At the moment the products included some very high quality greenhouse raised organic salad makings and a few vegetables, grown in the greenhouses. The future would bring higher yields, a wider variety, and organic meats. The animals were coming in as Glenn, on the advice of the animal science students, bought stock.
The farm would raise chickens for eggs and for meat; milk cows for milk and other dairy products; Black Angus cattle for meat and leather; American Bison for meat and leather; Ostrich for meat, feathers, and leather; swine for meat and leather; sheep for meat and wool, goats for meat and milk, rabbits for low fat meat and pelts; tilapia, trout, and catfish for food, worms for fish food and chicken food.
Additional animals would be Barb horses for riding and light harness work, and Clydesdales for medium and heavy harness. There was a kennel in the barn for those that wanted to have their own dog on the property.
As winter settled in, so did the tenants of the farm. No construction was planned, though finishing and equipping the work areas continued, using the grant money the group had. Though the group had lost two grants due to the private funding, it picked up another large grant because of it.
With outgo slowing, and some income beginning, Glenn finalized some of the additional plans he had for the place and began ordering more long lead items for spring delivery for the projects he had in mind.
Glenn stayed out of the students work areas unless specifically invited, but he spent much of the winter in the other areas of the farm, learning what he could, from the hands-on things he was doing, as well as the reading and research he did every night on the internet.
With not that much for them to do, Glenn equipped one of the ‘spare’ rooms as a welding and machine shop for them. They would do what was needed around the farm for their base wintertime salary, but could take on outside jobs if they wanted for extra income. Glenn financed their purchase and conversion of an old ‘70’s model Chevy one-ton dually truck to a diesel powered welder’s truck so they could do off site jobs.
Quite a bit of equipment began showing up as winter waned. The other two Bobcats arrived, as did two more of the Unimog U500’s. The rest of the attachments for the Bobcats and Unimogs also arrived, including the field farming equipment. Six ROKON bikes converted to Hatz diesel engines were completed and delivered. They were primarily for use on the ranch property handling the herds.
Also delivered was the biodiesel production equipment, including an oil press. Ever since the tank farm had been put in, one of the students interested in alternative fuels had been going around town collecting waste oil from restaurants with deep fat fryers. As soon as the equipment was set up in one of the ‘spare’ rooms, the farm would be on its way to energy independence.
Another component of the planned energy independence also arrived in the form of a truck load of RWE Schott photo-voltaic panels with several Xantrex/Trace inverter systems. Another truck brought the Surrette deep cycle batteries for the systems. As soon as the weather broke, the electricians would begin the installations for each building.
Glenn decided to call the supplier that was supposed to be getting a set of generators for the farm. He hadn’t heard from him in a while. Sure enough, there was a hold up. It was going to be another three weeks before they could be shipped. There wasn’t anything Glenn could do about it. He’d just have to wait.
But he wasn’t idle while he waited for the generators. He got with Jeremy and Helen and put them on two projects. The first was to make a set of stills for the production of fuel alcohol. The second was to build a pair of methane generators to produce the fuel to run the stills and the biodiesel production.
Even Tabitha was calm and cool as her plant growth experiments went well in her workroom and one of the greenhouses. She had even taken advantage of the residency possibilities, though she paid a nominal sum rather than do any work for Glenn. Brittany, too, was living at the farm, working with three other people on her project. She helped in the greenhouses, for the most part, for the privilege of living at the farm.
The operation, despite the equipment that Glenn had, was very labor intensive. Fortunately, there were plenty of students needing affordable room and board. Glenn had plenty of students willing to lend a hand in return for residency at the farm.
Many of them had an interest in several of the aspects of Glenn’s approach to a self-sustaining farm and ranch operation. It wasn’t just the plant and animal research going on, that brought students out, but also the earth sheltering construction and off grid goal of the farm.
Though Glenn had not planned on a wind powered addition to the battery charging, two of the students whose interests lay in alternative power asked him to consider adding that option so they could study it further. He agreed and ordered an Air-X 400 watt, 48 volt dc unit and an Excel 48 volt dc, 7.5 kilowatt unit with the necessary materials needed to install and hook up the units to the solar power system that was going in rapidly.
Work was started on additional structures for the farm and ranch operation. In anticipation of the herds growing, weather shelters were constructed in several places on the section of ground set aside for grazing. Hay shelters were also constructed, as the farm would produce hay to carry the grazing animals for at least two years, plus enough to sell every year.
Silos were erected to hold the farm’s field crops. This was to allow the best profit for field crops, the crop being held until the best price could be obtained. In addition they acted as storage for grain fed animals, as did the concrete lined pits that held silage.
The four Unimogs, with three point hitches attached, with the recently delivered farm equipment, were used to get the fields planted. One of the crops was hemp. The group had managed to get a special use permit from the BATFE and Department of Agriculture to grow it for experimental use. There was enough acreage permitted to allow a significant amount of it to be processed for biodiesel. But the farm also planted other oil producing crops to ensure an adequate supply of biodiesel too, for the entire operation.
