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friendbot2000 posted:The odds are I will have a fairly long driveway into the house so I am trying to think of the best longterm way to make a non-asphault driveway. I love permeable driveways, but the length will get costly. I do know that I do NOT want asphault or a dirt road. Asphault will be a nightmare to constantly upkeep and the mud from a dirt road will be an equal nightmare because I categorically refuse to get a non-ecofriendly vehicle. I think you need compacted river gravel (the kind with the small rounded pebbles - makes pretty attractive roads) and stone-lined drainage ditches and possibly culverts (depending on terrain) to manage runoff. Put some gravel down along with appropriate drainage, steamroll it, then when it gets too muddy/starts washing out, put down more gravel. Repeat a few times over the course of a few years and eventually you'll have a nice, firm, not-muddy gravel road. We went through this process with the gravel road at my family's ranch. Road has been solid - no new gravel needed in a decade or two.
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Sep 17, 2018 17:39
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i am 100% in favour of guinea fowl as a catch-all solution to all your poultry problems. unless, and i cannot stress this enough, you live in a built-up area and want to remain friends with your neighbours. a few years ago i was breeding them and i made a thread about keets that may be helpful if you're thinking about getting some (helpful not because i share any advice that's remotely useful to anyone, but because it will make you go from "maybe" to a definite "yes")
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Sep 18, 2018 00:05
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friendbot2000 posted:I was looking at the chicken tractor method actually, but this past weekend I was going around looking at properties and I am much more drawn to more mountainous topography with a large number of trees. That is why I was leaning towards Guinea Hens because they roam and then come back to their roost. I am "designing" a roost that has all the comforts of "home" to see if I can make it so they stay there instead of where I can't keep track of them. I am aware I might lose a couple of hens on the property due to predators from this method, but foxes got to eat too. I might merge chickens with Guinea Hens and have them flock together. That way the chickens can hatch the Guinea Hen eggs if I manage to lose all of them in a freak accident Domestic solar is pissing into the ocean as far as getting off fossil fuels for power generation. Still takes nearly as much energy (usually from conventional power generation) to produce the panels as they will generate over their lifetime, along with rare earths. Municipal wind, water, and nuclear are the solution.
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Sep 18, 2018 05:57
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Liquid Communism posted:Domestic solar is pissing into the ocean as far as getting off fossil fuels for power generation. Still takes nearly as much energy (usually from conventional power generation) to produce the panels as they will generate over their lifetime, along with rare earths. Yeah, you have a point about that. I was more hoping that more people getting personally involved in green energy might change the conversation to be more anti-fossil once they see the reductions in their bills and stuff. this broken hill posted:i am 100% in favour of guinea fowl as a catch-all solution to all your poultry problems. unless, and i cannot stress this enough, you live in a built-up area and want to remain friends with your neighbours. I am going to read the poo poo out of that thread my friend. I am looking into buying 5-10 acres so no worries about having neighbors who will burn down my house etc. Also gonna post so many goddamn "No Hunting GTFO my property" signs on my acreage and turn any unused bits into a nature preserve because I am a goddamn male Disney princess that makes friends with chipmunks and trees n poo poo. Queen Victorian posted:I think you need compacted river gravel (the kind with the small rounded pebbles - makes pretty attractive roads) and stone-lined drainage ditches and possibly culverts (depending on terrain) to manage runoff. Put some gravel down along with appropriate drainage, steamroll it, then when it gets too muddy/starts washing out, put down more gravel. Repeat a few times over the course of a few years and eventually you'll have a nice, firm, not-muddy gravel road. Thank you for this! I will definitely look into that. I was thinking of collecting large river rocks and lining the ditches with them and put in the tubing to divert excess runoff to plant beds. One frustrating thing I am going to have to figure out is how to put in a drain field for a septic tank system without having to clear-cut any trees. There is nothing that breaks my heart more than clearcutting. I legit look away out of guilt when I see it on the highway. Speaking of septic systems. Does anyone have any good resources on the best way to maintain them and minimize the amount of cleaning they need? I dislike the idea of having a truck take away all the waste and dumping it god knows where. I have always wondered if you could just nuke them with that bacteria that eats all that crap. I was also toying with the idea of an experiment with a "plastic septic system" where I get my hands on those bacteria that eat plastics and see if I can have a mini plastics disposal site. It is a weird idea that probably won't work, but one that I want to tinker with. I was thinking of using to dispose of cellophane and other non-recyclable plastics.
