Feed the community

"So, what am I doing now?" you might be sighing while asking yourself..

Do you know the "Food Is Free" idea, movement, philosophy.. whatever you want to call it. That is what I am doing now.

Food Is Free

OK, that heading just took about 10 minutes, so please enjoy it for a while.

Now that you have done that, so what is Food Is Free? It is the idea of planting/growing/making/harvesting food, a lot of food, more food than YOU need and sharing the overflow. Trading with others with similar mind sets, and just giving food to people who need/want it. This is open to abuse, clearly, however it is based more on a honor system. The system of love, peace, happiness and all the other good feelings that you get when life is going well.

I know a lot of the people in my local area do something very similar, they have beautiful local gardens and are happy to swap/trade/give away things that they don't need, when they have too much food or want something else, they will take carrots from one person in exchange for lettuce, eggs, garlic, whatever, you get the idea. So this project is just like that, but bigger.

This is going to be a charity. I will be experimenting with a lot of different growing styles, foods, types, etc, and trying to get the best, the most, the biggest, healthiest of them all. I want to cover this 5 acres and make it an huge eatable forest. I know this can be done, however people do it on a small budget of only $15,000 (cough! ONLY), I don't have that, so I will be trying to do all of this on a budget of about $1.87, hand-me-downs, freebies, charity, etc. anything I can get I will try to use. I will be seeking the cheapest parts (but trying not to sacrifice too much quality), cheap delivery, cheap labor (if needed, and I know I have had offers from WWOOFers (www.wwoof.net) for this already!).

I have started a new Face Book page (www.facebook.com/FTCMurphysCreek) to start to raise awareness of what I am trying to do, why, when, where, all that good stuff.
It is titled "Feed The Community - Murphys Creek", Murphys Creek being the area (of South East Queensland, Australia), however I am hoping that it will spread. I have titled it this way for a reason, I am hoping that more people will start to do this kind of thing and just call is "Feed The Community - your town", and keep the movement going! :)



This relies a LOT on charity, the good will of people just sharing THIS page, the Face Book page, donating, giving, caring, the ad-sense from this blog, whatever. So far this "New Life" blog that I have started has had such good feed back. So many loving, caring people out there that are so happy to share love with (most of the time) just a stranger like me. So thank you to all of you. I am hoping to piggy-back from this (limited) success so far and launch the new idea.

I will be attempting to launch this on Kick-starter in hopes to raise money to start it off. What money do I need? Well, since the ground that I am on is very hard (clay) and has had a LOT of damage done by the old owners (burring rubbish (including plastics and metals)) I have decided to start the project off with an aquaponics system. This is not like the aquaponics system that I tried (this link), but one that is a lot bigger, a larger scale one. While I was making the previous one I was thinking about all the problems with the design, future problems, and how I could best use it, and that is when this project came to mind. I figured that I could only really do what I wanted to do by scaling up a lot, and that the food production would be a lot more than I needed. The idea of just using it to barter was the first idea, but I do like to give to people that need it, to help others, so instead of just being selfish and hoarding all my lovely organically grown veggies, I will share them with my local community.

So far the chickens are on board! Thanks ladies!

So what do I need right now? Well, not just money (in fact no money right now at all!), I am looking for parts to MAKE the aquaponics system, this includes water catchment (such as drums, barrels, tubs, sinks, baths, etc..) pipes (PVC, rural, irrigation, hoses, etc..) shade cloth, metal poles/star pickets, wooden stakes, pumps, pretty much anything. These don't have to be new at all. BUT! The one thing I really REALLY need first up, is design help. I need someone who might know a bit about aquaponics to offer some time (even just on the net) to helping me design this thing. I don't want to get a pump that is too big/small, I don't want to mess the water flow up and ruin everything.

If anyone wants to volunteer help, please let me know (email is fine, remove the ()  in the address) and we can start to chat about what I want, and what I need.

Until I get a design that will work, I will not launch the kick-starter campaign yet, otherwise I don't know how much money I might need. The money will go towards the buying of the pump, pipes, tanks, clay-pellet things, seedlings, etc..

