Learn to feed yourself!

[Lug Nut]

Yes. But do they have 'training?'

What is this training I keep hearing of. I have guns and common sense. Be vigilant and keep any stranger in your crosshairs. And just like boxing. The trick is to hit and not be hit.

You got that right.

Bad guys won’t be kicking in doors.

They will snipe your ass.

How you gonna work your farm, now…?

 

[armorpl8chikn]

make no mistake so do I, I dropped a golden retriever running across my back pasture with my wife’s favorite chicken in its mouth , the neighbor lady who owned the dog literally started dancing as she dialed 911 screaming how I was going to jail, when the sheriff showed up he showed her the list of complaints I had phoned in about her dog killing my chickens then told her she is going to jail if she doesn’t compensate my for my lost livestock…… she was so angry I thought she might stroke out right there, she said it was my fault for not keeping my chickens in a coop and letting them run free on my property……..fucking liberals

I've shot my own dog, trying to kill sheep.

Had a similar situation when I was in my teens.
Two akitas had already got in the pasture and killed my Lincoln ewe and 3 spring lambs. They literally consumed 2 of the spring lambs, and were resting over the carcasses when I got home from school.
A few weeks later, a neighbor was visiting momma, a tender Karen liberal, way back when we didn't have such terms.
A dog was in the yard running up and down the fence trying to get to the sheep, it was just a matter of time till he succeeded. Grabbed my rifle, mommas friend went ape shit, "He isn't gonna shoot that dog is he? Oh my God nooooo!!"
Momma just dead panned. "Yes, he is, you might not want to watch."

Folks get all torqued up about how if you shoot their dog there's gonna be trouble. They also get very insistent about how it couldn't have been their dog that killed your animals.
After losing thousands of dollars worth of rare breed sheep, I was keen to shoot first.

I've spent thousands of dollars in fence, to keep my dogs where they belong. If they get out, and go at someone's livestock, I fully expect them to be shot.

 

[MadDuner]

You got that right.

Bad guys won’t be kicking in doors.

They will snipe your ass.

How you gonna work your farm, now…?

My cousins in ND are fairly sure that if SHTF they will need to defend their property and families.... so they’ve invested time and training into that endeavor. I could be wrong, but I expect that they would come out on top.

 

[Ronws]

If you had enough raised beds, you could definitely make enough to sell. But, the point of my post was to show how you can grow a lot of food in just your backyard. Yeah, I'm east/southeast of Longview.

I am a few towns away from the Red River and Lake Texoma.

 

[Gunfighter14e2]

You got that right.

Bad guys won’t be kicking in doors.

They will snipe your ass.

How you gonna work your farm, now…?

Laughing,.. when the contest starts, perception will quickly meet reality.

 

[W54/XM-388]

I've shot my own dog, trying to kill sheep.

Had a similar situation when I was in my teens.
Two akitas had already got in the pasture and killed my Lincoln ewe and 3 spring lambs. They literally consumed 2 of the spring lambs, and were resting over the carcasses when I got home from school.
A few weeks later, a neighbor was visiting momma, a tender Karen liberal, way back when we didn't have such terms.
A dog was in the yard running up and down the fence trying to get to the sheep, it was just a matter of time till he succeeded. Grabbed my rifle, mommas friend went ape shit, "He isn't gonna shoot that dog is he? Oh my God nooooo!!"
Momma just dead panned. "Yes, he is, you might not want to watch."

Folks get all torqued up about how if you shoot their dog there's gonna be trouble. They also get very insistent about how it couldn't have been their dog that killed your animals.
After losing thousands of dollars worth of rare breed sheep, I was keen to shoot first.

I've spent thousands of dollars in fence, to keep my dogs where they belong. If they get out, and go at someone's livestock, I fully expect them to be shot.

Just a little note about what my father had to do.
Some pack of stray dogs was attacking his goats, he couldn't be there all the time to shoot them all, just the ones he saw.

So he ran 2 wires of electric fence on the outside of the goat fence, a bit of a standoff from them, right at chest and neck height for a large dog.

That fixed the problem pretty quickly.

 

[eastexsteve]

Yes. But do they have 'training?'

What is this training I keep hearing of. I have guns and common sense. Be vigilant and keep any stranger in your crosshairs. And just like boxing. The trick is to hit and not be hit.

I also don't know what "training" they speak of. Most farmers don't have training at sitting at a shooting bench with their rifle clamped into a led sled. They usually do have a great deal of experience with running targets out to 100 yards, and deer or coyote sized moving targets out to 500 yds or so while leaning against a tree, resting over a log, or shooting over the bed or hood of a truck. When we were kids growing up in the country, all we did was shoot guns and fish in our spare time. Rimfire ammo was cheap, and the big hickory tree in our front yard never had a chance in hell of dropping a nut to the ground. When quail were abundant, we hunted them with .22 rifles. Same for squirrels, and crows dive-bombing the cornfield and melons. Shotgun ammo was too expensive for us kids in those days.

