Tag Archives: permaculture

Episode-765- Useful Small Animals for the Homestead

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Modern Survival| 42 Comments
Episode-765- Useful Small Animals for the Homestead [ 1:14:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Okay there is a lot of gloom and doom out there and to be honest some of the crap is really hitting the fan right now.  It will be necessary for me to delve into that world more and more in the coming months/years but I still want to keep some positive and fun stuff coming as well.

Hence today we are going to focus on homesteading and animals that can feed us, protect our property or provide us with other benefits.  The list we will cover today includes some “traditional small livestock”, some wild game and some other stuff people don’t usually think of.

So what happened to chickens?  They get a token mention but as everyone thinks of chickens first we are focusing elsewhere today.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • What makes an animal useful for our homestead
    • Produces food
    • Produces functional by products
    • Produces useful waste
    • Performs a useful function
    • Provides entertainment
    • Supports other systems
  • Some useful and easy to care for livestock
    • Dogs
    • Rabbits
    • Small Swine
    • Squirrels, Raccoons and other small wildlife
    • Bees (mason and conventional)
    • Ducks
    • Fish – tilapia, catfish, trout, crayfish, frogs, etc.
    • Worms and insects
    • Goats and sheep
    • Pigeons and Quail

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-762- Tom Haile on Serving in the Peace Corps

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Modern Survival| 13 Comments
Episode-762- Tom Haile on Serving in the Peace Corps [ 1:00:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Tom Haile in Madagascar

Tom Haile in Madagascar

Tom is a Texas native growing up in Katy Texas. He doesn’t remember leaving Texas until being at least old enough to buy a beer.   He started a career in software development in 2000 but tired of it and joined the Peace Corps in 2007.

After returning in 2009 he continued a career of software development in Austin Texas. His experience as an environment volunteer in the third world has given him a new perspective on humanity.

I think many people feel the Peace Corps is made up of nothing but peacenick hippies who want to escape reality for a few years before joining the corporate grind.  While serving in Honduras in 1991 building roads as a solider in the US Army I knew several Peace Corps members.

They lived in tougher conditions then I did, they had no way to defend themselves and were largely on the same mission, to help people in need.  My hope is Tom’s experience will expand the listener’s mind today on what service in the Corps is really all about and how valuable it is in helping others and perhaps someday helping us right here at home during hard times.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • The three primary objectives of the Peace Corps
  • What you get out of serving in the Corps
  • Individual skill sets in the third world such as
    • Growing rice
    • Building clay and mud ovens
    • Teaching language skills
    • Erosion control
    • Gardening/Permaculture
    • Raising poultry
    • Medical care in absence of doctors
    • Building community
    • Solar cooking
    • Building nurseries for tree cultivation
  • The way taxes can begin at a city level almost in an extortionist way
  • Theft and punishment thereof in the third world
  • Road construction in rural Madagascar (roads are a luxury in the 3rd world)

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-722- Bill Wilson on Permaculture’s Guiding Principles

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Modern Survival| 6 Comments
Episode-722- Bill Wilson on Permaculture's Guiding Principles [ 1:15:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture

Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture

Today we welcome back a great prior guest, Bill Wilson of Midwest Permaculture.  Bill’s entire life is dedicated to teaching and practicing permaculture.

Bill is an amazing guy that followed his dream, walked away from a career and created something special.  He has a special gift for making some of permaculture’s more complex components easy to understand and an unstoppable passion for teaching and spreading the word that no matter what the problem may be, we can find a solution utilizing a sustainable methodology.

Midwest Permaculture guides their students in how to develop the observational skills, the knowledge, and the practical information to create sustainable landscapes and communities — to develop more permanent cultures. Students are trained to explore how to consciously provide all of the goods and services we need while also developing ways to leave the planet in better condition than when we arrived on it.

In Bill’s words, “If each successive generation left the planet in better condition, we would be living in a more ideal world today. ”

Join Us today as We Discuss

  • How Bill went from truck driver to permaculture
  • How the Midwest PDC saves people time
  • What you gain in taking a PDC
  • Permaculture’s Prime Directive
  • The three ethics
    • Care of the earth
    • Care of people
    • Return of surplus
  • Principles of permaculture design in practice

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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Episode-720- An Interview with Jason Fields of The Urban Farming Guys

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Modern Survival| 12 Comments
Episode-720- An Interview with Jason Fields of The Urban Farming Guys [ 46:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Urban Farming Guys Explain Aquaponics

Today Jason Fields joins us from The Urban Farming Guys.  Jason is part of a group of about 20 families who have purposefully uprooted from out of their comfortable suburban homes.  They then relocated to one of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City with the goal of transforming it.