Well, I best get off this and back into the real life, or nothing will actually get done! :)

Until next time, I hope you all have a great night/day/week/month/year/... and smile at the things that make you happy, ignore the negativity!

Aquaponics/Hydroponics, it's a start!

My new Aquaponics system

So, it is time, I have decided to stop killing innocent plants in the ground and see if I can broaden my horizons by killing them in a aquaponic setup instead!

Like I have said of most of my other posts, I am NOT a builder, a mechanic, a water engineer, or anything of the sorts, I have no idea what I am doing. A lot of what I am trying is just guess work, and a lot of thinking time goes into it all. Some (most) of what I try fails, but then I learn why it fails, and we all get to move on :)

So, the new idea, using the main dam/pond where the ducks and geese (yabbies, turtles, whatever-else) like to play as the main water source, I will pump the water through tubes (PVC pipes) which will hold seedlings (and then plants), the plants will eat up all the goodness from the dam water, then it will go back into the dam. I think that it will do two really good things, 1- feed the new veggies with great water and allow them to constantly get water (should stop them from getting attacked by the sun), 2- keep the water moving the the dam which should help all the things inside there stay healthy, happy and alive.

So, the first thing that I need to do is create a frame. The frame is going to just hold a PVC pipe (which I have a whole stack of random sizes and lengths). Using all the spare wood I have around the place, I measure and cut the wood in half. I want this to be high enough that I will not keep bending down and hurt my back.

Once I have cut two bit of wood all about the same length, it is time to actually work out what I am going to try to hold. This is a 90 mm diameter PVC pipe, and it has been luckily selected as the first attempt at making a plant bed as part of the aquaponic system! I know, it is an honour (I will note here that the diameter of the pipe DOES matter, it has to be wider than the diameter of the pots you want to put in it, that will come into it all later on). I have stood the pipe up and using two of the bits of wood, braced the pipe (this is to ensure that the top of the X will be wide enough to hold the pipe), while there I nailed the wood together. I will note that I nailed the wood twice on this side, that is to stop it from collapsing, then I turned it over and nailed it once through the middle on the other side. Like I said, I have no idea what I am actually doing, but I try to think that if I was a piece of wood, what would I do to mess up the life of the person trying to use me!

So, doing that again on the other side, then I end up with two large X's that will hold the pipe. I need this to be on a slope, this is because I want to push water from one end and then make it run down the pipe and out the other end.  However I live on a slope, so not a GREAT concern :) I do have a different concern though, I think that the structure below could/would/WILL collapse, there is nothing holding the X upright, so, I will add two braces, one on either side going the length of the frame.

There is a problem with adding those supports, it means that it is no longer two big X's, it is now one larger monstrosity which will be harder to move around, but more importantly it will be a fixed length, so if I wanted to change the pipe for some reason to a longer or shorter one, the frame might not be good enough :( I don't know any other way of stopping it from falling over though, so this will do for now.

You can also see in the photo two of the three site supervisors I had there. Just so you all know that it was done by the books! :) So here it is, with the supporting bars to stop it from falling. I made them on an angel and opposite angels because I think that if they were flat or the same angel on both sides it would not stop the problem 100%. Time will tell :)

At this point I tested the pipe layout to see if my idea will actually work (no point in finishing a project that could never work), so I tested it out, I have uploaded the short movie to my YouTube account, in the movie you can see that water does go to the other side of the pipe, even though it also flows back through the side I poured it in on. That is ok, that is just because there is nothing stopping it, so I will do that now. I don't have end caps for this pipe, and I am not going to go out and buy them just yet (I will if it all works well), but I do have some other joins for pipes that will work.

Nothing too special, but I had a 90 degree end (left) and a 15 degree bend (right) for 90 mm diameter pipe, so they SHOULD work for now, for what I want to do. I would like to have the end caps, or at least two 90 degree bends, but I work with what I have.

