trust me most of your fences down there will fall on their own and be nothing more than something that cuts up your horse’s legs. Hell if you have miles of fencing it cannot be helped. Maybe your area is the exception. Fencing needs alot of maintenance as you well know, go out and count how many LBS of staples you keep on hand, posts ect. Can’t do like I do now and just go to town and buy more.
Do you have any national grasslands near you? If there was a collpse would you cut those fences and let your herd in there? Jim you will be cutting fences too, you just don’t know it yet.
As far as branding, if I am thinking correctly livestock west of the missouri river has to branded currently. The self-designed brand was intended for those not in brand states. Would you want to be able to identify your animals if you didn’t live in a brand state? How long would you feed a stray before you called it your own without thinking your were a thief?
It seems you confusing pre-collapse with post collapse. After many deaths property lines will be blurred at best. You are on this site so I suppose you are preparing for something, ask yourself how many in your local area are not. Would you not “adopt” the herd of someone who has passed on? What brand would they have then?
Insurance? Really?
None of us like to think about the questionable things we would do. Would we go through the house of a neighbor if they passed and scavenge things? I would, I probably would not be proud of it but I would do it.
Mike: i venture to say that your fencing observations are for all western states ….some are poor at best, others are solid. This is not the issue. The issue is the theft of unbranded cattle when you slap your brand on them. All ranches around here do indeed have at least one brand, many places have multiple brands registered.My point was and is that theft is theft, no matter how you justify it. If the cattle owner passes on to the greener pasture in the sky, do you not think that he/she has heirs or assigns? If you wish, then negotiate a private treaty with them, not just relieve them of their burdensome critters. How would you wish to be treated? NOT rocket science regardless of circumstances.
You would know the heirs if living in a close community….if not then caring for the estrays and keeping as best a record as possible would be in orderfor you to be squared up with. If ALL hell broke loose then who knows the right answers. But just randomly cutting fences for the ‘herd benifit’ makes you a capricious criminal and you would be dealt with privately in an appropriate fashion around here.
The suggestion of insurance was a bit of sarcastic syncapation which you may not have realized…..
By the way, I am not at all confused, my friend.
Best regards, but stay fer,fer,fer
away from here sir……please
Jim
Jim Steel: In all honesty our worries will be feeding them through snowy months. I would guess you get snow and feed hay throughout the winter months. I would also assume you bale round bales. If everything goes south I certainly don’t have the abilities like the haythorn ranch putting up loose hay with draft horses. And I don’t see how it would be possible to move them south for the winter months. So most likely we both would end up with dead animals or skeletons come spring time.
Andrew Breitbart dead at 43!
Dunno if this is a joke about Breitbart or what, but people are dying a lot earlier lately. Not many getting the Biblical three score and ten.
Just heard it on the radio – apparently Andrew Breitbart did indeed die at age 43.
Headline on Drudge by Matt Drudge talks about what close friends they were, and how they used to “flash each other” almost every day …. wait, whut? *How* close friends *were* they?
That’s what I am going to do – buy 20 acres of land.
Make garden and grow small livestock (goats, lambs and ducks).
The thought of growing/caring for everything we need is daunting. I have two teenagers that are very down to earth, not caught up in all the ussual materialistic crap and are aware of what is going on around them. I would have serious worries however if we all had to suddenly had to work 14 hrs a day to sustain us. That is some hard work that most people are not used to. I think even the hardiest preppers would struggle. It’s easy to sit back and say, “oh sure, we could do it.” But if one is being honest, it would be a challenge unlike any other. I hand peeled twenty pounds of apples for applesauce and I thought my hand would fall off. It was easy enough to drag it home from the store. Sure, the determined would be able to do it, enough to stay alive and relatively healthy, but it would be one heck of a learning curve.
Ma…it is hard work but if one works steady at it in sections so to speak it gets easier…you have to learn to enjoy it or it can be a drag and then you want to quit…my wife and I are spending about $50 a month on foodstuffs from “outside” so right now most all our food comes from our ground…itll vary throughout the year and from year to year but not too much…heres to you and yours and a great future! 🙂
I don’t know why nobody ever talks about fishing as a source of food.
You can get an old above ground swimming pool, set it up, and have on sight fresh fish wherever you are. You might be able to find one free if you look hard enough, or checkout some foreclosures that are sitting empty.
All the talk about storing food is great and I have some food stores, but the main concern should be providing fresh food from a sustainable source.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. I know that no matter how bad things get, I will eventually catch a fish if there are some hooks in the water.
I raised Talapia for a few years and it is not easy to raise fish in a pool. And if you dont have electricity it is downright impossible. Fish create tremendous amounts of waste and a week without the filters they start to die off. If you have access to a free flowing stream of water it might work.
Then you have to feed them.
I agree but an above ground pool is limited in many ways and at best as a holding tank. I was raised on a 13 pond catfish farm for stocking ponds. Catfish will put on more weight per pound of food than cattle. Will live on their own but still need oxygenated water within a given temp rage and will not start to put on weight until the temperature reaches 70 plus degrees. They are the most sturdy of fish for surviving extremes.
Preppers with the means should build a deep clay lined pond with spill way that have a water source. Willow trees do well along the edge or build close to large shaded tree area.
Anyone with a reasonable sized lot can build a pond in your front yard after you have built a wall around your perimeter; and use that space.
You may as well have “landscaping” that works for you by feeding you.
The question I have about keeping fish, chickens, livestock, is where to nyou get the food to feed them. Having grazing land is one thing but what about grains?
Red Leader– fish eat chicken poop, chickens are scavenger omnivores which eat anything from table scraps to bugs, and livestock can be free ranged to eat grass and such… another good food for fish is duckweed that grows in the pond. Sheeple have been trained for generations to believe that it’s impossible to farmstead without the magnanimous help of Monsanto and Friends. A total falsehood.
It is possible to build a maggoty using dead vermin, which can then feed the chickens. Why do I know this? I have no idea.
Maggotry…stupid iPad.
curious george,
Kinda like the way you think. If a person takes the time to read up on some of the old ways they would be amazed at the chain of life. I added tobacco to my list to grow this yr,they say green tobacco soaked in water and sprayed on your veggies will keep many bugs away. Plus it will be a great barter item.
DPS
My neighbor has an old concrete rainwater cistern in the back yard. It has huge fish living in it. No one has fed the fish in years. They live on insects and whatever stray animals fall in. And they have done without the stray animals for most of the time that the cistern was covered with chicken wire. I think frogs get in there and get eaten.
GC – for some reason I get really funny looks when I talk about this, but you’d get more productivity out of LITTLE fish I’d think. Go to an Asian store and look at all the delicious TEENY fish preparations they have. We’re talking guppies and down. They’re very tasty over rice.
I agree with you GC, fish will be an important food source in my neck of the woods. Won’t be from a pool though and we won’t use a rod and reel to catch them either. A spark plug wired to a coil will zap them just fine! Gather as much as we can as fast as we can.
AZ,
A few bricks, a little string, 2 ltr coke bottles and some dry ice will load that cool full also. I hate fishing but I love to eat fish..
DPS
DPS
Only problem I see with that is getting the dry ice. I do love explosions though!
Check SHTF Fishing for some good links and great info. Just saying.
I have dabbled in this and am building a system under cover….so far its promising!
I think this article gives an idea of how truly difficult it will be for most of us to provide for ourselves once TSHTF. Farming is extremely difficult work and if you were engaged in it every day you would be using far more than 2000 calories. Add to this the need to defend your land against government thugs and snooping/unprepared neighbors and the task becomes impossible. I think that at some point before the total collapse we will experience civil war and the confiscation of everything militarily useful by the warring factions. The more I have thought on this problem, the more I am convinced the best option is to get a bluewater sailboat, load it with as much food and supplies as it can carry, and when the civil war stage seems imminent, get the hell out of Dodge. I woyld head for the South Pacific where there are lots of uninhabited islands and atolls. Survival would mean living off the land and sea for several years until most of the population has died off. I don’t believe that civil war will be the worst which we will face. At some point, some clown by accident or design will unleash the bioweapons on humanity, and then it is a crapshoot on whether or not your cabin in the middle of the woods is far enough from others to allow you to survive. I would feel a whole lot more secure with hundreds of miles of ocean between myself and the next closest source of infection. Those are considerations you will have to think about as well.
If I could pull that off, damn straight. Something tells me I might not make it too far out of port though…
Moon it’s an idea, but the pirates are bad enough now, imagine how much worse it will be.
DomesticT:
Good point about the pirates, but these replies all seem to assume that none of us are going to shoot back before being overwhelmed. Mob psychology usually causes people to continue their aggression, until shots are fired and one of their crowd goes down. Check out videos of mob scenes from past news reports. Then the tidal wave goes in the opposite direction. Anyway, if you want protection from pirates, mobs, et al., invest in one of those .12 gauge shotguns that is equipped with a 20-round rapid-fire magazine and load it with slug rounds. It’s the equivalent of a .50-caliber machine gun. Sweet.
When you go out to work your garden or feed your chickens they will shoot you from a distance. That’s the catch. You have chores/tasks that have to get done. All they have to do is kill and steal. They have the advantage.
I am sure pirates will become more of an issue post SHTF, but they tend to haunt choke points such as the Horn of Africa and the Malacca Strait of of Indonesia. I plan to do a one way voyage anyway; my point is once it gets to civil war stage, the best laid plans to hide in the woods will be very problematic. Biological agents will manage to infiltrate unless you are a complete hermit and plain lucky. Home guard/police thugs will probably have shoot-on-sight orders for anyone living in the woods because they could be either partisans or supporters of partisan activities. No one can be that vigilant; your activities will give off thermal signatures and drones will be able to locate even the most remote hideouts. The South Pacific on the other hand, is some of the most remote and unpopulated real estate on the planet. I would rather take my chances there than in the land of Big Brother.
Moon: I like your idea, how would you get water? I have always dreamed of retiring and sailing the carribean. I have even read books on how a person could hop from island to island on day trips. Never happen though. I am a flatlander, no webbing on my feet and an ass that fits a saddle much better than in a shark mouth.
@Mike,
Water could be got through a solar still which is as simple as a hole in the ground with some organic matter inside covered by a clear piece of plastic with a rock in the center. A cup under the rock collects the condensate. A large number of these would provide drinking water.
