EnviroLink Forum

Dang it! 6 'twisted icons' vs. my one. I AM in trouble!

There was an evil or two in there as well.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Heaven forbid, Iowanic is going to become a factory farming advocate.

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I don't know what your problem is but I bet its hard to pronounce.

Here's a couple things I've run onto trying to get a functional agricultural stllement:

The amount of fodder stored thru the winter for the livestock is gonna be huge. My most conservative estimate for the cattle is 150 tons. Yes, 150 TONS. Fodder-silo's and barns are going to be another construction project for the colonists.

Which brought to mind something I've noticed cropping up regularly now: construction. It's unavoidable, of course, they'll be homes to live in, barns for the critters, roads, hospitals, airports/spaceports, tidal-power stations, fences....the list is imposing.

Now how are the colonists going to approuch this? Modular methods and reusing sections of the big colony spaceship will be useful and 'earthbag' construction methods hold promise for private homes. Roads are neccasary and with migration routes all over the planet, I think 'berm' construction for the roadways will work, with tunnels underneath to let the native critters go to and fro without getting clobbered by cars nor will drivers have to wheel their way thru herds of thousands of animals crossing the roads.

But some obstacles:

Materials for all this construction.

and what are those who do all this construction going to do once things get settled in?

I'll address this next update. That and maybe discuss what I've tagged as the 'flax-problem.'

To save some construction, may I suggest pit silos. We had three of these when we had a lot of cattle. Basically it's a long trench maybe 30 feet wide by 100 or more feet long, and about 6 or 7 foot deep. At one end it is slanted up so you can drive in, and the bottom end is open so you can drive out. This means it's best to be built on ground that is slanted.

We would drive though pulling a wagon and dump the fresh cut hay or chopped corn. Another tractor would level out the hay or corn and drive over it to compress it. Eventually you would fill the entire trench or silo with feed. Later you could access the pit silo from the lower or open end to take out feed for the cattle.

The only thing you would really need is a concrete bottom.

After we got rid on most of the cattle and only used one of the pit silos, I turned the closest one to the house into a singles tennis court.

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I don't know what your problem is but I bet its hard to pronounce.

OMG, Hunter; that would just about be perfect. Many thanx!

Some people cover these pit silos with plastic. There are large silo covers that are made of plastic that you can buy, buty we never covered ours. In time they would crust over and keep rain off, as long as you humped them up in the middle so the rain would run off instead of soak in.

Also for storing hay you could just make hay stacks in the field. Again it would just be hay stacked up maybe 10 or 12 feet wide by 20 feet long. We has a metal cage like stacker. The hay would be dumped in over the top, and the hay is stacked tight by walking around on it. The stack is usually about 8 feet all. Again humped in the middle so when it crusts over the hay will shed rain. When the stack is full one end opened up like a pair of door, and you pulled the stacker away from the stack. Close the doors and start on the next one.

Here the hay is put up drier then in the pit silo. The advantage here is with machinery the hay stack can be picked up and carried to the cattle and left for them to eat. When one stack in gone and new one can be brought in. This way you do not have to feed everyday, thus saving a lot of labor.

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I don't know what your problem is but I bet its hard to pronounce.

I'm just gonna touch on the 'flax-problem' briefly, but here's the deal:

I can't, for the life of me, find out how much linen one gets from a acre of flax.

You'd think they'd at least have rough estimates down somewhere.

You mean when these people went to this planet, they forgot their replicator.

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I don't know what your problem is but I bet its hard to pronounce.

Sorry, Hunter.

They'll be no faxing the flax.

And that's a fact.

Yes, it's a fact faxed flax forms faulty fabric.

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I don't know what your problem is but I bet its hard to pronounce.