Farming
after a Nuclear War

		At one time, almost every home was a little farm. Everyone had a garden and a few chickens. It is a life-style now unknown to present city dwellers but still present to some degree with our village neighbors. It is a life-style to which many will probably return and the purpose of these pages is to help that transition. This is our own little greenhouse.

Table of Contents:

Library: Gathering Resources for After a Nuclear War.

This web page deals with the technical aspects of farming such as seed saving, fertilizers, crop management and so forth. Other web pages in the hierarchy above this one deal with measuring radiation in food, alternate energy sources, and other subjects necessary to successful farming.

Farm1: Protection of Food and Agriculture From Nuclear Attack
                (In .pdf format.)

This 42 page booklet was the US Department of Agriculture comprehensive attempt to prepare the farmer for nuclear attack. It contains much important information.

Farm2: Fallout on the Farm
                (In .pdf format.)

This 14 page booklet is by the Canadian Government and has useful information about crop alternatives after a nuclear war, the handling of animals exposed to fallout, and many other items of information.

More: The Have More Plan
                (In .pdf format.)

The "Have-More" Plan (A Little Land - A Lot of Lving) by Ed and Carolyn Robinson is a 1940 classic devoted to the creation of a small farm. It is a bit dated in its view of DDT but generally may be exceptionally useful to those who are inexperienced and are trying to to start.

Seeds: Basic Seed Saving
                (In .pdf format.)

6 pages in .pdf format from Seeds of Diversity.

Humanure: Humanure Handbook

This 200 page book - winnner of many awards is placed here through the kind permission the author Joseph Jenkins. It can be obtained in print at Jenkins Publishing, PO Box 607, Grove City, PA 16127. To order, phone: 1-800-639-4099. http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/ .

Humanure: The Handbook available in .pdf format.

Mulch: Explains organic composting.
                (In .pdf format. )

This 30 year old 101 page book gives information about mulching.

Fences: Fence Planner for the Common Sense Fence
                (In .pdf format.)

This 12 page booklet gives information about wire fences, barbed, stranded, and electric. There are other kinds.

This 24 page .pdf file lists 56 oil bearing seeds and discusses a variety of methods for extraction and processing. These oils can be used either for food or fuel.

Ark: Build Your Ark
                (In .pdf format. )

"Build Your Ark" (How to Prepare for Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times) by Geri Welzel Guidetti. Published by: The Ark Institute, P.O. Box 364, Monkton, MD 21111,email arkinst@concentric.net : This 248 page Book One on Food Self-Sufficiency covers basic concepts on gardening and goes into detail on soil improvement and insect control. Details are provided on a wide variety of garden vegetables.

Farmstead: The Farmstead Book
                (In .pdf format.)

"The Farmstead Book 1" edited by Paul Harmond and is Published in the US by: Cloudburst Press of America, Inc. 2116 Wetern Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98121 and in Canada by: Cloudburst Pres Ltd., Mayne Island British Columbia V0N 2J0 - This 262 page Book covers soil and woods management on a more macro level than the book above and also covers the farm machine shop.

Taste: Like They Used To Taste
                (In .pdf format.)

"Grow Friuts & Vegetables The Way They Used To Taste" by John F. Adams published by Wynwood Press - New York, New York. This 104 page book deals somewhat with vegetables and seed saving but is more largely devoted to fruit trees.

Seeds: Saving Seeds
                (In .pdf format.)

"Saving Seeds" (The Gardener's Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds) by Marc Rogers and published by Storey Communications, Inc. Pownal, Vermont 05261. 97 pages.

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Individual Agricultural Recovery
After Nuclear Holocaust

Other web pages, in the previous table of contents in the hierarchy above this one, deal with measuring radiation in food, alternate energy sources, and other subjects necessary to successful farming.

Still other web pages, in the previous table of contents in the hierarchy above this one, deal with old Pioneering skills. There may be some overlap between those and these immediate pages but it is well to look at both of them for what may be start up farming without access to all the present modern technology.

We cannot just go back to the old ways. We have lost many of the skills. No one had them all then and you would be hard put today to find a wheelwright, a miller, a tanner, a barrel maker. All those trades, like farming have advanced into modern technology and the present experts seldom have used the old ways. Many of the old implements are no longer around and we certainly don't have the horses. Modern horses are neither bred nor conditioned to pull the plow. Still, in the skills of the past we may find solutions to the problems of the moment.

Our personal library is very extensive. At one time I counted 13 encyclopedias. These are mostly specialized - like a 14 volume set on gardening and another 16 volume set on do-it-yourself repairs. There are others on health and medicine and a variety of other subjects.

We have also acquired CDs with hundreds of books and one summer put a crew to work microfilming thousands of documents which we have on microfiche. These, plus many many books, are in just our own home but our Ark Two Community librarian is the real gatherer of information - he has many thousands of books, mostly on technology for recovery.

In the future, when people want it, we hope to be able to disseminate all this information widely. There are many blind spots in our library. We have little information on modern technology and almost no information on leading edge technology. Members of our Ark Two community are of far more than average knowledge about nuclear and computers but there are many, many fields such as in modern metallurgy, petroleum refining, hundreds of specialties in chemistry, medicine, and untold numbers of other areas that the expertise to re-establish them will have to survive with the experts - if they are going to be recovered in the immediate decades following.

One major focus of our library has been maps, in order to determine where that expertise may reside. We have thousands of maps. Local road maps. Topographical maps. More and more maps on an expanding scale. We have every map ever published by the National Geographic. We have CDs with map search programs. North American and World Atlases. The list goes on. One map set which we were very desirous of obtaining cost thousands of dollars (far beyond our budget) from the US government. It comes with a subscription program for real-time updating and the printed book is reprinted annually. A marvelous tool for demographers tracking changing patterns - but one copy would serve our purposes. Amazingly, we found one on the Internet - at a fraction of the cost.

Other associates of ours are providing us with gigabytes of survival information on CDs. Our problem has not been so much one of obtaining information but determining which areas on which to concentrate our limited resources for storing and cataloging. Tons of information is of no use, if you have no way of finding what you want in it. In early years we were given literally tons of books by libraries and publishers. Expensive volumes that cost over hundreds of dollars each - but we finally had to abandon that effort simply because of lack of storage space and manpower to handle it. We passed on trailer loads of books.

So the problem of the moment has not been getting information but one of determining which information is going to be most useful to survivors. These have been our choices. What we offer in these pages, measuring radiation contamination in food, producing food without the modern technology and its skills, finding alternate sources of energy, recovering and repairing remaining machinery, creating the nucleus of an economic system and restoring the basis of functioning society - information on how to do these things are what we feel will be most needed at the outset. It is our sincerest hope that we will be able to get it to the people who need it and that they will find it useful.

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