Permaculture for when the SHTF

[Mini Horses]

Mine love BOSS. I get 50# bags at feed store as the goats & horses also eat it. Oils are great for skin & hair plus, high protein. I've had sunflowers growing in a little manure pile where my stallion leaves it for me, in the past.

This year I've had a bald eagle, looks young by size, decide to move in around here. Never had air predators before!! Have lost 3 hens in a month -- daylight -- I know it's that eagle!! Not happy!!! All 3 have been the ones who were "independent wanderers".....not those flocked & near roos or shelters. We do have a couple resident owls but, chickens in coops at night.

 

[tortoise]

We are located next to a river and in an area with several lakes, so we have bald eagles all the time! We have lost several to eagles. They have a particular way of eating and leaving the carcass. We lost 20 out of 25 chickens our first year here. We learned a lot about identifying predators by what they leave behind. Raccoons have been the biggest trouble, but after DH trapped 6 or 8 we went a year without raccoon losses. Although we lost all our meat birds to a fox last year.

We had a young badger move in our blueberry patch last year. Between the badger and DH trapping 2 gophers with the milk jug trick, we haven't seen as much seed loss.

I'm planning to try sunflowers again in a variety of ways. One plan is to start them in the house and transplant to the garden. (Tedious!). The other plan is to commandeer DH'd failed corn food plot and plant sunflowers there. It's >1/4 mile from the garden with the gophers and far enough from where the chickens free range that I might have success there. I'm imagining starting some permie cultivation on the edges of our usued pasture and forest. There are wild blackberries to encourage. We tried planting nut trees but the deer ate them.

 

[baymule]

@tortoise what is the gopher milk jug trick?

 

[tortoise]

YouTube is the best for an example. Fill a milk jug with water, pour it down the gopher hole and the gopher runs out into the jug!

 

[MoonShadows]

 

[frustratedearthmother]

No gophers around here - but that's a cool trick!

 

[lcertuche]

I have 3 ponds and all kinds of wildlife are near us. My birds hide in thick brush and in our holly trees when hawks, buzzards fly over. There are eagles in Arkansas but I haven't seen any here.

 

[baymule]

I like gopher in a jug!

 

[lcertuche]

I think this is an interesting idea.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.c...ticles/plant-your-own-secret-survival-garden/

 

[SSLM]

Hello! I'm new to the forum and thought I'd share a couple things here that I hope are useful

Book:
The Secret Garden of Survival. It's really the permaculture forest idea but from the perspective of having food planted in ways that don't look like a garden and are, therefore, "secret" and not screaming to everyone "I'M A GARDEN". It's not comprehensive on permaculture, but gets you thinking...and it talks about a lot of what you are all thinking on this thread!

For me, the biggest thing is WATER.
Storing water is not practical for anything long-term, so I've been looking into ways to either run the current well pump on solar or other options like hand-pump, etc.

I found these 2 different options that I'm considering but haven't done yet.

One is the "simple pump" It goes right in your current well and can be a hand-pump or a pump run by solar and can pump right into your current bladder tank.

The other option is a reasonably priced solar system capable of running the current well pump and other items in the house. This would require a bit more work to set up but I found a fantastic option for this as well at a reasonable price linked above.

It took me forever to find this source as most of the smaller, or portable, systems just can't handle the well pump.