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#182
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
"George Cleveland" wrote in message
On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:11:46 +1100, "Fran" wrote: What I am objecting to is that both you and George are putting forward information that was NOT in the original post (and Lord knows how off beam into realms of pure fantasy this thread has moved from the simple question originally asked!) My observation that the "slant towards isolation is a bit worrying" comes from this: "This would involve one person living alone, in decent physical condition, willing to do hard work and learn whatever is needed." Yep, he sure did say that, but living alone does not equate with being a "slant towards isolation". All he said was to give details of his personal circumstances of being a person who will be "living alone". I'm sure you will have heard in the news or on current affair programs, that one of the the fastest growing households in the western world is that of the single people dwelling. There are more now than ever before and it looks like the trend is increasing. I know a lot of people in this situation (and more the older I get) and none of them could be considered to be at all isolationst. Some are happy to live alone and some are not and are desperately seeking a partner, but isolationst?????? Most definitely not. They simply live alone because of a lot of reasons. Don't chose to share, don't need (financially) to share, have lost a partner to death or from divorce or some other reason, but not isolationist at all. I even know a couple of fellows who live the sort of (almost) self sufficient life that the asker has in mind and they are both very happy to live alone and do not seem to be even be seeking a partner - both long term bachelors and likely to stay so, but good for any dinner party or drinks party or even for a drop round and share coffee and a gossip session type occasion. You have put in what YOU think he will (or should perhaps) do BUT not what he specifically said. As far as telling him what to do I didn't. I know you didn't tell him what to do. I was adressing Richard in that specific comment as that is to whom I was replying. I only objected to you assuming that if someone says they will be "living alone" that you assume they have a "slant towards isolation" I don't have the info. I agree :-)) hence my comment that you (and Richard) were making assumptions. I just opined that it shouldn't take much land or time to be self sufficient in food. Where I did go off into my own subjective world is when I assumed his motivations for doing it were similar to others I've known who've tried comparable things. Some suceeded, some failed. But all were motivated by a dissatisfaction with the way life is normally led in the "West". Perhaps his motives are different. Perhaps they are very different but at this stage we don't know and may never know. He may just love the peace and quiet of his own land and have the sort of personality that likes to do as much for themselves as they possibly can because he may find it both interesting and fulfilling. On the other hand, he may be barking mad and could end up taking pot shots at his neighbours. We just don't have enough info to make those sorts of judgements. He did not mention that he would be doing the building. He may or he may not but it cannot be read into what he wrote. It is not unusual for people in both NZ or Aus to have even a fairly traditional builder come in and build an off grid house that includes items like slow combustion cooking stoves (which also heat the hot water), composting toilets, water collection from roofs etc etc. Even if one is not off grid, it is still quite common in rural areas to have electricity but to still use solid fuel for cooking water heating (for at least part of the year) and tank (cistern) water for the whole of the year. I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin that was just that way. With the exception of using ground water for tank water and outdoor privies for composting toilet (eventually replaced by a home septic system). I still partly live this way and I don't find it very arduous at all. I have a septic system (although I grew up using an outdoor privy) and we use ground water for flushing but tank (cistern) water for drinking and I use a wood burning range in winter for hydronic heating, hot water and cooking. With modern building techniques and good trades people it is very easy to have the best that "old fashioned" living offered without the inconvenience that our mothers put up with. I much prefer food cooked in (and on) a wood stove as the taste is far better than the same recipe cooked in a gas or electric oven. I don't know what the difference is but it is tangible. |
#183
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
"Tina Gibson" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message "Tallgrass" wrote in message hehe.....the ground must not freeze solid where you are! No thank God! Heavy frosts only and that is bad enough. I'd migrate rather than live with frozen groudn or live in a place where fishing isn't possible all year round :-)) We live in the frozen north and fishing is possible all yr round - just have to cut through the ice to get there!! I've read about ice fishing and it certainly wouldn't suit me. Fall asleep and you could freeze to death! Snow and ice are wonderful if they occur one day of the year. Months of the damned stuff and I'd go stir crazy and kill someone. I hate houses that only have a front and a back door - too claustrophobic for me. I hate being confined by bad weather (too hot, too cold too wet) and get outside as often as I can. |
#184
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
In article , "Fran"
