[Ayoob]

Alright bunker buddies, here's what I got. Two acres, and while not in a flood zone it's a sopping ass mess in the rain and has a septic. Old house, added on a few times, so it's funky. We have natural gas and city electric, well, septic. The well is infected so we're going to start by drilling deeper to cleaner water and use a hydrogen peroxide system to clean it up as well as filters and softeners etc, should be pretty good, let's see what we get.

Right now it's a parklike setting with grass and lots of medium to large oak trees of various varieties every 30 feet in every direction over an acre and a half.

I would like to have a short term goal of getting chickens this summer and then one year to fencing and sheep for regenerative ranching over the wet zone and try to fill it in with sheep poop.

Also have a mentor who is going to work with me on mushrooms. There's enough deadfall in the yard to put a wood pile together and he's going to show me how to turn a pile of deadfall into a pile of mushrooms.

Also want to grow some vegetable beds for the sheep so they can eat largely what's growing out of the ground as much as I can. I dunno, maybe carrots and squash and yams and pumpkins or something like that, stuff that stores well and will provide some nutrition beyond calories. I'm sure I'll be buying hay, I want to use sheep to turn hay into fertile soil.

Fruit trees, tart cherries with melatonin, every kind of blueberry that will grow here, the basics of spices.

[Plantagenet]

Congratulations on your new doomstead. It sounds really nice.

However, I'm curious as to just what future doom you are planning to survive?

Are you planning to survive the doom caused by peak oil or economic collapse? Can you grow enough food on your doomstead to let you survive if the economic system goes down?

Or are you planning to survive global climate change? Is your doomstead in a safe place that won't be affected by sea level rise, flooding, tornados, droughts, forest fires, etc.??

Or are you planning to survive a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? Do you have enough weapons and fortified positions to enable you to hold off a Zombie Hoard that is coming to eat your head?



Cheers!

[Ayoob]

Let's just say trying to get real with things, like real estate, gold instead of bits, simple hand tools, etc. I like my well and my septic field so I'm not dependent on the grid for that. Well still am for electricity, but I'm going to spec out a system for that too.

Electric for heat, gas for heat, and wood for heat, so I think winter is in good shape, and I want to see if I can figure out some kind of passive cooling thing with fans and some kind of water tight pipe underground to cool off that way so in the summer I can flick a switch and have 58* air blowing in through a couple of ports, maybe even ducted in to the HVAC system to blow around, but why not just use the fan to move the cool air to the hottest part of the volume of the house and dilute the heat and let it all rise again from wherever it is and so move the heat upwards away from my head and that's good enough.

Salt water pool and I want to figure out a way to keep it open all winter for cold plunge, that would be so awesome

then immediately I wonder whether I could put some fish in there or some crabs or something

[jato0072]

Glad to hear! I think you are the only PO.com person I have met IRL. Last I heard, you were headed to the PNW. That was many years ago!

[Newfie]

Congrats.
That long to distribution will keep you outta trouble for a bit.

[theluckycountry]

I think given the demographics of the American small town a doomstead is definitely the wise choice. JHC set one up on the outskirts of a flyover town, far enough away so that the Oxy heads can't wander in.

[Shaved Monkey]

I would like to have a short term goal of getting chickens this summer and then one year to fencing and sheep for regenerative ranching over the wet zone and try to fill it in with sheep poop.
I'm sure I'll be buying hay, I want to use sheep to turn hay into fertile soil.

Have you considered growing oaks and chestnuts and having pigs instead then you close the loop and dont need to buy things to make it work.
Goats are less fussy than sheep if you have stuff for them to eat and are as delicious as sheep.

[Newfie]

From what I have read and seen pigs are devastating to a plot of land.

Maybe some deer if that is allowed in the area. They will eat acorns.

We bought a house with an acre of oak and beech. No sunlight for solar, house is covered by trees. So we have similar issues.

We just planted some hazel nut trees, they came "bare root" f4om the Audobon society. I ordered 5 "trees" and got 8 "sticks" with some root. Will be interesting to see what survives.

Last year I started some persimmons from fruits. They all sprouted but something got to them over the summer, nothing left by October. I am trying again this year but have put more fencing around the posts.