"Prepping" Food For Thought

Good to know about the potash. What method do you plan to use for seeding/harvesting the sunflowers?

Hi OddDuck

The sunflowers are going in my buffer zone, I spoke to the farmer yesterday and he gave me the planting and spraying update for the year, human grade soybeans with one spring spray and one very light mid summer spray and he will do his best to make sure its not over sprayed onto my buffer zone but recommended not planting my sunflower seeds until after or well before and to let him know (sometimes its his workers that do my field and I had a fit the one year when they really! over sprayed and nailed my buffer zone), so its a stripe of three feet that runs the outside of the fenced pastures.

We had mowed it down tight last fall, and this spring, I am going to lightly run the pigs over it with the electric fence, and then myself and the farm helpers are going to dig trenches and plant and cover, it will be done as a three person plant and go..

As for the harvest, I am going to be using a staggered harvesting, and feeding while it goes, so start with cutting off every third flower to feed and keep moving down the line, I will be planting three different kinds of sunflowers as I want to compare them, the best of each one, will be covered and allowed to go to full mature, the rest are intented to be feed and also I have detailed instructions on how to harvest to do a silage that I want to try and so will do that as well..

By the time most folks think of as harvest time, I should be down to just the select several hundred that are for winter keeping, about ten to twenty percent are going to be moved into house use, including some being made and gifted, and the rest are going to ideally be hung covered in the second floor of the big barn and used as feed in the bird pen and for the rabbits (I normally add a bit of black sunflower seeds to the top of the rabbit feeds in the cold of winter for the extra fats)

So its hand plant and hand harvest the whole way. I also have a girlfriend who has asked if I can put part of a fence line into the cut only sunflowers, as she has a table at the local farmers market and would like to see if they would sell, and I am open to the idea, even if I only make enough to cover the seeding costs back it would be worth it.. Its a new market that is just starting this year and its only about 15 min from the farm, so I figure I should show support in some way..

figure I will also do some winter squashs there this year as well.

I believe Meinmachine has an excellent point regarding how many people could accurately survive without oil/electricity etc. That population would of course be spread out amongst hundreds of small 'clans' across the region.

In response to Farmgirl, just a thought;

Although there is opportunity to fall back on old technologies for farming, how many people have access to the horses and oxen and also have the primitive tools that would be needed to plow the land and harvest the crops? There are probably many communities in AB where these two resources could be gathered together. I wonder though, how many of them would also not survive the initial winters and hungry (well-armed) mobs from larger centers? How much farming and ranching knowledge and resources will be lost initially as chaos or disease reign? How many horses and oxen would escape the dinner table?

Something that our eastern cousins may not be aware of is that most (all?) crops in southern AB survive because of the irrigation systems. We are technically a semi-arid grassland where all the 'grass' has been replaced with crops that need a lot of water. There will not be fields of hay or wheat to keep anything alive as we don't get enough rain most years in the south. The northern end of the province will be much better off for water but the winter is also much harsher on them.

As one of those hunters who has been out for 3 weekends in a row without having a successful kill; I'm pretty sure that the human cull would be very nasty if we did have a low-probability/high-impact event...

Prepping gives us that initial chance at success to make it through until the first potatoes can be harvested and the initial human cull winds down, taking pressure off whatever resources remain. Not a pretty thought but grim mathematics.

Well, to be honest, I have looked at this myself locally and looked at in though the eyes of my family in alberta, and I would say better then most town folks think..

Currently within an half an hour of horse back riding around my farm, there are at least a dozen of us that have horses, wagons, gear and plow etc.. and I know that moving out into a hour around me that there are at least a hundred of us (I know because I belong to a group that does this for fun and to keep the tradional of horse and plowing alive and well),

Back home in alberta, with family down drum way, my dad's place , has three folks within walking distance that have the horses, gear and equipement, frinds of mine just down the way by about half an hour or so, take pictures and show her own family using it every summer, hauling out the friends, family and grandchildren as they still do haying this way..

Move up to the three hills way and a girlfriend has a team of ox and all the fixings and she has taken me to a working horse/team/ox back to the land coffee meet and there was a dozen plus folks in her neck of the woods.

