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Hello from 34S 149E
We’re a family of 3 (2 humans and 1 furperson). The MOTH works off the property, I & the dog stay home and do the homesteading thing. I prep for short to medium term whatever happens, and try to cater for at least 12 hungry mouths as the rest of the family will assuredly land on our doorstep when SHTF.
Our little homestead is a mere 3 acres – dessicated at the moment after 5 years of contracting rainfall and 3 years of declared drought. We’re doing OK on the SR front though because when we bought here 20 years ago, we did our homework and saw the roughly 20 year cycle of drought in the history of the district, and put measures in place to get by. We’ll be much better off once we can get a reliable, affordable, decent capacity battery for our solar panels – totally unimpressed by what’s available at the moment – overpriced rubbish designed for short term blackouts in metro areas.
We’re Cold Temperate/Alpine and make the most of having a really good winter, distinct autumn & spring, and an increasingly dry summer. Our growing season is extended by having an unheated greenhouse – I’m growing passionfruit, ginger & lemongrass in there through -6C winters!!
We have just 1/2 acre under cultivation so far as the soil needs a great deal of amendment/improvement before our heavy red & yellow clays will support life. Even in drought we’re still eating around 70% from the patch, down from our usual 90%, but there’s been almost no excess to preserve for the last 18 months. We don’t currently grow our own animal protein – it’s something we’re still exploring. We’d love to do rabbits but there’s a stupid programme here where Mixamytosis is released every 2/3 years in an attempt to control the feral rabbit population (untapped resource) which it actually does not do – it just means domesticated rabbits have to be vaccinated at a cost of $25 each. Kind of defeats the purpose of growing your own as I can buy an organic, semi-free-range butchered rabbit for $20. So we’ve just got laying chickens for now.
As you can see, I’m very a very chatty type 😀
I’m hoping this forum will provide new ideas to improve our SR abilities through at least another 12 months of drought before the rains return in late 2020/early 2021. Of all the US climate regions, I would say ours most relates to New Mexico.
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to learn something new
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Well hello Missy!
Great intro!
Welcome, and we look forward to anything to can contribute! -
Hello and welcome Missy. Hope you can learn a lot from the forum and us learning from you as well. Nice introduction. You seem to be doing well at getting your homestead going.
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