With the first bend on, the 15 degree one, this is on the 'inlet' side. It matters. This should just stop the water from rolling back, the 90 degree one will stop the water that is flowing towards it (so it needs to be bigger), ultimately they should/will both have caps, caps that screw on and stop all the water flow.
So in this picture you can see that I drilled a hole in the top of the pipe, that is where the water will pour into. This is not a random hole, I found a 13 mm connector (the black irrigation piping stuff) laying around, and I am using that to connect it to the water barrel (that will come).

This is the connector that I have put in the hole. You can see that it just comes through the pipe, however it doesn't really matter how far, as long as it is in the PVC pipe. I think that it would be a smart idea to ensure that it is also above the water line (where ever you want the water in the pipe to fill to) so it splashes as it comes down, surely this will help keep the water from going stagnant?
The whole thing will be sealed, so light shouldn't get in there, so bacteria shouldn't grow.

This is the other end, it is a little different than the inlet end, this is because I need/want the water to drain at about 1/2 way. My theory is that the pipe will fill to about 1/2 way, then start to flow through the black outlet (which will be connected to another pipe slightly downhill again, etc..).
So, does it work? I uploaded this video as well to my YouTube account so you can see, but the short of it is, yes, it works :) It leaks from the 90 degree bend, but that is ok, it is just a test. If it was the finished product it would a cap that was glued or screwed on.

This is a better look at the connection to the water barrel, you can see the 13 mm connector in the pipe, connecting the small plastic tube up to the water tap. This is elevated on a old fridge to give it height (just so I don't need a pump or anything yet), and the pipe is sloping downhill to allow the water to run through the pipe and out the other end.

Now, time to add holes for plants! :) The whole point of doing this.

This is how we make the holes, using my trusty drill with a hole saw attachment. You can get these from any hardware store (common tool), and to the left of the drill is the pot that I am planning on using. It is taller than the pipe, but not as wide. I have made sure that the hole saw (they come in different sizes) just fits about 1/2 down the pot, which I measured against the pipe to make sure water will just sit on the bottom of it.

Line up about the middle of the pipe, starting at one and and make your hole. Be careful not to push the drill through the pipe and make a hole on the other side, that will cause it to leak, we don't want that.

You can see the results of the drill, it makes holes. I have decided to make the edge of the holes about 15 cm apart. I don't know if that is too big or small, but I was just thinking about the kinds of foods I will be growing, and you need to make sure that there is a enough room to stretch :) If it turns out that they are too cramped, this will just be for seedlings or things like leeks that grow straight up and not bushy :)

Keep drilling holes the whole way along (depending on how many pots you have, how much pipe, etc..). Then put the pots in the holes.

I have left one near the middle empty for now, I just want to watch the water flowing past (fault finding really). The pots are not glued in, just held there nice and tight due to the size of the holes I drilled.
I tested it again (so many tests) and I have uploaded it again on my YouTube channel, so did it work? No... :( Why not? well, as you can see in the video the last pot had the right amount of water, then working all the way back up it got less and less. Why? I should have see THAT coming, the pipe is on an angle, which means that the water will pool at the end (which is ok), but then drain out, not allowing water to pool throughout the pipe at that height. So, how do I fix it?

Change the angle that the pipe is on. This is my guess :) So I changed the level of the pipe by putting wood under the outlet side (to raise it up) until it was just not level. If you don't know how to read a level, the bubble in the middle part (green) should be sitting smack in the middle (between the lines), mine is not, the bubble is to the slight right of the middle, and that is where I want it (at the start the bubble was all the way over to the right, indicating that the slope was severe).

Now that I have flattened it out a bit more, does it work? I uploaded again (YouTube is going to hate me soon enough!) and it works a lot better!

This was a test to see if this idea will work, it looks like it will :) I will get the 'stuff' I need to put in the pots, clay pellets is what is recommended, and try to find a pump that will move the water. For now I am going to leave it just this size, if this works well, I will expand it.

What is going in here? The seeds that are on the way from Fair Dinkum Seeds! I can't wait!!

