Yes sorry, I wish I could re start the thread and have explained things better, I was tired.
The dog is legally my mothers but was the family dog when I was a teen, yes am an animal communicator and have worked with animals previously, dogs, horses, birds, small wildlife. Have grown up around wildlife and farm animals, always had animals, studied them, worked with them, so know the ins and outs. Also have kept chickens in the past and lost none of them to predators.
I would take the animals feed and keep it either inside my sleep area in a seperate container or in an animal/weather proof container outside. I would make sure I never ran out, the chickens would not need much feed though with it coming upto summer so unless I had many which I dont plan on a bag of feed would last a good two months.
I lived alone, moved back in with family due to health problems at the same time I was in contact with a number of eco villages starting up and was going to move to one but due to my health had to leave it at the time, in the meanwhile family decided they wanted to do the same thing, bought land and, the same people I am living with now own the land and asked me if I wanted to go, there was a few of us at first hoping to set up a 'village' but alot have dropped out since and now just three of us. I dont know how long I plan to live there, depends on my experiences, if I cant live the lifestyle and is to hard going will move somewhere more forgiving.
Sorry if my question is a bit naive, but english is not my native language: What does an "animal communicator" do?
Completing the plant based diet with eggs is a very wise choice. Eggs contains all of the important eight essential amino acids. If you have the means of erecting a small greenhouse it would also add substantial resources.
With your lifestyle you have probably already read just about everything Seymour and Angier have ever written, but if you by some chance haven't had the pleasure of reading one of their books I would really recommend at least the following books:
John Seymour:
On My Own Terms (1963). London: Faber & Faber.
Self-Sufficiency (1970). London: Faber & Faber.
Farming for Self-Sufficiency - Independence on a 5-Acre Farm (1973). Schocken Books
The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (1976). London: Faber & Faber.
The Self-Sufficient Gardener (1978). London: Dorling Kindersley
Getting It Together - a guide for new settlers (1980). London: Michael Joseph.
The Smallholder (1983). London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (2002). London: Dorling Kindersley.
The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It (2003). London: Dorling Kindersley.
Bradford Angier:
How To Build Your Home in The Woods (1952)
Living Off the Country: How to Stay Alive in the Woods (1956)
Free for the Eating (100 Wild Plants, 300 Ways to Use Them) (1967)
How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation That Makes Starvation in the Wilderness Next to the Impossible: Originally Published As Living Off the Country (1969)
More Free-for-the-Eating Wild Foods (1969)
The Art and Science of Taking to the Woods (1970)
One Acre and Security How to Live Off the Earth Without Ruining it (1972)
Survival with Style (1972)
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants (1974)
Most have been out of print for decades; I am lucky enough to have my own copies of these books. The libraries should be able to fetch at least the majority of these books for you.
If you are moving from the thought of foraging to a principle of gardening then a whole new set of possibilities open up. (Provided that the chosen location actually have a climate relevant for some level of gardening). A Danish scientist, Mikkel Hindhede, proved already back in the 1930 that - given the correct tools and knowledge - a whole family can be feed by the produce of a garden not bigger than about 1-2 acres (depending on soil type and climatic variations)
This is - by the way - one of the basic reasons that the population size climbed rapidly as the stone-age people learned agriculture. There is a vast difference in required acreage between foraging and gardening/agriculture.
There is a internet-based database over the most used edible plants from all over the world. The web-adress is:
http://www.pfaf.org/user/default.aspx
(As always with plant food - check the sources. Authors can (and do) make mistakes.)
//Kim Horsevad