Currently living in the post apocalypse?

[prairiegardens]

They also had mature Queen Anne and Bing cherry trees, a sour cherry tree, four pear trees and a few plums, as far as I know they have replaced none of them when they got past their prime and were cut down. This a a farming family, violently opposed to all things Monsanto et all but just never bothered with their fruit trees. I can't understand them at all.

[steev]

Yeah, well; when I lost my house in the Great Recession of 2008, the yard had a Northstar cherry, Fuyu Persimmon, Asian pear of six varieties, and an apple of nine varieties; they bull-dozed them out to plant a sod-lawn, which has gone to hell because the owner doesn't give a husky fuck about the yard. I can't honestly say I have much regard for people; I mean, how can we believe we're so fucking smart, when we're obviously so fucking stupid?

[prairiegardens]

Always a leap of faith trying to grow things a little out of their comfort zone, but what's life for if not to push boundaries from time to time?

[oxbowfarm]

Just read this through quickly, I guess I'll add my 2¢.

Horses vs Oxen vs Veggie Oil Tractors. Obviously I'm an ox person, but I will point out that there isn't any examples of a subsistence based agricultural economy that used horses for agricultural draft. Horses are pound for pound stronger and faster than cattle. That difference is meaningless until the farmer is in a market economy where the majority of his agricultural production is intended for market. Then the cost benefit analysis flips in favor of using horses. In a post apocalyptic economy I don't see horses having any draft function in farming. Horses are more expensive to feed due to their ridiculously inefficient digestive system. A ruminant extracts more than double the calories from a given amount of forage than a horse does. Oxen are easy to train, and their equipment is easy to manufacture DIY. Most yokes designs can easily be made by anyone with minimal tools. Harness requires access to large amounts of high quailty/strength leather ( or biothane), lots of brass or stainless steel fittings, and a large assembly of specialized equipment to manufacture, not to mention specific special skills. Horses are insanely delicate creatures that founder colic, and go lame at the drop of a hat and require constant attention from vets and farriers. All of these facts make horse drawn agriculture much more expensive than oxen. It only becomes feasible when you have a large enough market that the extra ground you can cover with the horse means enough extra$ to make them profitable. The use in a post apocalyptic scenario for horses is for transport, barges,wagons, riding, etc. In that arena their speed makes them obvious, and necessary.

In terms of veggie oil tractors, that's only an option assuming NO Apocalypse. In a societal breakdown your whole traction system is ruinied the first time a part breaks that cannot be fixed, and you've got parts on the tractor, the oil press, the bean harvesting equiptment, and the bio-deisel mfg system. That's a lot of places for a critical system failure to happen. And no Amazon.com. Horses and cattle have the obvious benefit of being self replicating.

I'm not actually making a case for or against our society being in a decline or not. I hope not, but I see the possibility that we are.

[oxbowfarm]

Dec 7, 2017 14:55:57 GMT -5 William said:

However in don't actually forsee amazon.com dissapearing. The question I started this thread with is basically is this already the apocalypse and essentially all there is too it?

If the "apocalypse" means I can still go online and buy a Nicholas Cage pillowcase then you've defined the word down to meaninglessness.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Dec 7, 2017 14:55:57 GMT -5 William said:

However there is some potential to create gardens with vegetables that go feral easily. I suspect annual or biannual tillage would be enough to keep several species going. No need to plant. No need to weed.

I suspect the species would be turnips, parsnips, radish, carrots, lettuce, dill, and Orach.

Those all grow feral at my place. I would include sunroot, spinach, garlic, bunching onions, leeks, wheat, and rye. And edible weeds: chickweed, mallow, lambsquarters, amaranth.

[reed]

I have
Dill
Turnips
Radish
Lettuce
Sunroot
Asparagus
Garlic
Bunching Onions
Walking Onions
Purslane
Amaranth
and various berries, fruits and nuts

Would love to add grains especially Oats and Barley

Need to learn more about native wild stuff.especially medicinal aspects.

The wild garden both sides of the dead end gravel road back to my house includes grapes and various seed grown apples, pears, plums and hardy kiwi. Woods over probably a 1000 acres all together all around my place (Indiana Splinter Ridge Fish and Wildlife Area) has over the years, been impregnated with many of those same things including lots and lots hickory, oak, walnuts and especially pecans. Anyplace within a two or three hour walk is seeded, if only 10% lived it should still be enough to forage and keep a resident population of turkey, squirrel and deer.

Except for the pecans and kiwi most all of it is stuff that has grown around here in the past, don't know how much longer it will continue to do so but is my hope that it and I will outlast amazon.com.

[steev]

[/quote]If the "apocalypse" means I can still go online and buy a Nicholas Cage pillowcase then you've defined the word down to meaninglessness. [/quote]

I think you just envisaged my idea of "the end of the world"; why else would I go there and do that, unless I had nothing to live for?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

An accommodation that I often make to the volunteering edibles, first thing in the spring, is to dig them up and move them into a row. That way I keep the genetics of winter-hardiness and/or volunteerism, while still having a bit of tidiness in the garden.

Or I will allow a species to volunteer year after year in the same location, and till most of it under to leave a single row.

[reed]

That's what I do too. My new turnip/mustard plants are scattered all over. In spring any that live will be moved along side any of the choi that lives. All of them look great so far except one Choi is blooming. I guess I'll eat it's flower stalk and see if it resumes growing leaves. I hope to make a whole new race of semi-wild cold hardy greens.

William, I'll check into getting the book you mentioned. I don't know anyone around here that has interest let alone knowledge on the topic. 

[steev]

I think the wide-planted-strip of something naturalized and self-seeding/tillering, that one tills half of on alternate years, is a very useful permaculture practice; works for strawberries and many other crops.

[steev]

There are so many things that serve permaculture; Rumex patiencia (patience dock), for instance; doesn't need care; doesn't last beyond early Spring (it's very early greens); self-seeds wildly; I look to it as a dried flavorant/thickener/nutrient. The Pilgrims brought it to North America; they might have had a clue.

I think there's somewhere in Britain that they have an annual dock-pudding competition; I expect this is what they use, not Rumex acetocella (sour dock).

[reed]

I forgot about the patience dock, it is happy over there with the sunroots, burdock and wild blackberries.

I would love to add carrots to my semi-wild crops, apparently it can be done. Even if they ended up crossed to QAL you could still have carrot flavor for soups and the like.

People ask why I would want to let things like cabbage and broccoli and sprouts or turnips and wild mustard get all crossed up. It's part my over all end of civilization strategy. I figure if I can mix it up enough something eatable will grow, for as long as anything will.

[steev]

My problem is not so much the North-South gradient, but the temperature whipsaw in Spring on my farm; warm days and too-cold nights that kill young trees by repeated cycling, until they're worn out.

Re agaves, at least blue agave (useful for pulque/mescal), the first time you cut it, wash well, or every place there was a drop of sap may be a pustule the next day; I don't think the reaction persists. I found that out the hard way, like most of what I learn (so glad I didn't use the chainsaw, which I considered, to rip that sucker out).

[steev]

The seeds are very edible; it's the pulp that stinks like cat shit.