Gromit commented on an earlier post:
The lifestyle of Pavlo's parents is rooted in the fall of the Soviet Untion, not the Ukraine / Russia war. They've farmed that area, like they do now, for years. The content that shows his grandmothers a and neighbors places show well over 40 years of rough rural living. Pavlo's girlfriend fishing for perch is much as you describe, simple rig, simple location, fill the basket with fish then watch as half the catch is preserved and stored.
A minor correction, the girl who fishes for perch and Crucian Carp is not Pavlo's girlfriend. The perch fisher is about fifteen years-old and as far as I know is not related to Pavlo in any way. Pavlo's girlfriend/wife(?) is Luba and she is a blonde who usually braids her hair.
The adaptation to "technology" in subsistence cultures is a curious thing
On this channel the main character comments "I can double or triple my harvest of potatoes and cabbage with two gallons of gas. That is a pretty good deal." (Note: Units changed to something most of my readers can identify with and he is talking about enough cabbage, beets and potatoes to feed fifteen people for a year). He was talking about using an inexpensive, gasoline-powered pump to irrigate his family's fields of staple-vegetable crops.
Another technology that pops up in many videos are "hoop-houses". Suppose you lived in a place like Iron Mountain, Michigan and you could count on a 60 day growing season. Furthermore, you don't know if that will be from June first until August first or from July first until September first. Being able to guarantee SOME production from May 1 until November 1 triples your growing season. It won't triple your production of calories but it will armor you against scurvy and rickets.
Your lucky day
I am a bit of an idiot-savant about being able to look at a stick and determine what species of tree it came from. Images from this video:
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| Running a gasoline powered tiller inside of a hoop-house with limited ventilation. Not so smart. |
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| Vertical supports and ridgepoles are Black Locust and the hoops and diagonal braces are Filbert (aka Hazelnut bush) shoots, probably three-years-old. They cut the shoots green and warmed them up before bending. |
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| I am always astounded by how dry the soil is. |
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| (Smiling), girls-be-girls. She made sure her hair was beautiful and her clothing was flattering before recording video. That is not mandatory in SHTF scenarios. |
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| After watching this sequence a few times, I guestimate the width of the hoop-house to be between 10' and 12', the height to be about 7' and the length to be about 30'. The ends are opened-and-closed to control temperature |
They plant tomatoes and cucumbers in the house in this video which was recorded in mid-April. In Michigan (pre-SHTF), I will be planting those crops outside in late-May and early-June rather than mid-April. They will be picking cucumbers (a 55 day crop) less than a week after I plant my seeds in the garden.
What tickles me about this video is that somebody executed a hoop-house that effectively doubles their growing season with very little money out-of-pocket. The Black Locust posts and poles and the filbert shoots were probably local. The plastic film might last three seasons (more likely two) if they don't peel it off the frame and stow it out of the sunlight (UV damage) after the risk of frost is over.
The thought-process also intrigues me. "I am trading 7 liters of petrol to gain 2000 kilos of potatoes" or "I am trading two handfuls of cornmeal which will attract minnows and then allow me to catch seven perch".
This would be a fine cottage industry after the SHTF; throwing up hoop-houses made of (mostly) indigenous materials.
Right now we are having wind gusts here on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the mid 30s mph. I wonder if a hoop house could be made to handle that. The fields are approx 75% clear of snow and still over a foot in the woods and the lakes less than 1/2 clear of ice. It's a slow spring. ---ken
ReplyDeletehttps://sharingideas.me/how-and-why-to-build-an-underground-greenhouse-walipini/#google_vignette
DeleteA walipini is better that the hoop house.
Adding a Crimean oven adds even more capability.
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2014/03/crimean-ovens.html
The Chinese near Mongolia don't bother with glazing on the northern side.
https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/chinese-greenhouses-for-winter-gardening-zm0z17amzmul/
A Harbor Freight greenhouse would provide quite a decent amount of framing and plexiglass for such a project.
After SHTF I don't want to have to replace clear sheet plastic.
Good info, thanks Michael. ---ken
DeleteAs ERJ noted earlier, weather is driving the bus. Yesterday we had 80 degrees with 60+ mph gusts; tonight and tomorrow night, frost and freeze warnings.
ReplyDeleteA commercial greenhouse was destroyed. Forget that plant-by-the-moon stuff, we have to plant between tornados.
@Coyoteken, I don't know about a hoop house, but standard greenhouses will handle that wind. As long as the tunnel structure is sound and the plastic is taut the wind will flow over it and around it. And keep the wall bottoms well sealed. If the wind gets inside the greenhouse it can destroy it quickly with pressure differential. If you want to use it very early or late in the season or maybe over winter with a heater, use two layers of plastic. Allow the first layer to lay on the frame loosely and droop between the ribs and make the other layer taut. The layer of trapped air will provide insulation. A professional horticulturalist taught me that trick.