 

[mosin46]

So you have seen A Boy and his Dog…

yea. seems more likely now than back then. got don johnson started.

 

[supercorndogs]

I'm actually thinking about aeroponics instead of raised beds.

My soil has bigger problems than just deficiencies.
I'm gonna move my punkins to the garden this year and see if there's anything wrong with it.
The punkin spot is top notch, but the soil won't hold moisture.
Garden:
View attachment 8434738

Punkin plot:
View attachment 8434739


Oh yeah....for those wondering about why I haven't planted punkins yet.....
This is south alabama....
You don't plant winter squarsh here until July....unless you want them to rot.

That looks quite sandy about like mine. Till in some compost and peat moss then stop tilling it. It burns up the organic matter you are trying to build in your sand to hold water. Adding rock dust/clay to the compost or mulch layers will help with nutrient and water holding ability. Mulching works well in sand. I like to mulch with wood chips from branches of live trees less than 3 inches in diameter or fall leaves Hay works well too but there are a lot more weed seeds in it. Same for chopped weeds. I never tilled compost into mine. I just let the worms and roots and stuff work everything in. While using deep mulch beds cover crops and living pathways.

It's good to break the wood chips down in a big pile for while. I use them as carbon to build compost piles and as mulch in my fruit tree rows. I also apply them directly to garden beds. The ground spiders and centipedes like the wood chip mulch. Worms too. As your fungal component in your soil grows it will hold water better too.

 

[mosin46]

No till growers on you tube puts a lot of good information on small scale market farming. Elaine Ingham, probably spelled wrong, soil food web, Jole Salitin, Charles Dowding, Paul Guachi back to eden. Stefan Sobkowiak, I had to look it up but that one is spelled correctly.

Weeds are a disturbance mitigator. Weeds come after disturbance and beging to restructure and recover the soil. Tillage burns up organic matter and kills or makes soil inhospitable to creatures that build soil. Weeds are trying to fix the disturbance but we generally fight them as they try to perform their processes. Then we wonder why our soil stays the same year after year.

With heavey clay soils I would start with a one till. Two really but done at the time. I woukd till straps on the sides of the beds then move that tilled soil on the garden bed. Then I would cover with compost and till that into the bed. Then I would plant something into it with a big powerfull root system like one of the giant sunflower varieties. I would either use 10+ diffrent cover crop seeds or just kind of let the weeds grow in it with whatever I was growing. Then I woukd put something in it to over winter. Like winter rye grass grain. Not rye grass like in your yard.

When working in a no till system some of your best friends could be the annual weeds that grow in your area. Same goes if you can't buy fertilizer. Weeds are easy to grow with nothing and make lots of green matter for compost for row cops. The compost you make can go farther if you make compost tea. Even if you just soak it in water and stir it occasionally.

Plant fruit trees, brambles, and vines. It's a lot more work to try to feed yourself on annuals only.

Forget tomatoes as a food source. Tomatoes are a sauce. You are going to be sick sick sick if you only have 200lbs of tomatoes to eat for the winter.

Sweat potatoes. Those fucking things. I have some two year old ones in a box in the garage. I used them to start slips this year. Perfectly edible, perfectly viable after two years of no special storage. If you are warm all year. Don't put them in your garden or you will never get rid of them. I would think you would be silly not to have a patch some where though. You can eat the foliage also on sweat potatoes.

Lambs quarter is an edible weed that grows big and strong in about any decent garden soil. Its leaves taste like spinach and stems kind of like broccoli if you cut it small. After it gets larger the stems get woody but the leaves are still good. I eat them raw and cook them. It's one of my friend weeds and one of friends weeds. I have a buddy who jars up a bunch of it every year. He went and found one and dug up it and transplanted it at his house so it could seed. Now he has his own supply that basically grows its self.

Find stuff that grows like a weed in your area.

read the 1 straw revolution and the lentil underground. standard tillage ag has been done for millennia . some feel that it is responsible for much desertification,negev,sinai-don't know. it is for sure,once initiated on an industrial scale,responsible for more environment destruction than every power plant in existence. the increasing use of deadly poisons is well documented to be necessary to maintain monoculture cropping -soy,corn,wheat. huge waste of H20. not to mention the genetic manipulations used more and more. just wait til mRna gets going in our food. this country and others could feed the world using true organic methods. but,the profits,the controls and the manipulation involved would be gone. yes,food would be more expensive; farms (mostly corp owned these days) would make less profit. would sell less poison. how much food is wasted here in a year? a lot. same things apply to meat production.
a thought i recently had is maybe the production and consumption of poison is a good thing for the NWO. make the population sicker; then they need to use the MIC (medical) and big pharma products more. get more profit,power and control. more hosp profits and people will die or become helpless more and more. if you believe the paleo ideas those 3 crops are in themselves poison. archeological evidence seems to support that idea.
yes,my paranoia knows no limits.

