I've had survival books around since I was a kid but have never done anything about it.
My wife wanted somewhere to grow veg. and I wanted space to experiment so after 2 years looking, we ended up in the sticks more than 50 miles from our previous South Wales city home. It was my intention to spend 10-15 years growing an edible woodland (agroforestry system) to counteract climate change effects but looking at the data I've realised we are in for big, sudden changes starting within the next three years, making subsequent famine much more likely. I'm trying to reduce food and energy dependence in a hurry and work out ways of feeding the locals before they eat me...
Used to think survivalists were all gun mad. Heard the term "prepper" on the BBC and found this UK site.
Long-term, a modular agroforestry system. Take a 20m x 20m plot of pasture land, take these 100 types of seed, plant this here, that there.... repeat with the next plot. If we have a standardised edible woodland, we only need to learn where things are in one plot. That's a very simplistic view.
Short-term, want to look into edible algae to produce a lot of survival rations at short notice.
Unfortunately, I still have a day job and am expecting the brown stuff to hit the whirlygig before I retire.
Perhaps you can expand a bit on how you protect your woodland crops?
We have tried planting in our woodland but the local wildlife assumed it to be a buffet. Including the supposedly non edible Hawthorn. I don't want to fit poly tunnels or anything that stands out too much like wire mesh everywhere. What are your methods/plans?
Last edited by Briggs on Thu Jan 02, 2014 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
I recently experienced Plymouth City centre so that's why I prep.
Hi! Welcome to the forum - sounds like you've really got a plan there, I look forward to hearing your progress. I'm in a suburban environment for the next few years, after that, we'll see.
Briggs, I'm not sure this is the place to expand this discussion so I've started a new thread under Food, Nutrition and Agriculture called "Fixing Agroforestry". I've noticed other agroforestry/permaculture references elsewhere.
Malthouse - it's based on the PIOMAS annual Arctic sea ice minimum data. A five-year rolling mean appears to give a reasonable fit to a linear trend of net ice loss between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. A kink then occurs and a new, steeper linear trend is followed to the present. The latter period has a better fit to a four-year rolling mean implying that there may be a dominant underlying four-year cycle, but this is supposition.
If the linear trend continues, summer Arctic sea ice will be gone by around 2018 and an extra 10^19 Joules of heat per year will need to be absorbed elsewhere. Increasing areas of clear water will occur before this date (e.g. 2012). Resulting rising Arctic temperatures will probably affect the jet stream leading to blocking patterns producing floods or droughts which will affect harvests. I expect this to start biting in around three years, then progressively worsen.
There are many examples of rising food prices leading to riots in cities, e.g. the Arab Spring. I suspect that severe food shortages will lead to large cities quickly imploding. The lack of essential goods and services from cities (e.g. spare parts, the Internet) will have a further impact on food production.
