Importance of planning 4 To be posted elsewhere -- Operation Phoenix

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Subject: Importance of planning 4 To be posted elsewhere

Author:
Allen Currie

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Date Posted: 16:56:46 04/03/13 Wed

The importance of planning 4
In my previous articles on this subject I mentioned the five years of research and planning that had gone into the project of bugging out. To plan one needs as much data as possible to determine what exactly one is planning for. It does not help to plan for a Tsunami when it is a drought that breaks your back. You are never going to be totally correct, but you must pick things that will serve you well in a variety of circumstances, whether you believe they may happen or not.

I made up a huge spreadsheet with potential threats across the top, and down the side I listed items of interest. For example, food, which I further broke down as Food-Animals and Food plants. Then under each threat I listed advantages or detailed threats pertaining to that item. Example – Food; Animals, under the heading of financial collapse, Necessary both as food and motive power. Eventually I abandoned the spread sheets in favor of tabs in a loose leaf binder for each major requirement I had eg, food, security, energy, etc. Seven major groups. Then I broke food down to Animals, goats, pigs, or horses, etc. And finally pages for breeds (Pluses and minuses) what they required to be useful, (eg. Horses need harness) what they needed for maintenance, and how they might react to predators common in the area. (Donkeys hate bears and are pretty good at killing them, but their voice footprint is horrendous.)

I eventually settled on: two hives of bees, four each (one male and three females) of rabbits, pigs, goats, dogs, and up to 25 birds. Definitely some chickens but possibly plus Guinea hens. (guinea hens are smaller, as are their eggs, but they rustle for food better and avoid predators better. They are also more prone to going wild and leaving the coop.) My other big want is horses, but they require a huge infrastructure. They are big hay burners and are prone to wander huge distances, often in all different directions. I would also need equipment such as plows to make them useful.

Remember, I am on crown land and under the rules, I may not have anything permanent. I started my infrastructure by building some barns on skids. Eight by ten feet and I could call them storage sheds, so long as animals were not present. Take care of your animals and they will take care of you. I learned where a number of nearby specialty farms with these kind of animals were so they would likely have my choices available for a brief time at least. After TEOTWAWKI, government is unlikely to have an interest in some crazy old coot way back in the bush. I figure I have about a week to get my animal situation resolved. In the meantime, as long as I don’t have animals, I am not tied to one place to care for the animals, twice a day.

My gardens required a bit different approach. Fruit and nut trees require several years (usually about seven) to mature enough to fruit. Perennials, such as horse radish (Flavor for foods) and rhubarb usually require large developed root systems to be prolific enough to be practical. Another time consumer. Annuals are all about viability of seeds. Kept carefully, viability decreases yearly, but some percentage will sprout. That gives me plants for new seed but not for food. Ah well, next year. Such are the problems of self sufficiency.

I had to have a mobile garden, so I cut two 25 foot logs as skids, stripped the bark off some three inch saplings, (they keep better if they dry out) and nailed them to the skids. Then I raided dumps for four fridges, and 10 discarded bathtubs.

One of the fridges, a really old baby with a heavy steel interior I reserved for a drying/smoking work. Put a 3-4 inch hole in the top and bottom, screen shelves in the interior and you have a smoker. Build a “sun collector house” (A triangular thing about 12 inches on a side and a length of about three feet. Lay it down on one of the 12 inch sides, put something black inside which will collect sun heat. The two sides that are up must be glass so the sun can get through to warm the black stovepipe or whatever you have used as black. Cap off both ends and add a two plus inch a pipe inlet near the bottom of one end and another similar sized pipe on the other end, near the top of the triangle, running to the bottom of your smoker, and now you have a dryer.)(The cooler air comes in the solar heater, heats and rises, flows upward into what is now a dryer) I found some flexible commercial clothes dryer aluminum pipe at the dump which worked well.

The other fridges I cut as much sheet metal from (very useful stuff), punched holes in the back for drainage, and laid them on their backs on the sledge above. The bath tubs I just put in place on the sledge. I found an abandoned sawmill, and one end of the sawdust pile had composted well. I hauled that back and filled the fridges and bathtubs, mixing in some swamp peat moss, etc. Now I had some movable raised gardens. Perennials, like horse radish, are often quite invasive. In limited spaces such as I was using, they couldn’t invade outside their container. I also used large three foot pots for some of my fruit and nut trees. Now I can let them all grow for two or three years without worrying about anything but watering and over wintering. Pests have been a very minor problem, except for my gooseberry plants which I lose to something very strange, every year.

Effective planning revolves around planning for what is actually going to happen in your circumstances. My research involved itself in what trends had happened in similar circumstances throughout history. My book, “Operation Phoenix” gives instances common in any collapse I have been able to research, going back to the Romans. It is available as a download, free sample read, or hard copy at www.AllenCurrie.ca

Allen

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