Aflockalypse

[AGeese]

We really didn't have this thread? or am I that bad at search?

That said I know this has been discussed in various forms within topics, but how about starting with the conclusion (things just got real) and now you must take action?

So let's posit a societal collapse following some sort of major catastrophe which cuts you and your flock (or farm) off from access to primary sources of resources, and supplies. The situation does not look to improve for at least a year or two if at all.

The question is then can you shelter in place or do you bugout?

What are your first steps?

What do you do with your birds? Are they ready to roll with you? or hunker down and hold your ground?

I know there's a handful of you already answering this question to certain degrees so if you're out there feel free to join in! (@Florida Bullfrog looking at you

Do you have certain types of scenarios you've already planned or prepped for?

Will you and your birds survive? or will you thrive?


Just interested in the different approaches our community might have on this, and maybe even get some fresh thoughts from people who haven't considered the possibility.

We all know there's an untold number of things ready to do us in, and it seems inevitable there will be a time when our number comes up.

If you can't answer this question now, feel free to come up with a plan of action to share!


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My personal setup is on a small acreage, my birds would be ready to move, but I've been putting more time in maintaining the property than I have given any thoughts to bugging out so while I could rock and roll, I haven't thought much about food or supplies to take along or how to maintain or add resources off property.

I personally would love to hear how some of you might tackle relocation.

My first steps are in progress, which is building a breeding flock of chickens. I have a rooster coming next month. I already have a breeding flock of geese.

My first other big consideration than food security will be flock transportation.

Other than this I'm a little disorganized in regards to the question and will be thinking about this as you share your ideas.

Be as brief or as detailed as you like! All are welcome!

 

[tripletfeb]

My husband and I are big preppers. I won't be sharing what we have except to say, it's lots. We are working on getting our 30 acres ready but it will be a long time. If something happened now, we have what we have already prepped. I would love to have a legit homestead with cows, pigs, and the chickens, it's in the works

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

We moved to our bug out location years ago and I’ve been working on it ever since. I figure the world is due for either a major war or a seismic economic downturn akin to the Great Depression in my lifetime. I’m not necessarily imagining Mad Max. Just our “easy life” bubble where basic necessities flow freely being popped at some point. My goal is to be able to feed my family from off the farm should groceries become scarce in stores. As such, I don’t plan on going anywhere in a emergency. We would just try to carry on best we can on our farm. I see prepping as a hobby. If a society-altering event really happens, we’ll have a degree of preparedness. If not, we’d still rather be living on a remote farm and growing much of our own food. We don’t prep out of fear; we do it out of common sense and enjoyment.

My livestock, including my chickens, have to be self-sustaining. They have to be able to feed themselves on what’s naturally available on the farm. So far, I have chickens, cattle, swine, and game fish that thrive without much care from myself and don’t detrimentally impact the rest of my farm. I avoid goats for this reason. I believe goats would thrive on my farm, but at the expense of much of my blueberry fields and natural vegetation. As compared to my cows, which live in my blueberry fields without actually eating the blueberry fruit in any numbers that matter. Heck, I only feed my hogs treats once every couple of weeks. They otherwise sustain themselves on vegetation and insects.

I have considered whether we would want to move closer to town or to another farm with richer soil (gardening is hard on my farm apart from the ease of growing blueberries due to the soil type). But I cannot imagine moving my animals or finding similarly situated habitat. I gave several generations of chickens that have only known my farm. I don’t want to start them over again somewhere new. They’re very well adapted specifically to my farm.

I do believe that if “bugging out” is your goal, better to do it now instead of during an emergency. And better to get your farm producing now while you can afford to have a long learning curve.

For example, raising animals with minimal effort is something I’m good at. Gardening, not so much. Its taken me years how to figure out how to garden on my farm to make a minimal crop yield, and even then my vegetables wouldn’t be enough to live on. As it stands, we can live off our farm, but it would be by animal protein, blueberries, and acorn meal. Those are the things that thrive in abundance in my habitat and that I already have established.

 

[AGeese]

My husband and I are big preppers. I won't be sharing what we have except to say, it's lots. We are working on getting our 30 acres ready but it will be a long time. If something happened now, we have what we have already prepped. I would love to have a legit homestead with cows, pigs, and the chickens, it's in the works

I'd say 30 acres is a pretty darn good start to a homestead I have just over 3, and feeling like I should have held out and looked for more, but it's definitely and upgrade from the city.

We moved to our bug out location years ago and I’ve been working on it ever since. I figure the world is due for either a major war or a seismic economic downturn akin to the Great Depression in my lifetime. I’m not necessarily imagining Mad Max. Just our “easy life” bubble where basic necessities flow freely being popped at some point. My goal is to be able to feed my family from off the farm should groceries become scarce in stores. As such, I don’t plan on going anywhere in a emergency. We would just try to carry on best we can on our farm. I see prepping as a hobby. If a society-altering event really happens, we’ll have a degree of preparedness. If not, we’d still rather be living on a remote farm and growing much of our own food. We don’t prep out of fear; we do it out of common sense and enjoyment.

