What did you do to 'prep' today?

[faerielady]

Thanks Badgebunny... I'm pretty lucky that my boyfriend has been doing this kind of thing for a while. We started dating last year and I've slowly started doing stuff, I've been picking his brain and asking questions.

I'm trying to split my focus between canning/preserving and gardening. Two weeks from Monday I'll have a pear tree, two currants, two elderberries, and nanking bush cherries to put in the ground. The tomatoes are all going into DIY grow bags with cages, I have a topsy turvy for hot peppers and one for strawberries. Eventually I want to put in a small greenhouse with aquaponics.

Trying to do all this around school (16 credits this semester, I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier) and a 12 year old... it's a good thing my boyfriend helps a lot!

 

[jrusling]

I am mainly stocking up. If I run out then I will be out hunting. I am planning on lasting 6 months or a little longer. If it last longer than that, I think that you would have to head for the hills in order to survive. I think that most homes that had anything would be mobbed and unless it was built like a fort with plenty of people inside to repel the mob you will be overrun. If that happens, I do plan on taking a bunch of them with me.

 

[BadgeBunny]

Thanks Badgebunny... I'm pretty lucky that my boyfriend has been doing this kind of thing for a while. We started dating last year and I've slowly started doing stuff, I've been picking his brain and asking questions.

I'm trying to split my focus between canning/preserving and gardening. Two weeks from Monday I'll have a pear tree, two currants, two elderberries, and nanking bush cherries to put in the ground. The tomatoes are all going into DIY grow bags with cages, I have a topsy turvy for hot peppers and one for strawberries. Eventually I want to put in a small greenhouse with aquaponics.

Trying to do all this around school (16 credits this semester, I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier) and a 12 year old... it's a good thing my boyfriend helps a lot!

Bless your heart!! That's a LOT on one plate! I was a single mom for 15 years (until GC came along ) so I know how you feel. (And 16 credits is a LOT for someone who has a life outside of school. Don't sell yourself short!)

You can do this ... It was easy for me to get overwhelmed sometimes, at first. Just take it one baby-step at a time. What worked for me was focusing on ONE thing each month. Like I'd do "water" one month. I read everything I could find, get on a few internet boards and ask questions, read some more and then get the absolute basics. My first month I wound up buying a quart of unscented Clorox bleach, found a metal tray and put back several 2-liter pop bottles (to use for UV treatment), and bought a couple of those little straws that you can suck water through and it will clean it, and put back a couple of flats of bottled water and I got a couple of those 5 gallon totes in case I had to walk over to the river/lake to get water. It wasn't much, but, I had redundancy (which is important to me -- nothing I try works the first time! ) and I had some kind of plan in place for water.

The next month I focused on something else. Before I knew it, I was in decent shape. Enough so that GC and I could help out quite few neighbors if we had to. That's another reason I'm focusing on gardening and backyard livestock now. As much to help out our working (or retired on a fixed income) neighbors as it is to help ourselves. I've lost track of how many eggs I've given away to friends because we just can't eat that many and I have plenty stored back now. (Fresh eggs -- from the chicken, not the store -- will keep for a minimum of a year to 18 months in a cool dry place, if you leave the bloom on them.)

Now I still do the "one thing a month" deal but I also have a bunch of little things going all the time too ... The garden is gonna be my "Big Thing" for the next few months, but I will still do little side jobs, if you will, on other things -- like storing food, setting up some kind of rain catchment, I'm beginning to think I may never buy a box of ammo again! but pick up ammo or reloading supplies, continue to study my coursework from Trinity (thank God for the internet and study-at-your-own-pace curriculum LOL) ... You get the drift ...

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and before you know it, you will look around and be amazed at what you've accomplished.

 

[TedKennedy]

riper, you and EM there are starting to make me feel like a slacker ...

I'm concentrating on getting a good sized garden in, using various techniques, so I can see which ones I am okay at and which ones I need to work on. For example, I have several raised beds in and am now working on putting up the framework for a vertical garden. I've also started gathering containers and lined the window boxes in order to try several different plants in containers and see how that goes. I've also started some trays with microgreens. Once I harvest those I can feel the "leftovers" to the chickens for them to pick through and scratch into the compost they make for me!

I'm about to try my hand at worm farming too ... I've got WAY too many oak tree leaves falling into my backyard to just bag them up and waste them. Several bags of leaves that I snagged from the neighbor last fall are already starting to get that nice, earthy smell to them when I dig down into the pile I made last fall ... I am a happy, happy camper!!

Finally, I'm taking a real hard look at dwarf fruit trees. I don't have a lot of land (typical suburban lot) but I really think that if I plan my perennial/annual plantings appropriately I can get a nice "cottage look" garden off to a start in the front yard and not look like that "weird lady down the street" ... I'm kinda going for the "that gardening lady down the street" look ...

