Projects, Permaculture, Homestead, Farmstead and the likes

[Flagrant_Disregard]

Want a better anything? Seems you have to do it yourself, which, as aforementioned, is next to impossible alone. Enter Food Church (www.food-church.org)

These guys are offering free placement for any and all who want to take part in empowered community. They are building communities, teaching skills, and offering free food and lodging in exchange for 20 hours labor per week.
Landowners are encouraged to donate land or build new communities.
Communities in need of additional labor and/or resources are welcome to apply for free support.

Also just learned about this global network doing great things! https://viacampesina.org/en/

[Ewan]

On the importance of heritage seeds and seed-saving.

(Sources for Heritage seeds online listed below)

Ireland

https://sowdiverse.ie/

https://irishseedsavers.ie/product-c...eirloom-seeds/

UK

https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/what-we-do/hsl

https://www.realseeds.co.uk/

https://vitalseeds.co.uk/product-cat...getable-seeds/

https://heritageorganicseeds.com/org...getable-seeds/

France

https://kokopelli-semences.com/en/c/...egetable-seeds

Germany

https://www.bingenheimersaatgut.de/e...egetables.html

https://www.magicgardenseeds.com/


America

https://www.allianceofnativeseedkeepers.com/

https://www.anniesheirloomseeds.com/

https://www.epicgardening.com/organi...companies-usa/ (State by State list of suppliers.)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ax0SIbxgqDw

First seen here Poisoning the Food Supply

[Abondance]

I started in my small village a monthly meeting club for amateur gardeners around the themes of permaculture, electro-culture, evergreen and edible wild etc. We make plant troc, cuttings, skill workshop like grafting, cooking etc. We are from several villages around. This makes an interesting micro-network that will give more resilience in the event of hard times, and as we do not all have the same soil or cultivation conditions, this allows to group on the same geographical area many more varieties.

[palehorse]

Land for sale in Patagonia Chilena

Found this website the other day when looking some classifieds in Chile, apparently there is only 1 plot for sale of about 1 hectare in size, price is absurd about $100.000.
This land is 100% off the grid, the only water you get there are from the glaciers and the river.

https://www.ibanezriverside.cl/en


I wonder if places like this can be easily found in a SHTF scenario.

Location of the property: Las Vertientes, Río Ibáñez, Aysén, Chile (there is an airport 2 hours North from this place), the locations surrounded by national parks and is possible to reach by vehicle too, it require the use of ferry at certain points, a hell of a trip to Patagonia Chilena do Sul.

This website is just one example of what is expected to a high-end (I guess), I bet it is possible to lease land there for a fraction of this value, after all it is literally the end of the world

The travel time from Temuco (not even close to Santiago) to Río Ibáñez (Aysén region) may take up to 40 hours depending on weather condition. Seems like a perfect bug out place.

[Bill Ryan]

I wasn't sure where to post this! I have a memory of videos posted somewhere on the forum showing disastrous (and sometimes hilarious!) accidents caused by people trying to fell trees, or remove large branches, who had no idea what they were doing. (But I can't find that just now!)

This might be the first of several posts, and I'll record everything with my own photos and video. I have a bunch of large trees very close to my house, and one of them has partially come down, leaning severely and causing a domino effect on several other trees and large branches. The result is a whole bunch of chaos, but thankfully my house was 100% untouched. It's hard to know how stable it all is, so all this has to be very carefully cleared up without causing any more damage.

Here's what happened:







My friend Gilberto is going to come down with his chainsaw to help start making it all safe. But like the kids' game Pickup Sticks...



... we have to think it out it very carefully to only move one big branch at a time without disturbing anything else and making it worse. So — we're looking forward to quite a lot of interesting and challenging fun.

[Bill Ryan]

Re my post just above a couple of weeks ago, here's an update on my tree-clearing and tree-safing operation, quite a major project.

It's way too complicated to describe in detail everything that Gilberto and I had to do, but we managed to fell the very large and heavy tree branch that had split and which would have crashed on top of the house of it had split further.



When all that fell, it brought down a number of other branches, but none of those actually damaged the house either. Here are a couple of small videos showing how I was able to drag a couple of them safely out of the way with a strong rope and my 4x4. (The second video is shorter and maybe slightly more interesting.)





Just one tree was left leaning dangerously, and it was too difficult and dangerous to cut it down without jeopardizing the house. So I belayed it with ropes, like the way one pitches a tent so that it won't collapse in the wind.

Here you can see the rope going up from left to right:



And here (a little harder to see) there's another horizontal rope about 50 feet up, near the top of the photo. The tree being secured is on the left of the photo, leaning directly towards the camera. The right end of the rope goes through the V of a couple of large branches of another tree which is 100% vertical and strong, and then down to the foot of another tree where it's tied off securely.



