When you get a 12 to 14 foot storm surge your self sufficiency pretty much washes away if you weren't expecting it. You might even lose your go bag and your stored food. Store it in the upper floors and it can be taken out by wind or fire, lower floors flood..so there is a lot to OBSERVE here and think about what would YOU do if you had been in staten island.
If you had a huge supply of home canned goods, buckets of flour and beans, and even a propane stove with a supply of propane, or wood stove with wood, or a generator..likely it was all ruined with either the wind or the water..and hopefully your bicycles didn't get washed away (you tied them to the house right, but the house is 100 feet away)..
You can not plan for something like that..even the boats were ruined.
It sure does open our eyes to the oil situation
We have a huge propane tank, generator, live up on a high area so floods aren't going to happen here but we lost a house to lightening once. There is always a chance everything you own will be wiped out, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't plan ahead and do the best you can. sure we all have our computers and phones..but that doesn't mean we HAVE to have them, I would survive without either..and I could "survive" without gasoline here, and without power, and my generator would last a while as would our wood furnace as we have 2 years of wood on hand..but eventually we would be down to no power, no gas and no propane, we still could gather and cut wood off of our own property unless it was all burned in a forest fire..and we have a fireplace and 2 wood stoves as well..we have running flowing well next door, so water isn't a problem..and we have perennial food forests and a greenhouse, so we would likely survive..as long as we had enough ammunition to protect it..
I'll admit I was getting visions of apocolyptic movies watching the t v renditions of the ravages of the storm and wondering how long people will go without food and water before they kill their neighbors.
My son may be beginning a new job near Cedar springs Michigan and will be looking for a place to sleep at least until he can find something more, a room or apartment to rent. He has his home but it is a long drive and will be working 6 days a week so wants to rent a room or apartment..to save the drive.
i too have had a lot of lizards in my bark and wood products in my gardens. some of them are so beautiful, i love the ones that are bright blue !!
I also have noticed that things are growing better where I have either buried wood, chips or where I have put some on top of the soil around things..but I did find that larger pieces of bark did seem to foster weed growth ..esp quackgrasses.. so I'm thinking that the bark should be in smaller pieces when I use it. (some was large sections that came off of firewood)..
well burying things in innards from animals, which I don't raise, and some of the spiritual stuff was a bit far out for my thoughts to come to grip with.
i don't do POOL stuff or hyroponics as I have a pond, and I agree with Isaac, and I'm in Michigan so I can't offer much help there..but I'd list what you purchase from the store for FOOD and mark off the list anything that you can grow there that you are NOT growing now, and try to go in that direction, maybe some trees, shrubs, bushes and perennial plants.
it is hopeful hearing you want to change from monocrop corn to something permaculture..as all the farms in our area are changing from hay to monocrop GM corn..yukko.
I am not the one to ask about how to change from the corn, but I praise you for doing it.
Obviously you still want the corn..by your thread..so I can't really help you other than suggesting that you grow other plants before and after and during the corn cycle..maybe clovers, alfalafa, or some other cover crop and possibly some other crops like squash, beans whatever..however..if you are going to use conventional planting and harvesting equipment, I'm not familiar.
I'm in zone 4/5 and we had a killing late June frost this past summer that wiped out the entire fruit crop ..a few odd things made it but most were dead.
I did discover that things that had some shade in the morning from the morning sun did better than things that did not, so I'm thinking I need to have some shade for early morning sun protection from frost..planting on a slope also diminishes frost, or near water.
you can cover smaller things to keep them alive in frosts, but it is a huge hassle..and year round covers mean irrigation and poor sun. I have a small greenhouse, coldframes, etc..which are helpful.
suntraps are qutie helpful for mroe tender plants but also having lots of companion plants is very helpful as well.
I love windbreaks and trellis trap the wind and warm up in the sun.
thanks I'll check those out, i have a LOT of catkins for next years crop so I'm excited !! I planted all of my acorns rather than trying any of them this year, they were huge though..
you do what you can and you control what you are in control of..at least you are trying.
we are fortunate here in N central Mich, they haven't ever sprayed here..
we do things to control mosquitos, like having fish in our ponds that are not fed other than what they can get from the pond, they eat most all of the mosquito larvae, we also try to keep water drainied out of other areas best we can..
Early On Jerusalem ARtichokes will not be weed free, but if left in place for a period of 2 years or more they should pretty much outcompete anything that would try to take over them, but that doesn't mean the ivy won't still be able to grow there as they have different root types and sun needs..the ivy prefers shade and shallow soil and will climb, the arti's like sun and deeper soil and don't mind vines climbing up them..so they might just like each other..worth a try.
similar situation with dwarf pear trees, they are well over 18' tall and are still babies ! Because of late frosts in the spring I lost the buds on most of my fruit trees but there were 2 pear buds that produced, one fell off when I was a little rough trying to show someone..dang..but ONE made it to ripeness and it was fantastically flavored I'm really looking forward to a harvest next year !!
possibly we are just giving them different care than they are getting in those controls that they base the sizes on?? with our permie gardens.
Mother EArth News had an idea done with square trash bins, probably avail on their website..
we used to have barrels we hooked up hoses a couple inches from the bottoms with taps siliconed in a hole..and they worked really well..you just drain out the hose and pop the lid on when it gets cold
do any of you eat them, I had huge huge huge crops of them this year..and was a bit afraid to try them. I understand that they do get kinda black when you cook them? are they good, do they taste like other mushrooms..have to pick them really really young?? anyone ever get sick from them?