wrote: "paghat" wrote in message In article "Fran" wrote: [clips] I've grown spuds in tyres and I live in a house that friends who live in the city think is quite posh. So how often do you encounter this sort of thing? Or more to the point, why do you live in an area with such slummy places or go to such slummy places? Hey, YOU'RE the one who lives where it's "posh" to stack used tires in your front yard. You aren't reading what I wrote. I don't live where it is "posh" to grow spuds in tyres. I live in a house which others have described as "posh". I also happen to have grown potatoes in tyre stacks. I don't put these tyre stacks in my front yard. The previous poster did not mention growing spuds in tyres in his front yard either. You are the one that assumes that anyone who DOES grow spuds in tyres is a "trashoid". And you've reinforced the truth of it. When you said you "hide" the tires with other plants (such as rubarb, I'm sure that's a year-round disguise of a wondrous sort) you pretty much admitted even you can tell that a stack of tires in the yard still looks like garbage & needs to be hidden. So you lack sufficient aesthetic to care; I'm not saying people SHOULDN'T live like that, I'm just saying it takes trashoids to do so. But when I make a planter, or a trellis, or any garden ornamentation, it doesn't need to be hidden; if it slowly does vanish behind vines or shrubs, it wasn't because it was butt-ugly & needed hiding. As you said "spuds don't care where they grow" -- they certainly don't grow better because someone put them inside some trashy tires. Get the trash out of the yard & the plants will do just as well. Did you know old tires can leech enough zinc to kill some plants? Used tires are an enormous hazard to the environment -- but stacking them up in the gardens is not the answer to that problem. Spuds don't care where they grow The garbage dump wouldn't mind a few spuds either, or even some toxic waste for that matter! That comment is simply adding hysteria to stereotyping. Just in case you aren't aware of it, many tips (or dumps) around the world are now becoming very well cared for and have permananet tip attendants. These tip attendants often shred garden waste dumped in the tip and then compost it and either resell it to keen gardeners who know the value of recycling green waste or reuse it on beautification schemes in the dump. I know a great deal about recycling, but if you think keeping piles of tires in the yard is comparable to municiple composts, then there's just no easy communication between the earth I'm living on & your Tireland residence on Alpha Centauri. No one is compelling you to recycle anything but there is simply no call to leap to the worst possible scenario simply because someone does try to make use of discarded items. Keeping garbage in your yard is NOT recycling -- no more than tossing whiskey & beer bottles out your back window means they're "recycled" into a lovely pile that bindweed can "hide" for a couple months out of the year. Our household uses as little as possible of anything that even needs to be thrown out or recycled by any means other than our own compost -- so in our case we don't have the city cart off very much (our weekly garbage pick-up is rarely more than a third full can, sometimes entirely empty, & it's mildly annoying that those of us who DO NOT GENERATE much garbage have to pay the same rates as people who cram their cans full every week, most of it for a landfill). If you care about the environment, give up your car & whatever else generates huge amounts of difficult-to-recycle waste, but don't convince yourself that leaving parts of your car in the garden & trying to hide it with rhubarb is ecofriendly. Eco is not spelled u-g-l-y. They do not become your "trashoids" simply because they have discovered a good method to use for growing something in a tight space. The trashoids are in your mind. A couple things are just not rationally deniable, such as anyone who lines up "fancy" whiskey bottles of colored water in their window sills as "decorations," or uses tires for planters in their garden, really are going to be trash, even if most won't be able to know they're trash (or they wouldn't've mistaken old tires for a garden decorations to begin with). Some few are proud to be trash & good for them; if one's life is a living satire & that person knows it, that's just about admirable. But for most, the only question about the matter would be whether or not they are even MORE pathetic by having painted their garbagy tires white to "improve" the look. As well to stick little cocktail umbrellas in the dog's turds never cleaned out of the lawn, to make those nice yard decorations too. The only possible exception would be a garden intentionally automobile oriented. I visited a garden decorated with vintage gasoline pumps with lovely winding paths amidst beautiful shrubs. Being aesethetic people they did NOT include tire planters nor even rusty cars up on blocks -- but I could imagine how tires MIGHT have been used in that context (in a satiric manner at least) given their collection of gas-station kitsch & the gorgeous old gasoline pumps. -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/ |
#186
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
"Richard A. Lewis" wrote in message