I can't begin to describe the creativity, gymnastics and mountaineering experience it took to get those ropes into place. (Quite a lot! ) I spent several hours on it all, spread over a couple of days. But there's now zero chance that the one remaining severely leaning tree can crash on to the roof.

I emerged (almost! ) unscathed from what was quite a tricky project. At one point a slightly thinner rope broke which was securing a karabiner (a heavy steel snaplink), which I was using as an improvised pulley to winch one of the branches into a safer position.

The bent branch fired the karabiner at me like a giant crossbow, and it hit my face with quite some force. (I was NOT wearing safety goggles or a helmet, as I'd never imagined that could happen.) Fortunately, it didn't hit my head, eyes, nose or teeth, and instead smashed into my upper lip.



Here I am, after I'd stemmed the blood. (Fans of boxing will know how bloody a cut lip can be. But it cleaned up really quite well.)



So now everything is 100% safe and secure, and I had a lot of fun methodically solving all the problems one by one.

Does anyone else living on a homestead or a farm have any similar experiences?

[JackMcThorn]

I was fortunate a few years after leaving the u.s. navy to purchase my first home with my then lovely wife. We found a nice house on a 2 acre lot that was one third woods in the back, a sort of cleared back yard, and a nice front yard. This was early 2ooo's.

My neighbor helped me fell some large trees in the backyard portion. He had several John Deere tractors and one of them had a bucket on the front and he would press on the tree while I cut it down with the chain saw so it would fall away from the house.

Well one day I was out smoking on my back patio and my neighbor came over to chit chat. Out of the blue I mentioned, gee I wonder what it is like to take a tree down with an axe. So he disappeared for a moment, went to his garage and came back with a 2-bit axe [2 edges vice one] and said here you go.

So I selected a fairly small tree, a 17" diameter oak tree. [Not knowing most trees that are taken down with an axe are soft pine.] So when he realized which tree I selected, he says well you won't get that done until next Wednesday and he and his wife left for dinner out with his family. [It was a Saturday.]

I was like - challenge accepted. So I start wacking on this tree. Working my way around it. The way I was chopping made it look like a beaver got to it, it was coming to a point. At 2 hours and 3o minutes of this activity my cell phone rings and its the wife calling to tell me we are invited to dinner with her family. I explained to her what I was doing and told her I'm almost done but I need time to get in the rain locker before we go out. She says ok. So for 15 more minutes I finished cutting the tree down and it damn near hit the garage, just barely missed it. Relieved that I got the task done in a timely manner, I cleaned up and headed into town to meet her and the family after placing the axe near his garage door.

So not thinking too much about it, the next morning I'm out on the back patio looking over my handiwork and having my coffee and first smoke and the neighbor's wife is hanging clothes on the clothesline. She says hi. I asked her if Bill seen that I got the tree down. She says he was out there with a flashlight when they got back from dinner and could not believe I got it down. [I was in good shape back then late 2o's.] He really thought it would take until the middle of the next week.

So now I knew what it was like to fell a tree with an axe. Good lord.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by JackMcThorn (here)
I was fortunate a few years after leaving the u.s. navy to purchase my first home with my then lovely wife. We found a nice house on a 2 acre lot that was one third woods in the back, a sort of cleared back yard, and a nice front yard. This was early 2ooo's.

My neighbor helped me fell some large trees in the backyard portion. He had several John Deere tractors and one of them had a bucket on the front and he would press on the tree while I cut it down with the chain saw so it would fall away from the house.

Well one day I was out smoking on my back patio and my neighbor came over to chit chat. Out of the blue I mentioned, gee I wonder what it is like to take a tree down with an axe. So he disappeared for a moment, went to his garage and came back with a 2-bit axe [2 edges vice one] and said here you go.

So I selected a fairly small tree, a 17" diameter oak tree. [Not knowing most trees that are taken down with an axe are soft pine.] So when he realized which tree I selected, he says well you won't get that done until next Wednesday and he and his wife left for dinner out with his family. [It was a Saturday.]

I was like - challenge accepted. So I start wacking on this tree. Working my way around it. The way I was chopping made it look like a beaver got to it, it was coming to a point. At 2 hours and 3o minutes of this activity my cell phone rings and its the wife calling to tell me we are invited to dinner with her family. I explained to her what I was doing and told her I'm almost done but I need time to get in the rain locker before we go out. She says ok. So for 15 more minutes I finished cutting the tree down and it damn near hit the garage, just barely missed it. Relieved that I got the task done in a timely manner, I cleaned up and headed into town to meet her and the family after placing the axe near his garage door.