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Sep 18, 2018 14:04
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Septic pump trucks dump at wastewater treatment plants. So you don’t need to wring your hands over that one.
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Sep 18, 2018 15:39
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You'd want a soak pit then. Big drat pit where it allows the effluent to seep into the soil. Way smaller footprint.
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Sep 18, 2018 16:11
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xwing posted:You'd want a soak pit then. Big drat pit where it allows the effluent to seep into the soil. Way smaller footprint. That may or may not be up to code depending on your state.
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Sep 18, 2018 23:20
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BigFactory posted:That may or may not be up to code depending on your state. Oh I agree... it's not a very good solution if you live in an area with a frost line either, but if you ABSOLUTELY want to minimize cutting trees or other things like not getting an "eco-friendly" vehicle it's going to push you to less than ideal or even non-permissible solutions. There's a reason the typical solutions are the typical.
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Sep 19, 2018 13:14
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https://www.facebook.com/RivendellVillage/videos/1922088331195577/?t=15
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Oct 3, 2018 11:26
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I have been so busy following politics and canvassing for the 2018 Midterms that I completely forgot my own drat thread. Sorry folks! This isn't quite a sustainable strategy for the home article, but it was posted in the Climate Change thread and I found it to be very interesting regarding alternative power storage. https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/ One issue I foresee regarding my personal homesteading plans is internet access. If was to move to the mountains of Virginia, reliable internet access could be...spotty and my job would be working remotely. Any goons have any personal experience with satellite internet service?
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Nov 1, 2018 15:42
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Somebody on this forums thought it was poo poo. Not a lot to go on, I know.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:19
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General consensus from people I've talked to with it is.. exactly what you'd expect, really. The bandwidth is ok, but the latency is rear end and the cost absurd.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:23
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I dont know about satellite stuff, but I have looked a few times at long range wifi setups- 3/4g is too spotty to be reliable where I farm but I'm within a mile or two of my mother in laws place which has a reasonable connection- it's pretty cheap and easy if you can stick up a pole at each end with directional antenna with line of sight, homebuilt solutions seem to be able to reach several miles.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:28
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DesperateDan posted:I dont know about satellite stuff, but I have looked a few times at long range wifi setups- 3/4g is too spotty to be reliable where I farm but I'm within a mile or two of my mother in laws place which has a reasonable connection- it's pretty cheap and easy if you can stick up a pole at each end with directional antenna with line of sight, homebuilt solutions seem to be able to reach several miles. Yeah, if this option is available to you it definitely seems like it's the way to go.
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Nov 1, 2018 16:31
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DesperateDan posted:I dont know about satellite stuff, but I have looked a few times at long range wifi setups- 3/4g is too spotty to be reliable where I farm but I'm within a mile or two of my mother in laws place which has a reasonable connection- it's pretty cheap and easy if you can stick up a pole at each end with directional antenna with line of sight, homebuilt solutions seem to be able to reach several miles. What kind of upload/down speeds do you get with that setup Dan? Do you need a cooperating partner to set this up? I legit have no knowledge of directional wifi stuff.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:56
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friendbot2000 posted:What kind of upload/down speeds do you get with that setup Dan? Do you need a cooperating partner to set this up? I don't have a setup yet- its all still theoretical till I'm living down there, and if I'm gonna have to put up a pole for an antenna I could also stick it in a good place for phone reception and run a 4g signal boosting setup From what I have seen/remember, homebuilt solutions tend to go for buying particular routers that can then be firmware hacked to allow for full functions/raise the power a bit. Rather than have a wifi antenna out the back of the router, it just runs up a cable to a directional antenna (bought reasonably cheap or made) which gets pointed at a near identical setup at the other end. Upload/download speed will depend on distance and how much interference you get, but fairly useable- I have only ever used a connection like it once and it was over a few hundred metres but it seemed to respond just fine. But yeah you will need someone with a connection that doesn't mind you using it and having an antenna and bridge set up for it- look up "wifi bridge" and you will see a range of solutions from cutting up pringles cans and hotgluing antenna inside them to expensive systems that claim 20Gbps.
