The Off Grid living thread (Dropping out the rat race)

[One Man Banned]

Yeah, one of the reasons I haven't fucked w/ fruit trees.  You had mentioned apples before and I was wondering if you knew how long that was going to take before you got any.  How does that go w/ buying trees, how old/established were they when you bought them?  Figuring one could buy a more mature tree if desired?

[misteraven]

This morning...

 

 

 

 

 

[Pistol]

I know this is technically off grid. But you guys are way up there with long winters and unexpected freezes. But have you thought about small grow tents or greenhouses with some inexpensive low draw LED grow lights to get a head start on fruits and vegetables until they harden and it’s safe to put outside. 

[misteraven]

Yeah man, thats been my plan, just not there yet.

 

Was going to setup a grow house to get a jump on seedlings in deep winter, especially for shit like tomatoes which grow super slow up here. Then looking to setup a big insulated hoop house with an aquaponic setup so I can do year round hydro culture gardening and also function stack some farm raised cat fish as well.

 

Freezes up here are expected LOL! Basically happens most nights other than a couple months in deep summer. My last frost date is June 22 if I remember correctly.

[One Man Banned]

[One Man Banned]

[misteraven]

Have a bunch of wild turkey out this way as well. Still have my turkey tags since I didn't get around to spring hunting, so hoping to bag a couple for Fall.

[GnomeToys]

On the hunting stuff:

I don't know state hunting laws elsewhere, but whitetail deer population has exploded so badly in East Chicago / Gary area over the past 5 years that the state made a rifle season with a pretty extended set of allowed rounds and expanded the list of allowed pistol from "classic" magnums to add a few more common ones like .40 S&W and 10mm.  On top of that they have "deer reduction zone" seasons running from 9/15/18 to 1/15/19 that allow hunting in wooded areas that would have been disallowed because they fall in designated city limits but are otherwise safe, and most importantly you can now bag 10 doe as long as you get one buck for that season.  I didn't notice it before, but this is pretty much per county so you could end up needing a refrigerated truck to ship everything back if  you stayed a while and hit the bonus seasons in multiple counties.   There's also another "anterless deer" season a bit later.  Between all that and the ones that have been in place, it works out to around 16 allowed in a year if you do those and only rifle / shotgun / pistol.   Might make it worth a trip here because that's a lot of damn venison, and honestly we need the population reduced here badly, they're becoming like weird tame pest animals that just happen to love jumping through car windshields.  
Allowed rifle list is pretty extensive now: https://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/7389.htm  

...especially since it used to be shotgun / muzzleloader only.    .300 Remington Ultra Mag seems just a wee fucking bit overkill for a whitetail at the range you'd be encountering them at here, but I suppose it'll only go through about 2 or 3 full grown oak trees before stopping so it'll be good.  ?

Flying into CHI with hunting gear is probably a nightmare given their gun laws and the largest zone in this state pretty much surrounds  all of Indianapolis anyway, so a trip into IND and finding a hotel near one of the fish & wildlife areas nearby might be your best best if a roadtrip isn't your thing.   Up towards the northern part I know a few people who'd probably let you hunt deer / turkey on private land.  Some farmers will too, if you ask them.  Deer / Turkey / Rabbits are just pests to them and they don't have time to handle them all.   Here's a 2017-2018 map, not sure if it's fully up to date with any 2018 changes yet.
https://indnr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Viewer/index.html?appid=968b21eecbb742fabae9f8cf8323543e

My dad stopped hunting years ago but we're thinking of going this year on general principle.

Carry permits aren't needed while hunting here for handguns, and we're open carry for everything else in the first place.  Licenses can be ordered from out of state in advance, so there's not much else to it than transporting gear here.

^ Literally never thought I'd be talking up this state lol

Getting some pictures of this year's garden ready for next post.  Normally I do lots of ultra-hot & exotic pepper varieties but had a bad case of root rot in the ones started indoors so I had to go with some local greenhouse starts for a lot of them.  Still doing great. 

[GnomeToys]

Randoms of the garden

 

[misteraven]

Garden looks great man. Any reason you don't grow more vegetable varieties?

 

 

[+plus+]

Yo 300 mag is a bit Overkill but it still works. I used a .243 for years and only had one run off on me. Liking the .270 a lot more. Dad is more into it than I am but I don't feel too bad shooting the hogs. They are fucking crazy and breed like rabbits

[+plus+]

Those gardens are impressive when I move to a new place I want to start growing at least some peppers 

[GnomeToys]

3 hours ago, misteraven said:

Garden looks great man. Any reason you don't grow more vegetable varieties?

 

Thanks!  Mostly too much other crap going on early year.  I went with my old method of using the fabric grow-bags so I didn't have to try to build a raised garden last minute (soil is awful here).   It works great for tomatoes and peppers.  This is the best I've had tomatoes do in those containers actually.