** Really important things to note so far;

• Diameter of the pipe has to be bigger (wider) than the diameter of the pot you want to put in it.
• When drilling the hole in the pipe, be careful not to puncture the other side of the pipe.
• Ensure that the angle your pipes are on it not too severe or the water will flow out far to fast.

Crazy beautiful garden

This morning I wanted to share with you some photos more than anything else. These are photos I have taken of some (small) parts of my gardens. There are so many beautiful things in the world that get hidden away in plain sight, but if you relax, take the time and enjoy the things around you, you will see so much more.

Like this, under one of the tomato plants is this little guy. I am not saying that he is a good mushroom, or beneficial (might be the worst thing in the world to have growing near my tomatoes) however he grew there by himself and appears to be very happy with life. It is such a delicate little mushroom, I am afraid that one of those little tomatoes could squash it easily!

On the topic of mushrooms, these little guys don't quit! They look so soft, like you could just push down on them and they would spring back up (not recommended), they look like a cloud of mushrooms

Majority of my property is Australian native plants, and native to this area, however there are some things that the previous owners have planted that I will never destroy because they are still alive, they are still doing so much. I would not have chosen a lot of them, but they are here until they don't want to be anymore :)

This little flower is so interesting, in a sea of ferns and palms this little one decided to bring some color into the area. I am not complaining.

Some more of the slightly odd plants for this area, but they do what they do :) 

They add some "diversity" into the scene, and a lot of birds and spiders are calling this place home, adapt and overcome.

Something again from the eatable side of the garden, I am more into natives (native to the area) and eatables. I don't see a huge need to add things that are just beautiful (I have Queen Cassowary in my life and that is more than enough beauty for my garden (and of course my princess Pants) because in creating an eatable garden, you bring with it all the beauty of the flowers that assist the veggies, like this one.

And... then there are carrots. These are some of the carrots that we don't talk about in public, the test babies. I have learnt a few things about growing carrots since these ones (which tasted fine so I don't mind what they look like)

Ok, my ducks are politely requesting that I let them out now (just on sunrise), so I must go and attend to the other living things around here.
I hope that you see the beauty and uniqueness in life just as in these carrots :) They might seem twisted but they are just as tasty!

Enjoy today and everyday, I will keep updating and blogging (hopefully for your enjoyment)

The Alpaca

Clive and Stuart

Recently we got two Alpacas, why you might ask? Who gets Alpacas, why wouldn't you just get a horse or a sheep, why an Alpaca? Well, let me tell you the journey we took to getting Alpacas.

When I say we I am referring to Queen Cassowary, author of "A Preppers Wife" (yeah, it's about me), so on the 5 acres we have a lot of native trees (large trees) and other types of natural debris (logs, sticks, shrubs, etc.) so mowing is not really a possibility. So why not clean up, you ask? Well we are trying to make this a natural sanctuary (if you will) and restore it to what it should be like, Australia native bush. But, in trying to do this we don't want to encourage nastiness like snakes that will eat me while I sleep, even though I say I want the natural environment, I don't like to die either. So we need to ensure that grasses are maintained, the chickens, ducks and geese do this also, but they are so cute and little that it would take them a year (if the grass stopped growing) to even think about clearing 1 acre! So, we needed a bigger, faster (and so what cuter) solution. Alpaca. Why not horses or cows? Well, we were looking into horses and cows, and after looking at the land that we have, we have seen the devastation that the horses and cows hoofs make on the ground, we needed a better solution. I know a bit about goats, and I know that they would love to eat all the baby trees and plants before doing what I want them to do (the grass) because they are like that, and we have planted about 50 new trees and shrubs on this land since we have been here, and I didn't want them to be a light snack. 

So, after a search, we found out about Alpaca. They don't have the same feet as horses and cows, they are from the same family as camels (and lama) and they do little when they walk on the ground (they do leave cute little foot prints in the wet soil). 