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Nov 2, 2018 11:15
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A slightly more refined solution is available in some places, where instead of making a friend and piggybacking off their wifi, it's an ISP with a dish on a tower on a hill and you pay them for service and equipment setup. Googling for 'fixed wireless' should turn up some information.
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Nov 2, 2018 19:01
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We had satellite internet in the dessert, that was about 10 years ago. We used it with about 30 people and we all could use Skype at that time at the same time. The costs must have been very high I assume. It was just a box, satellite and some huge router for all cables.
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Nov 5, 2018 12:38
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Hmm, I will have to look into the cost/benefits of all these. I have to wonder how resilient fixed wireless solutions are in weather events and high wind conditions(The image I have in my mind is equipment on top of a pole). It is ridiculous how highspeed internet has not been rolled out to rural areas though I think I remember seeing something Google was trying to do with balloons that created wireless infrastructure? Anyways, I have been trying to limit food waste as much as possible, but because I live in an apartment I can't compost so any food that does start to go bad I end up having to toss. I have already started shopping weekly instead of meal-planning for multiple weeks, but I am looking to try to narrow the waste gap even more. Any tips? Also, how does one get their hands on fruit tree seeds? Like, most fruit trees are grafts so they are stunted for easier picking, but I am not sure I want to do that. There is something to be said about being able to sit under a big apple tree ya know? Plus, I want to be able to feed local wildlife with the fruits I can't eat. I also worry about a lot of the corporate distributed seeds because I am naturally suspicious of agricorps. friendbot2000 fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Nov 19, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 17:24
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This is a cool thread. Please don't let it wither.
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Dec 25, 2018 18:48
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friendbot2000 posted:Hmm, I will have to look into the cost/benefits of all these. I have to wonder how resilient fixed wireless solutions are in weather events and high wind conditions(The image I have in my mind is equipment on top of a pole). https://extension.psu.edu/hobbiest-gardening-growing-fruit-tree-plants-from-seed Basically just buy them.
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Jan 4, 2019 10:30
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I just read this thread and love it and have a bunch of thoughts, not terribly well organized. What area of Virginia are you talking about? South/east Virginia is hot and humid like the rest of the southeast and much of the advice for sustainable homemade hippie houses I see seems to assume you live in a very cold or very dry place. Evaporative cooling, for instance, pretty much stops working when it is humid in the summer, and mud houses don't work that well if you get 50" of rain every year. Northern/western Virginia or the Shendandoah valley are a cooler climate and your focus is going to be more on lowering your heating costs but it still gets plenty hot in the summer. Also pick your county carefully as far as property taxes go-there's plenty of otherwise profitable farmers in Loudon county selling out to developers because they can't pay the property taxes that are twice what they are in the rest of the state. Living way out in the sticks is awesome, but having to drive half an hour to a grocery store takes some getting used to if you're used to a more urban life. You mention not wanting to cut trees-I get that, but a wood burning stove is excellent free/cheap heat, is basically carbon neutral (you're gonna grow more trees, I promise) and getting firewood is a great workout. 