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Old 04-14-2021, 12:12 AM
Enfield Enfield is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Milano View Post
I am only a rancher here in California but, as for agriculture I know that it all depends upon water, weather, and luck. If I were to go about it I would:

1st.. Catch Rabbits. For an immediate food source. Easy to breed. Cheap. Food is fairly easy to get for them; weeds, grass, flowers etc.

2nd... get a water source. Spring Boxes are easy to build. A redwood box dug into the ground about 3 or 4 feet. Pipe at the bottom going down hill into a storage tank. Pump water to high elevation and gravity feed from there.

3rd.. Harvesting and ground work equipment would be tough to maintain I think. Far harder to find or make the correct bushings for a disk plow than that of a Chevy pickup.

4th.. Cultivating ground for farming. Cow manure, rabbit offal, etc is a good fertilizer in lieu of the real stuff! Remember that someone with civil engineering could get the fall right for irrigating also.

4th.. Start transplants. Efficiency is found by growing transplants and planting the little started plants into actual farm fields. Think Green House to start them.

5th.. Get Cows and horses. The West Wasn't won on Carrots. (Had to plug my livelihood.) (Also Vesper, depending upon breed of cow, health etc etc. We look for a 60 to 65% yield. It takes me about 7 months of normal natural grass to get a 600 to 700 pound steer and I live in a lackluster enviroment.)

6th.. Pesticides, weeding, and water. Irrigation pipe would be fairly easy to find, especially in suburbs. 3/4" pvc with 1/8" holes drilled into it would work and that is found in every yard, with a shovel.

7th.. Rotation due to season. Strawberries do NOT do well in the rain for example. They get destroyed.

8th.. harvesting storage etc. I would again go with cats. I will also admit that this is where my knowledge starts failing me.

I hope I'm not being too wordy but there is quite alot of roll playing that can go into this and I am interested to see how this plays out with your group. Once it got going it is viable.
Thank you for the recommendations for planning.

As I understand it, the Okanagan Valley is a somewhat dry climate but works well for orchard crops. Do you know anything about ranching in that part of the state?

One thing I have often observed when watching post apocalyptic TV and movies is how often characters avoid areas in rural towns where they might have construction equipment, farming equipment, etc. If the rural folk have been driven out by hordes of refugees or marauders, it seems to me that there might still be heavy equipment to scavenge. One problem will be that they will not be experienced at handling or maintaining it if they do find it. The other will probably be finding a supply of diesel or getting the vehicles converted to alternate fuel.

One good thing the party does have is a well, which they have to maintain and clear contaminants from.
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