So not thinking too much about it, the next morning I'm out on the back patio looking over my handiwork and having my coffee and first smoke and the neighbor's wife is hanging clothes on the clothesline. She says hi. I asked her if Bill seen that I got the tree down. She says he was out there with a flashlight when they got back from dinner and could not believe I got it down. [I was in good shape back then late 2o's.] He really thought it would take until the middle of the next week.

So now I knew what it was like to fell a tree with an axe. Good lord.

That's a great little story. I don't possess an axe, and I've never used one to try to cut down anything!

But one thing I have learned, which is kind of related, is that the best way to remove a big branch (or even a whole tree) is to partially sever it, in whatever way one can, and then break it off or fell it completely by pulling it with my 4x4 using a strong rope, tied as far or as high as possible from the partial cut. (I developed a neat way to tie a thick rope round a tree far higher than one could safely climb.) That way, as long as one has the space to work in, one can far more confidently control where the thing falls.

[Ewan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
...tied as far or as high as possible from the partial cut. (I developed a neat way to tie a thick rope round a tree far higher than one could safely climb.)

Please tell us more, it may well be handy to know.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Ewan (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
...tied as far or as high as possible from the partial cut. (I developed a neat way to tie a thick rope round a tree far higher than one could safely climb.)

Please tell us more, it may well be handy to know.

For sure. Very hard to explain in text, so tomorrow I'll post a bunch of fun photos showing the method. (It works perfectly every time. It might not be unique, but I have to say I've never seen it anywhere else. )

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

Posted by Ewan (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
...tied as far or as high as possible from the partial cut. (I developed a neat way to tie a thick rope round a tree far higher than one could safely climb.)

Please tell us more, it may well be handy to know.

For sure. Very hard to explain in text, so tomorrow I'll post a bunch of fun photos showing the method. (It works perfectly every time. It might not be unique, but I have to say I've never seen it anywhere else. )

Okay, here's a demo. It's a fishing rod technique.

First, you need two long 'fishing rods'. Here's one of mine below. The ones I made are 18 feet long (5.5 meters). That's about the limit of weight + ability to control it with one hand. (The longer it is, the harder it is to handle.)



And here's what's at the end of one of them: a little metal screw-in 'eye' with a long, light piece of strig threaded through it.



The next step isn't essential, but it really helps. That's a weight of some kind at the end of the string that can be 'hooked' (see below). I use a steel karabiner (a snaplink), but anything else could be improvised.



Then using the fishing rod, you place the weighted string round a strong high branch of the tree. It's surprising how high you can get it up there, especially if you use a ladder as well. (It's possible to throw the weighted string up high, but that's far more hit-and-miss, it can result in difficult tangles in high branches, and the fishing rod gives you far more control.)



Once it's in the right place round the tree and the high branch, you can jiggle the thing, which helps the weight to pull the string down.



But if that doesn't fully work, or it snags or gets stuck, you use the second long fishing rod, which has a downward pointing screw-hook on it, to pull the string down to the ground.



So now you have the lightweight string going from the ground, up to your high point on the tree, and then back down again on the other side. The next step is to tie the rope to one end of the string.



Then you pull the other end of the string, and the thick strong rope is now looped loosely round the tree, just as the string was.





Now, you tie a loop in the rope round itself, forming a slip knot. (Any knot will do as long as it holds good. This one is a bowline.)



Then simply pull the rope right. The rope is now securely and solidly round the tree, and how high it is depends on your skill with the fishing pole.

[mountain_jim]

not usually around this thread, but recent posts remind me of a useful tool I have used to take down small to medium limbs. (maybe posted before?)

I bought a weighted pouch separately to throw the rope high enough over the limbs, then need 2 people to alternately pull to produce the chain saw action without binding the chain if one person tries alone with 2 sides of rope to close together.

https://www.amazon.com/Loggers-Art-G...lbWF0aWM&psc=1

Premium 55 Inch High Limb Rope Saw with Two Ropes,70 Sharp Teeth Blades on Both Sides-Best Folding Pocket Chain Saw for Camping,Field Survival Gear,Hunting.

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LOTS OF FREEBIES -If you purchase our chainsaw, you will get 2 emergency safety ropes each 23 ft (2 ropes totaling 46 ft), 2 sturdy nylon braided handles, 2 ergonomic handles, 4 spring loaded buckles, a glove, a round file and throw weight bag.
PORTABLE SURVIVAL CHAINSAW - Cuts high limbs safely and easily from the ground.Our saws will allow you to easily tear through wood while cutting on both stroke rotations.
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Better Functionality & Durability: Our high limb rope saw can cut both High & Low lying Branches. You can cut 17-21 Inches trunks in a matter of minutes.