 

[Blue Sky Country]

Those who think hunting animals will feed them long term might be in for a surprise in just how fast game will disappear if hunting becomes the primary means of nutrition.

This... The Road by Cormac McCarthy portrays a gruesomely realistic scenario of what one can really expect in a situation where everything modern society takes for granted is severely crippled. Many have speculated just what really caused the widespread catastrophe in The Road, and I have ventured many times to say that it may have been a low level gamma ray burst. A star going supernova between 20-80 light years away with their polar axis somehow pointed right at us, ejecting a stream of high energy particles that are considerably weakened by the distance traveled, but still packing enough power to cause atmospheric ionization and global EMP as the initial outcome. 80-90% of the rays from the jet gets blocked by the atmosphere during the ensuing EMP but the 10-20% of the particles that got through would be enough to wreak havoc on all plant life and kill off vast quantities of plankton and algae that aquatic life depends on for sustenance, and leave the larger lifeforms, including humans, facing starvation. In a situation like this, the unprepared hordes from the cities who are desperately fleeing outward to try to live off of game and fish would VERY QUICKLY find that game populations in the country would be heavily defended by local residents with extreme prejudice, and rightfully so. The scarcity of other human survivors in the novel is easily explained by the fact that those who did not starve to death or succumbed to disease would try to pilfer game animals and resources of local residents in the rural areas they passed, and many would be cut down as bandits.

ETA: Recovery of society after such an event, even with a significant enough population of survivors, would be very difficult, as items like crop seed stocks can very well be damaged. Seed embryos are extremely fragile and unless the seeds were stored in a hardened vestibule, the ionizing radiation from the pulse could have rendered all of them unable to grow, thus, even if the survivors were to have tried sowing new crops after the mass die off from the pulse had been cleared, they may have found that all of their seeds had been irradiated as well and useless. It is one of the most dreadful situations that could be possibly laid out onto paper.

 

[vikman99]

I try to make meals from random food you have laying around. Also, when I go to the supermarket, I buy some veggies i rarely buy. Can figure out what to cook later. It forces me to get out of my food comfort zone.

 

[Hobo Hilton]

The future is unknown. Interesting comments covering a broad range.
A few thoughts:

During a total collapse, evil people will be eliminated rather quickly.
Build your plan. It's your plan and you own it. Other's plan will not work for you.
Very little mention of water.
Garden = Location specific. Be proficient in growing something that will flourish in your immediate local, weather, insects, etc.
Learn to barter and have something to barter with.
Traveling will be minimal, think walking or riding a bicycle. Donkey cart, a luxury.
Your biggest mistake will be waiting on some one to save you.


NO ONE IS COMING

 

[TexPatriot]

This... The Road by Cormac McCarthy portrays a gruesomely realistic scenario of what one can really expect in a situation where everything modern society takes for granted is severely crippled. Many have speculated just what really caused the widespread catastrophe in The Road, and I have ventured many times to say that it may have been a low level gamma ray burst. A star going supernova between 20-80 light years away with their polar axis somehow pointed right at us, ejecting a stream of high energy particles that are considerably weakened by the distance traveled, but still packing enough power to cause atmospheric ionization and global EMP as the initial outcome. 80-90% of the rays from the jet gets blocked by the atmosphere during the ensuing EMP but the 10-20% of the particles that got through would be enough to wreak havoc on all plant life and kill off vast quantities of plankton and algae that aquatic life depends on for sustenance, and leave the larger lifeforms, including humans, facing starvation. In a situation like this, the unprepared hordes from the cities who are desperately fleeing outward to try to live off of game and fish would VERY QUICKLY find that game populations in the country would be heavily defended by local residents with extreme prejudice, and rightfully so. The scarcity of other human survivors in the novel is easily explained by the fact that those who did not starve to death or succumbed to disease would try to pilfer game animals and resources of local residents in the rural areas they passed, and many would be cut down as bandits.

ETA: Recovery of society after such an event, even with a significant enough population of survivors, would be very difficult, as items like crop seed stocks can very well be damaged. Seed embryos are extremely fragile and unless the seeds were stored in a hardened vestibule, the ionizing radiation from the pulse could have rendered all of them unable to grow, thus, even if the survivors were to have tried sowing new crops after the mass die off from the pulse had been cleared, they may have found that all of their seeds had been irradiated as well and useless. It is one of the most dreadful situations that could be possibly laid out onto paper.

The Road sucked and I'm so glad that the father died at the end.

I believe Cormack McCarthy uses monotonous redundancy as filler until he can think up a plot. If one read Blood Meridean they'd find the same thing, chapters of monotonous redundancy mixed with brief episodes of predictable gore. Neither book is one a reader would want to endure twice.
The Counselor wasn't readable the first time.

Conversely, as soon as I finished No Country For Old Men I began reading it again.