YouTube - An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability

@yoda

Um I am thinking perhaps the medicine will stay in that generic term.

On the other stuff you goal is much like mine, other then I have my place, the cost to run it is low I am just trying to get my wife to give me the go ahead to go there for good. Also I am not off grid, I want to develop the ability to be off grid if the need arises. The two are quite different, so long as electricity is available might as well use it. I may get one of them on grid solars that push extra back to the grid as an interim step. I do have septic and a well on my get away, for internet I will have to go with satellite. My company practically runs itself at this point if the wife would just give up the city, gone we would be.

I also hunt and fish a lot but won't be raising any stock unless we get a SHTF senario because I would be the only one to eat it, the wife ain't much on eating "pets". I do want some chickens for some eggs. I also plan a small pond for growing talipia. She will eat fish we raise.

Right now I grow peppers, tomatoes, chard and some other stuff, lots of greens. I also grow potatoes in tires, that is easy and really cool. Hey I just though of an old article I will mixx on growing catfish in a 55 gallon drum fed on a worm farm. Lets see if we can get that one to popular.

@jjspirko heck, if you can sell energy to the grid, that's even better. you could probably support yourself that way eventually, but still, that "attachment" has deeper ramifications, if you ask me.

what kind of business do you have?

why not just promise the wife to take her to the city for one weekend a month, with the money you save on rent you could stay at the Hyatt, eat some good food, take in some shows, and get your groceries? that could be a sweet compromise, and women love culture and shopping.

plus, one less place to clean and pay bills on and worry about....how ideal would that be??

medicine? most plants are medicinal, including skullcap, valerian, yarrow, mint, garlic, cinnamon, etc. hell, as far as i know, almost every thing that grows has effects on the human body and/or mind. hell, they are saying tomatoes contain healthy stuff in them, and jalapeno peppers.

that sure sounds like the right lifestyle, and i think that technologies such as effecient solar cells and batteries, and many others, are making it more possible all the time.

LED lights are now available in full spectrum too.

Comments (14)

- yoda
great post.
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- yoda
lots of good ideas here, good information for survival
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- yoda
see the related link for some stuff about healing herbs and plants, a good addition to this post.
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- vanessatony
This is cool, great submission. I watched a few other things on that channel and they were cool too, a bit to "environmental wacko" on some areas but over all really neat. One day I will have a garden, first though I need to get a house. One step at a time.
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- jjspirko
@Vanessa - I know what you mean I have been watching other shows. That host lady thinks everything is "wonderful" to an over used point and I am sure they may not think my freezer full of deer meat is exactly "wonderful", LOL. Yet you know when one side of society is completely to the extreme on raping the land and profit at all cost it is a natural extension that some will go completely to the opposite end of the spectrum. The shows I like were all on gardening, some of the total "talking ones" bored me.

@Yoda, yea it is good survival info and it may some day (perhaps sooner rather then later) be needed. I do have one concern for the guy's efforts though. Notice how he has many varieties of the same type of plant so close together. Even with heirloom seeds he will have issues with his seed stock he is so concerned with due to cross pollination. For instance when saving seeds is a goal peppers varieties should be at least 50 feet apart with a unrelated flowering crop between them and with tomatoes the distance is minimum 100 feet again with at least unrelated flowering crop between them.

The F1 seeds will be fine - though possibly not true to parent it is the F2 and beyond production and reliability will decline. Anyway my earlier post about the Nazis at Monsanto is what let me to this.
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- Dubz4sho
@jjspirko - great find... I did watch a similar video about a guy in Cali that was producing about 6000 lbs of fruit/veg each year. His lot was amazing and I am in the process of hunting it down. I thought I had Mixx'd it, but apparently not.

I am a backyard gardener myself, so this stuff amazes me. My garden is about 20x12 or so and so I definitely have a ways to go compared to these folks.

Let me dig that one up and I will post and relate it to this one. It is such an awesome idea and cause... I think people need to know as much as possible. With prices of veggies skyrocketing and the worries of chemicals and the ways they are being "enhanced"... I think this topic will become even more and more popular as time goes on.
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- Dubz4sho
OK - found it and added it as related... check these people out and what they are doing. It is truly something special. I am going to link to their website also to help people get as much info as possible.

http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/
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- yoda
@jjspirko my thought exactly about the "sooner" part. i don't know much about plant husbandry (would that be the term?) but i do have a green thumb and my goal in life is to have a farm, completely organic and completely off the grid (except for some kind of Internet access)....i wanna raise llama in addition to the veggies and chickens to eat.

you should read some more on Monsanto..Greenpeace is always talking about them. they are doing some awful things at the expense of humankind and the environment, truly awful.
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- TalkingCactus
Talk about "going green".

Uhhh, I grow medicine in my back yard, is that covered by "Sustainability"?
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- yoda
@TalkingCactus it's covered by this video, to some degree. what do you grow?
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- jjspirko
@yoda

Um I am thinking perhaps the medicine will stay in that generic term.

On the other stuff you goal is much like mine, other then I have my place, the cost to run it is low I am just trying to get my wife to give me the go ahead to go there for good. Also I am not off grid, I want to develop the ability to be off grid if the need arises. The two are quite different, so long as electricity is available might as well use it. I may get one of them on grid solars that push extra back to the grid as an interim step. I do have septic and a well on my get away, for internet I will have to go with satellite. My company practically runs itself at this point if the wife would just give up the city, gone we would be.

I also hunt and fish a lot but won't be raising any stock unless we get a SHTF senario because I would be the only one to eat it, the wife ain't much on eating "pets". I do want some chickens for some eggs. I also plan a small pond for growing talipia. She will eat fish we raise.

Right now I grow peppers, tomatoes, chard and some other stuff, lots of greens. I also grow potatoes in tires, that is easy and really cool. Hey I just though of an old article I will mixx on growing catfish in a 55 gallon drum fed on a worm farm. Lets see if we can get that one to popular.
- (0 Kudos received)
- vanessatony
@jjspirko

You always come up with the coolest stuff! And yea I get your point, basically some of the wackos are nuts because of the opposite wackos, right?
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- jjspirko
@vanessatony,

That is about taking it to the most simplistic way to explain it, yea. And he thanks for the kind words.
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- yoda
@jjspirko heck, if you can sell energy to the grid, that's even better. you could probably support yourself that way eventually, but still, that "attachment" has deeper ramifications, if you ask me.

what kind of business do you have?

why not just promise the wife to take her to the city for one weekend a month, with the money you save on rent you could stay at the Hyatt, eat some good food, take in some shows, and get your groceries? that could be a sweet compromise, and women love culture and shopping.

plus, one less place to clean and pay bills on and worry about....how ideal would that be??

medicine? most plants are medicinal, including skullcap, valerian, yarrow, mint, garlic, cinnamon, etc. hell, as far as i know, almost every thing that grows has effects on the human body and/or mind. hell, they are saying tomatoes contain healthy stuff in them, and jalapeno peppers.

that sure sounds like the right lifestyle, and i think that technologies such as effecient solar cells and batteries, and many others, are making it more possible all the time.

LED lights are now available in full spectrum too.
- (0 Kudos received)