Each family has purchased a home within a 5 block radius of each other and put down in order to change lives and improve a community.  Every family maintains a personal garden and actively works together on numerous community projects, such as green houses, a developing community center, raising chickens and more.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • How 20 families dropped a crime rate just by showing up
  • Linking up with neighborhood associations and watches
  • Getting rid of drug dealers the easy way
  • How community gardens are instilling a sense of pride
  • Making your own methane with a bio digester
  • Storing your bio gas to use for cooking and heating
  • Getting items to create biogas from for free
  • Growing over 1000 tilapia in an area the size of a small room
  • The sacrifices associated with this type of project and the rewards

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-711- Lessons from The Man Who Stopped the Desert

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Modern Survival| 21 Comments
Episode-711- Lessons from The Man Who Stopped the Desert [ 1:01:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yacouba Sawadogo is the Man Who Stopped the Desert

Yacouba Sawadogo, can not write, he was never classically educated, he received no help from any government programs but this one man has done more for the people in the ‘Sahel’ region of Africa than any other person or group of people combined.

How?  In some real ways, simply by digging holes!  He uses a method of growing called a zai.

Soil is essential to life on earth. But much of the world’s soil has become degraded and useless. As the global demand for food grows, millions of pounds and the latest technological advances have been invested in attempts to improve soil quality.

Leading scientists and agriculturalists from around the world strive against growing world hunger to find the means to bring exhausted soils back into production, but it seems that a peasant farmer from one of the poorest countries on earth has finally achieved what these experts dreamt of; halting the desert.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • Who is Yacouba Sawadogo
  • Some remarkable similarities he has to Bill Mollison
  • Why problems we think are unique to us are not
    • Resistance to new ideas
    • Hostility when they begin to work
    • The trials of “imminent domain”
    • Food is our greatest need
  • The Zai and how it works
    • 5000 – 10000 holes per acre
    • Incorporate organic matter – compost – manure
    • Create low rock walls on contour
    • Prep in the dry season
    • Grow crops but grow forest as well
    • Utilizes termites
  • Ways I think it can be improved
    • Incorporate equipment
    • Practice more poly culture
    • Increase depth
    • Utilize mulch
    • Incorporate true swales
  • Great wisdom about survival From Yacoba
    • Noting makes people nasty faster than insecurity
    • You can’t preserve your wealth by running away
    • We must solve the food problem first
    • If you cut 10 trees a day and plant none in a year you are doomed
    • Leaders are shaped by circumstance and choice
    • Food sovereignty saves societies

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-710- Holly Hirshberg from The Dinner Garden

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Modern Survival| 10 Comments
Episode-710- Holly Hirshberg from The Dinner Garden [ 54:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Holly Hirshberg founder of DinnerGarden.org

In 2008, in the midst of a crumbling economy, Holly Hirshberg came up with a plan to help families and communities could weather the tough times by growing produce themselves.  Much like the Victory Gardens of the First and Second World Wars, these “Dinner Gardens” would allow people to stretch their food budgets and enhance their nutritional intake.   Individuals and families could have greater food security and take a direct part in that effort.

To help people achieve their gardens, Holly started at the beginning: providing people with vegetable seeds, free of charge.  Step two was supporting their efforts with gardening information and tips for cheap gardening in the space they had available.   She envisioned a nation where front lawns, empty lots, medians, parks, schools, churches, and community centers devoted space to fruit and vegetable gardens.

Holly often states ,”The Dinner Garden isn’t just about the seeds, It is about giving people hope. It is about showing people another way to live. The Dinner Garden is creating communities where families spend time together in a productive way and children learn that they can create something beautiful and useful to their family.”

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Modern Survival| 21 Comments
Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food [ 1:15:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Note – Today’s show was originally supposed to air on Wednesday last week.  Due to an error it is airing today, so the episode numbers and dates in the audio won’t match.  Today’s show though is now officially Episode 699.  We will do a listener calls show tomorrow and a feedback show on Wednesday to make up for last weeks missed shows.

Today Marjory Wildcraft of Back Yard Food Production joins us to discuss taking control of your own food supply with home growing, small livestock and community building.

Not long ago humans fed themselves, provided for their on needs and were largely self sufficient. They knew how to feed themselves, how to take care of animals, what to plant and what to do when something went wrong. Marjory’s DVD, “Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm” is your guide to recapturing that lost knowledge.

Marjory is a nationally recognized expert in organic backyard food production.  She is the creator of a widely acclaimed video tutorial titled Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm.  Marjory teaches people with no gardening or agricultural experience, how to successfully grow healthy, vibrant, life-giving nutritious food.

