Are you prepared?

[NOKUY]

i saw that the rice price is goin wayyyy up too. (not that i eat rice much)...but i see where this is going.

have people seriously lost the ideal of sef-sufficiencey.

im really about done w/ reliance on society.

...and im not kidding!

this thread should be on every persons computer, and we need to talk about it...

....i dont care if it is or not, but it gets me thinking.

 

[Budweiser13]

The sky is falling................

 

[NOKUY]

The sky is falling................

haha..GOOD!

...u better duck and be prepared.

 

[RudolfTheRed]

Hey Yukon I'm goin to live in the woods like Dick Proenneke... you comin??

 

[Budweiser13]

Im just kiddin with ya man. But really I think we will be OK I just dont like to see folks worried about stuff like this on a weed growing site. Stay positive bro...........peace.......

 

[NOKUY]

Hey Yukon I'm goin to live in the woods like Dick Proenneke... you comin??

hell yeah!!!

i have his book too

and seen his pbs special

ive seen his actual cabin that he built by hand at lake clark presrve.

he is one of my heros

rudolf..i think your ready to read 2 books ok


http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Alask...d_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209184686&sr=8-2

and

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-into-C...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209184765&sr=1-1

 

[NOKUY]

fukin bump....anyone else ready to bounce?!

 

[swampdank]

my thought excactly

my thought excactly

i guess you could call me uninformed up until about a year ago, when i first heard of 2012. since then, i have made plans for my family to go way up into the ozark mountains where i have family with land and cattle. i bought a few guns (including an ak-47 with 1500 rounds) and im buying about a hundred rounds everytime i go to the sporting good store. i just picked up a new 30-06for long range shots.

i plan to start stockpiling food and planted some perrenial veggies.

i got my mom doing the same thing and she has more rifles and handguns than a little. if the shit dont hit the fan before 2012, im taking my family to her house for the thanksgiving/christmas holiday. if things go south, i will already be there.

the single most important thing (i think) is to arm yourself so the scum cant take from your family.

im taking notes and trying to figure out how to live off the grid. i was raised in this new world and i dont want to be punished for it. i wish we all lived in a world that accomodated us and somewhat symbiotic.

so, as it stands right now. its me and my guns. and im learning horticulture(organic) so i might feed the family if need be.

 

[NOKUY]

i tried to post a good response to this ill try again...dude hold on a min.
this may help and may already be in the long thread, buti ts relevant now.

Many of us have a garden and enjoy fresh vegetables during the summer and fall. Maybe we even have a few chickens for eggs and meat. But many of us may want to extend our homesteading to what I call “hard-core” homesteading. This is serious homesteading, aimed at being able to provide your family with nearly all of its basic needs.

Luckily, most of us with a piece of out-of-the-way land can become nearly “store-bought-free,” raising much of what we need in nearly the same way as did our ancestors.

There is a vast difference between this type of survival homesteading and stars-in-the-eyes, back-to-nature, recreational homesteading to relieve stress and provide enjoyment. The difference is not so much in how-to, but in discipline and learning.


The survival garden
It has been said that one can raise enough food for a family of four in a 50- by 50-foot space. While such an area can provide a goodly amount of food, there is no way a family could survive, year-round, off such a small patch. In reality, all that this is is a “house garden” for providing fresh produce such as greens, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, herbs, etc.

When one needs a garden to put up food, not only for the winter but possibly for a year or two, we’re talking about at least an acre of intense cropping.


A few rows of beans will produce quarts and quarts.


This includes a patch of wheat for grinding into cereal and flour; flour corn for hominy and corn meal; sweet corn for eating, canning, and dehydrating; and rows of dry beans as well as fresh beans (yellow wax, green, pole, etc.) for putting up. Here we stumble on the weak link in most folks’ gardens. They say “We only use a few pounds of corn meal or dry beans a year,” and they feel confident they can get by with just a few packages of such items, bought at the grocers.

But having lived in a wild corner of Montana, well above the “grocery line” (because of road accessibility), I can tell you that you will use many more pounds of these staples when you cannot eat from the store shelves.