5-10 acres of woodlot well managed will keep you supplied with wood literally forever. A wood stove is also wonderfully homey and comfortable to be around. I get hating clearcuts too-they're very ugly and not great for the soil- but because of intensive forest management practices like plantations and clearcutting, America today has as much forest as 100 years ago, but grows five times the volume of timber in that acreage and continues to grow more than is used. Those trees were probably planted 30 years ago so they could be clearcut today. Trees/wood are basically the most renewable/carbon neutral building material/natural resource we have and they unfortunately have to come from somewhere-even your backyard. Sort of on that note, log houses are totally awesome, but aren't great in areas with hot summers, and since we are not in frozen Scandinavia and you're not going to make your log cabin out of old growth heart pine or white oak, it would probably rot in a hurry. Also termites if you're in southern/eastern VA. Most fruit trees are grafted not to dwarf them (though plenty are grafted to dwarf rootstock for that purpose) but because most fruit trees don't come true from seed. The only way to get a Mcintosh apple tree is a grafted cutting which is a grafted, identical clone of the original Mcintosh apple. If you plant a Mcintosh apple seed, you will get an apple, but it almost certainly won't be a Mcintosh apple, and it may or may not be delicious. If you want to make cider and just have some apple trees, go wild and plant seeds and turn all your sour apples into cider. It's also pretty hard to grow a lot of fruit on trees without a lot of spraying nasty stuff in the eastern US because of various endemic diseases. I know you want to be friends with the chipmunks and groundhogs, but those fuckers will tear up your garden and the fruit off your trees. Michael Pollan has a great chapter in Second Nature about his war with the chipmunks that's worth reading along with the rest of the book. Plant some black walnut trees (not near your garden-they kill tomatoes and other stuff) if you don't already have them-they love to grow in Virginia. Collect nuts from around a tree and plant them-they're easy. The nuts are good, they are good shade trees, they grow pretty fast in decent soil in the sun, they're great firewood, and in 50 years you can cut them down for lumber for some pretty good money. I don't know if they do as well in northern/western VA but chinese chestnuts are also great nut trees. Totally bulletproof, but the pollen kind of stinks in the spring and the nuts leave spiky little husks behind. Deer love them-if you hunt it's a good tree to have around. You could probably grow hazelnuts too, but I have no personal experience with it. You're gonna want to learn to pickle/can stuff or eat cabbage all winter. A basement/root cellar is a great thing to have if you can stuff. Horse poo poo is great fertilizer and even better for soil texture and get all you can and work it into your soil, but it is weedy as, well, poo poo. Be prepared to solarize/till a few times in the heat of summer and still have to weed like crazy for a few years. You do like weeding, right? I think that all accidentally came across very negatively- not trying to rain on your parade or anything, just some other things you might want to think about. Having a real farmer for a father is a tremendous asset you should use as much as you can.
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Jan 5, 2019 03:35
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My wife and I are just starting down this path ourselves, after two years of planning. We just moved 3 hours away from home to live in the mountains. We are renting for a year to learn the area, and will start looking for the land to build our homestead next spring. I grew up with one parent who wanted to live off grid and one that didn't, so they compromised with a hobby farm. We had chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, milking goats, and a horse. We made maple syrup and for a year raised meat rabbits. I have had a vegetable garden every year of my life. That said, I don't really have a lot to contribute to the lthread because it's all on hold for a year. I will say, OP, 5-10 acres is not as big a plot of land as you think it is. It's certainly enough to do what you want to do, and is the size I am shooting for, but it's not enough that your neighbors won't be annoyed by your guineas. Oh, I must recommend The self sufficient life and how to live it by John Seymour. It was written before "green" was really a thing, but the whole focus is homesteading while taking in no outside products and producing no waste. It also has a how to guide on pretty much everything you can imagine.
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Jan 28, 2019 19:22
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Sweet, thanks for the rec! Frankly, I think no one itt is on the brink of starting a homestead, it is, necessarily, a slow process. It would be great to just keep piling the resources. On a different tack: is there any commercially available sterling engine that's worth it?
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Jan 28, 2019 20:13
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I still hold love and hope for this thread.
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May 26, 2019 18:39
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I am working my way through Ben Falks "The Risiliant Farm & Homestead" and it's a truly fantastic resource for cold-climate companion agriculture. That he can grow rice in North Vermont is simply astounding.
