Sebastian Mencius

It could easily be a month or longer until I am in the same spot again. Is the issue with putting rooters and grazers together that the rooters will, well, uproot too much of the land before the grazers have a a chance to graze it?

Hey y'all. I am thinking about pasture/paddock shifting some chickens. I was also thinking of throwing in a few other critters and shifting them around the farm together.

I wanted to put some sheep, chickens, and pot bellied pigs all together in a 75'x75' electro netted pen. Do you think they would all get along well enough together? If not, any ideas on what I could sub? As far as quantities go I was thinking 3 sheep (2 ewes, 1 ram), up to a dozen chickens (2 roosters, rest hens), and 3 or 4 pigs (1 boar, rest sows). I was thinking of having a 50 gallon waterer on a trailer as well as a chicken coop with a roost and a few laying boxes. I would drag it every time the paddocks shifted to the new spot. I have several acres (5+) to play with for this. I would like to be able to move them once a week. The land I am working on is currently a coastal bermuda hay field. I will definitely start planting some other stuff in there too.

It also crossed my mind to cut the chickens in half and put in some ducks as well.

What do you think? Decent idea or my sheep would eat and kill my pigs who would eat and kill all my chickens?

Everything is always more complicated than it seems, right? I had forgotten about keeping batteries cool and that kinda thing. I have actually listened to most of Steve Harris' podcasts over there with Jack. I guess I would probably need to get the power consumption down some. As you have probably guessed I am pretty new into this. I have a little time to get it straight...

Btw, how well do you think using a rain catchment type system from the roof for toilets would work? I live in lower SC and get about 47 inches of rain a year.

I was not really sure where to put this since it includes solar, propane, and wood. If this is not the right place, please relocate. Well, I have been thinking about and doing a little research on how to power my house I am planning to build in the next 12 months. My goal is redundancy, not really off-grid per se. My thoughts were:

Start off with a battery bank big enough to power the whole house (less a/c) and have enough "juice" to power the house for 2 days. I am estimating about 10kw peak energy. With this I will power lights, well pump (more on that in a bit), computers, TV's, refrigerators and freezers. Then, have a solar array tied to this batter back up that will recharge the batteries, obviously, when the sun is up. I would also have the battery set-up grid tied to "top off" any deficiencies each night. I am assuming I will need pretty consistent grid power, probably every day, since I doubt the solar array will be enough to re-charge the batteries each day. Oh yeah, I am in South Carolina by the way...

I will then power stove, oven, heat and a whole house generator from a 500 gallon propane tank. The generator will only be for when the grid goes down and be big enough to recharge the batteries every ~20 hours or so. Heat for the house will also be provided by one of those "central" outside wood burner.

To minimize at least some of the power requirements I am thinking of getting a 500 or 1000 gallon water tank lifted in the air. The well pump will just refill the tank. I think I could get a much smaller pump if I am just topping of the tank each night. This elevated water tank will also provide better water pressure to the house. It seems like water pressure to some of the houses I go to in the country have sketchy water pressure.

I will tie the A/C directly to the grid and will only be powered by grid power. Grid goes down I am not running a/c.

So, my new permies friends, what do you think of this set-up? Never work in a million years? Easy?