"North" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 22:34:07 -0600, "Bob Peterson"
said:


"North" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 02:10:31 GMT, KB9WFK said:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:50:33 GMT, (dstvns) wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:42:22 GMT, (Richard A.
Lewis) wrote:

On a 3,000-4,000cal diet, you'll need to eat approximately 12 pounds
of potatoes per day just to maintain your body weight. Add in the
artichokes, if they're of a comparable cal level as the taters, and
you got just over two days of food before you start starving.

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day?

And of those that did, how many would try to get all of those calories
from a single food source like potatos? I just pray for their sake
that they don't try to raise a lone crop of Habanero peppers. I don't
know how many pounds of those you would have to choke down per day but
I think spontanious human combustion would be the result. :-)


There is a way to get your cals from taters and other veggies, simply
fry them in lard, or fat, even veggie oil.

Another way is to eat some taters with a hamburger.

By frying the veggies in fat, you change everything.


The problem is where do you get the fats? the nuts that think you can
live
off a small garden are just dreaming. you can't do it without a lot of
back
breaking work, and even then the diet is poor and you run the risk of
health
problems from poor diet.

better to figure in a lot of animal protein and fat as a big chunk of
your
diet. much easier than trying to eat 20 pounds of cauliflower every day.

A small garden, NO. A small farm, doable, however you are not going
work a 40/hr per week job and run a farm alone. With a spouce and kids
(helpers) maybe.

Anyone who would try to eat 20 pounds of cauliflower would be foolish,
but a 1 or 2 cup sized serving of cauliflower with butter and topped
with cheese would cover the CAL needs and be very tasty.

The reason I say that living off a small farm would be doable is:
A garden and livestock can provide enough food but is very hard work.
You would not be able to produce enough butter and cheese out of 3
goats, however you could with 10. You could not produce enough eggs
with 2 or 3 chickens, but you could with 20.
Its all in how you prepare your veggies as to the CAL count.
As far as potatoes, it would take 17 pounds of potatoes to meet to
2000 or so CALs needed for daily life, however you would only need 2
or 3 pounds of potatoes friedinfat to meet the same CAL count.

Another reason why I say a small farm is doable is because most
familys 100+ years ago lived soly off of the things they grew and
produced from their small farms.

Adding butter and cheese to veggies is the best way to increase the
CAL count, and its how the irish and others made it.


However, the OP (and several subsequent posters) seemed to indicate no need
for animal products. This is just totally unrealistic in my view.

"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

"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

"North" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 22:34:07 -0600, "Bob Peterson"
said:


"North" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 02:10:31 GMT, KB9WFK said:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:50:33 GMT, (dstvns) wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:42:22 GMT, (Richard A.
Lewis) wrote:

On a 3,000-4,000cal diet, you'll need to eat approximately 12 pounds
of potatoes per day just to maintain your body weight. Add in the
artichokes, if they're of a comparable cal level as the taters, and
you got just over two days of food before you start starving.

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day?

And of those that did, how many would try to get all of those calories
from a single food source like potatos? I just pray for their sake
that they don't try to raise a lone crop of Habanero peppers. I don't
know how many pounds of those you would have to choke down per day but
I think spontanious human combustion would be the result. :-)


There is a way to get your cals from taters and other veggies, simply
fry them in lard, or fat, even veggie oil.

Another way is to eat some taters with a hamburger.

By frying the veggies in fat, you change everything.


The problem is where do you get the fats? the nuts that think you can
live
off a small garden are just dreaming. you can't do it without a lot of
back
breaking work, and even then the diet is poor and you run the risk of
health
problems from poor diet.

better to figure in a lot of animal protein and fat as a big chunk of
your
diet. much easier than trying to eat 20 pounds of cauliflower every day.

A small garden, NO. A small farm, doable, however you are not going
work a 40/hr per week job and run a farm alone. With a spouce and kids
(helpers) maybe.

Anyone who would try to eat 20 pounds of cauliflower would be foolish,
but a 1 or 2 cup sized serving of cauliflower with butter and topped
with cheese would cover the CAL needs and be very tasty.

The reason I say that living off a small farm would be doable is:
A garden and livestock can provide enough food but is very hard work.
You would not be able to produce enough butter and cheese out of 3
goats, however you could with 10. You could not produce enough eggs
with 2 or 3 chickens, but you could with 20.
Its all in how you prepare your veggies as to the CAL count.
As far as potatoes, it would take 17 pounds of potatoes to meet to
2000 or so CALs needed for daily life, however you would only need 2
or 3 pounds of potatoes friedinfat to meet the same CAL count.