And if there are no store shelves to choose from, we will all need to take care of our own needs at home. Remember, it takes more than one year to get a garden into full production. You can’t just plow up a plot and expect to survive off of it, especially if you lack experience.

You can’t grow everything, everywhere. Look at your local production capabilities. Here in New Mexico I can grow anything. In the high country of Montana, nearly everything was a challenge even though I’ve gardened all my life. But we could survive from my Montana garden with potatoes, wheat, and beans along with a number of cold-loving crops we grew. What you need to do is put your energy into growing what will make a crop in your location.

But don’t be afraid to experiment. Everywhere I’ve gardened I’ve grown crops that locals said “wouldn’t grow.”

To better use space, consider inter-planting as much as possible. Grow cornfield beans among the flour corn, radishes in the same row as carrots, peppers between rows of tomatoes (which act as windbreaks), pumpkins and squash next to a corn field where they can run into the corn after cultivation has stopped. (Don’t do this with sweet corn or you will have a devil of a time picking the corn stumbling among rampant squash vines.) Inter-planting will do much to save garden space, a large consideration in survival gardening, especially when you must cultivate and till by hand.


Crops for a survival garden
Everyone who gardens grows some things just because they enjoy the taste. This is great, and we all do it. But in hard-core homesteading, we must consider our basic needs, as well.

We need to grow enough grain and corn for ourselves and livestock. This can be done by hand, in a relatively small plot, provided that our poultry and livestock needs are small. If you need more grain, say for cattle or horses, consider small scale farming with horses. This is a sustainable way of living as horses are easy to work, versatile, and provide manure for the fields. They also require no fuel to run. One team of moderate-sized horses can do as much work as a small tractor and cost little to maintain.

As little as an acre of ground can supply modest grain needs for a family homestead. Include a bit of rye, oats, and barley for variation. (There is a naked-seeded oat that is great for homesteaders, as at home one has a difficult task in hulling oats for oatmeal.)

Besides small grains, include your rows of flour corn for corn meal and hominy, being sure to include enough for livestock feeding.

Most folks have to double or even triple the amount of usual garden produce to allow for putting up as much each year as possible. Be sure to allow for lots of tomatoes for tomato sauces, and enough root crops, such as turnips, potatoes and carrots. (You’ll eat a lot more “homegrown” when you can’t run to the store for “quick” meals.)

With all survival garden vegetables, a family should buy only open pollinated varieties. This will enable folks to save seeds from year to year, which is not recommended with hybrids. Hybrid seed, while usually fertile, can not be depended upon to reproduce truly. And, contrary to popular belief, most of those old open pollinated varieties are good tasting and hardy.


Perennial for the survival garden
Along with the vegetables, a hard-core homesteader should establish a good variety of perennial edibles. These include asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish, garlic, perennial onions, and herbs for both culinary and medicinal use.
A survival homestead needs
a large, productive garden.
Remember to encourage native perennial edibles which do well in your area. These may include prickly pear cactus (the fruits and pads are eaten as a vegetable), wild rice, wild greens, cattails, mushrooms, etc. In a survival situation, one truly appreciates variety in the diet.

The perennials have the advantage of having to be planted only once and usually expand on their own with little human help. And, like the annuals, which must be planted each year, a family can gather and put up many jars full of winter eating. I can wild and domestic asparagus, wild mushrooms, wild greens, cactus pads (known as nopalitos in the southwest), and dry many other wild and domestic perennials.


Small fruits are nearly essential
Nearly everyone has room to plant a good selection of small fruits. These include strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, rhubarb, blueberries, and so forth. Luckily, once a patch of each has been established, one can readily take divisions or replant sprouts to greatly increase their food-producing capabilities.

As with the vegetable garden, one should grow as great a variety of small fruits as possible, and enough of each to put up significant jam, preserves, and canned and dried fruit. In hard times, a good loaf of hot whole wheat bread spread thickly with homemade strawberry jam, or a steaming blueberry pie, makes the term “survival” a joke. We call it living good.