It was once a common topic on the misc.survivalism group....how many acres would it take to grow a year's food and all that. The bottom line was that if you plan *nothing but a veggan diet*, you pretty much have resigned yourself to a slow death. Most of our folks had heard or believed that it was possible to grow enough food on an acre, but it never stood up to scrutiny. I have a feeling I just started the argument again on these cross-posted groups as well. You gardening folks have fun Oh for Heavens sake! You are being patronising and heading off the track into pure fantasy. Bucket asked about a self sufficient lifestyle. Bucket did NOT ask about a vegan lifestyle or what the many froot loops at misc.survivalism go on about when they congregate for a fantasy session. The "gardening folks" understand very well what work is involved in food production. Instead of simply chewing the fat and weaving the odd dream about how they might get or produce food when it comes to a survival situation, they actually do it (REGULARLY!!). We on ms had gone so far as to plan out and critique pretty much every possible diet and analized the requirements vs the benefits etc and we came out with, at most, two possible ones (nothing but grains and beans etc) and dozens of proven impossible ones. That is it precisely - planning and critiquing but not doing anything about producing food at all. I remember once asking how many gardeners there were in misc.survivalism and there were about 3 who admitted to it and a couple more who had had a garden in the past but not now. AND if one reads the posts in misc.survivalism it is clear that many have never been nearer to a food producing garden than a Municipal Park. As for how many who have ever been on a farm or to an abattoir or killed a hen then I think the mix of all those experiences would drop the numbers to perhaps one or two at the most. And if one adds in cooking or preserving............... 3 vegetable growers is an appalling figure for any group which aspires to survive anything worse than a mosquito bite. I stopped reading misc.survivalism some time back. Instead of finding a ng which SHOULD be an interesting group (since "survival" involves so many basic "homesteading skills"), it was a group dominated by a bunch of deranged nutters of limited life experieinces but a huge dose of paranoia and with a weapon fixation who tended to drown out the few who were worth reading and who had some relevant experience. One person, using a minimum 3,000 cal a day diet (necessary to produce those taters after all....gasoline engines don't last long in a survival situation) would have to eat between 12-15 pounds of taters per day depending on the type to get the necessary cals. Of course, as that one fellow pointed out above, you won't be trying to live on potatoes alone. We added spinach, onions, apples, corn, beans, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, peas, squash etc etc etc in equal amounts and in pretty much every case, the required poundage simply went up. (We tried that menu above and it came out to approx seventeen pounds a day if I recall correctly.) Given that small list of edibles there are clearly still very few gardeners and no permaculturists who post to misc.survivalism even now! Right about now, someone on the gardening groups will be typing out an irate "but my family did it during the Depression and I grew up just fine". Problem is that their families, just like the Irish, the Europeans, and the Russians (all limited diets) all survived by eating massive amounts of fat. Why do you reckon fried foods were and are so popular in the US? Why do you think the Russian moms will stand in line for four hours to buy a pound of lard sold as "sausage"? Linda H. hit that nail on the head. Bucket's original question said "I am willing to eat anything that is healthy, preferably remaining vegetarian (although I am quite willing to have chickens for eggs, and perhaps a goat for milk" and "I realise that the yearly food yield will have to be spread out via preserving, canning, etc." No mention of eating only spuds or even adding the odd cauliflower or bit of corn. Fantasy can be fun at times but all you are doing is restricting the topic to one hobby horse involving a restricted set of annual vegetables. Bucket asked a much more broadly based question. He/she states PREFERABLY vegetarian but since eggs and milk are included and it is only a "preference" then why restrict it to only annual veg and exclude a wider range of animals and perennial veg and tree crops? |
#187
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
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/ |
#188
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
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#189
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
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/ |
#190
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
In article , "Fran"
wrote: "paghat" wrote in message In article "Fran" wrote: [clips] I've grown spuds in tyres and I live in a house that friends who live in the city think is quite posh. So how often do you encounter this sort of thing? Or more to the point, why do you live in an area with such slummy places or go to such slummy places? Hey, YOU'RE the one who lives where it's "posh" to stack used tires in your front yard. You aren't reading what I wrote. I don't live where it is "posh" to grow spuds in tyres. I live in a house which others have described as "posh". I also happen to have grown potatoes in tyre stacks. I don't put these tyre stacks in my front yard. The previous poster did not mention growing spuds in tyres in his front yard either. You are the one that assumes that anyone who DOES grow spuds in tyres is a "trashoid". And you've reinforced the truth of it. When you said you "hide" the tires with other plants (such as rubarb, I'm sure that's a year-round disguise of a wondrous sort) you pretty much admitted even you can tell that a stack of tires in the yard still looks like garbage & needs to be hidden. So you lack sufficient aesthetic to care; I'm not saying people SHOULDN'T live like that, I'm just saying it takes trashoids to do so. But when I make a planter, or a trellis, or any garden ornamentation, it doesn't need to be hidden; if it slowly does vanish behind vines or shrubs, it wasn't because it was butt-ugly & needed hiding. As you said "spuds don't care where they grow" -- they certainly don't grow better because someone put them inside some trashy tires. Get the