My Homestead Adventure - A stupid city slicker bumbles through the woods

With the garbage cell network. Get a HAM radio and your general license. Befriend some other hams so if you get injured and unable to get out they can help. You can also use the radio to contact emergency services yourself, get weather updates, and can even send out GPS coordinates, depending on the model.

At the minimum get your technicians. Study here: Ham.Study it’s super easy just do the flash cards and the practice tests until you hit 80% scores, should only take a couple of hours of hard studying. That site has the test banks on it so a lot of the time it’s just memorizing the question and answer. Radio clubs often have free exams but it’s normally $15 per exam and you only pay the $35 FCC license for your technicians, upgrading is free, except for the exam cost.

Radio wise just get a BaoFeng if you want cheap. Otherwise do some research and find one you like. Hams are super friendly and often throw equipment at you if you’re new to the hobby.

Edit: Added some info.
 
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It is very common to find those Horse hoof fungi on birch trees. The best way to tell if a log is good is to cut it, I would recommend getting an aggressive and rather long hand saw from the hardware store and crack one open to see whats going on.

Some tips I have for handsawing, if you have a bit of oil to put on the saw that can help it when its deep in the cut. Even better than that/Also, make some wedges to drive into the cut, or position the log in such a way the weight of it hold the crack open. Otherwise you will spend a long time wondering if its even possible to saw such a large piece of wood, due to the saw binding. Or just use be a pussy and use a chainsaw I guess.

With regard to vegetable growing, from my limited experience, dispense with all that raised bed nonsense. There is little benefit (or no benefit at all), and they are much more expensive than a traditional garden bed to prepare and maintain. That's just my opinion anyway, I can see no benefit other than bending less if you have a bad back. To prepare raw earth for growing vegetables you want to do two things, one is to trench it, that is with a square shovel dig down about two feet in a strip perpendicular to your garden and rotate the soil. The first strip you can move to the end of the garden, then subsequent strips can be rotated into the previous space you dug. This is very much the opposite of the no till gardening method that is very fashionable now. I did a couple beds like that this year and it was very effective for breaking up the soil and ensuring moisture movement and retention. The no till methods are well documented and usually involve putting large (gay) amounts of cardboard or something down and waiting a really long time.

The second thing is you likely need to add fertility, though if the area you are clearing is in the woods, the soil may already be fertile from all the tree debris that has been falling for years and rotting away. To do that compost is good, but takes a little while, if you know anyone who has animals they probably have a lot of poop, which is THE best thing to add to a vegetable garden. You can also buy a bag of chemical fertilizer from a store that sells such things to farmers. Its ok to cheat, its better than starving. While you are at the farm store, get some pelletized lime for the acidic soil. Potatos and blueberries prefer an acidic soil, potatos will get a bit scabby if the soil isnt acidic enough, but they are pretty hardy. Wood ash is also commonly thrown onto the garden traditionally. Getting the actual garden soil itself tested is the best way to determine what you need, and there are many services that do that now.

That's all I got for now. Best of luck, look forward to seeing the progress!
 
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Sperg_rancher said:
Any updates on this, @Happy Camper ? I thought this was rather interesting.
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Well that's weird, didn't know there were more people with the same name or that you could even have duplicate user names on the forum. Just replying to say that I dunno if your @ mention reached the right person and that there may be a forum issue at play here. But it's nice to know that we have more nature enjoyers out here!
 
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Happy Camper said:
Well that's weird, didn't know there were more people with the same name or that you could even have duplicate user names on the forum. Just replying to say that I dunno if your @ mention reached the right person and that there may be a forum issue at play here. But it's nice to know that we have more nature enjoyers out here!
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Yes, I noticed that. my bad!

The OP of this thread appears to have had his display name changed.
 
Happy Camper said:
Well that's weird, didn't know there were more people with the same name or that you could even have duplicate user names on the forum. Just replying to say that I dunno if your @ mention reached the right person and that there may be a forum issue at play here. But it's nice to know that we have more nature enjoyers out here!
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Well that's weird...

1727281671680.png1727281726703.png
 
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Catgirl Tyranid said:
Well that's weird...

View attachment 6454620View attachment 6454624
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The letters look a bit different. Might be a use of a non-standard font or something. Things get a bit more cramped after the C. That might explain it. May be worth bringing up in your report @Sperg_rancher!
Happy coincidence.png

Edit: If I copy the other user's "Happy" from his profile, he shows up in the @ mentions list, whereas if I just write the name on my keyboard I show up in the list. Don't know if that's it for sure but I think I'm at least on to something with the font theory making the names functionally different while appearing identical.
 
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Happy Camper said:
The letters look a bit different. Might be a use of a non-standard font or something. Things get a bit more cramped after the C. That might explain it. May be worth bringing up in your report @Sperg_rancher!
View attachment 6454642
Edit: If I copy the other user's "Happy" from his profile, he shows up in the @ mentions list, whereas if I just write the name on my keyboard I show up in the list. Don't know if that's it for sure but I think I'm at least on to something with the font theory making the names functionally different while appearing identical.
Click to expand...
the only normal letters in his name are the "m" and the "r", the rest are cyrillic
 
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