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Jun 20, 2019 01:44
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Would you do a bullet points summary? I could do the same with other permaculture booKs.
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Jun 20, 2019 08:12
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Rime posted:I am working my way through Ben Falks "The Risiliant Farm & Homestead" and it's a truly fantastic resource for cold-climate companion agriculture. That he can grow rice in North Vermont is simply astounding. Thank you a lot, I'm picking that up for drat sure.
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Jun 20, 2019 09:17
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Does anyone have recommendations for books or resources on general sustainability practices, maybe more introductory in nature? I'm wanting to work toward more sustainable practice, but don't think I'm ready/able to jump into full-fledged homesteading.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRF2bUBPA90
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Jun 21, 2019 11:14
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Dawncloack posted:Would you do a bullet points summary? -> Lots of excellent visual aids and examples of regenerative land use planning. I can't emphasize this enough, this book is beautifully illustrated in an educational fashion which just blows many others I've read out of the water. The balance between instructional text and visuals is perfect. -> Emphasis on applying concepts as needed to your own land, or even modifying them, rather than rigidly adhering to things in a cult-like fashion. Too many books in this field insist that you need to use systems developed for temperate Australia, which is cray-cray. -> Endless case studies from his own experiences over the ten years of developing his land down in Vermont. What's worked, what hasn't, what he'll change in the future (a couple years back he mentioned a revised edition coming at some point which will expand on many things, the current edition is six years old) -> Good, but short, section on concerns of the actual "home" portion of a homestead. I'm not even close to finishing it, and find myself flipping around quite a bit to peek at new sections, so there's probably more I could write. This is some good poo poo, up there with Farming the woods (which I found to be far too focused on the deep science of commercial operations) or Edible Forest Gardens v1&2 (which I've only browsed through, and was quite overwhelmed).
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Jun 24, 2019 20:37
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ThaNks! Thats awesome
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Jun 24, 2019 21:46
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So we have been thinking about it in a purely theoretical manner (since we don't have a house with a plot yet) but we thought this would make sense. The house - Step one: Make the house as passive as possible. This means good isolation, the works. - Step two: solar panels and other means of making sparks. The garden Following the advice of so many permaculture books we will do sections of the garden individually, adding one a year. We plan to start with the three sisters. and add a plot or a tree a year. One of the first things will be a water tank connected to the roof gutters, to collect as much rainwater as possible. I am enamored with the following system to avoid debris, dust and stuff in the water tank (besides obvs a filter).  We plan to work on the garden and the house in parallel, but the house part is divided in stages because those are some significant investments. And now that I think of it we'll have to find a way to avoid the solar panels interfering with the rainwater collection. I guess that once I have a specific house in mind I will have questions about isolation and passivization, but I guess those depend heavily on the build of the house.
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Aug 12, 2019 16:04
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With good isolation, the thing one must consider above all else is moisture and mold and how to avoid it. Better insulation drives up the risk of mold issues, exponentially I would say. Good ventilation is often key but clashes with the energy saving aspect, for this part we used FTX ventilation that uses a heat exchanger to warm incoming air and cool outgoing air, this also creates condensation so there is a pipe from the unit down into the drain. You really have to consider all the factors, are you in a cold climate then moisture movement is going to be inside out, but if you are in a hot climate, it's going to be outside in, if you got both extremes you gotta consider both. This is why I personally lean towards building solutions with materials that can absorb and release moisture and shying away from rock wool and glass wool and vapor barriers. I really like the idea of wattle and daub for inside walls for this reason, it absorbs and releases moisture in the air very well, so it also helps to keep the indoor climate more constant.
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Aug 13, 2019 05:03
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I have no knowledge of the things you said but now I have a ton of research clues! Thanks! It's central yurop so I am going to have to deal with both extremes.