ReplyDeleteGood advice Fred. Two layers is a good idea. I know some guys that lost their hoop houses the past two days and that's a lot of work Gone With The Wind. --ken
DeleteMy two cents on hoop houses and green house comes from Almost twenty years with a 12 by 24 wood frame green house with hard plastic covering and a wood stove and two 12 by 24 hoop houses with the hoops made with chain link fence top rails with chain link posts cut in half to anchor the hoops. All made with hoop bender from Johnny’s select seed. I average about eight years using “green house” plastic instead of construction grade! I have a wood stove in the green house and can push the season to May 1 to October 1 and I can use propane camp heaters in the hoop houses toward off imminent frost since here in Alaska on the Copper Basin you can get the odd frost any time. Right now we are running freezing nights around 40 for highs with snow on the ground. The grow buildings topped out at 70 when the sun came out. Since I am walker, cane and stool bound I have three raised beds in the hoop houses with the middle bed three feet by twenty and can grow one middle bed full of onion plants and get them dried down. The other middle bed gets green beans and about six feet covered with row cover to keep the flies off radishes, turnips and rutabagas. The thirty inch side beds are full length and I put squash in half of one cole crops on the outside of the beds with beets and carrots densely on the inner sides of the outer beds. Everything is drip tape watered. The beds have 2” x8” board edges. I till them with hand tools.
ReplyDeleteTomatoes and peppers are in pots and grow bags in the green house with cucumbers in hanging baskets in tho center of about half. I have some tubs used for extra early summer squash, kohlrabi, lettuce, some pots of celery and odds and ends. I think raised beds are more efficient than the movie one, easier to weed and don’t require the rototiller. The local hoop material is fine especially if you are desperate to grow calories in a desperate situation but if you are looking at possible desperate situations in thee future and could afford it think about a longer term solution. The bending tools could be shared by more than one family. Small propane heaters can extend the season if you are willing to pay attention on questionable nights with out breaking the budget. My weather station has a thermometer in each grow building and I can keep track whenever i wake at night.
I am particulalry interested in those half-buried style greenhouses (forget the name). I've seen several smaller examples built with scraps of lumber and repurposed windows. Some even grow and persist with tropical fruit trees as far north as Pennsylvania.
ReplyDelete**and he is talking about enough cabbage, beets and potatoes to feed fifteen people for a year** (I didn't watch the video... )
ReplyDeleteGrowing enough to get through a year, How much is that?
Back in the 90's I was on several "homestead" email lists and on one of them someone said (as I RECALL) they had to grow "33 corn plants" for every person they had to feed for the year, further she talked about having corn as a staple everyday.
I've wondered about that "how much to grow" question ever since. How much would I have to grow to support the family for a year?
A million Calories a year is a good starting point.
DeleteAt 2000 Calories per pound for grain, that works out to roughly 10 bushels per person (if that is all you ate) or 1/8 of an acre of corn per person. At 22,000 plants per acre that would be roughly 3000 corn plants per person (some rounding involved).
Potatoes run about 400 Calories per pound with a wide variation by variety. At 40,000 lb per acre (not all of them cosmetically beautiful) you would need 1/16th of an acre per person to hit a million Calories. That pencils out to 2500 pounds of potatoes per person.
You are really going to need fats in your diet. 30% Calories from fat is on the light side if you are doing large amounts of physical labor...40% is a more workable number. So you can down-budget your grain and potatoes if you can "buy" fats and oils. Otherwise you have to budget for oil crops like soybeans, canola or sunflowers or you need tree nuts...or you can raise hogs or milk animals. But you need a feed budget for the critters, which might be as simple as a pasture and hay.
Wow! That remembered "33 corn plants" of mine doesn't look real accurate...
DeleteThanks.
ERJ:
ReplyDeleteI must be suffering reading comprehension failure.
"2500 pounds of potatoes per person."
Pretty sure I couldn't eat almost 8 pounds of potatoes every day nor would I want all my calories from just potatoes.
I will accept my dunce cap without complaint.
I’d give you mine with a Velcro patch but I need it.
ReplyDeleteMF
This is a great thread
My comment about Luba fishing, is aimed at the whole body of the videos they have posted since the channel inception, not this specific video. Luba has been fishing in a good handful of their videos https://youtu.be/PKlaO23yI48?t=782 and does indeed fish with a simple rig and location.
ReplyDeleteThank-you for the link, Mr or Mrs Gromit!
DeleteAwesome content.
No worries, Colorado checking in, w ties to the UP, not far from Tahquamenon falls
DeleteWe received a book as a gift years ago from my mother that was EXTREMELY useful fir cold weather gardening.
ReplyDeleteThe Winter Harvest Handbook
By Eliot Coleman
Rizzoli International Publications publisher
ISBN 9781603580816