JW
Water is vital to life. Having access to clean, pure water is critical to maintaining health and wellbeing. We all need it in order to survive. But clean water is getting harder to come by. There is constantly more stress and contamination sources being applied to the natural and human built processing systems that supply us with fresh potable water. Water treatment plants go offline when power outages occur. Groundwater and well water sources are being increasingly contaminated. Natural disasters compound the stress on these systems and introduce new hazards and toxic inputs that we once thought were contained and managed. Here are a few recent examples of how our water supplies are being compromised and the potential health risks involved. 
My family has been raising a small backyard chicken flock for about seven years now, and we have had our ups and downs during this time. From learning about predation and having to protect against it, to dealing with frozen chicken waterers in the winter, to lack of eggs from molting and light conditions, raising chickens is always an adventure. Through this adventure we have increased our awareness of where our food comes from and what it means to have quality meat. So this winter we decided to take the next step and move from a small backyard flock of six birds to raising all of our own meat birds for processing this spring and summer.
(If you are just starting off with chickens or are thinking setting up your own backyard flock, please read the article Raising Your Own Chickens as a starting point.)
This new adventure has provided me a whole new knowledge set, and I would like to share just a few of the new insights I have learned over the last few months.
Six Lessons from an Expanding Flock
My family has been raising a small backyard chicken flock for about seven years now, and we have had our ups and downs during this time. From learning about predation and having to protect against it, to dealing with frozen chicken waterers in the winter, to lack of eggs from molting and light conditions, raising chickens is always an adventure. Through this adventure we have increased our awareness of where our food comes from and what it means to have quality meat. So this winter we decided to take the next step and move from a small backyard flock of six birds to raising all of our own meat birds for processing this spring and summer.
(If you are just starting off with chickens or are thinking setting up your own backyard flock, please read the article Raising Your Own Chickens as a starting point.)
This new adventure has provided me a whole new knowledge set, and I would like to share just a few of the new insights I have learned over the last few months.
One of the most important aspects of becoming self-sufficient is the ability to produce your own food. Many people begin small garden spaces in the backyard as a way to start out and then slowly expand their growing space and variety of crops. Growing your own food can become addictive. After one begins to grow their own food, many will then start looking at new and different methods of how to extend their season and at ways to include plants that require a longer growing season (building a cold frame is a good start).
Selecting a Greenhouse
One of the most important aspects of becoming self-sufficient is the ability to produce your own food. Many people begin small garden spaces in the backyard as a way to start out and then slowly expand their growing space and variety of crops. Growing your own food can become addictive. After one begins to grow their own food, many will then start looking at new and different methods of how to extend their season and at ways to include plants that require a longer growing season (building a cold frame is a good start).
Many of us here within the PeakProsperity.com community were introduced to the need of preparedness through watching the Crash Course and later exploring the WSID Guide and Blog. As personal awareness grew, many of us started to look at emergencies and situations that would have a dramatic and profound affect on our lives, and we began to make preparations to deal with those emergencies and build more resiliency into our lives.
We started to evaluate our water, food, and housing security more closely and to make sure we had backup plans and resources. Health, wealth, and community became a bigger concern for many of us, as we learned more about the state of the systems we rely on so heavily and their overall decline in supporting us in the future.
With all of the situations and concerns we look at when building resiliency into our lives, one topic that gets overlooked frequently is our “digital lives” and how to protect them from catastrophe. The majority of us are perpetually connected to a digital life. Everything from banking and financial records, contracts, business documents, and our personal photos and memories are all stored on a hard drive somewhere as binary 1’s and 0’s.
Considering Data Backup
Many of us here within the PeakProsperity.com community were introduced to the need of preparedness through watching the Crash Course and later exploring the WSID Guide and Blog. As personal awareness grew, many of us started to look at emergencies and situations that would have a dramatic and profound affect on our lives, and we began to make preparations to deal with those emergencies and build more resiliency into our lives.
We started to evaluate our water, food, and housing security more closely and to make sure we had backup plans and resources. Health, wealth, and community became a bigger concern for many of us, as we learned more about the state of the systems we rely on so heavily and their overall decline in supporting us in the future.
With all of the situations and concerns we look at when building resiliency into our lives, one topic that gets overlooked frequently is our “digital lives” and how to protect them from catastrophe. The majority of us are perpetually connected to a digital life. Everything from banking and financial records, contracts, business documents, and our personal photos and memories are all stored on a hard drive somewhere as binary 1’s and 0’s.
Today we are going to be discussing worm composting and vermiculture. Using worms to eat your waste organic matter from the kitchen can be a very convenient method of making black gold. Not only do these red wigglers produce a richer soil amendment than traditional compost (higher in nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash), they make it faster than their microbial compost pile counterparts. Worm composting has a number of additional advantages over traditional composting, some of which include:
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by blaggers