Another reason why I say a small farm is doable is because most
familys 100+ years ago lived soly off of the things they grew and
produced from their small farms.

Adding butter and cheese to veggies is the best way to increase the
CAL count, and its how the irish and others made it.


However, the OP (and several subsequent posters) seemed to indicate no need
for animal products. This is just totally unrealistic in my view.

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:50:33 GMT, (dstvns) wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:42:22 GMT, (Richard A.
Lewis) wrote:

On a 3,000-4,000cal diet, you'll need to eat approximately 12 pounds
of potatoes per day just to maintain your body weight. Add in the
artichokes, if they're of a comparable cal level as the taters, and
you got just over two days of food before you start starving.

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day?

I doubt if many people trying to live a self-sufficient lifestyle would.

A thanksgiving dinner is
2000. Are you going on personal experience with calorie intake? I
would hate to have you as a dependent.

By the way, thanks for being a regular ray of sunshine, I didn't know
there was gonna be a pop quiz on this. As I said in my first post, I
DONT KNOW how many acres require self-sufficiency.

The above posts are not necessarily indicative of the typical replies seen in
misc. survivalism.

It is easier to fight for our principles than to live up to them.-Alfred Adler

(Tallgrass) wrote in message . com...
(Edgar S.) wrote in message . com...snipped

Even just a dozen tire stacks with home raised potatoes would be nice
to have and takes little effort.
snipped again

Tire stacks....what are these, adn how does one work with them?

stack them up, fill with compost. As I understand it, u harvest the
spuds by removing one tire at a time. The tire stack saves space and
conserves water. Water evaporates off the stacks more slowly than it
does off the ground.

While the tires indeed would be ugly to look at out in the open, it
would not be too difficult to plant something in front of them... or
put them behind some kind of facade.... maybe a rammed earth wall in
front with access to the tire stack from the rear.

Having MULTIPLE dumped tires in my creekbed, I would love to find a
use for them, once I pull them up the ravine!

And a refrigerator....any suggestions, other than an aquarium?
Planter? Other?

My father used his old 'fridge as a tool chest. It worked very well
and was handy. The shelves remained in place. The tool shop was very
neat.

(dstvns) wrote in message ...

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day? A thanksgiving dinner is
2000. Are you going on personal experience with calorie intake? I
would hate to have you as a dependent.

By the way, thanks for being a regular ray of sunshine, I didn't know
there was gonna be a pop quiz on this. As I said in my first post, I
DONT KNOW how many acres require self-sufficiency.

Dan

It's not that hard to burn that many calories when using hand tools,
bucking bales, turning soil by hand, and especially if cutting lumber.

Most people will not eat all of that in carbohydrates, tho, but make
up a fair amount of those calories in animal fat. Bacon, butter,
gravy, lard used in cooking.

One can find caloric requirements of particular job types. It is very
interesting to read.

Linda H., M.D.

(dstvns) wrote in message ...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 04:26:33 GMT, (Richard
Lewis) wrote:

You have looked at the calorie levels of that garlic and those
tomatoes, right? What you grew on 400 square feet will do nothing but
slow your starvation by a slight bit.

Oh I forgot...15 pounds of potatoes on an extra 30 square feet, plus
just as many Jerusalem artichokes in the same amount of space on the
other side of the yard. Hows 30 pounds of starch in an extra 60
square feet?

Dan

Build up, not out with tire stacks. Grow potatoes, jerusalem
artichokes, and other root veggies.

But isn't it possible to grow oil-producing plants, like peanuts or
sunflowers or canola, and get calory-rich oils from them?

"Richard A. Lewis" wrote in message
ink.net...
(Tallgrass) wrote:

It's not that hard to burn that many calories when using hand tools,
bucking bales, turning soil by hand, and especially if cutting lumber.

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

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.

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.)

""If you add corn to that diet of taters in equal proportions, you
come
out with a diet that consists of 17 large ears of corn and 13 potatoes
to make 3000 calories a day. Want to know how much that weighs?""

It's thus not a question of how much food you have to grow, it's a
question of how much food you have to eat and *NOBODY* can live by
eating fifteen pounds of veggies a day.

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.

ral

Most people will not eat all of that in carbohydrates, tho, but make
up a fair amount of those calories in animal fat. Bacon, butter,
gravy, lard used in cooking.

One can find caloric requirements of particular job types. It is very
interesting to read.

Linda H., M.D.

But isn't it possible to grow oil-producing plants, like peanuts or
sunflowers or canola, and get calory-rich oils from them?