You quickly discover that small fruits are a wonderful treat that can be easily turned into strawberry shortcake, blueberry pancakes, rhubarb tarts, blackberry cobbler, etc. In hard times, you don’t eat many candy bars; instead you substitute healthier fruit snacks and desserts.

Even picky eaters greatly enjoy dried fruits and fruit leathers which are easy to make at home.


Every homestead should include a small orchard
Even the smallest homestead has room for fruit trees. With the variety of tree sizes and shapes, you can choose full-sized trees which are tremendous producers, but take room and several years to begin bearing fruit. Semi-dwarf trees, which usually require only a 10- by 10-foot spacing, produce full sized fruit in moderate amounts and only take a couple of years to bear. Dwarf and “pole” trees, which produce full sized fruit in small amounts, can be raised on a patio in a portable tub.

A hard-core homesteader can get by with two each of several varieties to provide variety and cross-pollination. I’d suggest apple, pear, pie and sweet cherry, apricot, and plum for most gardeners. Of course, if you can grow citrus in your zone, go for it. We live in zone 5 and have two Brown Turkey Figs in a protected corner of our east flower bed—protected by the house from the killer winter north winds.


Small fruits go a long way to alleviate hard times.


Now a lot of folks say they’d need acres and acres to reach this level of self-reliance in the food department. Not so. My grandmother did it on two city lots in Detroit. Instead of normal landscaping, nearly everything she grew produced edible fruit: peach, grapes, brambles, quince, asparagus, apple, crab apple, strawberry, etc.) Having gone through the Depression as a widow with two young boys to raise, Grandma knew how to fend off hard times.


But what about meat?
Like produce and fruit, a family can grow all of their meat requirements, right at home. Now few people actually like to kill to eat, but when it comes down to eating or not eating meat, most of us can find a way around our revulsions. After all, someone had to kill that steer that went into your Big Mac. It gets ridiculous when visitors won’t eat a home-butchered beef roast but will buy a tainted, chemical-laden piece of plastic-wrapped roast at the supermarket and eat it with abandon.

Folks on a very small acreage will usually have to limit their meat production to poultry, rabbits, and perhaps a little goat meat. A small flock of chickens for egg and meat production, with a couple of hutches of rabbits and the castrated male offspring of the family dairy goats will do much to help out at the dinner table. Of course, a family with these reduced production capabilities will not eat meat every day, but it will be able to enjoy regular meals with meat as a feature.

The benefit of having only a small poultry flock, a few hutches of rabbits, and very few goats is that the feed requirements and labor requirements are also minimal. In such cases, a family can easily hand-raise and harvest all feeds necessary to maintain their meat and egg supply.

Small-holders can help supplement their meat needs by hunting and fishing. But remember, if times are hard nationwide, subsistence hunting will become very difficult in most areas, as it did during homestead days and during the Depression. The game quickly disappears with overhunting. Fishing holds up much better, so it benefits a family if they hone fishing skills before they are truly needed. (Besides, it’s enjoyable family “work,” as well.) For lucky backwoods dwellers who live near the seacoast or a salmon stream, fishing can well be the major source of family meat.

Folks with more acreage are in better shape to truly be meat self-reliant. Using horsepower to till moderate amounts of land, a family can raise enough small grain, field corn, and forage (hay and pasture) to maintain not only the horses but a couple of dairy cows or several dairy goats. Let me stop right here and address you folks who are saying, “Goats! No way am I going to raise those stinking tin can eaters!”.

Goats do not eat tin cans, nor do they run around butting people, any more than do cattle. Goats are exceptionally clean, picky eaters, refusing to take a bite of the apple you just took a bite out of, and they’ll dehydrate before they will drink from a bucket containing even one berry of manure. Only bucks in rut have any odor. While in rut they will spray their neck, belly, and chin with urine as an attractant to does in heat. So do elk and deer. The normal scent glands on a buck’s head, which produce scent during rut, can be removed by surgery when the buck is an adult or during disbudding, leaving a scent-free male totally capable of breeding. Does never have an objectionable odor, and with neat droppings the pen is quite clean and odor-free with even minimal daily maintainance.

