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

15-12-2003, 02:46 PM

In article ,
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 00:58:11 -0800,
(paghat) wrote:

[clips\
I live in the middle of an ag area, where its far cheaper and
easier to buy 100lbs of Red Russets for $5USD right off the loading
dock.

Gunner

The reason I now grow mostly ornamental gardens is because I'm less
inclined in my middle years to do a shitload of work to end up with
something I can buy way too cheaply with no work at all -- yet I don't
mind doing the same amount of work for the sake of unusual shade plants or
flowering shrubs. But in the past when I was a veggy-gardening fiend it
was because the activity itself was joyous, canning was such great fun, I
loved the company of my aunty who had the space & devotion for keeping
these activities on schedule, & the resultant meals were much, much, much
better than ever could be store-bought. There may also have been times
when a dollar saved meant something too, but mainly it was for the intense
fun of it all. I do remember a year when finances were so tight that
harvesting in the forest was necessary rather than merely fun -- I threw a
party & fed a great many people a spectacularly good borsch made of
gleanings & the only part of it that wasn't wild was the beets, & those
were free at closing-time in the farmer's market. Mostly it was never from
need; & today I only ever do that sort of thing because I get a charge out
of having free stuff to eat even when I don't need to save mere nickles.
And experimenting with stuff that is edible but not often harvested by
anyone else is an inexplicable pleasure. There are many local berries
people will swear are poisonous, & which sometimes do taste nasty raw, but
they can be cooked, sieved & mixed with apples & spices to taste very
wonderful -- though even if something comes out mediocre I had fun giving
it a try. I'm sure it's in great part a biologicial "gatherer" response &
there're so many attendant pleasures to doing one's gathering in the woods
or in a personal garden than in grocery ailes. Not everything in life is
related to the price tag, & the reward is not quite quantifiable as cash
earned or saved. I can't today imagine spending the whole damned week
doing nothing but cold-packing tomatos, or canning free pie-cherries, but
I do some very occasional canning if my sweety & I can get it all done in
one day -- it's become a "break" from the important things instead of the
main thing it once was. When someone proposes the idea of doing it as a
"survivalist" or to be totally self-sufficient, I think that's admirable &
I don't believe it is difficult to do successfully.

Lately I'd rather grow species tulips or write a monograph on an obscure
Victorian author or dick around on the web or watch Japanese films on DVD,
but when my aunt was still alive, a lot of that energy went into growing
stuff to eat & canning as much of it as we had jars for. Life changed ten
times since then, but if life had been less dynamic & I still lived on my
aunt's land hoeing rows of veggies & pruning fruit trees, I can imagine
many a life spent at dumber things.

-paggers

--
"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/