Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[Speaker to Animals]

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No, man. It makes perfect sense. The crops are the product, not fish. You will not necessarily produce enough fish in aqua culture to make much revenue. The fish support the crops.

If I was running an actual fish farm, then it would be the other way around. I might grow crops that I feed to the fish, and sell the fish.

[C-Mag]

Those are cool systems, but complex and I'm sure require daily watching and maintaining. Not for me.

I'm going large pile composting as a soil building, and fertilizing strategy along with a worm bed. I think I've finally found a cheap straw source. Found a guy who raises grass seed, so the straw is a byproduct for him. I'm going to build 3' to 5' compost piles of straw and manure, shooting for 20' long to start. I'm probably going to cover them in black visqueen to get them cooking.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Those are cool systems, but complex and I'm sure require daily watching and maintaining. Not for me.

I'm going large pile composting as a soil building, and fertilizing strategy along with a worm bed. I think I've finally found a cheap straw source. Found a guy who raises grass seed, so the straw is a byproduct for him. I'm going to build 3' to 5' compost piles of straw and manure, shooting for 20' long to start. I'm probably going to cover them in black visqueen to get them cooking.

Make your own straw. Just scatter a couple pounds of winter wheat berries in the fall, and mow it down in the spring.

[C-Mag]

Those are cool systems, but complex and I'm sure require daily watching and maintaining. Not for me.

I'm going large pile composting as a soil building, and fertilizing strategy along with a worm bed. I think I've finally found a cheap straw source. Found a guy who raises grass seed, so the straw is a byproduct for him. I'm going to build 3' to 5' compost piles of straw and manure, shooting for 20' long to start. I'm probably going to cover them in black visqueen to get them cooking.

Make your own straw. Just scatter a couple pounds of winter wheat berries in the fall, and mow it down in the spring.

It's on the long range plan. My soils are sandy gravel. I need to build up a better organic soil layer to hold moisture. It's going to be a lot of work over time. I finally bought a tractor, I have a single bottom plow, drag disc and a loader, but I'm looking for a 3 point tiller.

My initial plan is this:
(4) 5' X 5' round bales
Cut the strings and break down the outside layer to form a pyramid shape
Cover with 6 inches of earth/manure mix
Cover with black visqueen
Even in the winter it should start to build heat and start to breakdown. Then in 4-6 weeks use the tractor to mix and blend the pile, recover. As the spring temps rise, mix pile once a month. Raw volume is 14.5 cubic yards. I'm not sure what the ratio of breakdown is on compost, but lets say 30%, my end yeild should be 10 cy.

[C-Mag]

New US Government Report says you need to start Prepping
~ the government is urging the public to prepare for the up to six months without electricity, transportation, fuel, money, and healthcare

DHS is warning that the electric grid is now the “prime target” of terrorists, and says Americans need to be prepared for a power outage of up to six months. The report says that “People no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. We need to improve individual preparedness.

Here's the report https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files ... 0FINAL.pdf

[C-Mag]

Ebola chicken little report.
I've been casually watching Aesop's monthly Ebola updates for the last several months. Here's his latest...https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/20 ... s.html?m=1
Key Take Aways
1) the World Health Organization admits the epidemic will go on for at least 6 more months
2) the WHO indicated that half of confirmed cases were not showing any fever symptom, thus making diagnosis more difficult
3) the WHO is still trying to get on top of this, infections continue to increase, they do not have containment after 6 months since the outbreak

Then add this stupidity to the mix
Health workers in the Congo trading Sex for Vaccinations
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02- ... reak-rages

Just on that fact alone, these people are too stupid to save

[Speaker to Animals]

They spent just over 100k USD. I would go bigger with the solar, install air conditioning units that pretty much would run on solar panels when you actually need them, and hook up a propane tank to heat the thing and possibly run a little generator when necessary. Instead of leaving the windows and glass doors exposed year round, I would have doors that could shutdown on any of them to help insulate heat at night.

If you could keep it under 120k and your only utility costs are water and propane.. that might be worth it if you are thinking in terms of five to ten years.

Imagine plopping that down on about six acres, building some high tunnels to grow produce you sell at the farmer's market, which hopefully pays your mortgage. No monthly utility bill other than probably a yearly cost for propane. I wouldn't use the rain water collection for human uses, but you could definitely use that in the high tunnels.

I bet you could get pretty close to neutral living costs after a few years, with a modest amount of labor in the nursery and getting your produce to market.

Upfront cost, I think, would be about 120k for the "house", about 10k to build a rudimentary high tunnel and get the things you need to grow something like tomatoes, and about 60k for a few acres somewhere in the styx. I think it would doable for a 200k mortgage. So all together your monthly expenses would be about $1,100 - $1,500 per month on a 15 year term plus propane and water expenses.

Just in tomato vines, I think that requires about 300 vines to be conservative. Which would entail a fair amount of work. But still. Doable.

[Speaker to Animals]

The math I was working with still shows it slightly more economical to own a condo and buy the acres within a certain radius of where you live and the market you most often would want to utilize. Grow on the land and keep your housing separate, but costs contained with smaller condo costs and not having to worry about crazy shit happening by paying into an association to deal with it.

Problem there is that it's not possible to get your housing off grid.

[Speaker to Animals]

[Speaker to Animals]