EnviroLink Forum

I'll have to research my grains again; oats seem very useful.

You're correct about the native grasses; I intend for that to be the 'main course' for the cattle, during the warm weather monthes. Now I'm busy trying to divide the herd into the most usable 'grazing herds'-size.

If nothing else, I've always got something to keep me busy.

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

Yes, I'm working on that. The day temps can be dealt with, if you use shading and perhaps irragation. The night temps are gonna take some work. As silly as it sounds, I'm looking into using water(Warmed during the days) to 'level out' the temps at night. I have to see how much work that entails, however.

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

Yeah, the extermns of temps brought on by the long days will have to be tackled.

Note: some plants ARE cold hardy; collards and parnips are two I can think of. Of course; that doesn't qualify as a balanced diet. And there are ways to extend seasonal warmth on earth (Cold-frames, mulching); on some crops I think this would work on the nightly lows on Zeta. It'd be awful difficult to try such on a large scale.

Here's the best chance, I think: Move close to a ocean or large lake. Ok, I'll explain.

Large bodies of water are very effective at 'leveling out' temp extermns. Water's ability to both warm up slowly then cool down slowly makes this possible.

A few miles inland from a ocean should allow the heat retained by the salty water to keep the nighttime temps above freezing. I suspect a reliable 'sea-breeze' will kick in as well. Windmills both for power-generation and mechicanacal work might be doable.

There are still a few downsides, as you might expect.

Salt in the breeze.

Hurricanes(Okay, gnomes)

All that warm water says 'hurricane/gnome alley'. Two things that could work for the colonists:

Locate to a spot where the directing winds are least likley to send mega-storms.

and, praise the lord, oceans on Zeta tend to be smaller then those on Earth. Hurricanes/gnomes will have less room to build. Expect a lot of tropical depressions that come ashore before they can get any bigger. At least we should have regular rain.

It'll definately require very hot day-temps. One thing about the summer temps; as on earth, summer days are more sun-up time then sun-down; they'll be more time to warm-up and less to cool down. Of course early spring and late fall will be a 'razor's-edge' for agricuture. The nights times will be near as long as the days and that'll drop the 'middle-ground temps' slowly but surely. Being a weather-man on Zeta wil be a busy but well-paid job, I suspect.

Um....this is only gonna be a short update, I'm working on a more extensive one for next week.

I was running thru some times for plowing with horses and I'm not liking the numbers.

Maybe tractors(As 'clean' as possible, of course) used in a sort of community fashion might be workable.

Those horses are a bit slower then tractors.

If your group had the ability to make it to another planet, surely they've also harnessed enough solar energy to drive a tractor. Or how about good old fashioned steam. Throw in some firewood and you're good to plow another 20 acres.

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

Well, I fought it as long as I could!

What happened, Hunter, was I got down to some actual crop rotations and the time to harvest and I used a couple 'plow-times' I looked up and it was rather depressing.


I tried to work around it but I visited a 'historic farming site' which was very imformative. They traced farming thru the years and they naturally discussed the switch over to tractotrs and why.

A) it took 5 acres of crop-stuffs to feed a horse.
B) A typical 4 horse team could plow a 40 acre field in 55 hours. Not so bad, right?
C) a modern tractor can do the same job in 1.1 hours(!!). At least, so said the source.




ouch!

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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

NO! NEVER!

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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