Move over to caroline and its repeated..

Move over to breton and its repeated..

Move over to stony plain area and its repeated

Move over to Westlock area and its repeated..

And those are only the ones that I know of personally.. which means there a hundreds, thousands? more out there.. Its just that its not seen in the main stream, I think that when folks drive by, they just don't see it..

As for the southern, I do hear you but you can also prepare for it, my dad's place has the spring, the creek and he has a deep, deep well and its on wind power, and so he has his livestock watering trough and then it runs in lines to feed the gardens, the tree's and moving down into the pasture..

Having said all the above, I do agree, major losses, major culls needed, you could not keep the same amount of animals that you have now, but a group of folks or small town could and ideally would be smart enough to keep back the required livestock to be able to do what needs to be done..

I do get your points, honest.. and yes, times would be grim indeed.

In our area, which is between drum and three hills, and mostly all around these areas, irrigation is only done in a few places, mostly for hay and if they are close to a river. Although I could be wrong, but that is what I have observed when we go out for a drive around. Most of the crops here are dependant on mother nature. Would agree that the hunting could be a bit sparse sometimes and a person could get skunked, but there are deer, some moose moving into our area more and more and the antelope are also moving in closer to where we are also. When taking a drive through the country occasionally you can see that quite a few farmers have some of the old equipment either stored or in the field and some have even painted it up and use it as decorations for their driveways. Good way to hide the obvious, specially if they don't use it.

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You are giving me some hope Farmgal... though I'd have more if I actually knew a farmer out here lol
They tend to stick to their own family and friends in small communities as it is wherever you go.

The average age of farmers in canada is in the 60's now? I heard that on the radio a few months ago. I hope some of that 'primitive' knowledge and gear is also passed along to someone before the big corporate farms buy up the land from those who are now in their 70's and more... because if the avg age is 60, that is a lot of people in true retirement mode.

True that the older folks are in their 60's, 70's but all those folks that I was talking about, are all being taken over or have second place's built with my gen, which are late 30's, early 40's, typically with one off-farm income and one full time on the farm.. but not all of them, some of them do full time farm, part-time off farm incomes.

Almost all of them have between two to six children and all the kids are involved as the next gens, some of these folks are on fourth or even fifth gen on that land, they are not going to be selling it off, in fact a fair number of them bought more land when there was the drought and are building bigger farms.

The biggest issue is that most of the time, land like this is sold within the families or the communties without ever making it on the market.. last spring, Big Brother got a call on two sections of land, one big house, one nice cabin, river, bush, so much in hay, some much in pasture etc, amazing price, in the time it took for him to call my mom, my dad and me to see if we wanted to buy it and we all did!, which was a hour.. it was sold by the time he called back.. that was from the time the old timer sat down at the breakfast mens table at the local dinner, told the guys, who all got on the cells called who they would like to see buy the land either locally or to bring into the community, and within 55 min, offer on the table, and accepted..

My point being, if Big Brother didn't already own land up there for his hunting camp, if he didn't already give a helping hand on things in the local community, we would never even heard of it, and believe me, we wish we had been faster on our feet.. because he was willing and did sell in the community for less then half of what it would have gone on the market for, just so that they could keep it in the community if you know what I mean..

This happens out here as well, just found out two days ago that my farmer that owns the land around me, one daughter and son in law just bought the land on the other side of the road and up from me, said, never say it for sale, same thing.. was never listed etc.. so now he owns the feilds around me, his other daughter owns down the road, and his other daughter owns on the other side.. that is the kind of thing that if you get along with gives a helping hand, and o boy, do you not want to be on that families bad side..

Small town politics at there best 🙂

Some of the farmland listed on MLS must have been harvesting & testing 'happy hay' judging from the prices. Like farmgal said, anything decent is snapped up in a heartbeat.

I found a great 1/4 section that I would love to buy but I'd need a part time job holding up armored cars to afford it. 😳

That is the drawback, BTR, to real estate purchases in this province. It is all too expensive.
To get anything reasonable, you have to get into the mountains and quite well north. Quite beyond the range of the average tank of fuel for most vehicles, unless hidden caches were set up along evac route(s).