Hey how's things in Australia? I haven't been there since 1999. I was there 4 times with the US Military, in 1997 and 1999. I have been to Perth, and Sydney, and a couple other places. Dove the Great Barrier Reef as well on some down time. Beautiful Country and I really enjoyed every visit. I wish I could go back it was so nice there.
Hello Everyone
- Thread starter Chance
- Start date
Help Support Doomsday Prepper Forums:
Hey how's things in Australia? I haven't been there since 1999. I was there 4 times with the US Military, in 1997 and 1999. I have been to Perth, and Sydney, and a couple other places. Dove the Great Barrier Reef as well on some down time. Beautiful Country and I really enjoyed every visit. I wish I could go back it was so nice there.
Army127 - Things are looking up - federal election in Sept, but, who knows. All going well we will actually get a govt that was elected by the people, not one who stole her position. There is a long time to go, and a lot of us are skeptical that an election was called so early.
I was lucky in my time to have a little to do with your forces when I lived in the US ( '85-88 & 89-94). Had some great times at Ft Hood, Even played on anM1Abrams tank simulator. Mate, if you ever visit, more than welcome to crash here. The past few years have had a mate in the CT Nat Gd. visiting us.
I was lucky in my time to have a little to do with your forces when I lived in the US ( '85-88 & 89-94). Had some great times at Ft Hood, Even played on anM1Abrams tank simulator. Mate, if you ever visit, more than welcome to crash here. The past few years have had a mate in the CT Nat Gd. visiting us.
Thanks June. I haven't had much time as of late to be on the site. I'm working on making some changes that will give me more personal time. Really, happy to still have my job with the way government is heading. We have had to do some rethinking of our plans for the future. Really sucks after working toward the same goals for over 4 years and then having to amend them. We have been actually completing some preps and moving on to others we haven't addewssed yet. Our circumstances are unusual because of where and how we live. It would be easier I think if we lived in an area with a more temporate climate, but, of course more people live in those areas, so we would have different circumstances to deal with. Like you, we haven't found many that are actually preparing for what may occur. They seem interested, and sometimes "talk the talk", but fall short if it means actually doing any real preps. I guess mostly they say, "we are coming to your house if anything happens". Lol Guess they don't really understand what this means. It is good that you have family members on board. We have quite a bit of close family living here and know they will look to us for help. It would be nice if they were actually contributing, but that hasn't happened. So we know we will have to prepare for more than just us. We broke our preps into segments and arranged it by priority. We are always on the look out for items we need. We find them all over, and relatively cheap, since they are "old school", and nobody uses them anymore. Works to our advantage. they will become precious at some point.
Our lifestyle has been slowly progressing to an off the grid status. Less dependant on outside services, and more focused on us, and natural resources. We probably will not take the final steps to be completely independant until we are forced by circumstance. We have been putting into daily practice some old time skills, such as cooking from scratch, different techniques for preserving the food we grow and butcher, exploring water resources in our area, actually using the manual mechanical devices we have accumulated to do this, and researching practical home medicine. We can only stockpile so much and still maintain our ability to go mobile if we need to. Renewable resources will be our saving grace. So that is our main focus. Not too many people will flock to WY and it's extreme weather conditions in a crisis. We are adapted to them, but most would not survive them for long. So we really do have long term survival using what we have around us in mind as we prep. Pretty close to a homestead situation.
Thank-you for your Welcome. Sorry I'm so long winded on this subject. We really haven't had many interested in the details, so I seem to ramble on in this forum. Lol We look forward to exchanging infromation and just expressing ourselves and getting feedback here. Take care and as you say.......prep, prep, prep!
Thanks for the invite and if I ever get down there again I will definitely take you up on that. I was a Ft. Hood only once and it was to set up a remote refueling station and hold the position during our pre deployment exercises.
Lindy
Active Member
Hi Mr. Chance, welcome to you and your family. I am new to our community but it already feels like a family as so many have mentioned. I have always lived in a big city however even in my childhood I longed to live in a small town. I know little to nothing about growing a garden every attempt has not worked. I want to start a garden that is raised up from the ground becasue I have mobility challenges. I don't really feel like I have anything that I can teach to other preppers becasue up until a year ago I only thought about it outside of having emergency things in my carand extra ice in our freezer. I let people teasing me when I mention anything about being prepared stop me. I have talked about it a lot to my husband and he never understood. Until about 6 weeks ago I brought it up again. I'm not sure if I said it differently or if he is recognizing how things are changing on the news but he is supporting me now. It means so much to me to have him understand. He is still not as passionate about it as I am but I will take what I can get. A little while ago he came home from work and brought in two big things from the car. I had no idea what it was and when I asked he said, "Well we talked about stocking things so we need shelves." He got two plastic shelving units on his own. I told him that is better than any chocolate he could ever give me. I am starting to get BOB's together. I told him we should have drills and he said okay. It is such a switch. They only thing he ever acknowledged me for was the way I wash out our milk jugs and put water in them and freeze them. I always have between 10 & 14 bottles of ice in our freezer at any given time. We have expereinced power outages one was 5 days in the middle of a horrible and deadly heat wave and one was 4 days due to an ice storm. First thing we did was get our cooler out and open up the freezerr to get what we needed for several days then move eveything close together surrounded by some of the ice and didn't open it up until the power went back on. We did the same thing with our refrigerator and lived out of our cooler. During the heat wave there was no ice to purchase and so many lost all their food. Thankfully we didn't loose any food either time. It is so expensive to restock a refigerator with the basics. You forget becasue you don't have to buy mustard, mayo, ketsup etc all at once every time you go to the market. Being in WY you probably don't have many heat waves. Well I have rambled on and on...welcome. I look forward to learning from you and your family.