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Aug 13, 2019 07:50
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Dawncloack posted:The garden This seems sensible. If you're in a climate where herbs can survive the winter, I'd be thinking about getting your zone 1 herb garden up as one of the first things. You'd also want to be finding out what the soil is like. Again, depending on where you are, there's a high chance that anywhere you can afford land will have quite marginal soil. (That's definitely the case in the Pacific Northwest -- most of our land is a thing veneer of old forest floor over hard volcanic bedrock.) Even if you manage to somehow get land somewhere really fertile, you'll need to do a lot of soil building to start, ie bring in a whole lot of compost, and/or plant a lot of soil-building cover crops, and either till or lasagne. Three sisters is, in my experience, quite a bit more fiddly than it's made out to be. You really have to get the timing (and spacing) right for all three of the plants, which itself requires fairly intimate knowledge of both the strains you're growing and your local growing conditions. (At least I'd guess this -- as I've said, I haven't had much luck!) Also don't forget deer fencing if you're anywhere that has them.
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Aug 13, 2019 12:47
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All of thoae good points. Of course I have zero idea about the soil (do I know anything really? I don't) bit at least I have identified a local lab that can do it. Same goes for the three sisters. I am just a desk jockey! I was thinking lately, a makeshift aeroponics setup should't be enormously hard, right? I am thinking, some old shelves, with one out of two stripped, some bottom containers for the liquids for the root tips to touch. Plants suspended with string. Assembly stuck to a sufficiently sunny wall, four transparent plastic walls, and a sprayer bottle for watering. Any of you know stuff so you can tell me how wrong I am? Oh and another thing: greening my building means nothing if the community is not on my side. What would you suggest to start with, once I find a place? I was thinking maybe a tool library, or maybe try to get people interested in perma (without bringing up "hey let's look at the abyss of climate change ans cry!" Ofc) through small projects... How would you folks go about it?
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Feb 9, 2020 15:50
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I don't want this thread to die, although the current news cycle seems to be drowning even my thoughts. So when I can I am going to get together with my dad (electronically) and try to have him come up with something easy to 3d print to hang plants from. And that is my regularly scheduled screaming into the void. How are you guys surviving.... whatever form of lockdown you are in, these days? I'm doing good and had a ton of food anyway. Frankly, my worst problem under the circumstances is how unproductive I am with my homework and housework. Unstructured expanses of time yo. I am in Austria and so far the government response has been good AND they got very lucky. One thing we have been doing is buying... "bonds?" from the local farms. All of the farms that had short chain schemes are hosed, since no one can go to the usual pickup places, so they have started asking for money, but in the forn of lax loans. Looks like a sort of bond to my ignorant eye. I hope they survive, their produce is amazing. Anyway. So how are you guys?
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Mar 27, 2020 12:08
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Dawncloack posted:I don't want this thread to die, although the current news cycle seems to be drowning even my thoughts. Why do you need something 3D printed to hang plants from. What’s wrong with a hook?
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Mar 29, 2020 10:26
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Hahaha, good point, gimme a second, I accidentally put some tech blinders on. Thing is, to be completely honest, I am dumb and I am not sure I see what you mean. Why don't I tell you my mental image, and then you tell me yours, and I learn from it? Base assumption is that I am going to have to work with a lot of makeshift stuff. So some cheap shelves that I can wrap with transparent plastic to make a sort of greenhouse, that I will expose to the sun. I am not sure how to hang the plants from there, and although making holes in the shelves seems like an option, it's an inflexible one: small plants will drop off, big plants might grow up and be stuck. Could I lift the plants by hanging then from string, tied to the shelves or something else? Could judicious use of hooks avoid the grow and stuck problem? The designing a piece for printing came from the consideration that that is something I can do now, and that plastic is pretty sturdy. Maybe there's something that would offer me covenience, like if I print a framework to hang the plants that's easier to move around/place on the shelves. (And because designing the piece would give me something to do together with my dad). As it is, I'm a dude that knows nothing at all throwing ideas to the wall because I'm under lockdown. If you could give me ideas that I can try later I'd be very happy. 
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Mar 30, 2020 12:25
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