Lex Eastwood

I'm welcome to people coming along and working some pep skills alongside me. So long as it aligns with the master plan of the property (no hugelkulture in the pond, no pond in the driveway, no driveway in the house kind of things). I have plenty of acres of nothing in rural Nevada. No heavy equipment available though.

Mark Brunnr wrote:

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Welcome to Permies Lex!

10 inches of water, Eeek! My first thing would be to set up a rainwater harvesting spot. Maybe a metal roof for a shaded porch over over your trailer's door. Maybe a tarp. I don't understand all the set up needed for such a thing, but others here have the knowledge.

There's a Youtube channel for a couple that built a homestead in Arizona, and he built something big like 1500 square feet of metal roofing at the highest point of the property, around 2-3' above the ground with a gentle slope using 2x4 frames, into a rain gutter and that ran several hundred feet down to half-buried cisterns, around 10,000 gallons. The first 2500 gallon tank acted like the settling/first flush, and when it was almost full it would start filling the other 3 tanks. That might be a good way to gather all your water and then you have a series of filters for water heading to the house. You could start small and add on using small roofs and 55 gallon barrels, and if down the road you can do some earth works to maybe mound up a space a few feet above grade, then you could have catchment there and gravity takes it into tanks.

I believe I know the channel you're talking about! The guy actually talks about how he got the idea from the guy I got the tarp idea from. Haha!

Jeff Campbell wrote: Be careful over planning. It is dirt. There is always water, you just have to keep drilling until you hit it. Spend a year out there and see where the surface water wants to go naturally. Build your chicken coop on the high ground. Get to know your neighbors growing the alfalfa, figure out there schedule. Then you know when they are planting harvesting or spraying. They also know about the water well situation. You might find someone that lets you fill your tanks close to home. I keep about 200 pigs 40 goats 50 rabbits and 100-200 chickens and we use about 50000 gallons a month in the summer. We get 0 rain in summer, so that keeps a little patch of grass green and a small garden.  Start searching for the info on the wells around you, they should be registered and you can find out the depths and water flow rates.  Life is short, trying to turn the desert into an oasis is not a quick thing. Find a local farmer to source your feed is one of the biggest drop in costs.

Great advice! We're definitely not looking to go anywhere near that big, probably ever. But who knows what the future holds. We've talked at length about three or four cows, three or four  pigs, and maybe twenty or so chickens. That's probably around where we're going to stop. Maybe double that in twenty years time. But our first few years are going to be much much smaller. No plans for animals that weigh more than me (again, this could change. Who knows.)

We're primarily focusing on getting the land situated and planted, in hopes that we can start creating some water retention, fertility, and the like.

I know that animals will significantly help this along, but slow and steady wins the race. I don't want to have more than I can care for. Especially in the beginning, while trying to find rhyme and reason. I'm new to it, and while a lot of people I know who want to do this sort of thing as well aim for the moon, I'll be much more satisfied with just reducing cost to exist. Everything afterward is a reward in itself.

When we math'd it, we only really consume about (a little less than) 500 gallons of water monthly, as a family, since staging in the fifth wheel.  We're going to be doing the numbers for the garden soon, but my guess is it's going to double or a little bit more. But, we will be supplementing grey water with that. My goal is to generate three months at a time with an inch, while being able to hold a minimum of 5 months worth total.

When we do start looking at animals, I want to scale water first.

My USGS groundwater research shows that within a mile of me, there have been two wells drilled at less than 50 feet. While that gives me a little hope, I'm still expecting the worst.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is "you won't know til you try" stuff. So we'll see.

Do VA pensions count as residual income? I got hurt while in the military, and they pay me handsomely for it now.

This is a software alpha sale (pre-pre-presale) of a mealworm breeding/production calculator, for generating mealworm goodness intended to be used as feed treats for chickens, etc.  The package that the client purchased was an early alpha + fully supported beta when the software is open, and the lifetime of the software's support. It's actually kinda nifty software, too. Lot of research went into it. The cost was 30 USD, but the client is from Germany, and had issues with the processing fee to round it to an even thirty, so gave me a few dollars tip. haha

EDIT: I accidentally missed Client name blocking in the original screenshot. I also added a preview image of the  alpha calculator, per request.

For this one, I submit a paypal report. I do code review in python, cpp, ruby, and a few others, as well as game development freelance work. I am ALWAYS getting clients that I have to turn down, due to not having the time. For that, I am very thankful. I charge friends 25 an hour, and regular clients I go for about 50. Here's a few payments

Panels are "mounted" and  rotated via cinder block currently, as they're not going to be permanently housed here. This is just their temporary home for a few more weeks while I stage and prepare to move officially to the site. I have some local L beams being held for me in my property's neighborhood, to create their pretty mounts in the future. All of the components for the kit were acquired independently of each other, so the panels came "as-is" with no mounts. This is our poor man's effort, this far. I've ran it since last night, got the 3 way fridge working, all my internal lights, furnace, etc. Which was "good enough" for me, for now.

Dan Fish wrote:Hey buddy, I live just over the hill in California. Nice to have another Iraq vet here. Good God will that work ethic come in handy trying to turn THAT place into a farm, hahaha. I wish I had something to offer ya, like a tractor. But I'm broke too. Oh well, start diggin!

Heya howdy! Whereabouts in CA?

I was an army grunt. If there's one thing I'm good at... It's digging. Haha

I honestly feel like I pretty much dived into "hard mode" for this whole thing, but with enough finesse, and colorful language... I'm confident.