I'm going to collect my posts from that other thread and put them here all together.
If you may have to haul water at some point, it would be a good idea to figure out how to do that without killing your back, now, while you can still get stuff to do it. (If we lost power, we would need to haul water from the river, about a quarter of a mile away -- return trip includes a steep hill, and the entire distance is rough dirt roads except for crossing the paved road that runs parallel to the river.)
Garden cart (with the hill coming home, I could carry four full five-gallon water jugs in my garden cart)
Little red wagon (Haven't used this for hauling water yet, but I imagine I can haul two or three full jugs with the wagon)
Old-lady shopping cart -- two-wheeled (for small families -- these won't haul a lot of weight; they also won't work well on rough ground)
Pony/goat/dog cart if you have a critter to pull it
Old-fashioned hand-cart (like the Mormons used for some of their ill-fated trips across the plains -- they are great for local haulage, though)
Bicycle -- can carry quite a bit of weight with a bike -- you push the bike while walking. You are using the bike like a pack mule. If you have a long distance to go, probably the best way to do it would be with a bike and a bike trailer -- the heavy-duty cargo kind.
Make sure you have containers with lids (you could use five gallon buckets, but water jugs with screw-on lids will work better, just take something to dip water into the jugs). And if you use a bicycle you'll need some way to attach the jugs to the bike that will allow you to take them off easily.
If it comes down to hauling water, make sure you keep the home storage containers topped off. Sure as shooting, if you let them get low, you'll get sick or hurt or have an ice storm or something, and won't be able to go out to your water source to get more water.
Kathleen
P.S. I have dairy goats who need about five gallons of water in the winter, more like ten gallons per day in the summer. The chickens need one to five gallons of water, depending on how many I have at the time, and the weather. Three dogs go through anywhere from two to five gallons of water per day, depending on the weather. So just for the animals I would need to haul eight to twenty gallons of water home (or be smart and take the goats and the dogs to the river with me twice a day -- goats don't need to have water in front of them 24-7 as long as they can get at least one good drink per day). In warm weather I could even take the laundry down to the river!
PPS: Stash two or three big bales of peat (the biggest size you can get at the garden supply store or the feed store), three five-gallon buckets, and a spare toilet seat. You can make a humanure toilet and save the graywater for watering the garden, or whatever else really needs water. That much peat will last most people and small families a year or more.
The Humanure Handbook is free on-line if you want to read it, but basically, you put a scoop of peat in the bottom of a bucket, set a toilet seat on the bucket (there are ways to stabilize the seat, but I won't get into that right now), and then add a scoop of peat after each use of the toilet bucket. You need one extra bucket for the peat, and one for when you switch out the toilet buckets (need a tight compost bin to dump the contents into, with more leaves, sawdust, or peat to add to the compost pile) -- the used bucket needs to be cleaned and left in the sun if possible before bringing it back in the house. We've used this system a couple of times for several months to a year, and it works just fine with minimal odor.
I do have a young goat that I am keeping for use in harness. He isn't quite old enough yet (he's about eight months old) to start pulling weight, but he should be able to pull a load next year, and the year after should be able to pull a cart with my handicapped adult daughter in it. I have the harness already, need to build or buy a cart. I don't know how much your Nigerian Dwarfs would be able to pull -- you might have to hitch two or more of them! (Which would be awfully cute!) They don't take a whole lot of training -- especially since I don't plan to drive from the cart, but will walk with the goat on a lead-rope. The young wether I've got for pulling is a Nubian/Boer cross, by the way -- he's going to be a big boy. I wish he wasn't mostly white, but you have to make do with what you've got.
Be Well, plain dirt will NOT work in a humanure toilet. I've tried it. You need something that will stay on top of the fluids in the bucket and absorb some of them -- dirt just gets wet and sinks. If it's got any clay in it, it then settles and sort of solidifies on the bottom of the bucket, and is a pain to clean out. (Takes quite a bit of water, preferably from a hose with pressure, self-defeating if you have a water shortage.) Peat, sawdust, and shredded dry leaves all work well. Chopped straw would work, and any other dry organic matter, but not dirt.
Adding: I was talking to a friend today who is probably close to my mother's age, and lives (and has lived for twenty or thirty years) without running water at her place. I don't think she has electricity either, but I'm not sure about that. She gets water from a friend's place (and does her laundry and baths at a friend's place). She has several horses, and uses a pony and cart to move water and hay around her property to take care of the horses. She told me today that she made her pony harness herself. So if you have an animal you could use for pulling, you don't have to spend a bunch of money on harness (although if you are going to use a full-sized horse, or an ox, or anything that can put a large amount of strain on the harness, it might be best to buy the harness). Just find some good pictures and copy them as best you can with sturdy webbing. Pony and goat carts are also not that hard to build from pictures and plans on the internet. A sled for winter use is a good idea, too. Just make sure, whatever you build, that it won't run over your draft animal on a down-hill slope.
Kathleen