The methane produced from plant and animal waste was providing enough gas to run the burners for the stills and for the biodiesel equipment. The alcohol was sold to a petroleum wholesaler for blending in gasoline. The farm kept its alcohol tanks full, only selling down one tank to half full at a time.
The students also planted several specialty crops for their research. The third full section of land was dedicated to cash crops for Glenn. The greenhouses, both the commercial production ones for Glenn and those for the experiments for the group were going full bore.
Besides the breeding stock the ranch operation had acquired the previous fall, enough stock had been acquired for finishing over the winter to allow harvesting that spring. With the help of the marketing students, Glenn had made deals with restaurants in St. Louis, the Cape, and Memphis, to provide them with not only beef, chicken, and fish; but lamb, mutton, goat, rabbit, bison, and ostrich, as well. That was in addition to the organic vegetables and salad components. It would be another two years before the fruit and nut trees in the orchard began to bear commercially.
Two of the commercial green houses were dedicated to semi-tropical and tropical plants, including small trees. Much of the production of organic lemons, limes, bananas, kiwi, cocoa, spices, herbs, and coffee was used at the farm. What excess there was went to organic shops in St. Louis and Memphis. So did the farm produced eggs, milk, cheeses, and other specialty animal products. They were produced in two of the ‘spare’ rooms, now equipped to handle the processing of the farm’s products. Students did do some of the work, but the butchering and meat cutting was done by a butcher that Glenn had hired.
Work started on two additional large earth sheltered barns and the main earth sheltered house. The generators finally arrived and were wired into farm’s electrical system. The solar panels on each building were able to handle 100% of the normal draw during daylight hours and still put a charge to the batteries. The wind turbines added some battery charging capa
city.
When electrical draws went over the norms, commercial power picked up the slack and recharged the batteries. If commercial power wasn’t available, the generator set kicked in. One generator would kick in if the solar panels and batteries weren’t handling the load. The one generator could handle the normal load, without the solar input. A second genset would kick in if higher than normal usage was needed, and the batteries were discharged. There was a third genset that would come on line if either of the first two was down for service. A fourth identical genset was available for use to replace one of the other three if one of them needed a rebuild.
The new house and barns were finished before fall and Glenn moved into the house. He sold the trailer.
The last two of the six Unimog U500’s came in and were available to help with the field crop harvest that fall. Between the small amount of hemp that was produced, the canola oil, and used deep fryer oil, the farm was able to produce all the fuel it needed, with enough left over to keep the tanks full and still sell off some excess.
Though the operation was often the butt of jokes because of the use of the Unimogs instead of conventional tractors, things were going well on the production farm. It was the same for the experimental crops those in the group were raising. Even the garden did exceptionally well. The farm was fulfilling all its contracts with the organic food distributors that served St. Louis and Memphis.
All-in-all, Glenn was quite pleased. He’d gone through the letter of credit he’d received from the bank with the property and operation for collateral, as well as half of his retirement funds. He still had half of the retirement and all of the money his uncle had left him. The farm and ranch was now bringing in significant income and Glenn began to invest again in his future retirement.
He went about it a bit differently than he had in the past, due, in part, to many of the things he’d learned on the internet. He transferred the remainder of his retirement paper assets to Treasury Bill investments, and began putting the new money into gold and silver as a hedge for the future.
It was going so well, that Glenn was becoming overwhelmed. He had quite a bit of help from the students on running the farm, but decided an experienced farm manager would be a good idea. It had been his original thought anyway. It was still a good idea. He put out the word and began to take resumes that fall for a manager to take over the next spring.
He talked to many applicants, including a couple of students that would be graduating with degrees in farm management, but had no working experience other than their work on their family farms. One had also worked at Glenn’s the past spring and summer.
Becoming one to really hedge his bets, Glenn decided to hire both an experienced farm manager and a green assistant manager. Glenn figured that between them, with his oversight, the farm and ranch could be run with the best of the old ideas and the best of the new.
He started the process to get two additional small earth sheltered homes built to house the manager and his family, and the assistant manager, who was currently single, but had a live-in boyfriend. For the meantime Glenn had two identical three bedroom manufactured housing units brought in and installed.
Fredrick Grebbs wasn’t too happy about working with not only an inexperienced assistant, but a female one, at that. But he agreed. And Alison McGrady was a difficult person not to like. Glenn thought it would work okay.
He had many talks with the two of them during the winter, getting across his short term goals and the long term goals he had in mind, and his thoughts on how to achieve them. It wasn’t long before Fred and Alison established a stable working relationship. Glenn was satisfied that things would go well.
