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Johnjosiah

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I lack creativity, but thought I would give it a shot. Maybe BB, 66, Sub, Rat, SCMM or someone else can come up with better ideas. Just seems we need something going on.

You have been planning for a tumultuous future world. You planted a garden and started to raise livestock. The first few seasons went well. Unfortunately, there is now a drought with record high temperatures and minimal rainfall. You and your family are not starving (yet) but the prospects of having enough food stored to last the winter are slim. You can cut livestock and have more vegetable matter or you can feed the livestock from your gardens and hopefully they (and you) survive the winter and you have spring breading stock. Neither method will guarantee enough food. Everyone is hurting for food and much of the available wildlife has been taken. All nearby citizens and communities are in similar circumstance, but there is currently no significant violence that can not be handled easily. You have a water well but it is low and can not provide enough water to irrigate sufficiently. There is minimal available surface water that must he hauled. If surface water is utilized it would requiring essintially all man power and fuel, which is being rationed. What would you do now and what would you do differnt?

I know kind of dumb and long but all I could come up with.
 

securitysix

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Long, but not dumb. Definitely something to have to worry about.

Ideally, you have some food stored for such an occasion, whether it's MRE's, extra canned food from the store, veggies canned from last year's garden, or freeze dried food buckets. That will help keep the family fed during the lean times so you can focus on keeping the farm alive enough to survive the winter.

I'd do what I could to keep the animals alive. Protein on the hoof will store longer than veggies in the refrigerator. Depending on the livestock, their feeding may actually be fairly low maintenance even in the winter months. While goats will be healthier if kept fed better, they can subsist off of a lot of things that cattle can't. Pigs can be pretty independent and aren't likely to let themselves starve, either. Chickens can eat a lot more than bird seed.

Consider intentionally growing ]url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth]amaranth[/url], aka pig weed, or at least letting it grow where it wants (as long as it's not interfering with the rest of your garden). It is considered a weed in most places, but it's very drought tolerant, and it has many uses as a food crop for both humans and livestock. Also, learn something about wildcrafting in your area so you know what plants grow wild locally that you can use to help supplement the food supply for your family and livestock. You won't necessarily be able to forage those things during the winter, but if you forage them during the summer, you can help stretch what crops do survive farther into the winter. Plus, you might be able to preserve some of what you forage via canning or dehydrating it.

Can or dehydrate everything you can out of the garden to help it keep through the winter. Also, if you had a good enough first few seasons, you might have some left over food stuffs from those seasons to help keep the family and the livestock fed.

I would also consider adding trapping to my list of winter chores, which would bring in meat and furs. Meat can be used to supplement feeding the family or traded for other needed goods. Furs can be preserved and traded or turned into blankets/clothing, which can be used by the family or traded.

As for the low well, a lot of water can be reused. Shut off the valve for the toilet so it doesn't auto-fill. Rather than draining the dish water, pour it into the toilet tank and use it to flush. Just make sure you filter out any chunks of food that might be in it so they don't clog things up. Bath water can be used for the same thing. Depending on the kind of soap you use, you may even be able to use the dish and bath water to water the garden.

Have a system set up to catch rainwater. It may not rain much, especially during the summer, but it will pick up some in the fall and through the winter. And don't forget the spring storms. They probably won't provide enough water to get you through the entire summer, but anything you can store up as it falls will be helpful when it's not raining. Any of it you can catch in a barrel is more water you don't have to draw from a well or fetch from the creek. Remember, your roof has a lot of surface area that can catch this water, so gutters with water barrels under the down spouts are your friends.

^^^ ...Talk about dumb and long... ^^^
 

Johnjosiah

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Some good ideas. A 300sqft of roof can collect almost 50 gal of water with a 1/4 inch of rain. I'm personally looking into some of the permaculture type of stuff and adding to my garden.
 

turkeyrun

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Drought and famine have happened throughout history. The strong and the lucky survive.
I have a garden and cattle. I do not feed cattle from the garden. Thinning the herd would be the first order of business.
Maintaining seed stocks is second. Third, tighten your belt, live day by day, and keep the faith.

I have installed a seperate drain line for our washer. The second line fund directly to the garden, just hang the washer hose in main sewer line if garden gets too wet (rarely). Looking at doing same for shower. Not for kitchen, no grease into garden.

Gutters drain to 2 325 gal containers.

Just finished the greenhouse, watered from laundry.
 

1krr

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Definately not dumb, I actually like the scenario!

If by live stock you mean cows (easier to just focus on that), I've read that cattle require 10lbs of vegetation for every pound of eatible meat they produce. That said, if resources are being rationed chances are you aren't using all your land (or even a significant percentage) for garden space and cows will just graze the pastures. So I would focus on keeping the pastures in as good of shape as possible and harvesting whatever livestock you need to ensure there is plenty of forage for what remains. Also if it is just cows, trade with neighbors to diversify into more efficent livestock like chickens, etc.

I would also put a lot of effort into the garden to make sure whatever is growing produces well including composting manure, weeding, etc. For water, it is what it is. Use whatever resources you have to develop rain water (assuming minimal in a drought) and find the most docile of the livestock to help haul water in if you need. It would be worth the time to train rather than humping it in yourself. Capture your waste water from the house for grey water irrigation as well.

If I found myself in a situation where I had to choose either livestock or garden, I would probably work on the garden. With careful management, you can produce a lot of food from little space especially if that is a full time job.

Turkey, post up some details on your washer watering and pics of the greenhouse!
 

turkeyrun

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Not really anything to photo on the washer. Took some 2" PVC pipe and zip tied to existing drain pipe.
Ran pipe just under the grass to the corner of the garden. Pipe empties into the rows. Winter put drain hose in sewer pipe. Summer hose goes in garden pipe.
 

1krr

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I was mostly curious how you got it out of the house to the underground line leading to the garden. I really wish I would have plumbed in a second gray water system I could pull water from and T'ed it in before the septic so I could siphon off water before hand if I wanted too. Either way, that's cool thinking. Any issues with lint/trash if you were to use it with a drip irrigation system?
 

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