A better option is a regular fractioning column still of the variety used to make vodka. Aside from the potential to distill alcohol for medicinal purposes, sea water could also be distilled to desalinate it. Thus, you would have a way to make salt and water using any available heat source. A parabolic mirror capable of getting the boiler hot enough to turn water into steam could be made from cardboard and tinfoil; free plans are available online and have been vetted.
What concerns me most about the idea of relocating to a tropical island is the threat of tropical disease, or injury far from any kind of medical care. However, everyone else will be facing the same issues regardless of location, and most will have to worry about injury or death at the hands of two-legged predators as well.
Build your own (cold) smoke house and learn how to store meat other than in a freezer.
Yeah, but when the meat runs out what are you gonna do, smoke a dog?
When your oxygen runs out samstone, what are you going to do?
They are hard to keep lit. But give it a shot.
Smoke a half dozen chickens, fish, nuts, wild game (quail, pheasant, dove, squirrel, deer, wild hog, rabbit).
Good article!! I have given some thought about how long our cows and sheep will last in a post-apocolyptic nightmare situation. Thats why my ideas of destroying roads so travel by cars would be more difficult for city dwellers to ravage the countryside. We are over 100 miles from major cities (major for MT) so Im hoping that the collapse happens in a terrible winter so they can’t travel. My heart hurts to think of the terrible human suffering that will happen. All the apartment preppers will not last long, and us rural folks will be targets for zombie hordes of starving people. The ones who say “Ill just head out for the mountains with my rifle and fishing pole when SHTF” will be in for a rude awakening. In the mountains the weather changes on a dime, you might be ok in the summer months in a hippie-like colony but come winter the average american couch potato will start dying off like flies. Then you have the wolves to deal with. Don’t be fooled they are savage bastard animals that WILL fuckin kill you!!! I don’t know what it is going to be like in 5 years but I do know that no govt. or gun will stop a hungry man with kids to feed!!!
I love MT, used to haul alot of corn out there for a couple of feedlots and haul barley out of NE area of the state. Do you ever get to the buckin horse sale in miles city?
I wouldn’t worry too much about the roads, if they are dirt they will wash out quickly without maintenance, and I think interstates will look like parking garages. If everything goes badly a road will look like the Oregon trail, just a 2 track path.
Im a little ways from Miles City, Mike. Im in the central part of the state, I work at a grain elevator/mineral plant so maybe I know you??? Im more worried about the ones in town that know what theyre doing and decide to come out to the country to shoot a cow or a rancher to feed themselves. No opponent is tougher or more determined than a desperate man trying to feed his family. I was looking at our situation and I was thinking deadfall/punji stake traps set out all around us and make the driveway impassible.
Normally I would haul corn to either a feedlot just north of billings. That place was huge, foreman told me that at any given time they had between 750,000 and a million head they fed out there, or else I would haul to a research facility just outside of Miles city. It was the first place I’d ever seen a clear piece of plastic on a cow’s belly so they could reach in and sample stages of digestion. Hauled barley mostly out of border towns.
I can almost assure you that some of your livestock will get shot and butchered out in a field. But once it happens neighbors will gather and actively hunt poachers because it could be theirs or them next time.
I have a similar problem with unlimited avenues of approach living on the plains. Almost no way to funnel intruders to a bottleneck without constructing some sort of mote. The only good thing is that I can see someone coming from miles or the dogs know someone is coming. I have to hope to use other people as an early warning system. I do plan on my own road work to make life a little more difficult for anyone to get out to my general area. But living on miles of dirt roads well off the beaten path I am not sure of what else I can do.
Just happened to be goin back over some skipped reading and saw “I love MT” and it caught my attention. I also love the state and considered moving there at one time. Have a good friend that lives in Augusta, just north of Helena. Visited in ’89 and ’94, hunted for a week each time in Scapegoat Wilderness. Dream often about a SHTF plan that has my little cabin with livestock,little woman,and provisions sitting next to the Deerborn Headwaters. Wish you both well with the prepping!
CM – there’s a saying, “A prepper with a year’s supply of food is just an MZB with a delay switch” by which I mean, there are going to be people who will hunker down and live on Mountain House or MRE’s or something, maybe for as long as a year, and then, since they’ve been hiding, hunkering down, maybe not really *believing* the Sh- is hitting the fan, they’ll emerge from their hidey-hole, look out upon their non-garden and the animals they don’t have, and the foraging skills that are still sealed up in the books they didn’t read, and they’ll go into Mutant Zombie Biker mode and come after YOU.
And yeah, enough gun will stop ’em all right 😉
Yep, both you fellas bring up good points! Unfortunely the collapse isnt even full-on yet and we are already having problems with rustling. Last summer 25 lambs were stolen out of our leased pasture. We looked for over 6 hours for signs of predation and there was none of the tell tale signs of the wool on the fence from either a mt. lion or a bear dragging the lamb through the fence. Also if wolves got em they would just eat them on the spot. Nope it was rustling bastard that knew what they were doing, they cut the fence and backed a horse trailer up and when they were done replaced it. It was that or aliens from space took em!!!
@Cinderella—
AND they were LOCALS…. so good luck when TSHTF and you think you will all skip around eating steak.
Man is the only savage bastard animal. Wolves are not dangerous to people, they only attack when they feel they are being threatened. You may think they are dangerous, but if you do proper research, you will find that they are loving, friendly animals.
Wolves live in packs and take care of their young and old. Mess with their young or their kill, you will ask for trouble. Sounds a lot like the survivor mentality to me.
Wolves do not track humans for prey, but humans do track wolves. I would rather live near a pack of wolves rather than a gang of thugs with weapons.
Wolves are beautiful animals who have been badly catagorized for many years.
IGIT, you are dead wrong about wolves, you sound like that flaky Timothy Treadwell who thought the grizzlies were cute cuddy animals and his girlfriend and him ended up in bear shit!!! They kill sheep just for fun, a local rancher had 150 of his prized Ramboullet sheep evicerated by those savage beasts. They will bite a sheep’s hindquaters and rip their stomachs out and not eat the sheep, they just move on to the next one. They teach their bastard pups the same thing. I can tell you are a liberal townie, and you have never seen sweet baby lambs which are TRULY loving, friendly animals get torn apart just for sport by a pack of bloodthirsty savage creatures. There was a reason they were hunted to extinction, GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH!!! Oh BTW, When the elk and deer are hunted into extinction, and all the livestock have been killed off, your wolf friends will come for your ass!!!!
CM: Back when they were protected I knew many ranchers that would take out wolves and drive them down the road 20 miles and throw them in a ditch (in case they had a tracker on them). Most people think that ranchers kill them for sport and fun, but it isn’t the case. A rancher has every right to protect his herd.
I have heard of yotes doing the same thing, but have never seen it. I have even seen yotes eating afterbirth less than 10 feet from a new calf and they would not mess with it. Not sure what they would do to sheep though.
Cinderella Man,
Wolves were not hunted to extinction, they are still here.
You sound like an extremist, who likes to make up stories to suit your rant. Wolves do not kill for the sake of killing and if you did a little research, you would know more about this subject.
Like I said, Man is the only savage bastard animal, and sometimes they are ignorant as well.
i got wolves and coyotes and bears around here
supposedly wildcats and cougars are roaming now south of hereabout 50 miles south.
no sheep around here… no sheeple allowed on my property
I live in the little finger area of Michigan. We have way too many of those damn coyotes around here. They kill all the fawn in the spring and it makes for less tasty meals on our table. I can walk out my door most nights and hear them yappin. I’ve never had one but I hear they taste like poodle.
Bill: When my dogs are in heat coyotes will come right up to the from door or they will lay in the hay field 20 yds from the dogs barking at them. I hate shooting them because they are about the only thing that control prairie dogs and mice and rabbits. If I see one just once chasing livestock I will put a stop to it.
Bill,
Pick up a Haydens GHC-Cottontail call and call them coyotes in and shoot them. Its alot of fun, plus great way to still in tune with that gun.
DPS
Don’t know much about wolves, but I suspect they were hunted to extinction for a reason. I think it was incredibly stupid to reintroduce them to the American west, especially given the human population density increase in recent decades.
Yeah, well tell that to Little Red Riding Hood……..
You believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny too I bet. Get a clue. The wild ain’t Walt Disney and wolves are dangerous especially the Canadian wolves the idiot enviro nuts have introduced into the US..
~IGIt~
You sir, are one “fucked up SOB”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Take your earth-worship/animal instinct apologizing/compromising theories & shove them up your ass!!!!!!!!!!
I & my manifold brother(hunters) here at this site…..are, FYI……..
……the ultimate predators/hunters…we represent the epitome of the “APEX PREDATOR” syndrome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*************************************************************************************
Wolves/coyotes etc…etc… are merely…..my/our competitors & I’ll “shoot, shovel & shut up”……..when I get one in my gun-sight/scope!
They are akin to goobermint agents….they herd their more numerous prey into groups & cull the weak/stupid/cowardly for profit( i.e = in nature its calories…in NWO-speak, its “brownie points”)!!!!
…Get the fuck out of here, asshole! Goto to green-peace.com or some other limp-wristed site & spew your happy horseshit!!!
….most of the real “MALES” @ MAC’s web-site possess/use/burn/run on……high-test/high compression TESTOSTERONE!!!!!!!!!
…….your shit is poor/weak/anemic…..grow some balls, pal!!!!!!!!!!!
Gunsmith, you are spot on brother!!! That pantywaste IGIT dosent know WTF he or she is talking about! The rancher that lost his herd was near Yellowstone. Those bastard animal AKA Fucking Wolves are decimating the elk herds in the park and in the Bitteroot Range on the MT/ID border. The other day (look it up IGIT) a wolf was spotted in Kalispell in a middle school football field!!! I hate to say it but Im waiting for the day when one of these “loving” creatures grabs a kid and then the backlash from the public will be so great that they will be wiped out from existience!!! IGIT is a fucking fool and if we were in a situation like that movie The Grey I would shoot IGIT in the leg and let the wolves eat him/her!!!
Gun. Thanks bid I didn’t feel like writing all that right now glad I don’t have to what a damn hippie I’m going to kill a coulple yotes Tonite just to spite these assholes. Stay safe brother!
@ IGIT:
Wolves are the only animals known to kill for sport. Ask any rancher with wolf predation problems. Oftentimes wolves will kill livestock and hardly feed on the kill. You are a liberal idiot if you think wolves are delightful, friendly and benign. They need to be wiped off the face of the earth, extinguished, slaughtered, so hard working ranchers and farmers with livestock can keep what they’ve worked so hard to grow and raise. You don’t belong on this website.