 

The peppers would probably be in those anyway.   All of the pepper varieties are perennials and can be overwintered with zero-to-no effort and produce twice as much the next year, so I do that with any that were particularly good. 

 

46 minutes ago, +plus+ said:

Those gardens are impressive when I move to a new place I want to start growing at least some peppers 

Yeah I've been growing them for years.   I should still have some viable trinidad moruga scorpion seeds laying around along with a few other kinds if you want any.   If you don't have as much space those fabric bags are great and last forever but I think the company that was making them went out of business.   Might have had to do with them being called "The Awesome Pot". 

 

48 minutes ago, +plus+ said:

Yo 300 mag is a bit Overkill but it still works. I used a .243 for years and only had one run off on me. Liking the .270 a lot more. Dad is more into it than I am but I don't feel too bad shooting the hogs. They are fucking crazy and breed like rabbits 

My thing with it is that it seems to make a lot of sense when you're talking longer range in the first place...  The reason I'm picturing it as "interesting" is that a lot of the hunters here grew up hunting with slug / buckshot.   Switching to fast rifle rounds can be done safely, it's just going to take... adjustment from people.  ? Haven't fired .243 / .270 but looked into getting one at one point.  I noticed .338 LM is missing from the list...  presumably because the deer haven't evolved light tank armor yet. 

[+plus+]

.270 is great middle of the road. 

[+plus+]

Wait deer w shotgun that's wild. 

[misteraven]

@GnomeToysHas me thinking that maybe we have enough people to start a seed swap?

 

Big thing I realized this year is that I didn't need to put most my stuff in raised beds. Unsure how to do it, but in the fenced off garden area I need to figure out how to remove the grass and till the soil without bringing in a full on tractor. I did summer squash and a few varieties of zucchini that did incredibly well. If anything, could have used more space between the plants but the output was far larger and far tastier than anything I've bought from a market. Plants grew fast and super hardy so thinking next year I'll plant twice as many and put them straight into the ground.

 

My arugula did great as well and instead of pulling them out at the end and giving them to my birds, I let them grow wild and go to seed. Now there's a million seed pods, so about to start harvesting those along with seeds from all else that did well. Spent about $50 for quality heirloom seeds from https://www.rareseeds.com/ and thinking I'm probably good at this point between what I have left from this year and then saving seeds from what I'm growing.

 

Sort of surprised by my tomatoes... I usually always do so bad with those. I think I got a late start (again) and they looked like they were going to be wiped out by too much sun, but they pushed through and now look pretty incredible. All are starting to show little tomatoes and figure I still have enough time left of warm weather that I'll actually manage to harvest them. Planning to can a bunch and sun dry a bunch to preserve in an olive oil, garlic and herb mixture.

 

Cauliflower is throwing me off. Havent researched yet, but wondering of what I'm seeing are male and female plants or something. Some have nice tight heads like you'd expect, other look sort of like broccoli that is even looser and appear to be starting to flower. Never grown that before or seen anyone else grow any so unsure what I'm looking at.

 

Definitely going to do a shit load more beets next year. As mentioned in an earlier post, you can eat the leaves for a picking or two and then still have the beet itself once it matures. I did a Detroit and Egyption variety and they seem to have done well. That said, I used those little organic cups that are supposed to break down once you transplant from inside and put it in the garden and turns out they stunted my beats since they dont break down fast enough. Another lesson learned is that I probably wont use those next year, though I'm unsure how I can do my plant starts while its still snowing out.

 

Carrots are super tasty but also got stunted and ended up looking like ginseng plants.

 

[~KRYLON2~]

Those colors looking delicious

[GnomeToys]

17 hours ago, +plus+ said:

Wait deer w shotgun that's wild. 

Yeah, it was shotgun, bow, or musket for a very long time.    Squirrel and rabbit were shotgun only too (maybe still are?) which was more ridiculous.  I didn't like picking lead pellets out of my teeth very much so I used a full choke 20 gauge that normally would have been better for bird hunting and got skilled at hitting them in the head.  A .22 would have been far better for something that size but wasn't allowed.  ? 

 

6 hours ago, misteraven said:

@GnomeToysHas me thinking that maybe we have enough people to start a seed swap?

 

I'd be up for this.  I grow mostly hot peppers ranging from the more standard cayennes & jalapenos to things that might fall under weapons export restrictions and more exotic varieties.  Would have to check what seeds I currently have.   Some tomatoes, but this is the first year in a while weather has been favorable for them so I don't have many saved seeds yet. 