We set out and talked to some Alpaca breeders and picked out two. We don't like having just one of an animal, because it would be lonely for them, and having 107 Alpaca might just be slightly overwhelming for our little 5 acres, so two was the right number :)

The other really appealing part of getting the Alpacas is their wool, it is nice and soft and durable, and can be used to barter as a raw product, or can be made into a lot of different things, and as mentioned in other posts here, I like to make and do everything myself, so having a source like this on the land is very beneficial. Also the poo, they are relatively clean animals, they will have "piles" where they like to 'go', so for gardening reasons it is really really handy :) My gardens will love it!!

This is Clive, the is the older of our two boys (both de-sexed because we have no interest in breeding at this stage (and to boys can't breed)

And this is Stuart,I think that he is a little more handsome than Clive, Clive is kind of goofy looking, but he does his job :)

Well, I must head off, the day is starting without me and the ducks are yelling at me already, but I will leave by saying that these Alpaca are great, if anyone was considering them, I would recommend them. They make beautiful soft noises when they talk, they defend the area from wild dogs, and when they walk around they act as a snake deterrent because they are big and heavy and noisy, all the things that snakes hate :) 

I hope that you all enjoy your day, and enjoyed reading about our two new babies. I will keep you updated about these Alpaca and the rest of the monsters as our saga unfolds. Enjoy life, be happy :)

My wife.. the blogger

So, my wife has a blog page.. I am not sure if this is a good thing, a bad thing, or a scary thing :) Considering it is called "A Preppers Wife"  and I think that it might be a slightly objective view, but that is ok.

So, about being a #prepper, well, about ME being a prepper. What I have learnt is that there are so many kinds of 'preppers' out there, the title alone is so ambiguous. Some people assume that you wear tin foil as a hat, others think that you have a large cache of underground weapons capable of taking on a small army, some think that you will quit your job and start to monitor the radio for signals that come from another planet. I am not any of those (I do like the feel of tin on my head though).

Why do I say that I am a prepper? What does it mean to me? Well, I have talked a little about this in other posts on this blog, but now I will go into some detail (without mentioning the NSA secret plots, aliens that want my toenail clippings or my long lost uncle in Nigeria), I am preparing for when I don't need society anymore.

What? That is crazy, all people need society. Is that what I hear you say? Well, if you have not read all my posts yet, you will know that yes, I am slightly insane, however what I mean by this comment is very simple (I think). What I mean is that if anything happens (government overthrown, bikie gangs rule Queensland, oil companies monopolise the industry or aliens come and take us in our sleep) I would be prepared to handle it. I would not require too much help from others to complete this. I am building a place (home) that is self-reliant, one that can live off the grid for a period of time and remain as alive and as efficient as before.

Does that mean I have a secret tank at my house and a stolen satellite?!? ... no.. sorry, I don't actually have anything as interesting as that. In fact, one of the things that I try to ensure is that everything I have and do is legal, I don't need to get in trouble for something silly and lose all that I have. I intend to get a fire-arms licence and get the right stuff (safe), and it will all be above board. I am not one of those preppers that has a laser-guided-anti-missile-seeking-nuclear-silo-anti-alien-mind-reading-probing-projectiles in my basement (I don't have a basement yet).

I think that I started to be a prepper by accident, I know that a lot of preppers reading this will most likely agree (if not now, you might by the end). I started hoarding first. I hoarded (and still do) lots of things, wood, metal, electronics, waste, I don't know the list goes on (I can detail everything if you are really that interested however it will all come out in these blog pages). I started 'collecting' all these things in case I needed them, why? Why would i need them? Who knows, literally nobody in the world could ever know why I might need some of these things, however I think that I have a problem, well, I think that is a given since I have purchased 5 acres to store it all in!!

So why is it a problem? Good question, you might be thinking right now, 'No, you are right, keep collecting all those old trampolines and freezers!' (my wife doesn't agree), however it does get to a certain point where enough is enough. I don't think that I have got there yet, but I am sure that there is a "spot". I collect things. I have a large collection of (what some may say useless) things which I hope to use for projects around the place.