An all out collapse of this country will most likely never happen in my lifetime. I am prepared and do raise my own garden. When you hit a homecenter buy only organic seeds that are not genetically engineered by the big food conglomerates. You wll pay a buck or two more and just seal them in a jar.
Buy some good ole manual gardening tools that will last. It takes alot of work to raise a garden that will support you all year around. You better learn how to can is all I can say.
A commentator made the biggest point of all. You must have friends that are like minded and form a communtiy of them or your toast. I feel for those in the big cities they are basically screwed once the trucks stop running to their areas.
The only way a total collapse of this country could happen is an all out nuclear war.
Well, I’m in trouble then. I live smack in the middle of a big city with no ability to purchase rural land at the moment. We have about a month of storable food (two months if we stretched it). Additionally, we grow most of our vegetables in our backyard. And we can the surplus every year. But this author has a point, and it’s something which I’ve thought about quite a lot. If things REALLY got THAT bad, there are very, very few people who could emerge unscathed. And I also think that if it got bad enough that we would have to rely solely on our storage for more than two months, we wouldn’t make it out of the city alive. The preppers where I live are outnumbered by the zombies 40 to 1.
If I were in your situation, I would chose an low population area within a few hours drive and adopt it. By that I mean spend weekends there (maybe at a campground or storage unit) and attend local events and meet people. America is aging and there are a lot of seniors who have a free and clear home on a few acres, but will not be able to fully utilize it. Many of them would love to have company on the weekends and would welcome you WTHSTF. Of course, it takes a while to build up this kind of trust, but it would be worthwhile.
Great idea.
Im screwed. I live in a suburb on a 1/4 acre with a family of four. Have to eat the kids first, I guess.
308,
Eat the kids first. Sorry bud thats some funny s–t
DPS
I plan on eating the 99%… not the ows,If you actually took numbers i bet 99% of the paychecks in this country are tax collected or fake money …
It was a very good article, but as most of you noticed a lot of important information about feeding yourself was left out.
Having grown my food for the past 20 years on our 20 acres of mountain/forest land, I can attest to the difficulty of providing all your own nurishment through your own garden and skills.
Every year I have a garden but make sure to pick all the wild balckberrys, huckelberrys and elderberrys that I can find in the surrounding forest. I also make sure to be out mushroom hunting in the fall/winter and spring. There are several wild greens that can be scavanged from our property/forest land that surround our valley.
The wild life hunting I will leave to the capable hands of my neighbors who know the land and how it should be handled to maintain a supply of wild meats.
I’ve come to realize it will be a lot easier to become vegetarian then try to raise farm animals that are noisy and attract attention.
Our biggest advantage are our neighbors who each have some very good skill sets and are more then willing to be active members of a surviving community.
All you you need to get your groups up and running to work the kinks out before the collapse happens.
God bless and keep on prepping.
Might also consider food crops that are not easily identifiable as food crops, that could be sown in “waste” areas during a SHTF. Among those could be amaranth,Once considered a weed in the U.S., this annual is now acknowledged as a nutritious high-protein food.
Chicory,Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons (blanched buds), or for roots (var. sativum), which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also grown as a forage crop for livestock. It lives as a wild plant on roadsides.
Dandelions rank in the top 4 green vegetables in overall nutritional value.
Lambs Quater,Many people see Lambs Quarters as nothing more than a common weed, never realizing that a tasty and nutritious green vegetable could be enjoyed, free for the picking.
Just to name a few.
I definitely agree to be able to forage greens–unfortunately, they offer such a low calorie count, you will expend more energy looking for them than you get from them. Roots–dandelion, burdock, chicory–offer more calories, I believe, although I have found it hard to find really reliable information. Wild greens are absolute nutritional powerhouses…they just lack calories.
I read a good idea, probably on Rawles, although I haven’t tested it–if SHTF, allow your grass/weeds to become overgrown, and don’t plant immediately identifiable vegetables (no red tomatoes in a cage, for example…allow them to sprawl and pick them when they are green). Grow root vegetables in waste places–most sheeple can’t identify a potato or carrot by its foliage. Don’t be seen tending your garden in the daytime–plant and water by night.
How awful to have to imagine such a world, hiding out from the mutant biker zombies.
My son (aged 7) has been lapping up learning foraging skills with his friends. This is a way even kids can be productive members of a survival group, if you take the time to teach em now.
While your at it start looking around at the medicinal wild plants growing locally. That willow tree may be the only access you have to painkillers (contains aspirin).
Correct!
Most kids will absolutely love the outdoors and learning to be self reliant if we only take the time to teach them.
By time I was 8, I had memorized about 1000 acres that us boys freely roamed over. Any one of us could have told you where every blackberry bush, goose berry, nut tree, fishing spots, etc was located. By age 12 I knew the basics of gardening, canning, was an expert marksman, etc. Pretty much as soon as you could walk without crushing plants, you helped pick, weed, plant the garden. Used to have to pick up rocks if we wanted to fight amongst us kids.
My point is kids today are capable of just as much as any of us. However most just haven’t had the chance to be experience it. Take the time to teach every kid that will listen.
Jerusalem Artichokes, look them up! A rhizome similar to a potato and it’s a perennial.
I grow them Clay. Last year my plants were about 6 feet tall. They have a pretty yellow flower and most people would never know they are edible.
They are pretty HSL, I cleared out a small spot in the back of my property and they just went crazy. And yes they are stealthy and the lowest maintenance produce I have ever seen. We mash them, fry them, boil, use in soups etc.. They can be a pain to dig in the winter, but it is worth it. Keep the faith all.
You guys are right, most would never suspect that they have a tuber under ground. They grow all over the place here in SW Mo, most people just think they’re a weed.
If you have a pond on your place or a cooperative neighbor, I would also suggest starting some wild water lotus/lily. Once they get going they will grow like crazy. They produce a root about 2″ across and often 10′ long, and will keep forever, until you harvest them. They also help the habitat for fish.
Carefull with those suckers. The monstrous farts they generate might just reveal your location at the most inopportune moment. Way, Way worse than cabbage.
Oh it all sounds easy – world ends – start a garden, work hard with your preppers an you’ll have some food. Do you really belive that would happen. It will be so much worse than that!! If it happens it will be so much worse!!
If you aren’t already a gardener/farmer, its too late for you. I was reading Mikes comments earlier about his soil problems. They can be easily fixed over the course of time, but time is the key.
One of my favorite foods is hercules crowder peas, this year I am going to experiment and grow some down by the creek bank amongst the weeds and see how they do. Unless someone is walking the creek they will never know whats there.
Agreed HSL, I would suggest a Peterson’s field guide to Edible Wild Plants. They print them based on the area of the country you live in. I bought mine a few years ago and use it regularly. I also used it to decide what to order seed-wise for wild plants and made quite a large patch of edible wild flowers. I also bought the sister book for medicinal plants and made medicinal wild flower patch too.
Thanks Clay, I’ll check it out.
~Clay & High Speed~
Thanks much for the ideas & info/data! Much appreciated here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My big failure last year was my chamomile patch. It grew well, but I’d totally underestimated the sheer quantity we’d need to plant to yield a useful tradeable amount in a shtf situation. We are “seeding” some local wasteland this spring to ensure adequate supplies.
I’m good with herbs (Gran & Great-Grandma taught me as a kid, and my Mum’s good too). My son has an almost perfect visual memory for foraging. (That disability Autism has some suprising survival ABILITIES for shtf- he also has super sensitive hearing, smell and sight).
It’ll be the key skill I bring to the table of any group in a shtf situation as conventional drugs will be hard to obtain (looking at the current situation in Greece). Too many wanna-be hero hunter fantasies. Gathering is more mundane but just as critical a skill for day to day life post shtf methinks.
Collapse can come at any time. Without warning. Nukes are unlikely, yet. Monetary collapse more likely. The problems of the Great Depression will look small compared to what comes around this time. It takes a good imagination to even visualize it. Stores will close the first day. Including drug stores. No gasoline. No nothing. The Great Purge will begin.
I don’t plan on surviving. Too old. 🙁
Obama will see to it that you get the pain pill……
Me also; but if it gets here, I want to cull out a few for the rest of you
Things will not colase overnight. Mad Max scenarios is really far fetched. I spend 6 years in the Iraq theatre, it never got that bad. Even Somalia, which could be called a SHTF scenario still has people living and eating there. The reccomendations in this article are really moot for me as I live in the tropics and subsistence living on small lots is the norm.
I lived in Rhodesia for 6 months. I saw people eat grubs on a daily basis. Most of the time they ate mealy meal. Corn mush. But the White government always made sure no one starved. Now it is called Zimbabwe, has a black government, communist. Now they go hungry often. First thing that starts to disappear is the bush critters. Small animals then big animals.
A true survivalist knows that he or she is surrounded by edible plants and animals, and yes, even insects, as disgusting as that may sound. All these strategies are great and always a good idea. Yet, as a last resort, never forget that most insects are edible. Many weeds, flowers and plants in your area are edible, even acorns, once you boil out the tannin. Additionally, most people don’t know that even clay from the ground and leather from shoes can be consumed in dire times, if needed.
So, yes, I agree, get your planting and livestock in order. However, don’t forget the books loaded with information on what naturally occurs in your area that can be consumed. It just may safe your life if faced with starvation.
I keep seeing 2000 calories as a magic caloric threshold. BS! … at least for women. Realistically, I maybe eat 1500 calories per day and have done so all my life. I am in perfect health, no osteoporosis nor other maladies rumored due to less than 2k/day, and can bench as much as most men (I am 5’10” tall meaning 6 foot by the way men measure their own heights these days ;-)) ). All the animal protein is hogwash. I cannot remember the last time I ate animal protein. I am not a vegetarian – I just have never been able to physically tolerate eating animal protein (nausea, headaches, hives, palpitations, etc. within minutes of consuming animal proteins including eggs and dairy). Beans, grains & legumes fulfill the majority of my caloric intake. Fruits and veggies, though eaten in abundance, do not add up calorie-wise.
Store buckets of wheat berries, beans and rices and you could live healthfully for a long time even if you don’t have acres of arable land.
O/T..enemies foreign and domestic
enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/efadGG.htm
http://www. infront of it if you wish to read it
The best survival strategy is join a uniformed force which will have the power to take food by force.
It takes months and years to raise food. It only takes moments to take it away.
