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/

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:09:00 +1100, "Fran"
wrote:

"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.

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.

Au contraire. Richard presented quite a few examples and numbers. The
original question, like so many others that generate a lot of
interesting discussion, is a nuanced one. What does "self-sufficient"
mean? A hunter/gatherer nomadic existance? *Entirely* depending on
one's own efforts to live without any transactions with others? Bucket
mentioned vegetarian (not vegan) and telecommuting. So we can assume
he uses money, and is just looking to produce much of his own food. As
has been pointed out a number of times. a vegetarian diet with
sufficient calories to sustain life would be *very* difficult for one
person to achieve *on his own*. He may well be able to grow (and
preserve) enough veg to eliminate the need for store-bought. He *will*
have to have canning supplies, an energy source for canning, and time
to do that work. Veg provide nutrition, but not many calories. It
isn't the potato, it's the sour cream and butter. :-) Fats and sugars
are calorie-dense foods. He proposed goats and chickens for milk and
eggs, but they're labor-intensive food suppliers, and *also* require
their own food.

I wonder if there are *any* modern examples of true individual
self-sufficiency.

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

American nutrition labels are based on a 2,000 cal/day diet, which is,
I presume, a *very* rough average for a moderately active adult --
i.e., not bedridden but not out plowing, either. Tour de France
bicyclists consume 5-9,000 calories per day just to stay even. 3 to
4,000 calories for someone engaged in 8 or more hours of vigorous
physical activity, like farmwork, is more than reasonable.

BTW, the edible part of an artichoke contains practically no calories
at all. It's the melted butter or mayonnaise sauce. :-)

"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

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/

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

American nutrition labels are based on a 2,000 cal/day diet, which is,
I presume, a *very* rough average for a moderately active adult --
i.e., not bedridden but not out plowing, either. Tour de France
bicyclists consume 5-9,000 calories per day just to stay even. 3 to
4,000 calories for someone engaged in 8 or more hours of vigorous
physical activity, like farmwork, is more than reasonable.

BTW, the edible part of an artichoke contains practically no calories
at all. It's the melted butter or mayonnaise sauce. :-)

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:09:00 +1100, "Fran"
wrote:

"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.

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.

Au contraire. Richard presented quite a few examples and numbers. The
original question, like so many others that generate a lot of
interesting discussion, is a nuanced one. What does "self-sufficient"
mean? A hunter/gatherer nomadic existance? *Entirely* depending on
one's own efforts to live without any transactions with others? Bucket
mentioned vegetarian (not vegan) and telecommuting. So we can assume
he uses money, and is just looking to produce much of his own food. As
has been pointed out a number of times. a vegetarian diet with
sufficient calories to sustain life would be *very* difficult for one
person to achieve *on his own*. He may well be able to grow (and
preserve) enough veg to eliminate the need for store-bought. He *will*
have to have canning supplies, an energy source for canning, and time
to do that work. Veg provide nutrition, but not many calories. It
isn't the potato, it's the sour cream and butter. :-) Fats and sugars
are calorie-dense foods. He proposed goats and chickens for milk and
eggs, but they're labor-intensive food suppliers, and *also* require
their own food.

I wonder if there are *any* modern examples of true individual
self-sufficiency.

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.

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.

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 06:28:07 -0600, "Bob Peterson"
wrote:


"North" wrote

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.

Not true. With very few exceptions, people have *always* traded what
they had excess of for what they did not produce. *Communities* have
been self sufficient, owing to cooperation and specialization among
the group. The "ideal" early American farm traded grain for milled
flour, animal skins for metal implements, wood for meat. Or meat for
wood. They had to buy or trade for salt, sugar, much clothing, etc.

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

Butter and cheese imply a dairy operation. More work, and more need
for animal food supplies. The Irish diet before the potato famine was
far from dairy-rich. And not exactly the nutritionally-complete
regimen anyone would care to try today. One can stay alive for quite
some time on nutritionally-deficient diets. Not healthy, but alive.
Your teeth and hair fall out, and your legs bow, but you're still
alive. This is not exactly a picture of home-grown bliss.

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

The OP *did* mention goats for milk and chickens for eggs. More feed;
more work.

"Andrew Ostrander" wrote in message
...
But isn't it possible to grow oil-producing plants, like peanuts or
sunflowers or canola, and get calory-rich oils from them?
====================
Sure, but then you're taking up space and time needed to grow the food
you'll need to survvive the year. It's far easier to get the fats from an
animal source. In some cases not much work or time is needed at all.




"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.

(Richard A. Lewis) wrote in message link.net...

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

I have a feeling your argument does not stand up. At least here in the
US, the caloric production per acre is close to 12-15000 calories per
day for a whole year (and indeed US vegans do survive on far less than
1 acre). Perhaps you are posting from Australia, but who says the soil
needs to be turned? Who says that you have perforce to grow low-fat
foods, when, say, chickpeas, oats, acorns all have 20% fat, and
hazelnuts, walnuts, soybeans or sunflowers provide much more?