Most of my prepping is not about stopping zombies or the government from stealing my basil crops, but it is about being able to live with as little purchases as possible. Right now I am relying so much on other people to "give" me things, charity. I am looking for anything really, old sinks, tvs, freezers, wood, etc. anything that I might be able to reuse into something around here. Why? Am I that cheap that I can not afford to buy a real raised garden bed from Bunnings? Well, yes. Companies over charge for things, they have to pay so many people, deliveries, packaging, warehousing, shipping, storage, etc. what if you could just buy from the guy who makes it? Surely that will save a LOT of money (e-bay is great for that), but even better, someone else has already paid silly amounts of money for something, and now either has no use for it, or it does not function in the way it was first intended to function, so they throw it out. Well, that is where I am trying to come into it. I am trying to catch all that stuff, trying to stop all that from going into the land fill. Please don't get me wrong, I am not after money for this, I don't get things that are broken, 'fix them' and then resell, I either use everything on this land (or store it for when I can use it), or give it to charity. There are a lot of people that are now donating things to me (mainly clothes and toys, etc) and I am just taking them to the local thrift shop as a donation. If I can not use it, someone else might be able to. I just want to try to stop so much landfill and save people (including me) money.

Well... I have no idea what I started writing about, but I know that the geese are outside the window right now yelling at me (they have little to no patience), so I must go now.

I will, as always, hope to update you all soon on what I am doing (and how my Adsense account is going), and anything that I hope to do in the future.

In the mean time, I hope that you all have a great weekend/night/day/life, and I hope that we can help or meet each-other soon :) and sorry for no pictures on this post, tomorrow morning I will have some about the new chicken coop :)

The big picture, hopes, goals and dreams.. - a trial run

This is a garden bed, I mean that literally, it was a bed, and old single bed (white steel framed). We collected this from someone who was throwing it out, and I kept it for a few weeks, not knowing what I actually wanted an old bed frame for, just knowing that I did not want to see more landfill, more waste created because someone had no need for something anymore. So I collected this single bed frame and stored it, I was thinking at the time that I might pull apart all the metal and use it for various projects around the place, as supports, whatever (really just trying to justify my hoardings :) )

My wife came up with the idea, she suggested that we try to use it as some form of garden framing, maybe to make a frost-free dome over veggies, or protect them from the animals around it. After playing with this idea, testing it all out and experimenting a lot, she adapted her original idea and decided to put the bed together as a bed, fill in the bottom of it using hessian and heighten the edges using old scrap wood we had around the place, then fill with dirt.

Great idea! It worked, we covered it with some old wire to protect the seedlings we were growing, and this is what happened :) (see picture)

This worked so well, that the seedlings took over really fast and we had to transplant, now the garden bed is a strawberry bed, which she loves even more :)

In the above picture you can see that there are also nasturtium growing with the strawberries, this is companion planting, it seems to be working nicely. It was meant to stop aphids from eating the strawberry plants, and BAM aphids gone :) Happy times for everyone involved (except the aphids.. sorry aphids, not today)

However, at this point you might be asking yourself about the title for this page, strawberries and recycled garden beds really don't have much to do with "hopes and dreams", unless you dream about those things. Well, in this case they as a 'trial' for what we want to dream about, confused? I would hope so!!

This house and land that we have (the 5 acres) is not my dream place, it is no where near close to it. This place is a trial run for our life. I know it sounds like an expensive trial, but there is a purpose to it all.

The one thing that most people say is that they burnt out, they took on more than they could handle at one time and everything died in a ball of fire and fairy glitter. So, we got 5 acres that we could manage alone, and we are trying out little things that we are learning. things about animal husbandry, plant welfare, aquaponics, hydroponics - WHY IT'S GREASED LIGHTENING! .. sorry.. just seamed to be going that way.

So, this place (my home) is full of odd things (not just the people and animals in it!), we have different things all over the place, things that are working, things that are failing, but things all the same. The idea is for us to grow with our knowledge and be able to get to the new place and implement things so much faster, make things work from day one. So, what is this "new place"? ..