[~KRYLON2~]

 

 

this made me lol, as well as learn something I knew nothing about

[One Man Banned]

Lot of people appreciating mushrooms edible and otherwise in here, random fact I learned the other day:

[GnomeToys]

Mushroom hunting is fun as long as you know what to avoid.   Luckily morels only have one lookalike that doesn't look much like them, the oyster mushrooms aren't hard to mistake, same for hen of the woods, giant puffballs are easy, etc.   Sticking to those keeps you away from the worst of it, and learning to ID chanterelles isn't too hard. 

 

This isn't exhaustive but it has some info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadly_fungus_species

 

Gallerina & most of the Amanitas (A. muscaria pictured above not being one of the very dangerous ones) are some of the worst.  The compounds in them prevent DNA transcription to RNA, which stops cell protein synthesis.   Every organ will fail and there isn't much they can do except put you on dialysis and hope the stuff clears your system before it kills you.   AKA avoid generic looking white or brown mushrooms. 

 

Many of the others will just make you violently sick to your stomach for a while. 

[GnomeToys]

The other day I was looking over my tomato plants and found this tomato hornworm with something weird going on:

 

 

So I searched around.   Apparently this is a Braconid wasp larval infestation.  

 

These wasps are like some fucked up thing out of aliens;  they co-evolved with various DNA viruses which are now part of their genetic structure.  The active viruses are only produced in pockets with the wasps eggs, which it injects into the host worm.  One virus messes with the worm's immune system so it doesn't attack the eggs that just got oviposited into it.  Another screws with metabolism to create compounds beneficial to the larvae.   This is late stage here, with the larvae already coming out.   Everyone recommended leaving these in / near the plants because the wasps are harmless to people (or so they'd like us to believe) and will kill these worms.   This is great for me because I won't douse my plants in neurotoxins, but it's creepy AF nonetheless. 

[misteraven]

Yeah, thats freakin creepy for sure. 

[One Man Banned]

Those wasps got some attention last year or so from Nat Geo or similar.

Above is maybe a good segway to ask if you're all growing au natural or are you using pesticides and such.

I've had some near microscopic bugs and other interesting colored ones eating small holes in the leaves of some veggies/herbs, not going to spray them.

I kind of have 3-4 small set ups including a small patch on a hillside that I might terrace later on, some pots, and a throwaway section where I throw seeds out to chance and typically get some success.

Jalepenos

Cilantro

Radish

Long leaf spinach

Thai basil

Snap peas

Attempted Thai chiles but they didn't take off well

 

[GnomeToys]

I won't touch pesticides unless they're absolutely necessary, which around here is kinda never.  In the south for fire ants might be a different story.

 

I use fertilizer mix because it works and some calcium chloride solution spray for blossom-end rot on the tomatoes, usually try to do everything with the least toxic option.  After an accidental exposure to a small amount of Parathion concentrate (wind shift) when I was growing up I'd just as soon not directly handle any of them even if that shit was originally a war gas and probably as bad as it gets. 

 

I found some aphids on a couple of the peppers earlier but those can just be sprayed off with water over a few days, other than that and the few worms haven't seen much.  Something was munching on the leaves of one pepper plant but stopped, so I dunno?

 

 

[misteraven]

No pesticides at all. Has a big issue with flea Beatles last year but none at all this year. Often there’s a decent enough solution that literally spraying poison on the stuff you’re eating. If you’re willing to do that, you might as well just shop at the supermarket and save yourself the hassle. 

 

Lady bugs work great as a pest deterrent so long as you create a good environment for them so they stick around. They sell them at a lot of places and basically you put them in a fridge all day to put them into a semi dormant state, the release them just after dusk in your garden. So long as there’s lots of shade and moisture, they’ll usually stick around and feast on all the eggs and larvae left by other bugs. They won’t harm your plants at all. 

 

Lots of other solutions like this that work well, including planting certain flowers and herbs that either serve to deter pests naturally or attract them away from the stuff you’re growing for food. 

[One Man Banned]

I usually don't have to bother with anything but this year is different in general than past.  Lot of stuff has come late, like butterflies, hummingbirds, other insects.  Have not seen many ladybugs whereas there are usually dozens about.

[~KRYLON2~]

Sooo the wasps come out like the alien pregnancy scene? 

[misteraven]

Freakin yellow jackers have been insane this year. Super freakin aggressive. Literally come at you from nowhere and bounce off you a couple times before finally stinging.

 

Didn't realize that yellow jackets are by far the most aggressive our of all wasps and bees. They also happen to both sting and bite. There's a more aggressive subspecies to an already aggressive main family that sort of like an africanized version.

 

Been really nuts though.

[~KRYLON2~]

I hate when any bee gets in my car while I'm driving. It usually results in me taking off my shirt and whipping it around like a helicopter. Then I get paranoid that said bee is plotting its revenge, waiting for the perfect moment to sting me in my nuts causing me to lose control of my car and crashing. Fuck bee's in cars!!