"Richard A. Lewis" wrote in message
ink.net...
(Tallgrass) wrote:

It's not that hard to burn that many calories when using hand tools,
bucking bales, turning soil by hand, and especially if cutting lumber.

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

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.

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.)

""If you add corn to that diet of taters in equal proportions, you
come
out with a diet that consists of 17 large ears of corn and 13 potatoes
to make 3000 calories a day. Want to know how much that weighs?""

It's thus not a question of how much food you have to grow, it's a
question of how much food you have to eat and *NOBODY* can live by
eating fifteen pounds of veggies a day.

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.

ral

Most people will not eat all of that in carbohydrates, tho, but make
up a fair amount of those calories in animal fat. Bacon, butter,
gravy, lard used in cooking.

One can find caloric requirements of particular job types. It is very
interesting to read.

Linda H., M.D.

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:50:33 GMT, (dstvns) wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 01:42:22 GMT, (Richard A.
Lewis) wrote:

On a 3,000-4,000cal diet, you'll need to eat approximately 12 pounds
of potatoes per day just to maintain your body weight. Add in the
artichokes, if they're of a comparable cal level as the taters, and
you got just over two days of food before you start starving.

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day?

I doubt if many people trying to live a self-sufficient lifestyle would.

A thanksgiving dinner is
2000. Are you going on personal experience with calorie intake? I
would hate to have you as a dependent.

By the way, thanks for being a regular ray of sunshine, I didn't know
there was gonna be a pop quiz on this. As I said in my first post, I
DONT KNOW how many acres require self-sufficiency.

The above posts are not necessarily indicative of the typical replies seen in
misc. survivalism.

It is easier to fight for our principles than to live up to them.-Alfred Adler

In Iraq you need a hole in the ground and $750,000.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.



Ian Stirling wrote in message ...
In misc.survivalism Down Under On The Bucket Farm wrote:
Hi Everybody,

I am working on long-term plans for self-sufficiency, oriented to
buying some bare land and building an off-grid house, rainwater
catchment, composting toilet, etc, etc.

One issue is the question of how much physical space would be
needed to grow enough food to completely support myself?

The answer kind of depends if you'r in the middle of the Amazon, Antarctica,
or Austria.

In Iraq you need a hole in the ground and $750,000.
--
Gene Seibel
Hangar 131 - http://pad39a.com/gene/plane.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.



Ian Stirling wrote in message ...
In misc.survivalism Down Under On The Bucket Farm wrote:
Hi Everybody,

I am working on long-term plans for self-sufficiency, oriented to
buying some bare land and building an off-grid house, rainwater
catchment, composting toilet, etc, etc.

One issue is the question of how much physical space would be
needed to grow enough food to completely support myself?

The answer kind of depends if you'r in the middle of the Amazon, Antarctica,
or Austria.

(Tallgrass) wrote in message . com...
(Edgar S.) wrote in message . com...snipped

Even just a dozen tire stacks with home raised potatoes would be nice
to have and takes little effort.
snipped again

Tire stacks....what are these, adn how does one work with them?

stack them up, fill with compost. As I understand it, u harvest the
spuds by removing one tire at a time. The tire stack saves space and
conserves water. Water evaporates off the stacks more slowly than it
does off the ground.

While the tires indeed would be ugly to look at out in the open, it
would not be too difficult to plant something in front of them... or
put them behind some kind of facade.... maybe a rammed earth wall in
front with access to the tire stack from the rear.

Having MULTIPLE dumped tires in my creekbed, I would love to find a
use for them, once I pull them up the ravine!

And a refrigerator....any suggestions, other than an aquarium?
Planter? Other?

My father used his old 'fridge as a tool chest. It worked very well
and was handy. The shelves remained in place. The tool shop was very
neat.

(dstvns) wrote in message ...

Who the hell eats 4 thousand calories a day? A thanksgiving dinner is
2000. Are you going on personal experience with calorie intake? I
would hate to have you as a dependent.

By the way, thanks for being a regular ray of sunshine, I didn't know
there was gonna be a pop quiz on this. As I said in my first post, I
DONT KNOW how many acres require self-sufficiency.

Dan

It's not that hard to burn that many calories when using hand tools,
bucking bales, turning soil by hand, and especially if cutting lumber.

Most people will not eat all of that in carbohydrates, tho, but make
up a fair amount of those calories in animal fat. Bacon, butter,
gravy, lard used in cooking.

One can find caloric requirements of particular job types. It is very
interesting to read.

Linda H., M.D.