Around my suburban homestead

[Tofu]

Been doing some yardwork today. I have a modest house on .63 of an acre. Posting some pics of what I'm doing. Over the next 7 years I will have a 30 vegetable beds 6 x 16 and 14 fruit trees. The east and west borders of my yard will have grapes to the east and a variety of berries on the west. Last fall I roughed in two 275 gallon tanks to capture rain water. Today I got started on my berry bed, got my water collection system collecting water (hose was sagging). A few weeks ago we got started on those raised beds, been a little wet to work with the mortar the plan is to work with that tomorrow. Enjoy the photos would love to have your input in how I could be doing things better.

Tofu

[Klayton]

Great work!! KUDOS!!

[trkarl]

Good job! Keep the updates coming!!

One question. You wrote 6 x 16 beds. Are they really 6 feet wide? I have a hard time dealing with the center of 4' wide beds.

[Tofu]

Yeah 6 foot wide. I agree that I might be narrowing the ones we build in the future.

[runtothehills]

Awesome Tofu! I posted some of those tanks on here, that were for sale on craigslist for $75, I wish, I had the room for those! Looking good!

[Rmplstlskn]

My only concern right of the bat is your neighbors taking your garden goodies when it gets harder than it is now, or asking you for some...

Rmpl

[runtothehills]

12' fence and barb wire is what it's coming to! Have a great aunt that lives in South Africa with a 12' wall and machine guns around her house. It's crazy down there! It can happen the same way here in a heartbeat! Was talking to a alarm co, that has a great product, and he told me they ship 10k per day there in South Africa! Wowzza!

[Rmplstlskn]

Was talking to a alarm co, that has a great product, and he told me they ship 10k per day there in South Africa! Wowzza!

What product is that? (thread hijack... but email bailed with server error)

[runtothehills]

Voice Alert 6.......Google it.

[Tofu]

My only concern right of the bat is your neighbors taking your garden goodies when it gets harder than it is now, or asking you for some...

Rmpl

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. My hope is that by having it out in the open like this I can encourage my neighbors to follow my example. I have in my plan to give away seeds, I'm already seeing a need to create a small kid bed for a few of the kids that are expressing an intrest.

I'm not so much on the doom and gloom stuff. I can't live like that. If I can do positive things, encourage my neighbors to do "prepper" stuff without calling it prepper, and be cheerful about it, if the bad times come I'll have some friends around me that aren't afraid to get their hands dirty providing for themselves.

[barfife]

Tofu,
Thanks for the information you shared. Keep up your great efforts.

Does anyone know where you can find/purchase caged water containers? The used ones I have seen have had some toxic chemicals in them so iI am afraid to reuse them for water storage. Not having good luck finding any reasonably. Hope to find some preferably around Georgia so as not to incur large shipping charges.

[Tofu]

Keep checking Craigslist. Took me about a year or so for me to find mine.

Another idea is to put in a bank of smaller blue ones. The big ones are great for storing water, but they are a pain to install. If I had it to do over again I would probably elect to go with 10 small barrels sitting in a framework on their sides. If one fails, it would be easy to replace and I wouldn't lose the whole thing.

This isn't about perfection, its about trying stuff. Failure is not a bad thing.

Tofu

[Erg]

Does anyone know where you can find/purchase caged water containers? The used ones I have seen have had some toxic chemicals in them so iI am afraid to reuse them for water storage.

Definitely craigslist.

However, you have to consider fife, those listed on craigslist, 9 times out of 10, will have had, at some time, chemicals in it. So either you or them will have to clean them out before storing water, fuel, etc. in them.

If you find 'em...buy 'em. In my case, once the economy collapsed and all the land developments went under, many of the jobsites left these type of containers in a trash heap.

So...one man's trash is another man's treasure, eh? ;)

tofu, you may not be a prepper officiato but you're starting and that's what counts. One must always provide for their family and not do so by depending on a welfare state government which will always leave you stranded.

[Tofu]

Learned a lesson today. There are at least two different types of ball valves on the 275 gallon tanks. One is a 2" NPT and the other is called a Camlock quick disconnect. If you are going to buy one, be sure to get the ones with the NPT connector, or you will be spending an extra $30 on an adapter to connect it to the rest of your system.

[Tofu]

Some more stuff today. Got 3 of the 4 beds filled with compost, the two rain catch tanks are now connected and have sipgot. Even built a small raised bed for a little neighbor girl that is totally captivated with planting water mellon.

btw, found that adapter I needed at Tractor Supply for $12. Amazing what the correct key word search can do for ya.