The Mongols did that for millennia. And it worked out well for them, since there is still Mongolia, unlike most of other settler kingdoms they crushed in cold blood.
You sound both lazy and foolish. Good luck to ya, I have a feeling that line of thought will give you nothing but a gunshot hole. It may work in the city where you live but that will not work anywhere else.
Tell that to the Turks. The Turks never farmed until 1922. The slavs did that for them.
Comenius: You remind me of someone that thinks he is much better with weapons than he really is.
Lets just look at your plan: For it to work you would have to have either better training or better weapons. I would bet you have neither. But for the sake of argument say you have both better training and weapons. You are counting on 100% success rate with 0% intelligence on whatever building you are assaulting. You have no idea what kind of defenses your target has. You don’t have the luxury of waiting because you were not smart enough to be able to provide food for yourself and you have a hungry army to feed. How are you going to transport all your army? Figure you will just stop and fuel up at a truck stop on the plains?
What are you going to do when someone who can shoot starts picking people in your army off. You may get him but how long will your army last while suffering 10% casualty rates.
Like I said before, you won’t last very long against someone who has hunted all their life.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe that should be your plan. Practice up on your first aid skills, they will be very useful in your future.
You will be left to rot where you fall, you fool. You’re not tough enough to be a mongol, you’re more like a mongrel…..
Samstone, don’t know you well, but I like ya!
I totally agree about the gardening “learning curve”. It is not easy work. And heirlooms are much harder to grow & seem to bear less food. This marks year 4 of our garden – we are expanding it to about 1/2 an acre. We will be very busy…..
If you haven’t done it already, start a garden this Spring. Just for practice. Even a tiny one will help.
Also, one thing the author didn’t mention is that it takes a few YEARS for fruit trees to produce well. Even more for nut trees. Plant them this Spring. By next summer you might get a few apples, pears, plums or peaches off of them. But not many.
And don’t forget to store pesticides and fertilizer.
Mr. B
I started some heirlooms last yr, and you are right alot more work. But the funny thing is I still have Broc and lettice growing from last yr wind drift seeded alot of my raised beds. My onions are also still growing. I feed all the raised beds from my little pond that has goldfish still in it who knew that they would live 11 yrs now. My little green house only has peppers in it and I have been using the same seeds for the Jalapenos for 7 yrs now. What can I say I love them stuffed peppers, plus when eating raw the are full of vit.c
Have a great day sir
DPS
I see our food storage as one layer of food preparedness. Our pantry, kitchen garden, and fruit bearing plants comprise layer one and may be lost soon after TSHTF.
The fruit and nut trees at the retreat along with the wild plants and game we can harvest from the forest and pond are layer two. Wild game populations dropped in many areas during The Great Depression so we set aside hundreds of canning jars to hit this hard in the beginning.
Several years of food storage (Rawles has three) comprise another layer and it is important to diversify this among several cashes so if TPTB confiscate the pantry at the city house, for example, they will be satisfied with a small fraction of the total.
Our livestock is layer four because we keep only a few breeding stock until ‘the event’ after which we will focus on growing the herd. It will be easier to a hide fewer chickens and rabbits during the panic phase.
America may be the largest empire to collapse, but it is certainly not the first. There is a lot we can learn by studying the past. One great book is ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies.’ Normalcy bias led many to failure, but those who adapted often survived. It will be no different this time.
Ever had appendicitis, a gallbladder flare up or a really nasty abcessed tooth? You better hope you don’t after there is no medical care available. Appendicitis really sucks. Gallstones are no fun either nor are kidney stones. Any of these will make all the preps in the world moot.
I agree with much of what has been posted. As someone who grows and stores the majority of my food, I can attest to how difficult it is and the learning curve is very steep and at times seems to never end -especially in a climate where we have a never ending hard winter the majority of the time. I’d also like to add that I HATE slugs! Bartering with neighbors for foods not grown here or other items is a must for me and if TSHF total collapse, it will be a requirement of us all.
Having berry bushes and fruit trees is wonderful, if a late frost doesn’t come through and kill off all of the blooms on your trees! Ditto for keeping the birds from eating all of them. Today we have weather forecasts to warm of the possibility of frost, in a SHTF situation, you have to use your good sense -better to cover the trees just in case rather than see no harvest.
Canning is a great way to preserve much of your fruits, veges and meats. However, even if you own Tattler lids, eventually they will wear out and it may just happen you will run out of jars before you have preserved everything you want to. For those who depend on store-bought pectin for use in canning, I would advise learning how to use under-ripe or crab apples for pectin in canning. It is a skill and just like all of the others it takes time to master.
I am also a huge fan of using a root cellar and deydrating as well as smoking meats. If you have never brined a hog (or any other animal) I suggest you take a look at just how much salt you need for this operation (and the size of the tank). While I’m on the subject of salt, how much salt does everyone have? You can use salt to preserve many things, but you sure need a lot of it.
Are you solitary, with family, have a group, have a community? The odds of survival if it gets to the worst of the deep end will go up if you have a large group or community. During the depression, folks slept in their growing crops along with a gun and maybe a dog to prevent theives from stealing their food. If it gets nasty, you will need to post guards in rotating shifts not just around your garden but around your property along with other warnings (trip lines, etc).
And the last piece of my rant is fitness. Seriously, how fit and healthy are you? Let us all be honest here about this. If you are holding your knees after climbing a flight of stairs (assuming you can reach your knees) and the only squat you can do is when you sit to shit, you are in sorry shape. Give up the smokes and the extra helpings of food and junk food and go for a walk to start. Get as fit as you are able. If you are out of shape you probably aren’t going to be capable of the hard work required to garden, harvest, or raise anything and take shifts guarding your homestead.
Even if we never have to deal with a SHTF collapse in our lifetimes, being prepared and physically in shape will save us all a lot of misery. I love living a prepared lifestyle and wouldn’t willingly give it up.
Cheers!
Slugs can be eliminated from a garden by dusting your veggie rows with ash from your wood stove. The ash is also good for your soil.
My son chose to spend his Xmas money on slug eating plants for the veggie patch last year. He’s also built a toad mansion.
Copper strips around pots and raised beds also help. Yoghurt pots filled with beer to drown the blighters.
Nematode worms also help.
Gravel paths between beds.
Ducks love slugs but will trample seedlings.
You need multiple attack methods in our neck of the woods. Slugs are my Gardening Nemisis!
Hey Mum, hope you see this it is a little late. What plants eat slugs, that would be great. Clay
Swift, I never heard of using ashes, thats great. I crush up egg shells and scatter around the base of the plants, and that seems to work. My grandmother would put beer in an empty jar lid, the beer would attract them then they would drown. She said she liked it better then anything she tried, she also said the only bad part was listening to drunk slugs partying all night long lol.
You can get rid of slugs with ash, salt, or ground egg shells. The sharp edges of the shells harm the slugs and they won’t cross them.
No more than 200,000 Manchurians(1/3 of them ethnic Chinese who went to (literally) greener pastures) were needed to conquer a China of 300 million souls.
No more than 100,000 Brits were needed to subdue an India of 400 million souls (which included Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan as well).
Surprisingly, if the difference of firepower is large, it doesn’t take too many men to conquer a territory and strip the food from the people.
Germans , numbering no more than 5,000 in German East Africa (larger than New York state), took away food and fish from the natives in a regular basis for more than 40 years. Yet, when the Brits sent 20,000 soldiers to conquer it, the natives fought with the Germans (never numbering more than 3,000 soldiers, and ever declining) for more than 4 years!
A motorcycle gang, especially those who actually came from official armed units and has some kind of ‘legitimacy’, can go a long, long way. Lettow-Verweck, the leader of the ragtag German-African force who were little more than bandits, was never captured and only surrendered after he learned Germany was defeated in Europe.
It seems we enjoy the same reading material.
Comenius,
You are the definition of a Parasitic worm: A worm classified as a parasite. (A parasite is a disease-causing organism that lives on or in a human or another animal and derives its nourishment from its host.) Lice are examples of parasites that live on humans; bacteria and viruses are examples of parasites that live either on humans or in humans; parasitic worms (also called helminths) live in humans, or in your case, off of humans.
And Nurhaci, Robert Clive, and Lettow-Verweck have shown that their names have outlived those they had preyed on.
Virginia declares “emperor has no clothes”: NDAA nullified
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/virginia-declares-emperor-has-no.html
Wish I could find it, but some where out there is net ville is a good article on how you can feed one person with between 8,000 and 10,000 square feet of arable soil. This accounted for no fishing, hunting or raising of animals either – just vegetables and grains. My BOL is full of God Damn rattle snakes anyway – and yes they do taste like chicken and I know there is no possible way I can eat them all cause I don’t have that much ammunition (and I have a lot).
I liked for you to think about this: planting garden veggies on a setup like baseball bleachers, facing south. Works great for people with limited space and really produces for veggies with vines.
The deep style plastic rain gutters mounted on a fence or wall make for great vertical gardening and you get to pick the Sun exposure for the veggie you are growing. Makes it hard for the critters to cause damage too, works great with smaller veggies and strawberries etc. The ten gallon Rubbermaid Tough containers are ideal for many veggies and are just the right size for easy moving.
The one I ate did NOT taste like chicken…
Great article and love the comments. Yes, maintaining a plot of land is difficult, plus you are at the mercy of the weather – one good hailstorm and your food supply is gone. When people are starving they will stop at nothing to ravage your land and rip up your veggies, strip the fruit off your trees, and probably leave you dead in the process. We are at the end of days, we need to trust in the Lord to get us through the terrible times that are on the horizon.
just a little BREAKING NEWS
http://www.presstv.com/detail/229494.html
will be of interest to those of you who follow peak oil
no details yet on what happened
hopefully this is not like the opening pages of LAST LIGHT by Scarrow ??
google “magnetic generators”
eeder: Have you or anyone you know made one of these? I am researching it currently and it is going to be my summer project to try to build one.
mike
i havent tried yet but it is going to be a project i tackle this summer.. it clearly can work. but harnessing it into where you can use it might be the hard part…dont give up on it though.. im certain you can produce electricty this way.
eeder: youtube has things on it, google hojo motor, there is stuff on it. I am like you, intrigued by it, but know very little. I am not sure if it would only produce DC and that you’d use an inverter or if you could produce AC with it and power a freezer. I read on one site that a man spent $300 on materials and could power his entire house with it.