Her DVD is endorsed and carried by such notables as The Permaculture Activist, Acre’s USA, John Jeavons and Ecology Action’s premier seed and tool company Bountiful Gardens, SurvivalBlog.com and The Weston-Price Nutrition Foundation.

She has been featured as a guest on a diversity of national radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM, “The Power Hour” with Joyce Riley, and the Patrick Timpone show.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • Getting started from zero with food production
  • Growing herbs
  • Composting
  • Rabbits vs chicken for meat production
  • The “secret to a green thumb”
  • Guns and gardening
  • How hard times are on the way but you don’t have to participate

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

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Episode-693- Creative Gardening Solutions for Transitional or Harsh Environments

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Modern Survival| 29 Comments
Episode-693- Creative Gardening Solutions for Transitional or Harsh Environments [ 1:03:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A quick bag garden combined with a natural trellis.

Gardening and permaculture are key topics with me when it comes to modern survival living.  Some question this concept and feel survivalism is far more about beans, bullets and bandaids than compost, a shovel and turning soil.

To such types I have one question, where do you think the beans come from?

I have said a few things before that I feel need to be reinforced today.

  1. You can only store so much food
  2. You may fight a real battle a handful of times in your life or never but you must eat daily
  3. Our current food supply is threatened
  4. Our food supply is now heavily effected by inflation
  5. Being self sufficient means you must feed yourself

This is all well and good but at times we find ourselves in transitional periods or dealing with harsh environments.  While I believe that permaculture can in fact terraform the desert (because it has, see Greening the Desert for an example) such terraforming takes time and resources.  Something you may not have or have in sufficient amounts to feed yourself this season.   Today I present to you some options that can get you up and producing quickly during just about any season of the year.

The purpose of today’s show is to help you get production will making major improvements to the land itself or even use the transitional method to improve the land long term.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • The bag garden
    • For quick production
    • For creating a permanent “fence garden”
    • Fore creation of conventional raised beds
  • The self watering bucket and rain gutter garden
    • Self maintaining
    • Used easy to find materials
    • Presents unlimited configurations
    • Can be permanent
    • Takes care of itself while you improve your land
  • The Straw Bale Garden
    • Can be up and running in a few weeks with no digging
    • Can be a permanent or transitional
    • Is very water efficient
  • Rock Garden Hugelkultur
    • Fast permanent structure
    • Requires no digging
    • Looks great
    • Perfect for herbs
    • Uses abundant/cheap/free  materials

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-686- Rob Mies on Bat Conservation and Habitat Management

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Modern Survival| 18 Comments
Episode-686- Rob Mies on Bat Conservation and Habitat Management [ 49:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today Rob Mies joins us on The Survival Podcast to discuss bat conservation and habitat management.  Rob Mies is an exciting and adventurous scientist, conservationist, TV personality, and bat expert who has focused his passion on educating and entertaining people about one of the most unique and misunderstood animals in the world.

His energetic, charismatic, and captivating personality explains why he is continually requested to present to sold-out auditoriums. He is an author, Director, and Founder of the Organization for Bat Conservation and has appeared on many television shows with his furry, winged friends including The Tonight Show, The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Today Show, Live with Regis and Kelly, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Fox & Friends, and Martha Stewart.

For those wondering how bat conservation is a survival topic wait until you tune in today’s show, you will learn about many myths about bat along with the massive good they do in controlling pest insect populations.  How to properly install bat houses, how to use them to create fertilizer and the massive role they play in our ecosystem.

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

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Episode-658- Converting Raw Land into Fertile Land

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Modern Survival| 9 Comments
Episode-658- Converting Raw Land into Fertile Land [ 1:14:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So yesterday we discussed finding a remote piece of land as a get away retreat/BOL or even as a low cost place to live full time.  Whether you are working with such a piece of land or even a larger homestead most affordable land isn’t ideal for agricultural pursuits.

So today we discuss how to take arid, rocky, steep or any otherwise non agricultural land and convert into a fertile and productive landscape.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • Okay I screwed up the military discount it is now fixed
  • We made the first of two server moves all is well
  • The initial land assessment is all about slope and sun
  • The secondary assessment is what is already there and doing well
  • “Hardscaping comes first” applied to permaculture
  • Permaculture’s key with water is make it take the longest and slowest path
  • Design in totality and a foot at a time
  • Think in guilds vs. crops
  • Consider the Permaculture layers
    • Canopy
    • Sub Canopy
    • Shrub
    • Herbaceous
    • Soil Surface
    • Vertical Climbers
    • Rhizosphere
  • Think natural growing systems not “organic”
  • Don’t force round pegs into square holes
  • Naturalist vs. Monoculturist vs. Permaculturist

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Photo Credit Above to planet a.

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