My livestock, including my chickens, have to be self-sustaining. They have to be able to feed themselves on what’s naturally available on the farm. So far, I have chickens, cattle, swine, and game fish that thrive without much care from myself and don’t detrimentally impact the rest of my farm. I avoid goats for this reason. I believe goats would thrive on my farm, but at the expense of much of my blueberry fields and natural vegetation. As compared to my cows, which live in my blueberry fields without actually eating the blueberry fruit in any numbers that matter. Heck, I only feed my hogs treats once every couple of weeks. They otherwise sustain themselves on vegetation and insects.

I have considered whether we would want to move closer to town or to another farm with richer soil (gardening is hard on my farm apart from the ease of growing blueberries due to the soil type). But I cannot imagine moving my animals or finding similarly situated habitat. I gave several generations of chickens that have only known my farm. I don’t want to start them over again somewhere new. They’re very well adapted specifically to my farm.

I do believe that if “bugging out” is your goal, better to do it now instead of during an emergency. And better to get your farm producing now while you can afford to have a long learning curve.

For example, raising animals with minimal effort is something I’m good at. Gardening, not so much. Its taken me years how to figure out how to garden on my farm to make a minimal crop yield, and even then my vegetables wouldn’t be enough to live on. As it stands, we can live off our farm, but it would be by animal protein, blueberries, and acorn meal. Those are the things that thrive in abundance in my habitat and that I already have established.

I'm surprised you can't garden down there. Isn't there a lot of rainfall? What type of soil do you have? Do you compost?

Thing of being where I am centrally located is that while there's plenty that could get me along with everyone else, it also seems like we would miss some of the big scenarios.

So do I bug out and go where I'd rather be (like west) now or stay here where it's relatively safe? The answer to that currently is my job which I wouldn't want to give up without having a way to replace my income on the homestead. That or finding another job that allowed me to be remote, which is a pretty considerable benefit I've got.

I have a go-bag, but that's about it. I don't even know where I'd go. I have friends in town, but if something happened there they'd be coming to me heh.

There is a pretty good network of folks out here in the country so there's people I can call on if needed, but other than bugging out to someone else's I have no idea where I'd go.

I do have access to water nearby and near unlimited firewood so there would have to be a really good reason for me to leave.

One thing I should probably look into is getting these old wells working. I have two that are functional and 2 others that have been capped off.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I'd say 30 acres is a pretty darn good start to a homestead I have just over 3, and feeling like I should have held out and looked for more, but it's definitely and upgrade from the city.


I'm surprised you can't garden down there. Isn't there a lot of rainfall? What type of soil do you have? Do you compost?

Thing of being where I am centrally located is that while there's plenty that could get me along with everyone else, it also seems like we would miss some of the big scenarios.

So do I bug out and go where I'd rather be (like west) now or stay here where it's relatively safe? The answer to that currently is my job which I wouldn't want to give up without having a way to replace my income on the homestead. That or finding another job that allowed me to be remote, which is a pretty considerable benefit I've got.

I have a go-bag, but that's about it. I don't even know where I'd go. I have friends in town, but if something happened there they'd be coming to me heh.

There is a pretty good network of folks out here in the country so there's people I can call on if needed, but other than bugging out to someone else's I have no idea where I'd go.

I do have access to water nearby and near unlimited firewood so there would have to be a really good reason for me to leave.

One thing I should probably look into is getting these old wells working. I have two that are functional and 2 others that have been capped off.

Florida has famously poor soil, except for pockets of richness here and there (that many of the cities were built on top of a century ago). Its a kind of nutrient-poor, white, acidic, sand. Most traditional European and American-type crops hate it. There are commercial farms here, but they rely on tons of chemicals. The south part of the state is tropical and can grown most of what otherwise grows well in the Caribbean islands. But the north part of the state is too hot to be temperate and too cold to be tropical. The rain cycle teeters between flooding and drought. There is no happy medium.

Animals like it, assuming they’re adapted to eat the low-nutrient woods forage. Florida used to be the top beef state in the U.S., surpassing Texas, due to free range, feral, herds of cattle up and down the peninsula. Mild winters even in North Florida relative to up north gives forage for most animals for most of the year. We get lots of freezes but little actual freeze hours and the ground does not freeze. On a warm winter day, insects will come out and dormant plants will wake up until the next frost.

The wild hog epidemic comes from us. We had wild hogs in Florida for over 500 years. They remained confined on the peninsula until the late 20th century, then for reasons unknown they shot out into the wider Southeast then the rest of the country. A lot of Floridians lived off of wild hogs, free-range cattle, game chickens, and wild game. There was once a lot of Florida adapted crops, but few remained into the modern era when sustenance farming ended.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I do compost and burn a lot. That’s the only way I can garden.