Still trying to figure out what is fact and what is fiction with it though.
mike
it can power a whole house, i am convinced of this. it is entirely feasible and has been suppressed oviously. i have seen all the things on here… its really pretty simple… its just doing it! i just discovered this about a month ago.i will certainly try to make one.
Look up on internet and you will find so much information that it is a fraud, it is a scam.
rjg
no you are a scam, an obvious govt troll…i dont believe ive seen you here before? i know you gus dont want this one to get out, but ,well, sorry!go to hell!
GOOGLE MAGNETIC GENERATORS
IGNORE SUPPOSED SCAM>>NOT TRUE!
The problem with magnetic generators is while yes they work MORE ENERGY is spent making the magnet than that same magnet will produce in it’s life.
The same is true of “pink” insulation. More energy is used to make it than it will “save” over it’s life.
james
ok, well i guess we better stock up on magnets!how long do they last?
bottom line if you dont live in a rural area… its not looking good.
I live in a sub-division…I’M SCREWED!
Our second home is so far out in the sticks that I have trouble getting enough sun to the solar panels.
That thumbs down means someone thinks its a bad idea to be in the sticks.
Don’t forget about sprouting! You can grow sprouts inside, even in the middle of winter.
During a SHTF, I may become dangerous to show off a master garden. You may be forced to skip a season. Growing sprouts, inside away from nosy neighbors, and living off your stockpile may be a good alternative. Hopefully, once the zombies kill each other off, you can resume your gardening.
And just what will the nosy neighbors be eating, you moron?
They’ll be eating all the preps they have carefully stored away, of course, since any intelligent person would be able to heed the numerous clarion calls to prepare, prepare.
If they fail to heed, they’ll be eating guys named Mike. Mmmm…tastes like chicken.
Mama Bear,
ANYTHING’S edible…
if you cook it long enough, even Mike! 😉
LOL
The short term food storage is to give one a chance to get their sh*t together and implement their renewable foodstuffs plan. Crops, livestock and poultry take time to mature & ripen. Then you have to store whatever your harvest. The livestock needs feed too. One needs both types of plans to go the long term. Lots of time & work go into both. Add to all that work & prepping; defending your crops & animals against two & four legged critters. It’s grueling, back-breaking work. I live for it. There’s a lot of people out there who have no idea where hamburger or a tomato comes from other than a store.
The figures “Dr. Bones” quotes are a bit on the low side. Depends on where you live. Corn here is sold by the ton & right now it’s selling at $31/hdwt, bagged.
Respects to all. BG
My wife and I have 24 acres. We have turkeys, chickens, ducks, cows and one horse. We have 10 acres of woods that we use to heat our home. Fresh water from several springs can be used in addition to our well. If I could change ANYTHING, I would have bought land sloping west. The snow melts faster and the pasture turns green sooner rather than the land we have which slopes east. The only advantage of what we have is 1,900 feet of frontage on a rural fishing lake and excellent hunting. (No motors except electric allowed on the lake.) Having said that, always buy land sloping west!
There will be a collapse. There will be a time of anarchy but eventually the government will regain control of the country. I believe that the anarchy will lead to the one-world government prophesied in Revelation. The collapse won’t be permanent. They never are.
sadly barn cat, you probaly are about right.not willingly by me though.
Is anyone here into Dogs?
We have a whippet who is an amazing hunter and I know she’ll be worth her keep when shtf. She’s not a guard dog as her primary purpose right now is as a therapy dog for my ASD child, so a key part of her job is to help initiate friendly social interaction.
I am tempted to get a Doberman bitch, so that hopefully I have time to train her up properly to guard. I know that if you have one good dominant dog they can “train” any subsequent members of a pack that you build. However I’d really appreciate your opinions as this breed, and it’s suitability for homestead defence.
My reason for thinking about a Doberman is that I have experience of the sight hounds and ths breed was developed from them. However I would appreciate advice, especially from those who already use dogs to protect the homestead. I have also looked at Ridgebacks as friends had good results in Zimbabwe, but it’s almost impossible to get a decent well bred example locally as the gene pool is too small. I don’t have the funds to import a dog. (UK quarintine laws push up the costs of importing to $9000).
.
A friend of mine did have a couple Dobermans, one of them went senile, and had to be put down as a result of his actions. From others I’ve known, they are hit and miss. If I could have a dog, I’d go for a German Shepard; they are very intelligent, protective, and loyal. Too bad about the quarantine laws, that’s spendy!
lonelonmum -I’ve kept a variety of dogs and honestly prefer mastiff types, especially for guarding my home and for schutzhund. I know folks who will say a German Sheperd or a Malinois would be their picks because they are smaller and require less food. Obviously if you are looking for a dog to work a farm that will play a role in your choice as well. Everyone has their favorites and the following mastiffs are my picks. These breeds are not for everyone, so caveat emptor -or buyer beware.
The Dogo Argentino is a powerful, fast and sturdy breed that can be used for hunting as well as guarding -they are AMAZING at both. I have even seen a Dogo that was taught to sheep-herd and round other types of cattle (the handler of the dog was VERY talented). They have an interesting history and are wonderful with the family in my experience.
The Dogue de Bordeax is a powerful, sturdy, tough breed. They are AMAZING for guarding, some of them will hunt but not all. The massive size of these dogs would make you think they are slow and compared to a Shepherd I would say they are. This is not a cattle dog, but some Bordeaxs are more willing to work and energetic then others, it really depends on the dog. However, even the “lazy” among these dogs can be unbelievably fast and wickedly brutal to their prey -I have witnessed this firsthand with my own Bordeaux when he caught something on the property, it took a split second for my guy to snap the neck of the creature he chased down and caught -picture that with an intruder. These guys are also great with the family.
The Cane Corso is also a force to be reckoned with and in my opinion is very similar to the Dogue de Bordeax with some variation.
My last pick is the Bully Kutta. I haven’t had a Bully Kutta, but I’m considering one for my next addition to the dog pack.
Hope this was of some help!
I really want my son protected, as in a decent dog standing guard, at his feet when I have to take a nap. People may betray you, a good dog never will & noone can stand guard 24/7.
The german shepherds I’ve seen recently have all been “show dogs” with those funny banana backs. I’d have one in a heart beat of the old-school straight back build as they are lovely dogs.
Dog de Bordeux is beautiful – hhhm, I hadn’t considered that at all – so thank you.
You’ve deffo mentioned a couple there that I need to go away and have a good think about.
The key issue is getting the healthiest animal you can, and frankly so many breeds have serious health issues cos of really dumb inbreeding nowadays it’s getting silly. Even icons like the British Bulldog have become poorly cartoon caricatures of their past glory due to modern “show” obsessions. Crufts should be banned.
I can purchase “any” breed of dog here in the UK, but a health tested, sound hipped, & free of genetics faults like a dodgy ticker that’s not the progeny of it’s own Aunt & Brother? Now that’s a real challenge for some breeds.
My last dog lived till 18, so I expect a new dog to be a long term investment of the training time iykwim. Our whippet has the potential for longetivity too as I chose her well.
The Dogo Argentino is a banned breed here in the UK, like the American Pitbull. OPSEC means it’s not smart to get a banned breed right now, (or even a dog that could be mistaken for a banned breed by some dumb sheeple).
Mastiffs as a group though are looking like they might be a good choice – thanks for suggesting I look at this group.
NEWS ALERT: “UN to Propose Planetary Regualtions on Food & Water”
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/01/un-to-propose-planetary-regulations-water-food/?test=latestnews
thanx for the link.Wow,They
are becoming rather blatant,as
of late.
I wonder what a solar flare would do to a solar panel? Is it easy to spot those panels from the air? If its TEOTW, doesn’t that mean we are all gonna die?
Think you can hunt for enough food?
I can’t remember the exact details, but once I multiplied the estimated number of deer in Missouri by the average dressed out weight of a deer, and divided by the Missouri population to see how many people could be fed on deer meat. It turned out that wiping out the deer population would only feed us for a few months, so heading for the woods to hunt really doesn’t work very well for the average person if we are all hunting for survival.
Cattle work a lot better for a small homesteader. A 2 year old steer might weigh 1,000 lbs. and dress out to about 600 lbs. of meat and bones. This would provide protein for the equivalent of two people for a year generously. Around here you need a minimum of 3+ acres of pasture per cow, and to sustain a family you probably need about 40 acres for pasture, gardens, and orchard plus a woodlot, and that doesn’t leave much room for a cash crop. Over the long run that spells survival, but poverty.
Your analysis assumes that everyone in Missouri owns enough land on which to harvest deer. Most people do not hunt and although this will increase somewhat, trespassers/poachers will not be tolerated as they are today. My state has the highest deer/auto collision rate with deer and wild turkey all over the place. I shot three attempting to get into my garden last year. I do expect the wild game population to go down, but instead of harvesting throughout the year as we need them like we do now, have set aside the supplies to slaughter and process several immediately after a trigger event.
I have never had cattle and probably never will as I have read in several places that they are among the least efficient to raise. I am sticking with hogs, rabbits, and chickens which is what I found most often in third-world countries. I might try goats later, but have no experience with them.
Sid I think you’re right about the game. I used to listen to great grandpa tell stories, about how he had never seen more than a handful of deer in his life up until the mid 50’s when they reintroduced deer to his area of SW MO . It seems that the depression and commercially sold venison had all but wiped out deer and turkeys in large parts of the ozarks.
I’m not sure why anyone thinks it will be any different this time around. We could wipe out enough of the large game within 6 months to a year post collapse, that hunting for anything but squirrels and rabbits will be a waste.
Most people can’t afford to make the preps. They’re too busy just trying to survive now.
FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM
OsiXs (Revolution 2.0 – The Smart Revolution)
More people could prep if they’re willing to look at it as an emergency. You need to look at where every penny goes. You can sell things you don’t use. Look at possibly downsizing your car to something cheaper. Get a cheaper cell phone plan or go to a land phone. Don’t go out to eat anymore. Don’t drive any more than you have to. Shop for cheaper car insurance. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t smoke cigarettes. If your life depended on it you could cut your spending and use the money to prep.
