GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?

15-12-2003, 02:32 PM

In article ,
wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:00:17 -0500, "rick etter"
wrote:

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day?
=======================
Obviously not the lard butt that sits on the computer all day. There are,
however, many occupations/activities that will burn off far more than 2000
calories in a days work or a few hours a day workouts.
That you are too lazy to actually work/exercise doesn't mean that others
are

Hummm anyone up to a bit of research? When I was working above the
arctic circle for an oil exploratation company, I was eating (2) 1
pound bags of Craft Carmel candies, and a 12pack of Coke, along with 4
large bologna and cheese sandwiches, every 10 hours. And was loosing
weight.

Anyone want to calculate how many calories I was consuming in those 8
hours? This of course did not count a big dinner at the end of the
day.

Gunner

Otherwise you'd've had a really great Arctic garden, eh? Ice-carrots
pulled from the soil & fresh-frozen blackberries right from the bushes --
if only it were enough calories.

The daily caloric intake for a fellow taking a dog team to Sitka would
make someone living in Jersey weigh 400 pounds within one year, but the
musher will lose weight chomping down whole sticks of butter as a major
part of a diet.

A temperate garden would not have to be large to feed a family (& some of
the neighbors to boot). When great-aunt Cora & I gardened what must have
been a mere half acre, what grew on that well-sunned land we couldn't give
away fast enough to be certain none went to waste. We dried foods & we
canned like crazy; we went years never buying veggies; we traded or gave
away bags & bags of stuff; we gave away canned stuff to whoever would
bring us a box of good jars. Even at that we ended up composting a great
deal of from the garden season by season, which always seemed a shame, but
it just overproduced food & there were only on average eight people to
feed on three adjoining properties. When we overestimated some crop by
factors of a hundred I had to find recipes that called for vast amounts of
garlics or radishes or zucinnis -- lord do I still love radishes baked in
coals, & fortunately garlics don't taste like garlic if you cook the hell
out of them so they make a pretty darned good soup. For some tubrous
things plus broccoli we could still be harvesting fresh in winter so it
was almost a year-round thing.

The only thing we could never quite get TOO much of was tomatoes, because
even making them a big priority by cold-pack canning scores of jars &
eating them off the vines like they were sweet apples, I loved the
cold-packed ones so much I used them up quickly in soups & stews & baked
things. Cold-pack canned tomatos are even better than fresh, there's no
way to duplicate that amazing taste without actually canning them
personally, then very hard to restrain oneself from using them immediately
instead of waiting until there's no more tomatos in the garden.

A honeybee hive would be nice to include as part of the garden, & a number
of berrying shrubs (not just summer fruits but bitter autumn berries too),
a hazel tree or two so one can press one's own oil. We had four Italian
plum trees -- can four trees worth of plums in just one year, you'll be
eating them for six years there's so many. One year we got so carried away
canning everything in sight that when we finally ran out we decided to
pickle watermelon rinds -- they were great pickled! When there was nothing
new growing to harvest, we were so addicted to the canning process that we
harvested crabapples from up & down the street & pickled those in the
prettiest jars -- they made great holiday gifts.

If I wanted to go all survivalist about it I already know from youthful
experimentation that earthworms, crickets, & snails are good eating -- so
the critters are also part of a garden harvest. No kidding about worms,
the only trick is to clean them properly, & really no stranger to eat than
clams & mussels, but with more uses, like they're good in muffins ("What
kind of berries are in this?"). As a vegetarian I'd be reluctant now; but
I don't think it's icky (to me eating cows is much ickier & eating pigs
unthinkable). I would also count as part of my harvest anything I could
get in walking distance right out of the wild (for a couple years "the
wild" for me meant harvesting from buildingless lots inner city).

In the countryside it's even easier, & not just blackberrying along
railroad tracks in summer. What you can do with a mudhole full of cattails
for might surprise many people -- cattail parts can stand in for potato,
flour, asparagus, & corn on the cob -- & that's just one of a couple
hundred things one can spot worthy of harvest. When I was eating mostly
only what my aunt & I grew, plus whatever I could harvest at odd moments
in the nearby woods, I was eating better than I do now that I mainly shop
in grocery stores, & cooking way better than now that I have a microwave.
I wasn't quite fully vegetarian back then though, so I did also eat
rabbits from time to time -- stewed, alder smoked, or fried -- & guinea
hens & chickens. No one could ever tempt me to eat redmeat again (not that
I'm dissing elk sausages), but sometimes I do get a hankerin' for alder
smoked rabbit which seems now to be a food of a bygone era & has taken on
a mythic immensity of flavorful greatness in my memory.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/