Winter Prep Ideas- outside

This is an excellent article on winter and preparation. Before I placed my planter boxes, I watched the sun for a year in the summer but never considered watching the snow and run off. Had I watched the flood waters, I would not have placed my planter boxes where I did.

The article linked seems to cover some really good points about watching where the snow piles up, where the water pools. These are all important things to consider when you are planning on a garden or having livestock.

Winter Prepper Project Ideas – Outdoors - The Prepper Journal

Please follow the link for the rest of the article

 

Very good article.

I have buried a John Deere 4440 that badly before. Like the article said: It was firm enough until it wasn’t.....

 

Uh - those opening pictures send chills.
To think I used to actually live in country that looked like that in the winter.
Used to.

 

Winter prep, summer prep, drought prep, there is no limit. If you do not live on your bug out location, or have someone else live full time on it, it will fail. As simple of a thing as knowing where last years potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc were planted, and planting this years somewhere else will in all likely hood prevent you from losing the crop to the late blight, and ask the surviving Irish, if it really works in the long run to raise those crops year after year in the same place. I own a 2 1/2 acres lot and have an upper garden that is 15 feet higher in elevation than a lower one, the upper one has a 15 to 20 day longer growing season between frosts, and the lower one can be planted 15 days earlier as it is sandy and drains well and warms up sooner and if you plant or transplant any of the frost intolerant crops or long season crops in that beautiful rich soil lower garden, you will probably lose them. The only way I am able to solve that problem, cold air does not drain up hill well, was to get a greenhouse. Again back to real life, I tried automatically watering the greenhouse plants in the raised beds, didn't work, on a hot dry windy day it needs watering 3 or so times, on a cloudy misty no wind day, it may not need watering at all. Ended up going to hydroponics for those crops that I did not want to babysit every day. Excellent article, but extend it to all year and to a few years time as even micro climates cycle over time. As I grow older, it is becoming ever more obvious that knowing how to do things and having the right mindset is more important than the tools themselves. As a child raised on a farm with no electricity, an emp event at that time would of had very little impact on us. A simple little thing like water, we had a pump and a windmill, that had to be shut down if you expected high winds, that you had the device needed to pull the well cylinder, spare leathers for it, oil for the head, extra brake band, a couple spare parts for the fan and such, and every one as a child learned how to do it by watching. It did not require solar cells, batteries, a deep well pump, a controller, etc, and over the previous 100 years it had became painfully obvious what the windmill failure points were.

 

Great article!

 

That could be very true and many have a BOL that is a place they only visit during hunting season or a few times a year. Knowing the land is one thing but knowing the seasons and how they affect the land and your buildings/fencing is very important. I was back in Vermont and they received snow. Two of the gates at the mini-farm were right to the ground which caused me to have to shovel in front of the gates. Cutting a foot off the bottom of the gate would save some work (that will be a spring project).

 

Those are good points about watching where the water piles up. Yet another example of how awareness is a core prepping skill.