trash out of the yard & the plants will do just as well. Did you know old tires can leech enough zinc to kill some plants? Used tires are an enormous hazard to the environment -- but stacking them up in the gardens is not the answer to that problem. Spuds don't care where they grow The garbage dump wouldn't mind a few spuds either, or even some toxic waste for that matter! That comment is simply adding hysteria to stereotyping. Just in case you aren't aware of it, many tips (or dumps) around the world are now becoming very well cared for and have permananet tip attendants. These tip attendants often shred garden waste dumped in the tip and then compost it and either resell it to keen gardeners who know the value of recycling green waste or reuse it on beautification schemes in the dump. I know a great deal about recycling, but if you think keeping piles of tires in the yard is comparable to municiple composts, then there's just no easy communication between the earth I'm living on & your Tireland residence on Alpha Centauri. No one is compelling you to recycle anything but there is simply no call to leap to the worst possible scenario simply because someone does try to make use of discarded items. Keeping garbage in your yard is NOT recycling -- no more than tossing whiskey & beer bottles out your back window means they're "recycled" into a lovely pile that bindweed can "hide" for a couple months out of the year. Our household uses as little as possible of anything that even needs to be thrown out or recycled by any means other than our own compost -- so in our case we don't have the city cart off very much (our weekly garbage pick-up is rarely more than a third full can, sometimes entirely empty, & it's mildly annoying that those of us who DO NOT GENERATE much garbage have to pay the same rates as people who cram their cans full every week, most of it for a landfill). If you care about the environment, give up your car & whatever else generates huge amounts of difficult-to-recycle waste, but don't convince yourself that leaving parts of your car in the garden & trying to hide it with rhubarb is ecofriendly. Eco is not spelled u-g-l-y. They do not become your "trashoids" simply because they have discovered a good method to use for growing something in a tight space. The trashoids are in your mind. A couple things are just not rationally deniable, such as anyone who lines up "fancy" whiskey bottles of colored water in their window sills as "decorations," or uses tires for planters in their garden, really are going to be trash, even if most won't be able to know they're trash (or they wouldn't've mistaken old tires for a garden decorations to begin with). Some few are proud to be trash & good for them; if one's life is a living satire & that person knows it, that's just about admirable. But for most, the only question about the matter would be whether or not they are even MORE pathetic by having painted their garbagy tires white to "improve" the look. As well to stick little cocktail umbrellas in the dog's turds never cleaned out of the lawn, to make those nice yard decorations too. The only possible exception would be a garden intentionally automobile oriented. I visited a garden decorated with vintage gasoline pumps with lovely winding paths amidst beautiful shrubs. Being aesethetic people they did NOT include tire planters nor even rusty cars up on blocks -- but I could imagine how tires MIGHT have been used in that context (in a satiric manner at least) given their collection of gas-station kitsch & the gorgeous old gasoline pumps. -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/ |
#191
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
"Fran" wrote:
Oh for Heavens sake! You are being patronising and heading off the track into pure fantasy. Bucket asked about a self sufficient lifestyle. Bucket did NOT ask about a vegan lifestyle or what the many froot loops at misc.survivalism go on about when they congregate for a fantasy session. Sorry, Fran. I don't know who the hell "Bucket" is nor do I really care. I was replying to Dan, Linda, Noah, Gunner etc. Snipped a bunch of useless bullshit.... I remember once asking how many gardeners there were in misc.survivalism and there were about 3 who admitted to it Ask how many gardeners in your group know how to treat a colicky mare or how to go about butchering a hog and I'd venture a guess that not many care to know. One such as yourself could argue that it's "a part of farming".... In misc.survivalism, only the absolute hardcore folks bother to plan or prep for your Doomsday....most, plan and prep for the next blizzard or thunderstorm etc. Snipped more useless garbage.... Right about now, someone on the gardening groups will be typing out an irate "but my family did it during the Depression and I grew up just fine". Nuff said. More garbage snipped.... No mention of eating only spuds or even adding the odd cauliflower or bit of corn. Fantasy can be fun at times but all you are doing is restricting the topic to one hobby horse involving a restricted set of annual vegetables. No....I was answering a fellow who made the implied claim that growing a year's worth of food in a garden was easy. Was I wrong? ral |
#192
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#193
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
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#194
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
"Fran" wrote:
Boy, I don't think I've ever seen anyone drop so quickly into stereotyping about such a simple thing. I have. Happened in one of the subs of this thread just above. Think it was written by you, in fact. ral |
#195
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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement?
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/ |
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