If you like both, do both..Almonds are a regular TREE which could be the center of a guild..and Hazelnuts are more of a spreading shrub..which would do well below the almond or another tree in another guild..
I have both here..my Almond hasn't born nuts yet as we had late frost that killed the blossoms last year, but it should this year..I had my first hazelnut crop this year and they were delicious.
They are not in the same guild as the almond is in front of my house and the hazels are way out back, 6 in a row..
I have also put in sweet chestnuts, hickory, and several kinds of walnuts (black, butternut, carpathian and heartnuts)..I love nuts.
have done some sheet mulching here..one thing to be aware of, if you have quack grass which runs by stolens it will permeate the cardboard and grow up through it..so watch for it..have a serious quack grass problem here
you may like to do more polycultures in order to prevent insect infestations. You can find lots of information on polyculture in permaculture books like GAia's garden by Toby Hemenway
also perennials such as asparagus do not generally produce the first year and should not be moved around unless they are a perennial that needs to be divided..so they should have a permanent, preferably polyculture bed like a food forest..also can get info on that in the same book
the indigo bunting is a bird that has a similar type of sun reflection..if you saw the bird in NO sunshine it would appear brown, but when light reflects off of it's feathers it appears the most beautiful blue
i started out as a hippy first (in 1969)..the long hair, beads, etc..yup..a real 60's hippy..then found permaculture...had to edit this to say, you'll find me outside in the snow at about -20 F barefoot, people wonder when they come over and see barefoot tracks all over in the snow..first thing I do when I get home from shopping or whatever is get my shoes off !!!
all of our adult lives our family has been giving and receiving vehicles..we have given away 3 cars and this will be the third or fourth we have received..just kinda the nature of things around here, but this was highly unexpected..
got a phonecall over the weekend and my husband's sister is going to give us a 2000 Olsmobile Silhouette Mini Van...our truck is broken so this will be a real blessing for me to be able to haul some stuff . All we have to do is pay for the reg, license and ins and go 5 hour drive to Toledo to pick it up..
My son is good at repairs which is good as it has a glitch in the side door and drivers window as well as a few dents in a fender where she it a mailbox..but other than that it is in good condition.
I know I can haul front end loader loads of mulch and stuff like the pick up..but I can haul things like lumber, and bags of things and trees and plants and stuff..so it will be helpful, also gets better milage than our car which is a gas hog.
not familiar enough with zone 9 to give info on that..but for frost protection look into some season extenders like cold frames, greenhouses, or just cover when there is a frost coming
great idea Tyler, I did that here at my Michigan house..the porch is quite small..8 x 12..but I plexiglassed in 4x8 panels between the posts and put in a 15 light glass window door so it is all glassed..it will heat our entire house on a sunny day ..gets up to about 90 degrees in there even if it is 30 out, when the sun is shining..just open the door to the house and shut off our heat..wonderful..also have a closed in n back porch between our house and our woodshed, so we can walk to the shed from the house without going out in the snow a lot..and a place to be outside when it is cold..also shady in summer
you could use stumps (flat large) or posts dug into the soil to stabilize the hugelbed to keep it from rolling..you also could (hard work) split your wood lengthwise to make it flat on one side..?
I have flat land..so no worries here..
I have seen most people that have photographed hugel beds on hills or mountains have terraced the land flat where the beds are built
10 more chapters read and wondering why all this info that was avail in the 80's hasn't ever been put into practice, at least not as far as I can see. If it works, why isn't it being done? If people know more about what is actually beinig done I'd love to know about it. A lot of interesting information but disappointing that things seem to be "as they were"..
you don't say where you live..there might be someone that can help you out if you state where you are from...i know I have given a lot of materials to other permies in our area.
doing that here as much as I can. I have a wooded area and I have been putting things in there for the wildlife..
I have a couple apple trees that are producing, some berries and am putting in acorns for future oak trees (there are a few baby oaks already growing)..The oak I took the acorns from has some super large acorns that it produces, I got them from my sister's house and grew it from an acorn and this was its first year for a large acorn crop, and the acorns were gigantic from it.
I am planting all of them around our property this year.
we also have taken an old abandoned field we own and have been reforesting it..right now it is mostly evergreens and nitrogen fixers, but we are putting in fruit and nut and berry trees and bushes.
are your winds out of the north or west?? If so you might want to plant some sort of windbreak along the road, esp since your home faces North..Are a lot of your windows on the North and West? If so you also might want to find some way to protect them from the wind in the winter.
Maybe a strip of fast growing evergreens along the road ..that would also give you privacy, if you can grow one that bears nuts (pinenuts) that would also provide a food crop.
Can't tell if any of your trees are food producing trees or not, but if not, I would get some of those in in your zone 2 or 3 area, maybe surrounding any fencing you might be putting in for animals so any drops would fall into the pens and feed animals but also wouldn't be grazed..or damaged...hedges of berry bushes would also work along those fencelines.
I'm seriously into food forest gardening, so I would be making my tree plantings in beds with other guild plants, I'd make a list of the foods you most likely will want to buy to eat that can be grown in your area, and plant those first..I love fruit and nuts so I have planted as many different kinds of fruits and nuts as I can acquire that willl grow here.
surround them with nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators, insectory plants, etc.. and feed that soil.
Don't see barns, you might need fences and barns and paddocks for any domestic animals you want to get..so I'd plan for them and their access and water access to them first.
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