Posted on 03/12/2022 5:43:54 AM PST by Pollard
I've been meaning to do a prepper thread for a while now and will do my best to start one the first Saturday of each month from here out.
When you start prepping, it's about stocking up on food, water and supplies and maybe having a BOB(Bug Out Bag) and a retreat to bug out to. That leads to moving to that retreat which is usually away from the cities and your retreat likely is larger than the typical city/suburb home lot. In fact, you probably have room to produce some of your needs. Basic prepping leads to living in a more self sufficient way and producing some of your needs. It's a natural progression and as such, I'm calling these threads, Prepping & Self Sufficiency threads.
In preparation for this, I've reworked my profile page and also included a lot of info that freeper Pete from Shawnee Mission has been collecting from past Weekly Gardening threads. Gardening is a part of prepping and self-sufficiency but I'm far from being an expert so be sure to join in the weekly gardening threads. The best way to find past gardening threads seems to be by doing a keyword or tag search for "gardening:. https://freerepublic.com/tag/gardening/index?tab=articles
Prepping Ping
Here we go again with empty shelves. Peppers got to prep.
All the preps in the world don't matter squat unless you have guns.
Yeah the fertilizer issue is pretty worrying. Some of the typical big growers of corn/soy will be going with soy because it takes less fertilizer. Meanwhile, corn or something derived from corn is in everything. Most animal feed/food is mainly corn based.
When/if it gets to the point where people’s EBT cards won’t buy squat, all hell will break loose.
The average American is 30-50% overweight. A food shortage would be a good thing in a lot of cases.
Did I ever tell you about my sailboat? It was fun but then one time I capsized it and lost quite a bit of stuff in that boating accident.
...and don’t forget obesity is a COVID co-morbidity... :-)
Prepping is an excuse to buy, handle and touch food. A lot of people are food obsessed. They seem to live to eat instead of eat to live.
Ping to self. Thanks for this thread.
I have a question for either gardeners or preppers. I am trying to think down the road for prepping for farm animals more than just stacking bags of grain in my feed room.
I can do corn, but it is very little yield for the space. I always plant some to keep the heirloom seeds going. But any ideas what I can plant to use for supplement feed for chickens and goats? I’m in zone 8
The good Lord doth provide.
Thanks for posting
That seems to be the case here in East Tennessee (and throughout the south, I imagine)...every time a new restaurant opens, it makes the local news. Don't get stuck on a road between a church and the nearest restaurant after noon on Sundays...you'll be there a while.
yep, and when the non-ag fluent among us are only left with Little Debbies from the Dollar General store....well............there ya go. And you don’t even need Bill Gates to facilitate their demise....lol
Any grain like rice or wheat should work for the chickens. Goats will eat anything just don’t leave them for a long time in one spot.
...imagine a world where the only remaining food is Spam and Little Debbie Zebra cakes...OMG!
What is wrong with just using composted manure and dead fish (adds nitrogen) for fertilizer as the early pioneers did? You could use wood ash to add lime to your soil.
Been a long time ago for me. But we grew most of our items
with the intent of canning or freezing. We butchered animals
in the fall both hogs and cattle. Takes some time, effort and
help. But nice to have things you prepared yourself. Good luck.
Have to be careful with goats, they can bloat with certain things and some plants are poisonous to them (like azaleas) so they can’t eat just anything. Fortunately, well fed goats tend not to eat stuff they shouldn’t though.
Anyway, I’m thinking of fencing off a section of pasture this year and planting field corn, millet, oats, barley, rice and soybean and see what happens.
I have a solar powered portable fence that I can use to move my goats to non fenced areas, plus a neighbor with 6 acres that has already offered to let my goats graze if I fix her fences.
I have a friend that gets truckloads of soil from a local lake when they lower the water levels. He has never had to use any fertilizer other than that, and his gardens are amazing!
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