Very good article! I am in mid-life and have gardened since my mom made us do it in childhood. Now hubby and I have a garden every year. I have squash, bell peppers and okra in excess from last year and are about to plant a new garden. Like many commenters have stated, gardening is HARD WORK! Back-breaking! I cannot see many people today getting out there amongst weeds, skeeters, snakes, bugs and heat/humidity and planting, chopping, harvesting, freezing or canning to harvest what you can successfully grow. Then all it takes is one thunderstorm with hail to tear up your plants! The learning curve cannot be stressed enough. Those who are planning to learn to garden, GOOD LUCK TO YOU! You can do it, but be prepared to work and work some more. It indeed is worth it!
you can survive on 5 acres if you do it right…
IMHO, in a shtf scenario, those that have gardens will be among the first to be over run by gangs of no good nicks! A body can go for a couple of weeks with out food, only 3 days without water! If you got a garden, then you must have plenty of water, cuz crops won’t grow with out it! You will only be able to grow a garden with a well, spring, or nearbye lake. Good luck to all you back yard gardeners when the infrastructure goes kaput! I think my best chance for survival will be to keep on the move, never stay in one area too long. Planning to bug out to Mexico, where the people are forbiden to own fireaems. Yeah I know there are plenty of firearms in Mexico, but even if you count all the weapons of the cartels and the military, it is still an extreamly tiny fracton of the number of weapons here state side! The chances of being shot at in Mexico will be alot less likely, and the mountains in Mexico have plenty of game, and edible nuts, berries, and fruit that grow wild. No gardening needed. Hunter gatherer I think will be the best survival strategy until things restabalize. Good luck to all, it will be a trying ride for us all!
I agree about gardens in the first years of the crises and am prepared for a gap in my farming. I was a wilderness survival instructor for many years, however, and the population is currently too great to survive for long as a hunter-gatherer. I have done missionary work in third-world countries and am confident you will have a lot of company in the Mexican mountains. At least consider burying cashes along your expected route and possibly your destination.
i didnt give you a thumbs down or up, but if your on the move, your not gonna be able to carry ammo by foot that long with all that water your gonna need. that will be hard but i like your enthuasium or however you spell it.
That’s my plan, to just go out to the woods, and then live upon nuts and berries. I like them better than regular food anyway. I will find a horse and we will be best friends. The horse will let me ride her. I will never need clothes again because there will be nobody to see me naked. It will be wonderful to live such a life of freedom from modern day worries. I just can’t wait for the apocalypse, it will be so fun.
WTF “Mite as well start drinkin now” I just want to shoot me some mexicans before i go !!!!
Dear COF – this short true observation is for your wisdom.
I was born and raised in Washington DC. 40 years ago I was visiting my father in Mexico, at his vacation ranch up one of those steep misty valleys above Veracruz. There was lush tropical jungle all around his farm’s fence. I took a tour on the paths around the farm,- some hillsides were almost 50 degrees slope, where occasionally I would find a lonely corn plant, growing from a small hand tended mound just for that single plant, on the steep slope of valley. I noted that there was no wildlife, no monkeys, no birds, no squirrels…When I returned I asked my father, “Father, why is there no wildlife in such lush jungle?” He answered, without hesitation, “It is because the peasants have eaten everything that moves”
Soon you too may understand too well my lesson of 40 years ago, they were hungry.
Ok then…. Gang bangin mexicans
I’d like to suggest something about goats as they were provided as an “easy” solution in this article. Goats are NOT that easy to keep. Especially not if you expect them to produce copious amounts of milk. Nubians are an arid country breed and not suited to all regions and areas. Please do some research into goats and their requirements before getting any.
Otherwise I can foresee alot of dead goats dotting the landscape
You all should watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dys3xE2Bnk&feature=player_embedded#!
The powers that be have a different plan than whatever it is that you think is going to happen. It’s already in the works and waiting for the right time. The main reason we won’t survive is that “they” have socially engineered it so that we try to remain individuals, rather than a cooperating community.
Now that we know their plan, it will be foiled!
With respect I dont see where you arrive at this conclusion….I see no effort on the part of TPTB to encourage individualism…everthing is geared towards vilifiing the individual and worshiping the society/community…govt/churches/corporations…they all preach a socialistic/mantra,gotta be a team player,no lone wolves ect….of course theres a place for likeminded peoples to work together but I see us being distroyed not by being free thinking individuals but by being hammered into the square hole wether we fit there or not…
Theres alot of truth to this article but understand alot of food can be raised on a tiny fraction of an acre…start where you are and work with what you have you will do better than putting it off till the day you move to that farm/homestead of your dreams and the reality is dreams sometimes take along time to happen if they happen at all…meanwhile in this reality we are about to hit a brick wall so to speak…get your learning curve out of the way asap BEFORE you have to depend on raising your own stuff…
A bit off topic but heres a list of seed varieties owned by Monsanto….so you can avoid them…any time you buy these as plants or seeds Monsanto gets a cut…AND MAKE NO MISTAKE THEY ARE YOUR ENEMY!…dont give them any support,Thanks!
Beans: Aliconte, Brio, Bronco, Cadillac, Ebro, Etna, Eureka, Festina, Gina, Goldmine, Goldenchild, Labrador, Lynx, Magnum, Matador, Spartacus, Storm, Strike, Stringless Blue Lake 7, Tapia, Tema
Broccoli: Coronado Crown, Major, Packman
Cabbage: Atlantis, Golden Acre, Headstart, Platinum Dynasty, Red Dynasty
Carrot: Bilbo, Envy, Forto, Juliana, Karina, Koroda PS, Royal Chantenay, Sweetness III
Cauliflower: Cheddar, Minuteman
Cucumber: Babylon, Cool Breeze Imp., Dasher II, Emporator, Eureka, Fanfare HG, Marketmore 76, Mathilde, Moctezuma, Orient Express II, Peal, Poinsett 76, Salad Bush, Sweet Slice, Sweet Success PS, Talladega
Eggplant: Black Beauty, Fairytale, Gretel, Hansel, Lavender Touch, Twinkle, White Lightening
Hot Pepper: Anaheim TMR 23, Ancho Saint Martin, Big Bomb, Big Chile brand of Sahuaro, Caribbean Red, Cayenne Large Red Thick, Chichen Itza, Chichimeca, Corcel, Garden Salsa SG, Habanero, Holy Mole brand of Salvatierro, Hungarian Yellow Wax Hot, Ixtapa X3R, Lapid, Mariachi brand of Rio de Oro, Mesilla, Milta, Mucho Nacho brand of Grande, Nainari, Serrano del Sol brand of Tuxtlas, Super Chile, Tam Vera Cruz
Lettuce: Braveheart, Conquistador
Melon: Early Dew, Sante Fe, Saturno
Onion: Candy, Cannonball, Century, Red Zeppelin, Savannah Sweet, Sierra Blanca, Sterling, Vision
Pumpkin: Applachian, Harvest Moon, Jamboree HG, Orange Smoothie, Phantom, Prize Winner, Rumbo, Snackface, Spirit, Spooktacular, Trickster
Spinach: Hellcat
Squash: Ambassador, Canesi, Clarita, Commander, Dixie, Early Butternut, Gold Rush, Grey Zucchini, Greyzini, Lolita, Papaya Pear, Peter Pan, Portofino, President, Richgreen Hybrid Zucchini, Storr’s Green, Sungreen, Sunny Delight, Taybelle PM
Sweet Corn: Devotion, Fantasia, Merit, Obession, Passion, Temptation
Sweet Pepper: Baron, Bell Boy, Big Bertha PS, Biscayne, Blushing Beauty, Bounty, California Wonder 300, Camelot, Capistrano, Cherry Pick, Chocolate Beauty, Corno Verde, Cubanelle W, Dumpling brand of Pritavit, Early Sunsation, Flexum, Fooled You brand of Dulce, Giant Marconi, Gypsy, Jumper, Key West, King Arthur, North Star, Orange Blaze, Pimiento Elite, Red Knight, Satsuma, Socrates, Super Heavyweight, Sweet Spot
Tomato: Amsterdam, Beefmaster, Betterboy, Big Beef, Burpee’s Big Boy, Caramba, Celebrity, Cupid, Early Girl, Granny Smith, Health Kick, Husky Cherry Red, Jetsetter brand of Jack, Lemon Boy, Margharita, Margo, Marmande VF PS, Marmara, Patio, Phoenix, Poseidon 43, Roma VF, Royesta, Sun Sugar, Super Marzano, Sweet Baby Girl, Tiffany, Tye-Dye, Viva Italia, Yaqui
Watermelon: Apollo, Charleston Grey, Crimson Glory, Crimson Sweet, Eureka, Jade Star, Mickylee, Olympia
REB,
Its simple to solve that problem, Just order from Seed Savers or Baker Creek heirlooms, Also so Johnny’s seed Co. have some really get stuff. Monsanto is out to kill folks. Also stay away from Walmart seeds this yr. if you don’t want heirlooms, buy organic. Check out mother earth news also, somebody talked about selfwatering pots Mother has some really great articles on those.
DPS
DPS, I’ve ordered for Bakers and I will give them a thumbs up. Seed germination rate is almost 100% each year.
Claymation,
Baker creek rocks the catalog alone is some great reading. If you get time pick up a Johnney Seed catalog, it has all kinds of great tips for every veggie plant I have heard of.Last yr I put in 120sq of raised boxes and this yr I have doubled it so far. Plus thats to D.K. my front room is looking like a green house. That underground hydro is some really cool stuff.
Being a old hippy I didn’t even have to buy a 400 watt grow light.LOL
DPS
DPS…Seed Savers or Baker Creek…Ive ordered from both over the years,both are great companies…used to order alot from Johnnys back years ago but look in their catalog and you will find in big red letters beside alot of things the letters PVP..Plant variety protected…this means these seeds/plants are patented and monsanto is one of the biggest if not the biggest plant patent holders on earth,and as I see it by selling their junk they support monsanto…so I dont order from Johnnys anymore myself.
I am actually in the place now where I have dozens of old OP seed varieties that I have bred to my soil and climate over the last few decades and am at least a year ahead on all my seeds so if I have a crop failure I dont lose the seed. And as I do with all my important stuff I store it in several different locations so a fire or a raid wont wipe me out of seeds.
Thanks!
Another thing Id point out is in the monsanto list above some of the varieties are OP and even heirlooms….like Hungarian Yellow Wax peppers and Poinsett 76 cukes,somehow monsanto owns the name and they use the rights to make sure they get a cut from the sale of seeds and plant starts using this name…its insidious and even I a farmer over 40 years and an avowed enemy of anything GMO or monsanto do not always know this stuff I keep up on this stuff almost daily and am still amazed by what is going on in the farming world…
..as I like to say alot…be a rebel grow something to eat thats not approved by the corporation!