We’ve had both dairy goats and cattle, and we know the benefits and drawbacks of each. Both produce milk which is equally good-tasting. A goat often produces multiple offspring while a cow produces one calf a year.

Cattle are easier to fence in, but goats will do great in a pasture grown over to willows and brush as they are by nature browsers like deer. And, like deer, they can hop a four-foot field fence to enter your young orchard and strip the tender trees of their bark and twigs. Cows produce beef; goats produce chevron. Both are good, but different.

Chevron comes in carcass weights from between 20 and 100 pounds of dressed weight, depending on age. They are easier to cut up and handle, but their small carcass lasts a much shorter period of time than a 600-pound Angus carcass.

Remember that worldwide there are thousands more goats used for meat and dairy production than there are cattle. There are reasons, and economy is at the top followed by the quickness of meat consumption in areas without refrigeration. A 600-pound cattle carcass is likely to spoil before it’s completely consumed.


Chickens provide both meat and eggs for a survival homestead.

Pigs are another cog in the serious homesteader’s wheel of self-reliance. Not only can a few pigs easily be raised for butchering—being fed from home-produced feed, kitchen and dairy waste (skim milk is an excellent food), along with weeds, pasture, and hog-foraged feed—but they provide excellent meat with a carcass that is quite easily handled by the family. The bonus of hogs is that they produce lard, the only homegrown cooking fat easily obtainable.

Yes, I know about high cholesterol, but let me tell you that when you are working hard everyday to put food and other necessities on the table, your cholesterol will balance easier than your finances.


Homegrown dairy products
Okay, so far you have a good vegetable plot, small fruits, small grains, and an orchard and meat/egg supply started. It’s time to think about dairy products, particularly milk and cheese. After that stored dry milk is gone, your family will want something to replace it. And what is more natural than learning to run a tiny kitchen dairy and cheese plant? All dairy products are quite easy to produce at home, and as with almost everything else, it’s much better when homemade.

I’ve made cottage cheese, cream cheese, mozzarella, colby, cheddar cheese, sour cream, cheese spreads, balls, logs and sandwich loaves, ice cream, ice milk, sherbet, and more regularly at home, both from cow and goat milk. Butter and whipped cream are easier to do from cow milk, as the cream quickly separates out, floating to the top. Goat milk is naturally homogenized and it takes more “doing” to access the cream. Both animals’ milk produces good-tasting dairy products.

Suggestions for
a survival garden
green beans, pole & bush
sweet corn (various
maturing dates)
yellow wax beans
carrots
dry beans (several types)
tomatoes (several varieties)
potatoes
turnips
rutabagas
cabbage
broccoli
cauliflower
cucumbers
onions
greens of several types
spinach
lettuce
peas (dry & green)
pumpkins
summer squash
winter squash
muskmelon watermelon

 

[Chiefsmokingbud]

Hell yeah I'm prepared. Got the 2007 4x4 bug out vehicle, generator, 3 mo of MRE's numerous assault rifles. Couple Bendix king vhf military radios. 3 alice packs, Water, 50 gal fuel, and more camping equip than i care to tally. People in the south don't take this situation lightly.

 

[Magi101]

Marine Corps S.E.R.E. training will give me an edge. plus i can stomach alot of shit ive dined with raccoons a couple of times aswell.

But as of now this is what i have.
Old School Vietnam jungle fatigues
1 ka-bar, 1 machete, 80 pounds of rice, a trot line, some jug rigs for jug fishings, a Remington .700, 20 pounds of gunpowder alot of PVC pipe, basically i got some guerrilla war equipment. who said vanguards have all teh lulz?

 

[flubnutz]

got sum davey crocket dial-a-yields i picked up on e-bay, a minigun pintle mounted on my toyota pickup (favourite of warlords word-wide) with a shit-load of 7.62; a jerry-can full of whiskey-barrel swish, atropine auto-injectors and a full-body rubber bondage suit and gas mask, ivory-gripped colt frontier .45 and a telepathic dog that can locate pussy. and 10 lbs of mango haze. bring it on.