 

[AGeese]

We get lots of freezes but little actual freeze hours and the ground does not freeze. On a warm winter day, insects will come out and dormant plants will wake up until the next frost.

I guess in one way the winters up here do provide the benefit of killing off parasites once a year, and I suppose that keeps our insect populations in check too so they don't get too large. We have enough of them in my opinion regardless. No wild hogs though thankfully.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

In the event of the apocalypse the majority of my fat chickens will be eaten before they starve to death. At this point in time I don't have enough crop production to sustain them. The only surviving chickens will be my mostly useless landraces

I've been growing food for years, preparing for ragnarok, but I expect to eat many pine trees if the worst should happen

 

[HollowOfWisps]

I’m not necessarily planning for the apocalypse, but I am a very independent person and my end goal has always been to be able to live off of the land. It is just so much more satisfying eating a meal that you grew and raised yourself. Being able to watch the sunset on your own land seeing everything that you have achieved and accomplished. Just something about it. Currently we have 30 acres. We are dividing everyone up into 3 acre increments. (1x) 3 acres for barn, house, orchard, garden and greenhouse. (2x) 3 acre plots for hay. Then the other (7x) 3 acre increments are fenced for rotational grazing. Apparently all of the neighbors think I’m weird because I mainly grow potatoes, dragon tongue beans (can be both eaten as a green or dried bean) and lots of pumpkins. Last year my garden produced 300lbs of potatoes, 50lbs drying beans and over 100 pumpkins. Next year I plan to double those numbers. Seriously though, if (I will just say crap) crap hits the fan I don’t want to live off of only lettuce and tomatoes I can live off of potatoes, dried beans and pumpkins though! We have chickens and ducks for meat/eggs. We are looking at adding sheep, pigs and a couple of cows. We are planning to eventually move somewhere with more land though. When that happens I already told my husband I am buying a herd of bison. Always been a dream of mine to have bison. Some of the most beautiful animals and bison is also my favorite meat. We bought horses this year that I will be training to work cattle and drive. I specifically picked the two yearling because they are well matched for driving and not only is it fun, but if things did get crazy I could use them to help till and as transportation. As far as storage goes. We have this big awkward walk in closet in our living room that we are turning into a giant cool storage pantry for produce. We have hallway that just leads to another awkward closet so we are walling off the entire hallway turning it into another big pantry for dried and canned goods. For water we have a well and live close to the river. When everyone else in our state was in a drought our county wasn’t because of all of the underground river water. So I am not worried about that, but we are making a grid of water lines going across the entire property each leading to either a pump or non-electric livestock waterer. We have almost no trees on our property so I am planning a double layer row of Hemlocks bordering the outer edge of entire property as a wind break plus if things did get dire you can always eat the bark for carbs

 

[AGeese]

I’m not necessarily planning for the apocalypse, but I am a very independent person and my end goal has always been to be able to live off of the land. It is just so much more satisfying eating a meal that you grew and raised yourself. Being able to watch the sunset on your own land seeing everything that you have achieved and accomplished. Just something about it. Currently we have 30 acres. We are dividing everyone up into 3 acre increments. (1x) 3 acres for barn, house, orchard, garden and greenhouse. (2x) 3 acre plots for hay. Then the other (7x) 3 acre increments are fenced for rotational grazing. Apparently all of the neighbors think I’m weird because I mainly grow potatoes, dragon tongue beans (can be both eaten as a green or dried bean) and lots of pumpkins. Last year my garden produced 300lbs of potatoes, 50lbs drying beans and over 100 pumpkins. Next year I plan to double those numbers. Seriously though, if (I will just say crap) crap hits the fan I don’t want to live off of only lettuce and tomatoes I can live off of potatoes, dried beans and pumpkins though! We have chickens and ducks for meat/eggs. We are looking at adding sheep, pigs and a couple of cows. We are planning to eventually move somewhere with more land though. When that happens I already told my husband I am buying a herd of bison. Always been a dream of mine to have bison. Some of the most beautiful animals and bison is also my favorite meat. We bought horses this year that I will be training to work cattle and drive. I specifically picked the two yearling because they are well matched for driving and not only is it fun, but if things did get crazy I could use them to help till and as transportation. As far as storage goes. We have this big awkward walk in closet in our living room that we are turning into a giant cool storage pantry for produce. We have hallway that just leads to another awkward closet so we are walling off the entire hallway turning it into another big pantry for dried and canned goods. For water we have a well and live close to the river. When everyone else in our state was in a drought our county wasn’t because of all of the underground river water. So I am not worried about that, but we are making a grid of water lines going across the entire property each leading to either a pump or non-electric livestock waterer. We have almost no trees on our property so I am planning a double layer row of Hemlocks bordering the outer edge of entire property as a wind break plus if things did get dire you can always eat the bark for carbs

this has me all teared up now. Freedom sunsets and Bison. Always wanted a pumpkin patch. I planted pumpkins this year, but I didn't give them the right attention early on sadly. Next year though!