Workin' up hay and grain to feed a horse will be Hell if it were me. Each one consumes a 1/2 (70 pound bail) a day. Horse hay has to meet certain specs and can't be dusty. You can feed cattle anything, but not horses you expect to ride. Being just out to graze doesn't always work out well either, more so if you live in a place like NH where there is no natural graze for a minimum of 3 months of the year, and then Whoa first growth is hi test and overly rich.
It isn't nearly so simple. A man can get pretty dang tired walking a colliced horse out too.
And that doesn't even include the acers you need to grow hay on... Been a while since I needed hay, but I bet it costs more than a gallon of gas per 70 lbs bails.
1 ton bales will be out of the question, since moving them won't be easy.
If SHTF for cattle ranchers, we can kiss red meat good bye.
In SHTF it isn't likely meats will be on the open market anyway. Any meats people get will be wild game and that won't happen once a month for most if that. The fact is most people won't have any meats, fish, or fowel unless they either raise them, or hunt every single day.
I won't be hunting every single day myself, because that is wasted energry.
I would rather spend my time working up plants to eat and gathering wild foods. That's a better bet, and potting some small game on occasions to mix in with plants. That might be once a month.
The rest of my time will be making items I can use as others wear out, or working on what's to eat 120 days from now... When ever now happens to be.
SCG, Yeah I don't look at things like a lot of people do. The area I live in has been logged over no less than 3 times by white man. The result is junk littering the woods for miles in every direction.
But I don't go and drag everything home. I don't need it at home, it's far better right where it is.
At the best on a discovery of say a slave whip (2 man cross cut saw, made out of high carbon steel) is, I will make a minor effort to protect it. I know where one is and it is rusted beyond use as a saw, but it still can be a lot of other items. I took that from a brook banking and stuck it in a hollowed out Beech Tree, standing it on one end inside the tree. That wasn't to hide it so much as to get it off layin' on the ground, partly in a brook.
What ever I need to be sharp, and hold a cutting edge is what that would be.
The copper water heater I found all shot up is plenty good for arrow heads, and assorted other smaller items. If it were larger and not so shot up, I could make a big pan for boiling maple sap or making sea salt, but it's not, so larger items are out for that heater.
I know where bottle dumps are, so I can always have water tight containers. Those are also rodent and bug proof with a stopper made right of wood.
But once again they are far better where they are, rather than me dragging it all home.
Just the fact I know where these are, if something happened and I had to leave and move fast I have a goal, a place to go and get what ever it is I need.
My bug out bag is a little different from most as well. It has odd things like smaller lighter wood working tools, than are average. One is a 4 pound wood splitting maul, which is less than a 6 lbs standard maul. Another is a draw shave, smaller than standard. I have a limited variety of Swiss Scorps and chisels, so I can carve out bowls, cups and spoons on a whim.
The carry hatchet is a PEXTO, a no longer made wicked nice piece of steel. Once when I could hear, I could flick a finger nail across the cutting edge, and it would ring. I can't hear it ring anymore, but I know it still does.
As I see it that is the caddilac of all hatchets.
I bought the head only at a yard sale when I was 19 years old for 3 bucks and back then 3 bucks was a lot of money
Today it sports a curly hickory handle, nice huh? It also has a leather case I made, which is a little different too from most. I sure don't need a cut from that hatchet. If I do it won't be pretty and it will be better than bone deep. No fun.
I can do all of this with stone tools too, but in stone it takes longer, and fire is first used, and then the stone tools are used to scrape not cut.
But my ways are not likey to be popular as they are so far removed from what people know today.
It's a good bet my ways are just over the top, under terms of Too Strange to suit most people.
There is a following I rather enjoy however, of Buck Skinners, with a like mind to me. They often pay cash and trade items they have to get what ever the lastest wacko items I have made recently.
Once I got 100 dollars and a string of antique blue 7 layered chevron beads about 3/4 inch diameter for a all wood and bark canteen. It looked like a regular sized metal canteen with the wool on the sides, but was all made of birch bark, bass wood, sewn with cordage i made of bass wood, and had split white pine sides. Any place a modern man would have used a nail I used sharpened twiggs of hemlock trees, a evergreen not a toxic hemlock plant. I would have used long thorns if I could have found any.
To this day I grin, and sometimes laugh out loud at the first comment the first guy made, and he was the buyer too. He said It's heavey, why is that? I said It's heavy because it has about 2 qts of water inside. He then said it isn't leaking! I said No, it's a canteen and it's not supposed to leak!
That old man ran for the first time in 40 years to get cash and grab up beads... He was right back too.. He hide that canteen for the rest of the event, not wanting anyone to know what I made, or what he paid..... damnned fool.
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, hoping to find a job that pays more this summer, but that's quite hard. I had a good job. Doing whatever I can under the table until then.