He eased off his own labors at the farm and ranch and left the day to day running to Fred and Alison. Things did go well. That spring, despite bad weather, the crops went in on schedule. The greenhouses were producing well, and the herds were now large enough to begin some real harvesting. That included the bison and ostrich operations. They were not only doing better than Glenn expected, but the demand was higher, too.
The farm got good prices on the grains they’d stored and held for that very reason, keeping back enough for feed for the animals for two years and seed for two year’s plantings.
But Glenn was still restless and couldn’t explain why. He’d done what he wanted, to the best of his ability. He had food for the future. But suddenly he felt vulnerable. As vulnerable as he had before he got the farm. Why?
He began to access the steps he’d taken to get to where he was. Why had he decided to buy gold and silver as his retirement? That had been a sudden decision. It was as a hedge. Much like the farm itself. A hedge for bad times. Suddenly Glenn muttered to himself, “Holy cow! I’m a survivalist!”
Glenn began to go back and check some of the internet sources he’d used in planning the various elements of the farm. Sure enough, a few of them were actual survival sites, while many of his searches had pulled up survival related sites based on the words he used in the Yahoo search engine.
He began to research the survival movement just as he had organic farming. He found it a fascinating subject, starting with Civil Defense in the 40’s and WW II through the Cold War into the FEMA era. Then the actual Survivalist Movement with its roots in the late 50’s through the modern start in the 70’s and the media-made maniacal Survivalist, to the current movement that no longer used the word Survivalist.
It seemed he was a prepper. But in only two ways. Food and fuel. And even when it came to fuel, only the farm was relatively self-sufficient. The Talisman took gasoline, which they couldn’t make. And it would be extremely difficult to convert it to straight alcohol use. Better to get a new vehicle. “No,” Glenn muttered, “Not new. Something not too vulnerable to EMP, whatever that entails, and with a diesel engine so I can use the biodiesel.”
Glenn made that his next project. A diesel powered, EMP resistant vehicle. He did more research on the internet and the St. Louis newspapers. Then he went looking in St. Louis. In the end, he found a used 2000 ¾ ton four-wheel-drive Chevy Suburban with a blown engine. Just what he needed.
He ordered a crated GM 6.5L non-electronic diesel engine to replace the blown gasoline engine. To keep it as EMP resistant as possible, Glen opted for an old style generator rather than an alternator to supply the starting batteries and the deep discharge battery that was installed to run 12 volt equipment and the 110 volt inverter.
A St. Louis diesel mechanic would do the engine swap for him. Glenn looked at many different front and rear bumpers on the internet and in Off-road show rooms, but went with shop build models made by Jeremy and Helen. He did buy a commercial heavy-duty roof rack for the Suburban and mounted some pioneer tools and two spare tires on it. That gave him four spare tires with one each on the front bumper and rear bumper.
Though the Suburban had a forty-gallon fuel tank, it was for gasoline. Not only was that tank changed out, along with its associated fuel lines, to a forty-five gallon model, but a second tank was added. A fifty-six gallon in-frame tank.
He wasn’t planning to go rock scaling with the Suburban, it wasn’t really suited for it, but he liked some of the features on the vehicles that did. So an on-board welder alternator was added, as was an air pump. A second power steering pump was added to drive the front mount hydraulic winch and the receiver mount hydraulic winch for use from the rear of the Suburban.
Getting the Suburban up and running kept Glenn occupied for a couple of months, though he did continue his research on prepping. Okay. He had food covered. Water, too. And transportation, especially when you considered the horses in addition to the Suburban. Oh. And shelter. His whole house was better shelter than most people’s basements.
But his further research had him concerned about hanging onto everything, if things got really bad. He didn’t see much that he could do if the government decided to take over his place. But what about brigands if there was a collapse of government. A place like his would be a prime target.
/> Glenn wasn’t much for firearms. Never had been. But the possibilities he was reading about in preparedness sites, especially the various forums, were giving him second thoughts. Glenn’s attempts to bring up the subject with several of the residents of the farm met with some hostility. So, as Fred and Alison ran things, Glenn began to research in depth an armory for the farm.
There were plenty of opinions on what was best, for a variety of scenarios. Glenn was becoming one that liked to cover all the bases. He picked up a variety of firearms, several of each, one or two at a time over several months. He kept the weapons acquisitions a secret.
He took a local hunting class, and a couple of other weapons handling classes in St. Louis, and then got a concealed weapon carry permit. Glenn went armed from then on; everywhere it was legal to do so.
Preparing for the worst became something of a hobby, since he now had a reliable income stream, and time on his hands. Glenn began to watch the news with a new eye, considering almost every news and weather story as to how it might affect him and his future.
One of the first things he did was to switch his gold and silver holdings from dealer storage vaults to his own vault in the house. The second thing was to double his buying program of the precious metals. It was no longer just his hedged retirement fund, along with the farm and ranch; it was a hedge against disaster. He also converted his T-bills to gold and silver.
Simpler Times Page 4