IAF issues a sincere call to spread awareness of the Grand Solar Minimum we have entered and the importance of GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD, and, in sharing the message, building stronger, self-sufficient communities to thrive in the times ahead.
“Survival seed packs” do a disservice by implying a sense of food security, when in fact, it is the knowledge of how to grow food, save seeds for next year, and share this knowledge with a growing, self-sufficient community. IAF explores how to meet the most basic of human needs in a bottom-up (individual) model, without the state to provide for you.
Also in this video:
* hill your potatoes at 8-10″ high. potatoes are top of list of calorie-rich food.
* viewing spirulina algae at 1200x
Links visited in video ( via http://twitter.com/IceAgeFarmer ):
I visit the Green String Farm, home of the Green String Institute, known for its sustainable farming practices. One of their mottos is “50% for people, 50% for nature.” At any one time, half of the farm is dedicated to restoring/improving/building its soil and productive processes, while the other half is actually producing for people. Clearly these aren’t entirely mutually exclusive, but it’s a guiding principal.
Ice Age Farmer discusses the application of this principle both to one’s own self-sufficiency in the coming Grand Solar Minimum, underscoring the need to constantly reinvest in ones own property and processes (and learning!), but also to the 50%/50% balance many of us must currently strike between maintaining a life in the current paradigm while preparing simultaneously to thrive in the changing times.
Also in this video:
* Worm Bin Basics — (time to setup the worm bin!)
* Freshly picked cherries
* A freaking huge stack of trays for microgreens
Please share with your friends information on the Grand Solar Minimum and the resulting climate disturbances we are experiencing, as well as intensification of the crop losses that have already begun.
START GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD TODAY TO ENSURE YOUR FOOD SECURITY!
Taking daily steps towards radical self-sufficiency means looking each day at what INPUT is required. Identifying these inputs and creating systems that will produce them for tomorrow allows you to push forward that frontier of producing your own inputs–and increasingly leveraging your own outputs!
Each step increases your resilience. This concept must be applied to the communities we build as well.
Today, I apply this methodology to one of the two elephants in the room with respect to the challenges of moving our food production to sustainable off-grid indoor growing in order to ensure our food security in this Grand Solar Minimum: HEAT.
A compost water heater generates HEAT (up to 160F/70C) as it produces COMPOST, which can be used for growing further crops. By completing the cycle here, you generate energy AND reduce your dependence on external inputs!
Also in this video:
* drilling holes for a new 2″NFT pipe
* transferring dwarf moringa oleifera starts in coco coir into containers under LED lights
… and a spider spins a web across one of my grow beds.
YOU CAN DO THIS AT HOME! –And you should, to produce clean food for your family. It’s that or watch as the food prices continue to increase, and ultimately, the shelves empty completely.
Start taking daily steps NOW towards radical self-sufficiency so that you can thrive in the current Grand Solar Minimum / Little Ice Age.
Efficient planting of microgreens is a careful balance between too thin (not fully leveraging your soil/time) vs. too dense. This tray of radishes microgreens was planted too densely, resulting in some seeds/soil getting pushed up into the surrounding sprouts. It’s not ideal to have this wet, organic material up around your stalks; it can cause rotting of the surrounding good greens, attract pests, and generally be nasty.
Also in this video:
* A fully harvested tray of pea sprouts also idle and surprised me with a decent second harvest! Good to know that with rich enough soil, these trays can actually keep producing.
* Ice Age Farmer waxes philosophic about cities squandering tax money on massive decorative landscaping instead of creating edible parks for citizens, equally (if not more) beautiful, and helpful for food security. But the system NEEDS you to NEED it, so don’t expect that to happen.
a period during which solar activity diminishes, resulting in drastic climatic and geophysical changes to our planet. These include increased galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), seismic activity, and volcanism; the latter often results in a global reduction in temperatures (see “the year without a summer” — and much more on the IAF wiki).