REB,
Funny you brought that up I read about the PVP and chose not to order from Johnnys but their book has some really good info, plus when I’m done reading it makes pretty good mulch. I have really bad bind weed here so news paper or old mags work great.man you are so far ahead of the game having your seeds. I’ll get there someday.
DPS
Ther is nothing wrong with hybrids. the obsession with heirlooms is not based on fact. Two heirlooms planted together will make a hybrid the next year. That’s how it is. I used to cross early girl with large fruited tomatoes. You get big tomatoes that grow in bunches. Good result.
Didnt say there was anything wrong with hybrids if you like them…its just that they dont breed true…so your seed isnt much good…hence the “obsession” as you call it with OP/heirlooms because they do breed true.
The point was/is that these varieties(listed) are owned by monsanto and monsanto makes money everytime someone sells these seeds/plants…and that monsanto is hellbent to control the food supply,my posting this list is for those folks who understand what monsanto is up to and dont want to support them!
Also GMO (geneticly modified organisms) are not hybrids…they are cross species in many cases(animal x plant crosses) this is not acceptable to most people and the few non-thinkers who believe its okay dont count in the final outcome. Also Im not saying you said they were the same… Im just throwing that out there because the propagandists for GMO would have us believe differently.
This from Wikipedia)…Early Girl VF hybrid is verticillium and fusarium wilt (strain I) resistant. The VFF hybrid is resistant to fusarium wilt strains I & II. The patent holder of the Early Girl variety is Monsanto Corporation following its 2005 acquisition of vegetable and fruit seed company Seminis, Inc[end quote)
If you were crossing Early Girl with a large tomatoe then you were crossing at least one already hybridized tomatoe with (whatever it was)another tomatoe. Be that as it may tomatoes do not easily crossbreed,even planted closely together,they have to have intentional help in most cases….I grow a minimum of 6-8 different OP heirloom tomatoes every year from my own seeds…in over 30 years Ive yet to have a crossbreed….so simply planting two heirlooms together wont automaticly produce a hybrid,sorry.
Willy you can breed any seeds you want together and see what happens. I am on my seventh generation using heirloom seeds and they are still breeding true. If you mix breeds you may lose the characteristics that you bought the seeds for in the first place, including actual fruit production. If you have luck doing things your way, that’s great. Good luck.
It is shocking how many seed companies they own as well…businesses like Wayside Gardens! Use Seed Savers or Seeds of Change. Seed Savers has a really good forum for learning about all things vegetable related.
Oops, DPS, I was typing mine as your comment was posted. Didn’t mean to create an echo in here!
Mama Bear,
Its all good never did mind a good echo. I’m just happy to hear so many folks starting gardens. Its really good for the soul, plus eating them veggies fresh is so good. Gotta love a fresh tomatoe with a little salt.
DPS
GOOGLE MAGNETIC GENERATORS
MAKE ONE
DONT BELIEVE THE SCAM CRAP
THE HYDRO COMPANIES ARE THE SCAM
AND OIL COMPANIES
Post pictures or a link to yours on youtube working! I seem to repeat this every time it gets mentioned and yet no body bothers.
claymation, look yourself. you know full well the best images are not possible for anyone to find. there certainly is a lid put on this for very good reason. this could destroy everything we know…
Ok the first people to die are going to be the elderly and we all have some family members or most of us, Type 1 diabetics are gonna die without insulin. If you have glasses or contacts make sure you find a pair of glasses. Keep your teeth clean cause if they rot your not gonna want to pull a tooth. Fat and disabled people are gonna suffer and thats a lot of them. The gangs I would not worry about them because most of them are not good shots, then your gonna have a bunch of kids going hay wild without any experience and are going to get pegged by snipers so they are out too., It leaves the smart ones and the family people and many violent others, wonder if the prisions are gonna leave them starving to death unless they get out. will be interesting. The highpower are going to bunkers and hidouts. Make sure you honestly have enough ammo and keep it universal, so if someone robs you and you kill them they might have a 12 gauge. dont have like a funky round like my .338 laupa, you wont find much ammo for it. and if you get into a firefight just once can eat a lot of ammo., so really make sure you have thousands and thousands of rounds for prepping. Id like for the serious ones to lets all start one good hint and keep it semi short for all of us to share, like talking a water bucket and getting electricity out of it, something we all can learn about. that would be cool to see on here. Please someone under this leave a survival tip. it will help the ones that wanna be helped. I care about you guys too.
I wouldn’t worry too much about electricity. If the grid stays up and the dollar collapses, the “power” companies ( TPTB/Illuminati) will cut you off in a heart beat. At 10 to 20 dollars a gallon or gram of gold per gal. not many weeks on a generator. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best without electricity. Stock up on candles and oil lamps and lanterns. For outside; used motor oil will work in an old lantern if need be. Forget the electric conviences of the good ole days. Some of the super-smart and with plenty of money may have self generation and that’s great, but for the average person, the simpler ole timey methods will just have to do. Anything outside of a big city, with the basics, will beat the heck out of living in a high-rise apartment in a major city.
Eric, funny you mention teeth. I see you can get teeth extractors on ebay fairly cheap. They say they are for Veterinary use, but they look just like the ones sitting on my dentists shelves, I am thinking about ordering them and opening up my own little business post SHTF, now if I could learn to cut hair! LOL
There is a (c) 1864 book titled “Ten acres is enough”, I highly recommend it.
yo bro im hidin out hear in the hood ya feelin me when things go doun im prapaired wth my ebc card you no what im sayin
Don’t talk with your mouth full or your brain empty
Greetings Everyone!
Just finished reading this posting(Mac:Once again a timely topic to consider!Kudos).
I also just TODAY had my first experience with the “Sub-Urban” problem.For about 3-4 days now my padlocked gate to my back yard(and this in what passes for a “good” ‘hood) was opened.At first I thought the recent windy days had something to do with it.Nope!Today(about 1 hour ago) I heard voices and looked out a second story window.What did I see?Just like in the ghetto,about 5 or 6 of our so-called “middle-class” black teenagers were shaking and rocking the gate to force it open.Why? so they could trespass to “reach” a friend’s house via my back yard.I had wondered why some fences in my neighborhood nearby had boards pulled away in spots(had put it down to storms).I grabbed my camera and took pictures(which looked to turn out to be fairly good.These black children come from expensive homes in the 3000-4000 sq.ft.range,daddy drives a Caddie,BMW or Lexus.They had the latest expensive “sport clothes” and the latest i-phones.
What does this have to do with the topic?
I CAN’T begin to raise ANYTHING with “critters” like these in the neighborhood no matter what.Moving is a “scorched-earth” option,I might add.When things start to get grim it will begin in places like mine.If these “middle-class church raised animals” won’t respect simple fences and property lines now we won’t have to wait for SHTF to get to see some “action”.
As the Feds print more Q.E. money and Bern-eke “quietly lends” even more trillions to European bankers our money will turn to crap.I expect in the near future you may not even FIND places to get seed,much less be able to grow stuff as the criminal-minded get bolder.You can’t shoot trespassers at the moment w/o going to jail(Middle South ain’t Detroit yet!).So the next level is the unthinkable.Something to consider and discuss perhaps,but not to look fwd to.
Hope you and yours are safe and have something to eat.
All the Best
GFG
Time for one big ass dog!
Duly noted…
Working on same(seems the “black children around here are scared SH**less of anything larger than a Spaniel).Might just get two and go on parade around my new ‘hood with them.
Thaanx!
GFG
GFG,
Big dog will do the trick like clay mentioned. If it was me I’d run some power to that gate, take a pic and then plug it in. That will raise some hair and make them think twice about that gate.
DPS
We put in our first large garden last summer. Buried fish between the plants and that really seemed to be a great fertilizer. We dramatically lowered our grocery bills. We learned to can, both with a hot bath and a pressure cooker.
However, we planted in rows. I’ve learned since that if we plant in raised beds that will dramatically increase production. That’s an experiment for this year.
Once the ground thaws I will finish putting a six foot fence around the garden. Deer got most of our cabbage when they came down from the hills in the fall. I am concerned, though, that no fence will keep out hungery people if times get that hard. The garden would have to be abandoned in a worse case scenario. Shooting neighbors does not seem like a viable long term solution. You know what they say about payback. No matter how well armed a person is, any fool with a room temperature IQ can shoot you in the back. Giving serious thought to setting up a backup location on my family’s ranch 70 miles away. Very isolated, and you can see someone coming from miles away. Meat would not be a challenge, but just about everything else would be.
Just start…now in your back yard … and you can learn everything you need to know about gardening. Use Raised beds, dirp and get a couple of chickens. I live on an old apple farm that was productive before there was electricity and could be again if the grid goes down. The best things learned have been how to get raised beds to be no dig and almost no work..(square food method) and how to grow citrus and avacados reliably (in a faux green house against a sunny south wall… throw the sliders open if it is moderate… use shade cloth in summer and a small portable heater in winter… The hardest part is just starting… stop by my blog for tips and views on what living a prepper life is about..http://www.survivalist.zzn.com
We start from seed every year. If you have never done it, you need to try. It is not as easy as it sounds! Peace
who should you be afraid of WTSHTF
the cops or the gangs ??
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/01/44319.htm
I think the folks who think they would plant their own garden will be fucked. The NWO depopulation plan is to trash all the crops and spray a UG99 type crop fungus that will wipe out much. Better have your supplies ready and make them stretch.
Monsanto is trying to get all farmers to grow their mono crop so their engineered fungus will work better. That’s the real reason for the chem trails… break down your immune system…. release the flu, crash the dollar, then fungus the crops. They will wait it out in bunkers.
A GLOBAL DEPOPULATION IS BEING PLANNED.
If I were in charge….I’d do the same thing.
Too many people fucking up the earth.
it’s coming….better be ready.
No where to hide.
Good luck.
ps. Obummer will be the last president of the US. His plot was to destroy us with debt. Marxist.
His latest is inflicting us with thousands of IRS tax agents. Our friends are getting audited…it’s a fucking nightmare.
We need to vote this guy out of office. Substitute N word if the mood strikes ya.
Correct..
however..
Chemtrails primary ingredient is an aluminum compound..
Aluminum attacks all vegetation root systems ability to properly grow and yielding a minimum or zero fruit production.
Monsanto has released patented aluminum resistant seeds.