Hi Lindy. Very nice to meet you! Great idea with the freezer, dual purposed. Lol I have always been a great gardener, but WY has been an over the top challenge. I ovecame with amendments and time the poor soil, but the weather, well .......you can only do your best and pray! It is gret that your husband is on board. I'm not sure how I would handle my wife not supporting our preps. It would definately be a difficult situation for me. Everybody has their gardening methods, usually in tune with where they are at, so don't feel poorly about your poor success in the past. We will help you with some basics and you will take off from there I know. We have generator back ups, so we haven't had to get that creative yet when the power grid goes down temporarily. Let me know what you have in mind to grow and I'll tell you what I know. My wife wasn't that interested until a few years ago, loved eating it, just not the work of growing it! lol She jumped in two years ago and now gets excited every Spring! Actually does more than drink ice tea, watch, and supervise me! She even got dirty last year! It is alot more fun with your partner involved with you! Her expertise seems to lie in preserving it. She did very well last year with some things and i did the rest. Really felt like a team, and we remember growing and preserving it every time we eat something now! LOL I just laid my garden plan out this morning and put together my seed order this afternoon. We always buy about twice what we need and plant the other half the next year and keep the new for the following year. Crop failure can be bad, and i noticed some seed is not available this year or at a high price because of it. Luckily, i have last years seeds still. We also only grow heirloom plants, inless we get a wild hair, and have been learning the proper way to save and store seed. some tecniques are a little surprising . Like fermenting tomato seed in the rotten tomato before cleaning and drying. whew!
Now who is running on? Me! We love gardening and we love practising the tried and true old school ways of doing it. Look forward to sharing. Let me know about where your at geographically and what you want to grow and we will tell you what we know and do. Thanks Lindy!
Lindy
Active Member
Hi Mr. Chance, thank you for your offer to help me, I tend to kill every green thing in my path accept the weeds. I don't really like to garden but I think it would be good to learn how. We recently moved to Southern IL from MO where the ground was mostly clay. We haven't tried gardening at our new home. I think my husband is kind of discouraged and I'm not much help. I remember many years ago when we had a pretty good start on the garden I tried to help my husband and ended up "weeding" the young plants instead of the actual weeds.
After that my husband said "thanks but no thanks" to my offers of help. Bless his heart he was so disappointed but he knew I didn't do it on purpose. Now I'm afraid some of my physical limitations won't lend much help in a traditional garden but I am always looking for ways to adapt my life as I am now. I am thinking a garden higher up in a raised box might work. I would like to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots to start. Do you know if I could try to grow those in big potted planters? Maybe that won't be so overwhelming to start with??? Blessings on your evening. ~Lindy
After that my husband said "thanks but no thanks" to my offers of help. Bless his heart he was so disappointed but he knew I didn't do it on purpose. Now I'm afraid some of my physical limitations won't lend much help in a traditional garden but I am always looking for ways to adapt my life as I am now. I am thinking a garden higher up in a raised box might work. I would like to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots to start. Do you know if I could try to grow those in big potted planters? Maybe that won't be so overwhelming to start with??? Blessings on your evening. ~LindyMastercajun
Active Member
Hi Lindy, mastercajun here, welcome again. The only real garden I have ever been able to grow was in pots. I have grown tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, all our hot peppers. I just have not been able to grow a garden in the ground. I guess I've started to big of a garden at the begining. I guess I need to start small. I know these guys here will be able to help both of us. The only thing is, Im in south Lousiana and you are in Illinois. I don't know how much different our planting would be. I know I can survive in the wild, but it's hell, I can't grow a garden. Ain't that some sh*t. If I learn anything that can help you also, I will sure let you know. I know that Old-Anorak can help us because she has a great garden and has been doing it for a long time. I will try to pick Old-Anorak's brain about gardening. Good luck my friend.Hi Mr. Chance, thank you for your offer to help me, I tend to kill every green thing in my path accept the weeds. I don't really like to garden but I think it would be good to learn how. We recently moved to Southern IL from MO where the ground was mostly clay. We haven't tried gardening at our new home. I think my husband is kind of discouraged and I'm not much help. I remember many years ago when we had a pretty good start on the garden I tried to help my husband and ended up "weeding" the young plants instead of the actual weeds.