Wait, before THAT, what about this place? Why build up 5 acres of awesomeness and then leave? Well, the idea is to rebuild this land, rebuild it in the way that it will be as natural and as native as we can, while still making it a self contained little paradise away from people and things (if that is what you want). This place will be built so that you can lock the front gate, and not have to see people, if zombies come you can hide here, if the pesky North Koreans come and want to steal the ducks from the dam, you can fend them off from here. One of the other large projects that is coming together is a root cellar, or a self-contained underground pantry :)

I intend to sell this place to a like minded person in a few years, someone who will appreciate what I have created, someone who wants to move into a place that is ready, plants with fruit on them, dams with water in them, alternate power sources, root cellars, the works :) Nothing to do but to sit on the back porch in the rocking chair, playing your three stringed banjo and chewing on some jerky... sounds nice eh? :) I know that it is not for everyone, that is why I think that I will sell this place myself, to a targeted audience, not the mainstream. 

Well, I must get back to actually living the life that I am talking about :) things to be done, this morning I am moving an old van, gutting it and making it into a new chicken house, I will update you tomorrow or whenever with some pictures and information and hopefully it all works (yes, I have scotch on stand-by!), and I will tell you more about my dream land, about where I want to be and what size, shape, color the place will be, later :)

For now, enjoy your day where ever you are (I know here it looks like a great day weather-wise), be happy :)

Gardening and Prepping..

Gardening and Prepping, nearly the same...

What is prepping? Well, what does that word mean to me is a better question. You hear the word "Prepper" (or some variety of) a lot more these days, mainly due to shows like "Dooms Day Preppers" and the like. So, why would I say that gardening and prepping are the same? Gardens and zombies, EMPs, civil unrest, they don't normally go together, but in my case I think they do. 

Let me just say, I don't think that zombies are about to jump out of the sewers and eat peoples brains, but I do believe that the world that we are living in is changing fast, and not for the best. So, if you haven't worked it out yet, if I garden and create my own livable area, an area that is self-sufficient. I realise that it is hard for humans to become self-sufficient, however it is easier for plants to do it. So what I am hoping to create is something that will create food, warmth, shelter, harness water and protect itself from predators (bugs and what-not). Above is the first 4 garden beds we put in around September 2014, below is the same garden currently (taken start of February 2015). 

Firstly I would love to note how much better the area around it looks, so nice and green and alive. The previous owners to our place didn't really care for green, or dirt, or trees, or air, or life. I have no idea what they were doing with 5 acres, I don't think that they knew either. They helped destroy this land, there was so much damage when we got here, so much of our time (even now) is spent just trying to 'clean up' the messes and try to reverse the damage done to the place.

Since we are trying to live with the land, we created this enclosed garden bed. It is just over 6' high and fully surrounds the 4 garden beds. This is to stop possums, bids (including my chickens/ducks) and any other animals that would like to munch on what I have done. The gardens themselves are not thriving as much as I would like, but I have learnt a lot since first planting them, since the soil was so bad we got some nicer soil (hence why they are slightly raised), however since the soil below the raising is so poor as the roots got through the good stuff they are met by nothing good. So, what have I learnt from this, you must make sure the soil below is perfect first. This is hindering the development of my garden. They are getting there, just slowly :) For our first attempt I am happy though.

The edgings of the garden are made from an old above ground swimming pool, the wooden stakes are either recovered or leftovers from other jobs, and the wire was spares from the chicken pen fencing.

So, what am "I" prepping for? Nothing particular, just a nice happy future with my own veggies, and eggs. I don't want to be so reliant of the main system (shopping centers) I want to know what goes into/onto my food, I want to be able to grow enough food on this land that I can happily share with the animals around me, and the people around me also. Our idea is to have multiple fruit trees and food sources around the yard, some that are not protect from animals, so the wild birds (and the chickens) can eat the fruits and nuts from those, and other gardens (like the above) that are for human consumption. I plan on eating from the "wild" trees also, but if the animals get there first, we won't stave.

Ok, it is nearly 0600, I have a lot of work on today, so I best get to it. Enjoy your day, hopefully you are doing something that you love doing today.

Until my next update, have a great life!