"David I. Raines" wrote:

Jim Dauven wrote:

[...]

Have you looked into no-till farming?
It's working very well for us on a smallish scale, just to feed ourselves.

-dir

I have planned on using no-till farming with horse drawn
equipment. First I would run the disk harrow behind a two
horse team. That's two acres an hour for 5 hours. Change
horses (you cannot/should not run a horse more than 5 hours)
because the need time for foraging. Then run disk harrow
for another five hours. That way you can disk up 20 acres
a day. The next day run the spring tooth harrow for the
same about of time. (It actually may go faster as the
spring tooth harrow doesn't have the resistance to pulling
that the disk harrow does). Last run the grain drill for
the planting of wheat, oats, barley, rapeseed etc. These
plants are winter planting so you plant them in late september
and let them germinate in the fall rain so they will get
good start for the spring. That way the plant matures while
the moisture from the spring rains is still in the ground.

If you are raising cattle and you keep your cattle in a corral
in the winter you can use a manure spreader to spread manure
on the grain crops in the spring just as ground if thawing
This will provide additional nitrogen for the growing grain
plants. (The object of this is to get the grain as
healthy as possible for increased yield)

Also the rape oil is important here because after fertilization
of the grain heads if you spray the grain with rapeseed oil that
will kill many of the pests like grass hoppers as rapeseed oil
is toxic and does really dry out.

I don't have a horse drawn spray rig yet but it is one of the
things that will have to be constructed.

Crops that you will irrigate, Corn, potatoes, beans, peas,
onions, alfalfa, etc you plant in the spring. One trick you
can do is seed alfalfa over the grain crop that you planted
the fall before. The grain will grow faster than the alfalfa
but the alfalfa will still grow and the plant root nodules will
fix nitrogen into the soil for the grain. You do the same
no till harrow work but then you use a cultivator to make
up the rows. After planting you can then lay the soaker
tubes for a water supply.

Again after these crops have fertilized then a mist of
rapeseed oil will help in pest control.

I have herd that a mist of rapeseed oil will also control
pests on fruit and berries.

So you can see why I am very interested in the rapeseed plant
in a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

The Independent

The Independent

A man with a good supply of horses (6) should be able to
plant 180 to 200 acres of grain crops in the fall and an
additional
up the rows for the planting for crops


Why do you need to grow so much stuff? We can live on a quarter acre
apiece and that includes veggies, grain, oilseeds, bush/cane/vine fruits,
legumes, sugar plants, and fiber plants.

A simple planting stick is all you need, and something sharp to cut the
weeds off at the base.

Seems to me that you only have to have the tractor and horses in order
to grow enough crops to 'feed' both of them.

As for raising large animals, that's an incredible amount of work. I
would rather eat veggies and kick back.

Why feed animals 10# of food to get 2# back? And ALL that water and care
and shelter and fencing and herding and on and on and on.

I don't think you can do the above, Jim, without a pretty good size work
force of people that are not equal partners. That tend the animals and
eat turnips, so to speak. An underclass.

Americans couldn't eat animal products at every meal now, if their food
supply wasn't subsidized by cheap labor, here and abroad.

-dir


I currently have 4 horses, 6 beef cattle, 12 Sheep, 6 pygmy goats
a flock of chickens and some ducks. I own 5 acres of land with
half a duck pond, and have rented an extra 8 acres on a long
term lease from an old gent. That gives me 13 acres for
my livestock. My wife tends the garden 200 X 200 in raised beds.
(That stops a lot of back aches right there.) The live stock takes
about an hour a day to take care of. Of course I plan on spending
4 or 5 weekends a year to repair fences that the livestock brake
down.

My bug out property in South East Oregon is basically my hunting
and fishing camp. There are lots of deer, sage grouse, and
chucker
partridge there. The Owhyee river at the bottom of the deep
canyon
that borders my property is a fisherman's paradise with native
lahaten cutthroat and rainbow trout. I can fly over in the
morning
and fly out in the evening. Its a two hour flight on most days.

If event of TEOTWAWKI, major War, or economic dislocation I plan
on
having an abundant supply of:

biodiesel for my vehicle
linen cloth from flax
wool cloth from sheep
leather goods from traded hides from slaughtered animals
flour
Corn meal
popcorn
peanuts
Potatoes
Tomatoes
beer (home brewed from my own hops and grain)
beans
pea
onions
garlic
herbs
squash
turnips
parsnips
carrots
beets
asparagus
strawberries
black berries
apples
peaches
pears
apricots
milk
cheese
butter
eggs
Wine from fruit and berries
brandy from the distilled wine.

For most of the above plants I already have seed stored in
vacuum sealed long term storage containers. I plan on
ordering some rapeseed this spring. I plan on putting about
20 lbs of it away in vacuum sealed containers.

You might be interested in my vacuum sealing process. I have
a steel pressure sphere. I place the seeds in old fashioned
glass jars with the glass lids with rubber gaskets and wire
hold down clamps. I fill jars with helium by turning them up
side down cracking the lid which is not sealed at this point,
and using a long thin hollow tube which I insert all the way
into jar.

When I think the jars are filled with Helium replace the lid
and clamp it down. I place the jars upside down on racks in
the pressure sphere. I then with draw enough air so pressure
in the sphere causes the jar to seal its self.
(generally about 7 psi or so)

There may be a few other odd and ends that I have neglected to
list but to have abundant food is to have wealth if things go
all to hell.

Now I know some wise ass is going to say the government will
come in and confiscate all the food stuffs. But I got news
for you they won't. They know if you confiscate the food stuffs
there won't be any for the next year. What the government does
is set a price ceiling of which you cannot sell above. But even
the price ceiling is a lot more than the cost of production.

During World War II the farmers in Southern Idaho while the
didn't become filthy rich, they did rather well during the war.

I know some Japanese families that were interned at the camp
at Hunt Idaho. During the war they hired out as day laborers.
By the end of the war Mr. Izowa, Mr. Murakami and Mr. Matsuoka
were all very prosperous farmers with some large holdings.


The way my parents told me, during the rationing of WWII,
the farm communities had abundant meat, leather, gasoline, cheese,
milk, and even tires for their farm vehicles, (mainly trucks).
It seems farmers were exempted from almost every thing but sugar.
That was hard to get but with bee hives and honey there was a
lot of sweeteners to go around.

The Independent


--
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making
of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Abraham Lincoln