Lindy
Active Member
Hi Mr. Mastercajun. I have talked to Old Anorak but not about gardens. I don't know why I didn't think to ask her. It is good to know that your were able to grow things in pots maybe I can talk my husband into trying that is summer. I would die in the wild at this point anyway. I am learning so much from this forum I might learn how to do that too, stranger things have happened right? ?? Have a good night. ~Lindy
Danil54grl
Top Poster
Welcome Chance. I am hoping that you are able to learn as much as you seem to be able to share. You seem to be well informed which is freshing.
Hi Mr. Chance, thank you for your offer to help me, I tend to kill every green thing in my path accept the weeds. I don't really like to garden but I think it would be good to learn how. We recently moved to Southern IL from MO where the ground was mostly clay. We haven't tried gardening at our new home. I think my husband is kind of discouraged and I'm not much help. I remember many years ago when we had a pretty good start on the garden I tried to help my husband and ended up "weeding" the young plants instead of the actual weeds.
Good Morning. One man's prized plant is another man's weed! Lol My wife wasn't into gardening either, except on facebook, until she watched the work she put into the soil culminate in the sprouting of food. I think then it became a mix of anticipation and pride. Indiana is a great gardening state. Almost anything can be grown in a pot. The only drawback is the harvest size. Several years ago I built a raised bed garden using the cedar slats from an old fence row I tore down. The area I built it in faced the south where I got the longest sunlight. It was an area about 25 ft x 26 ft. I fenced it in with a large hole, garden fence. You can buy a roll pretty darn cheap. I put he slats on their sides so they were about 6 inches above the ground. I didn't burry them at all, just layed them out. I ended up with 4 foot wide by whatever fit, long rectangles. I left enough room between to get my lawn mower between the rows. Along the fence, I layed out the wood all along the bottom and then about 2 feet out from the fence. I ended up with three raised beds inside the fence and a 2 foot one all the way around except where I had placed the gate. I staked the corners of the beds so they wouldn't move. I bought a combination of manure, compost, and potting soil at the garden center and using a mixture, half filled all the beds. I then tilled it all into the beds.
It was alot of work, not much money, and they lasted me about 9 years and produced an abundance of food. The beds were 4 foot wide so I could reach from either side of the bed to perform any task necessary. I planted along the fence, about 3 inches out. I used the fence to grow pole beans, peas, cucumbers, winter squash, and in a few spots tomato's I could tie to the fence. In front of those plantings in the same bed, I planted carrots, beets, chard, radishes, garlic, and parsnips. Also along the back side I planted summer squash, which gets big and prickly, brussel sprouts and made an asparagus bed. In the center beds I planted bush beans, onions, potatoes, shallots, garlic, peppers, kholrabi, and radishes. As many as fit depending on final mature size. Also in one corner I planted horseradish. You have to bury a barrier around the horseradish or it will spread like wildfire. I used double deep cedar slats, about 12 inches deep. Now you can work your way around the beds to plant and tend your plants. Also you only have to water in the beds, which saves water. We made a seperate bed in another spot. About 12 by 4 foot. we worked in amendments as in the garden. We planted oregano, basil, parsley, mint (another spreader), creeping thyme, rosemary, cilantro, chives, and dill.
We went around the neighborhood and gave everyone a list of our herbs and told them to help themselves to what they needed when they were cooking. They loved it and used it often without abuse. I added a few soil amendments every year. even ended up making a small strwberry bed in one spot. The asparagus got better every year, and the horseradish filled the bed. Love fresh horseradish! lol This garden provided the majority of vegetables we used in a year. we learned how to preserve most by canning, drying, freezing, or just cold storage. We are still eating turnips and carrots from last years garden now. Just cold storage.
Pots are great too. Look up soil prep for what you want to grow for each pot. Place your pots according to the plants light needs, and look for heavy yeilding varieties designed for pots. I bought my wife a clay strwberry pot last year and it works great except for the birds. We had to build a tee pee net to keep them out! lol When you come up with the specific varieties you want to grow. Let me know what they are and I'll tell you what I know about them. I think you will end up loving gardening. Great stress reliever and the gratification of eting your own grown food is .....well, indescribable! Don't feel overwhelmed, and start at whatever level you are comfortable with. What you learn now will serve you later Lindy. BTW, many young plants do not look like the plant they will become, but you will learn this with experience. Ususally the 2nd set of leaves define the plant better. So don't be discouraged by your mishap. Got to get ready for work. Have Great Day and TTYS!