Go figure..
possee
Think of survival this way:
1. Have a good clean water supply.
2. Short term food supply to get you to the next harvest season is the first goal.
3. If you have chickens, you have meat & eggs; if you have rabbits you have more meat; if you have goats you have milk and meat; hogs-nasty buggers- but I like pork; Beef -a lot of work but good eating. Jerk and dry the beef.
4. Gardening: fresh veggies and fruit to be canned and preserved.
5. Buy and save your good boots, Levi’s, wool shirts, winter coats, water proof clothing, wool caps, leather and wool gloves.
6. Don’t forget to work in harmony with your family and neighbors – they may be in a position to save your life one day. You do the same for them.
Stand together against whatever comes.
Plan, Prep & Pray.
1948, You have the right idea. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, PRIORITIES!!!. # 1 Clean Water and lots of it, not just for the humans. Do you want to drink milk from a goat that has to drink from a mud puddle with fly and insect larvae and piss in the mix? You can turn rain water into 99% purity by filtering,boiling and preferrably distilling. We have one of the best mountain springs around, but we take no chances because it is 200 yds. away in the woods and no way to secure it from wack-Os. Counter-top distiller, about $165.00, Electricity to run off one gallon about 25 to 50 cents, Peace of mind and health benefits—-PRICELESS!!! I’d have to be thirsting to death to ever put municipally chemically treated water to my lips ever again. You can take that city crap and run it thru a distiller and look at the slimey, sludgey crap left in the distiller; yea the crap you have been drinking and feeding to your children.( I have a 10 gallon wood fired water distiller just about completed for a total grid collapse scenario) Tip: With a gallon size distiller-only stainless steel interior- it takes about six hours to run off. The unit will shut off after it boils about dry. This leaves too much crap baked in the bottom to scrub out or treat with chemicals. I use an inline timer switch that I set for about five hours and thirty minutes. This leaves a couple cups of water and doesn’t bake the residue in. Every few runs, wipe the bottom with a papertowel or lint free cloth and keep running for 30 or 40 runs before giving the stainless a good scrubbing. Been doing this for fifteen years and mine still works like a champ. Tip #2 Store in glass containers. Stay away from plastic storage if at all possible. I’ve been stocking up on every gallon glass jug I can find at yard sales,glass recycling bins(get some funny looks fishing out jugs at the recycling centers with a clothes hanger), and old home places. For large storage I buy up 3,5 and 6 gal. glass carbouys, the ones used for beer and wine making. Their heavy to move around but with an aluminum lid made from the separator out of a can of cinnamon rolls, sealed tight with duct tape to keep the mice out; you’ve got pure potable water that can be stored for years. #2 A dependable source of protein that is readily available. For me that is Wheat, (berries or actually the seeds) Hard Winter Red is best but I also have Hard Winter White. Secure, air tight, storage is a must. Once again I use glass. You’ll need a good hand grinder in case you have no electricty. Takes too long with rocks unless you have several helping hands with nothing better to do. A lot of info out there on making you’re own bread. The best source I found and nearest to my area in the southeast is Breadbeckers.com. Wheat berries aren’t that expensive, “yet”. Shipping is, so we planned last years mini vacation around a trip to Georgia to BreadBeckers Store and stocked up. Sue has a great story and inspiring message for showing truth about how we are being poisoned by our food companies. Check it out! You will need a few other bulk supplies for making good wheat bread like canola oil and yeast, etc., but not very expensive….. With clean water, wheat (that could be worth it’s weight in gold) for making bread, YOU can live a long time. Add some canned bacon that will last several years, milking goats and chickens that can live free range if need be; and you can make it if you have weapons to defend and protect it all. Forget the swine, God tells us they will make us sick and not to eat them anyway. Just a little canned bacon for seasoning and mixed with eggs, that’s all. Stock up on beef bullion for seasoning those green beans with a little salt and squirt of olive oil,mmm,mmmm, good!
Just wanted to add something. Mass amounts of sugar and honey could prove invaluable. Not only for making sweet bread, but cakes and wild berry pies. If you find more fruit than you can use,can, or dry, then make wine with it. Wine yeast is cheap and will keep for years. With added sugar and a little know how you can bottle homemade wine that will keep as long as you will ever need it. Moisture is the enemy to sugar and honey and oxygen is the enemy to wine after the first fermentation process. I read where wheat berries, and honey were found in one ancient Egyptian pyramid crypt. The honey was still edible and the wheat seeds were planted and sprouted. Just sayin’.
I’ve encouraged my lad’s interest in bees for exactly this reason. He’s too young now but with the right equipment there’s no reason he won’t be able to build and maintain a simple hive or 2 from aged around 10. Just hoping things will hold out a couple more years as this year we have higher priorities on the prep list.
Learn how to make & maintain a decent sourdough starter too for breads etc.
Cous cous as well as rice as cous cous needs less water and energy to prepare than rice.
Dehydrated fruits (and some veg) are less bulky to store than the equivalent canned. Dried berries add sweetness to all sorts of foods when needed.
I’m currently trying to master making my own vinegars – not as easy as I’d hoped. I want to learn the skill for ongoing pickling from year to year.
We are close to the sea for a source of salt. If you are inland you need to include a LOT of salt in your preps as it’s amazing how much is needed to preserve meats etc.
superpails from beprepared.com. No worries. The chemtrail goal is to poison the soil so we are all food slaves to monsanto. bad times are coming and many do not see it.
Add a decent dog or two to help you guard and protect it all and you are good to go.
Thats a great list – thanks!
Diversifying ways of obtaining food is important.
Permaculture/edible landscaping, turn your yard into a garden, and wild edibles along with supporting local farmers now and in the future will mean more food availability.
Learn how to identify (& prepare) native edible plants in your area.
cyrus,
From the link – I admire your potato harvest.
The past 2 years I haven’t had any luck with potatoes.
A friend told me it might be the soil.
Any suggestions?
KY Mom,
Don’t know if this will help but here is what I found.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-04-01/When-and-How-to-Plant-Potatoes.aspx
You can also do a search for trashcan potatoes, looked to me like it might work well
DPS
DPS and KY Mom…..I have used old tires with success….you probably know how that works but for any newbees…you fill a tire with dirt/rotted compost and plant some taters…when they get up about 6″ add another tire and fill it up with more dirt,almost burying the plants…let them grow another 6″ or so and repeat…in the fall just tip the tires over and harvest…have gotten some nice crops that way!
If you cut the sidwall outta a large(wide profile) tire(or a large truck/tractor tire) you can raise alot of stuff in them…makes for a fairly inexpensive and long lasting planter…hope that helps someone!
For all of those who made comments about someone coming and taking your food, supplies etc if you allow them to take anything they will take whatever they want including your wife, children or just rape/torture them in front of you trying to get you to tell them where the hidden valuables are. Happens all the time in war zones what makes you think it won’t happen here. Better to plan for a strong defense of your home/property than and die defending it rather than think if I just let them have what I have they will go away. It won’t happen before they take everthing.
I’d really tell you what I think…but the NDAA might lock my ass up forever.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4296843/US-Patent-5003186-Stratospheric-welsbach-seeding-for-reduction-of-global-warming-spraying-with-aluminum-
I found the patents for the chemtrails and also monsanto’s aluminum resistant crops.
My take on all this…
1. To keep the planet cool.
2. To kill poison the soil so only Monsanto’s seeds will grow.
3. To create food shortages –> profits for Monsanto and the farms the NWO boys have been buying with their bailout money.
4. Depopulation, decreased food supply.
5. Bankrupt the middle class
6. Destroy America
7. Weaken immune systems. See #4.
8. To sell chemtrail chem. by the ton to the UN and the govts. Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1T61oTrR8
Some people think that they can just live off their stored foods when the shtf but it’s going to eventually run out in a long term crisis. Everyone should start learning how to produce their own food now so they have the skill to grow more food when the shtf.
Outferkinstanding SLAVO!
This guy feeds himself and 3 adult children -and sells the rest- on what he produces on 1/10 acre: http://urbanhomestead.org/
@highspeedloafer.. I’d like you to show me where in the new testament that it says it’s OK to eat unclean meat. Fact is it doesn’t. You may have been told it does, but Jesus tells us to follow his lead. He did NOT eat unclean meat because he knows it is bad for him. Jesus’ words to Satan when asked about turning rocks into bread (said before the new tesatment was even thought about) were thus: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out if the mouth of God.” That means the old testament still applies and needs to be followed. Pigs are scavengers and will eat their own young given the opportunity – I’ve seen it. Theya re also 50% fat or more and we are also instructed (Deuteronomy) to eat no manner of fat.
You will find that Christians say it’s ok because they didn’t ahve refrigertaion back then and pork spoils quicly.. Chicken spoils faster and it’s a clean meat.
It’s really too bad that the pharisees and priests of today are not telling folks the truth ablut what the Bible says and are just repeaters of the govern-mental tow the line crap.. Check your church – is it a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization? I’ll lay odds that it is. That means it is government controlled and NOT teaching God’s laws.
Jesus followed God’s Laws to the letter. he tells us to do the same. By your logic all laws of the old testament are null and void.. That means the 10 commandments are too. Is it ok to steal? Is it Ok to commit adultery? Is it Ok to have idols?: is it Ok to have other Gods ahead of the almighty? I could go on but i think I have made my point.
Jesus said – Whay do you call me Lord Lord and do NOT what I say?? remember – he had nothing good to say about priests, politicians and lawyers. Same applies today. Beware of false prophets they will steer you down the wrong path.
Hope this clarifies my position.
Amen to what you said, Stone. I grew up on pork and so did my families. It was a way of life down on the farm. I believed the lies I had been taught in the baptist church up until about 1995. I began searching for truth. I won’t get into it any further here because people get so “touchy” about their churches and preachers. I just wanted to say I have almost given up on pork over the past ten years except to season a little cooking with. The main reason pork is so bad is that swine have no sweat glands and they retain all toxins taken in thru out their lives, especially in their fat. All Gods laws and statutes, except blood sacrifices and killing for adultery, are very much still in effect to this day. All that “nailed to the cross” stuff is man’s teachings and may get a person in trouble with the Big Guy, or at the very least make you sick as a broke dick dog.
Jesus Christ was JEWISH. I’m not. You can eat all the Camels in the US, I’ll take the pigs.
In that case, StoneAge, I hope you keep the seventh-day Sabbath, ‘cuz there’s no place in the New Testament where Sunday worship was instituted. The seventh day is the day that God blessed and sanctified.