Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[Speaker to Animals]

One cool thing about having a substantial apiary on your property is that you can use surplus honey to produce mead. I don't think it takes nearly as much equipment and inputs to produce mead as it does beer, but I might be wrong about that. Mead is nasty, though.

Takes too much honey. I thought about making mead. Mead takes 1-2 gallons to produce 5 gallons of mead. In a SHTF situation the honey will be too valuable in America, a country that weens it's kids on high fructose corn syrup and has them addicted to sugar before kindergarten. Honey will be fucking GOLD. My Dad is pushing 89, a child of the Depression. He said there were only 2 things that were very hard to get. 1. Tires for vehicles 2. Sugar.

Honey would be used a lot for health. If you get cut, you put honey on it (raw honey, not the processed corn syrup you buy at the store).

Sugar would be hard to come by for most of CONUS.


Another crop you may want to consider along those lines are parsnips.

[C-Mag]

Appalachia back in the colonial days was about as rough as you can expect in such a scenario, and alcohol bartering was so important that whiskey became the currency here.

Alcohol is not just useful for drunkards either. It can be used as fuel or antiseptic.

It was a very smart move. They took a bulky relatively low value product, that was hard to transport through rough, undeveloped land; and turned into a much more valuable product by mass and volume that could easily be transported on a pack animal.

Speaking of antiseptics. My wife is getting to be better and better at home remedies, oils and potions. She got into the colloidal silver, bought a machine, makes it, and a meter to read potency. She cured me of an ear infection. Now, I could have gone to the Doc and got meds, but it was a good trial to see if we could do it at home first. The colloidal silver fixed it in just over a weak, while modern prescription drugs would have done it in a day or two.

[Montegriffo]

I was wondering about that. You can get a brewing system likely relatively cheap from a failed brewery these days when they sell off their assets. If you just built a light structure that was powered and had some kind of air conditioning to maintain temperatures, I wonder how many acres of crops you'd need to produce beer for bartering and maybe even selling? You'd still need some kind of granaries, as well, I guess.

The brewery waste I know you can use to feed compost worms to create vermi castings that are really, really good compost material for your vegetable plots.

Seems like a steep initial investment, but I see people making similar investments in stupid shit like complex water systems and whatnot.

I laugh at JWR born again Christian preppers that say don't barter in alcohol, drugs, etc. I would definitely do alcohol, not drugs because I don't have them and don't know the culture. But beer, hells yeah.

Quick math on beer. 75 lbs barley for one barrel of beer (31 gallons). 1 acre barley, dry land 35 bushels to the acre, irrigated 50 bushels to the acre. Barley weight is 48 lbs per bushell.

1 acre avg yield 42 bushels. 42 bushels X 48 lbs = 2,016 lbs
2016 lbs divided by 75 lbs per barrel = 26.9 barrels
26.9 barrels X 31 gal/barrel = 833 gallons of beer

That's the first time I wrote out the math. I previously did it in my head and missed a digit, I was thinking around 85 gallons. Crap, that's a lot of beer.

That's just the first mash.
If you mash the barley again for some ''small beer'' you could get the same again.
Great way to make your drinking water safe.
Going to need a lot of barrels though.
IBCs (intermediate bulk carriers) are good value (£20) and 1000 litres (225 gallons)capacity.

[C-Mag]

That's just the first mash.
If you mash the barley again for some ''small beer'' you could get the same again.
Great way to make your drinking water safe.
Going to need a lot of barrels though.
IBCs (intermediate bulk carriers) are good value (£20) and 1000 litres capacity.

+1
You guys need to understand, I'm not the brewer. I have a SHTF contingency plan with a buddy who's an experienced brewer coming who will handle those duties. My job is to prep the ground, develop a relatively deep organic layer and grow large product crops, spuds and grains.

I like those things(IBC). I need to buy a couple. If for nothing else H2O transport. A quick search says $200 American new, $40-$80 used.

Alright guys, breaks over, I better get back to it. Replacing the mandrel shaft on the riding mower today. It transfers power from the mower deck drive belt to the cutting blade. Wife hit a rock and busted the old one. I asked her if she mowing drunk...……………….. she didn't think that was funny.

Later

[Speaker to Animals]

I use those tanks on the farm I learn from for irrigation.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Hmm. May have to invest in one for water storage. That would make a kickass rain barrel.

[Montegriffo]

Hmm. May have to invest in one for water storage. That would make a kickass rain barrel.

Yeah, the tap makes them really useful.
You want a fruit juice concentrate one so you know it hasn't had anything nasty in it.

[Fife]

I asked her if she mowing drunk...……………….. she didn't think that was funny.

I can't imagine a worse yard job than mowing totally sober. I mean, really -- what else are we fighting the good fight for?

[brewster]

Hmm. May have to invest in one for water storage. That would make a kickass rain barrel.

Yeah, that's the 1st thing I've seen that makes sense for me to capture rain for the garden. I run about 25 gal a day in the drippers, but I have a 1k ft flat roof. 1/4" of rain would get me about 150 gallons. I'd have to have a pump to get the proper pressure. Maybe a float valve to maintain a minimum level from the town water during a dry spell.

Just got my fertigation system operational. Running 180 ppm nitrogen fertilizer in every watering.

[Speaker to Animals]

Carlus, had you looked into getting a biogas digester to produce gas that runs a water heater and possibly a stove?