The back yard is where I hope to excel though. I've got the laying hens fixed up and going good. Meat birds I'm already making different plans for this fall, when I get another, more sizeable batch, to feed out.

Dogs are fixed up so they can be out when it's good and up when I need them to be out from underfoot.

Rabbits are the next "big thing" for the back. I had a breeding trio last year, but had to give them up when I got sick and couldn't care for them like they needed. The guy I gave them to is having great success with them.

After that I'd like a greenhouse big enough for a few plants, but mostly to start a small tilapia "pond" with some 55-gal barrels ...

And ONE of these days I'm gonna talk GC into that dwarf goat ...

Something I'm noticing with my reading around here. There seem to be two different "types" of us ... those of you who are focusing on stocking up and those of us who are focusing on homesteading where we are. I'm off to start another thread to discuss this as I don't want to derail this thread ...

A guy I know had a rabbit "barn" (pretty good sized outbuilding). He had rabbit hutches Going up to about 6 feet high. There was a wooden trough under each hutch. All troughs were directed to a chute at the back of the building. Rabbit pellets fell through wire mesh on bottom of hutches, rolled down trough, and out chute into a pit he kept watered. Pit was FULL of red worms. He had a company that would come out about once a month and dig the pit with a backhoe that had a kind of "finger" attachment, so it extracted the worms, and left the dirt. Amazing setup.

 

[been]

I browsed OSA. This helped me prepare to prep because I now know what yall are doing to prep.

 

[BadgeBunny]

A guy I know had a rabbit "barn" (pretty good sized outbuilding). He had rabbit hutches Going up to about 6 feet high. There was a wooden trough under each hutch. All troughs were directed to a chute at the back of the building. Rabbit pellets fell through wire mesh on bottom of hutches, rolled down trough, and out chute into a pit he kept watered. Pit was FULL of red worms. He had a company that would come out about once a month and dig the pit with a backhoe that had a kind of "finger" attachment, so it extracted the worms, and left the dirt. Amazing setup.

Really?? I'm gonna try to do something like that on a bit smaller scale. I think I could accomplish so many things at one time that way. Rabbits for food, worms for chicken food, and get some really great dirt outta the deal ... Not too shabby, huh? I know this is a weird problem to have but with it just being GC and me, I'm having trouble coming up with enough stuff to feed a compost pile and the chickens. Those girls are ALWAYS hungry ... lol But they give me eggs like clockwork ... Even my Buff Orpingtons are laying every day right now -- It's gonna break my heart when I have to replace these gals year after next ... but ... that's life on the farm ... even if it is in the suburbs ...

I browsed OSA. This helped me prepare to prep because I now know what yall are doing to prep.

BEEN!! So ... You have learned that you need to go somewhere else to get your stuff?? LOL (Don't make me shoot you, young man!! )

 

[been]

Really?? I'm gonna try to do something like that on a bit smaller scale. I think I could accomplish so many things at one time that way. Rabbits for food, worms for chicken food, and get some really great dirt outta the deal ... Not too shabby, huh? I know this is a weird problem to have but with it just being GC and me, I'm having trouble coming up with enough stuff to feed a compost pile and the chickens. Those girls are ALWAYS hungry ... lol But they give me eggs like clockwork ... Even my Buff Orpingtons are laying every day right now -- It's gonna break my heart when I have to replace these gals year after next ... but ... that's life on the farm ... even if it is in the suburbs ...



BEEN!! So ... You have learned that you need to go somewhere else to get your stuff?? LOL (Don't make me shoot you, young man!! )

All youd have to say is "its me BB!" And i would not mess with you......I do not recommend other OSA'rs trying this though

 

[Wormydog1724]

And you helped the rest of our allergies! Too bad they're like rabbits...

I've cut 2,500 in the last two weeks. Allergies may be bad for some, but grass for cattle is more important to us. And they're fire hazards. They won't come back because we spray our pastures and it does a good job keeping them knocked down. The big ones are what we have to remove now to get it prepped to spray this spring.

 

[SoonerBorn]

I've cut 2,500 in the last two weeks. Allergies may be bad for some, but grass for cattle is more important to us. And they're fire hazards. They won't come back because we spray our pastures and it does a good job keeping them knocked down. The big ones are what we have to remove now to get it prepped to spray this spring.

Where and when is the keg and bonfire??? Woot!

 

[freewookie]

I've cut 2,500 in the last two weeks. Allergies may be bad for some, but grass for cattle is more important to us. And they're fire hazards. They won't come back because we spray our pastures and it does a good job keeping them knocked down. The big ones are what we have to remove now to get it prepped to spray this spring.

Oh yeah we've cleared all the ones close to our house to keep the fire threat to a minimum.

Do you have much of a pasture with this drought?