 

[GET MO]

Good lookin brotha, Im deffinitly ready(been ready) grow our own food and got plenty of protection... lookin forward to crazy times!

 

[med_breeder]

Most of the midwest is under water.
Many crops have failed, farms washed away.
The wheat,corn,etc that would have been harvested a few months from now, will not be. With fuel and food prices already rising, the end of this year could be interesting.

 

[DrHydro]

Ya... Seems like everything is building up for some shit to go down...

 

[NOKUY]

bump bump

 

[Backwoods Bud]

Good thread!

I'm prepared for whatever comes this way. I live in the woods, garden, can, hunt, trap and fish. The blackberries are ripening right now so I'll be loading up on some more of natures free and delicious food soon. I have enough guns and ammo for all situations.

Hank Jr. nailed it....."I can skin a buck and I can run a trot line and a country boy can survive!"

 

[Babombeez]

Live with the Earth and you will adapt to the coming changes... I think 2012 is more about a spiritual evolution than anything, it's the evolution of consciousness and doesn't necessarily imply an end of the world scenario, it's just that most people are expecting an end to all this madness and our world leaders are making that a reality it seems... It truly seems the human race is on the path to self destruction, but will something prevent us from pulling the trigger on ourselves... I think so, something greater than you are I can fathom...

if any one cares, the science behind the 2012 date is simple. Changes in the local interstellar medium (LISM) are causing a heating effect in our solar system, bringing about a rapid change in climate and affecting the ultimate tilt of the Earth's axis, which will fully re-align itself to the incoming energies which are said to be responsible for turning the "wheel of evolution" every precessional cycle of approx. 26,000 years, this period of time belonging to a larger cosmic cycle of evolution approx. 62-65 million years in duration, which was discovered by Berkeley scientists. The time is now for that to happen. Furthermore, as we reach the time window of era 2012, the energy fields which create and sustain this reality will become incompatible with the energies that are flowing into the Earth from the Galactic Center (of the Milky Way Galaxy).. These "new" energies that I am talking about are of a more highly excited or higher vibrational nature and as a result are causing all of these "inconveniences," such as a warming world, droughts, famine, increased volcanic and earthquake activity, economic chaos, and further destruction of our biosphere...

Being prepared is extremely smart in times like this, just one thing is certain... You can only rely on yourself and your family, the governments' infrastructures are collapsing upon themselves, live with the Earth and in harmony with each other... For this is the only way to ensure your survival.

Beez

 

[basilfarmer]

good thread.


Well, I used to be a hardcore survivalist. Met some really interesting people in those days.

Anyway - the best things you can do:

-being in an area with a water supply where you are the first contact to it, rather than downstream of god knows who&what, & having solar distillation apparatus, activated charcoal

-an area with an ok growing season

-obviously, having the means to defend youself/family group from the masses of unprepared & looters

-the fuel issue is not entirely over: unlike other liquid fuels; ethanol has no expiration date and can be brewed on sight from crops - sort of solar power of you think about it, converting your gasoline vehicle to 100% ethanol is probably possible. Of course you can make biodiesel too, with hemp oil and such by processing it with lye to remove glycerides.

-a concealed, remote location a gas tank and a half away from the nearest city

-this last point will save you from 99% of the shit heads cuz they will never ever know you exist, the last few can be detered by such things as a bridge with removed ramps you take with you; and of course wireless proximity alerts/guns


==I wonder how many days worth of food the average city has in it?????? think about it....

 

[hunt4genetics]

I really feel that this fall leading into winter will be a trying time. There are millions of acres of grain that got washed away do to the great midwest flood of '08. The US food (Grain) supply was already in a fragile position due to the ethanol sect. (I believe that enthanol can help if sugar cane is used. check out what the brazilians did.)
The fuel crisis also affects food cost from the farm to transit to market. There is a sorta perfect storm. Hurricane season is underway, Isreal may bomb Iran etc...
There are alot of things that need to play out before we pop the ole bubbly on New Year's Eve.
I am not a doom and gloom kinda guy, all I'm saying is, if you have a backyard, please cultivate it to the fullest.
Peace,
we will be better on the other side once we get through these dark times.