"Richard Lewis" wrote in message
(George Cleveland) wrote:

Jeez, I don't see that at all. The guy is keeping his day job. He can do
it
from home via a satellite link up. He just wants to know what he would
need
to keep himself in food and off the treadmill of consumerism. Noble
goals,
although the slant towards isolation is a bit worrying

Really? The post I saw was about a guy building his own off-grid
house on his own land and going totally self-sufficient.

You are both reading into the original post something that was not there.

The "slant towards isolation" is an interpretation and was not mentioned as
is the "guy building his own off-grid house".

Andrew may or may not intend to build and he may or may not intend to seek
isolation but he certainly didn't mention doing either thing. It is still
very possible in NZ to have a house built by a reasonably traditional
builder, to be off the grid and collect one's own water off the roof to
have a septic toilet (or even a composting toilet) and still live a full and
active socially involved life.

"Noah Simoneaux" wrote in message
...

I've noticed that many gardening books ignore potatoes, since they're so
cheap
to buy in the store it just doesn't pay to grow them at home. Just try
finding
some of the better varieties for home gardeners and taste them and the
store-bought potatoes will never taste the same for you. I've done that
with
tomatoes.

I think I'd ditch those gardening books as they are don't seem to know much
about a very important subject :-))

Having just looked through some of my books I notice that a lot of them that
I use most regularly emphasise the importance of growing even a few potatoes
in even a restricted garden space. These books all seem to stress the same
point which I find of most importance: - that it is impossible to buy a
decent potato in any supermarket and finding a good spud is a very hard task
if one doesn't have a garden.

I have found one shop which does supply good potatoes (in a very large
regional hunt) and they are still in the hessian (burlap) bag that comes
from the grower. It is a matter of digging in and getting ones hands dirty
in order to get the potatoes but they ARE good potoatoes (unlike anything
that comes in a plastic bag).

(paghat) writes:

It seems strange to me that "normal" people so rarely buy into the
self-sufficient cooperative idea. It's so often either antisemitic
klan types trying to get away from the mark-of-cain ******s &
world-taking-over yids, armed to the teeth & waiting for the Feds to
break down the doors & kill everyone; or else complete stoners who
never outgrew the far-out-man hippy era or wish they lived in an L-5
[..]

....or, say, much of India.

--
mike [at] mike [dash] warren.com
URL:http://www.mike-warren.com
GPG: 0x579911BD :: 87F2 4D98 BDB0 0E90 EE2A 0CF9 1087 0884 5799 11BD

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:16:55 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:



North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:28:30 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:


snipped all the the stuff

The Independent

Your getting better at this ;-)

You know you should read a little before you accept all the bull
shit that RAL puts out. (That is assuming that he and you
are not the same person.)

The Independent

Sorry, but my flaming you has nothing to do with RAL.
Had you been paying attention in past replys, you will find many times
where I agree with you on many aspects. I just don't get caught up in
all the TEOTWIDIOT crap.

Instead of throwing a temper, you used the facts that I posted against
me. Well done !!

Here's my over all point. When you write a post and make claims, if
you do not wish to get stepped on, for being a braggart,
post a 'few' links to data to support your claim. Thats why when I
posted the goat FAQ, I put "FWIW" (I wanted to see if you were paying
attantion :-))
Understand my giving you shit, is all in good clean fun, its not
personal. Only meant to spark up even further discussion.

All the best,
North.

"paghat" wrote in message

It would be
nice if regular sober middle-of-the-road folks with NEITHER the cultic
eco-jargon nor the fear/hate agenda could have rural eco-friendly dreams &
then really achieve them, but one rarely sees that; if it exists it
doesn't advertise itself as loudly.

There are plenty of people like that. Perhaps not in the US but at least 3
other countries I can think of have lots of people like that.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:16:55 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:



North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:28:30 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:
(That is assuming that he and you
are not the same person.)

Learn to operate that computer Jim. Learn to read headers.

Here was a project to determine self sufficient needs and work. Done at UC
Santa Cruz. Even in California he came up a few months short of a years
supply. They say mainly because of a bad potato crop. But, it was only a
4500 sqaure foot garden. It lists the crops, the area planted in square
feet and the yields in pounds per crop. Should give you a good idea of the
size and numbers you might need.

http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html.






"Down Under On The Bucket Farm" wrote in message
...
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?

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.)

This would involve one person living alone, in decent physical
condition, willing to do hard work and learn whatever is needed.

I realise that the yearly food yield will have to be spread out
via preserving, canning, etc.

My "day job" can be done remotely, via wireless Internet
connection, with flexible hours, thus leaving time and
opportunity for extensive gardening/farming, etc.

I do understand the risk of, for example, having a bad year, bad
weather, etc, and so would have money set aside to buy food in
that case. But the plan is to avoid that if at all possible.

I live in New Zealand, with plenty of rain in winter, but also
reasonable sunshine in summer.

So... How many acres of flat, farm-able land will I need?


Thanks in advance!

-V.

--
Guide To DIY Living
http://www.self-reliance.co.nz
(Work in progress)

Here's another site that gives yields in pounds for a given area and number
of plants.

http://www.foodforeveryone.org/garde...s/yields.shtml








"Down Under On The Bucket Farm" wrote in message
...
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?

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.)

This would involve one person living alone, in decent physical
condition, willing to do hard work and learn whatever is needed.

I realise that the yearly food yield will have to be spread out
via preserving, canning, etc.

My "day job" can be done remotely, via wireless Internet
connection, with flexible hours, thus leaving time and
opportunity for extensive gardening/farming, etc.

I do understand the risk of, for example, having a bad year, bad
weather, etc, and so would have money set aside to buy food in
that case. But the plan is to avoid that if at all possible.

I live in New Zealand, with plenty of rain in winter, but also
reasonable sunshine in summer.

So... How many acres of flat, farm-able land will I need?


Thanks in advance!

-V.

--
Guide To DIY Living
http://www.self-reliance.co.nz
(Work in progress)

"Fran" wrote in message
u...
"Noah Simoneaux" wrote in message
...

I've noticed that many gardening books ignore potatoes, since they're so
cheap
to buy in the store it just doesn't pay to grow them at home. Just try
finding
some of the better varieties for home gardeners and taste them and the
store-bought potatoes will never taste the same for you. I've done that
with
tomatoes.

I think I'd ditch those gardening books as they are don't seem to know
much
about a very important subject :-))

Having just looked through some of my books I notice that a lot of them
that
I use most regularly emphasise the importance of growing even a few
potatoes
in even a restricted garden space. These books all seem to stress the
same
point which I find of most importance: - that it is impossible to buy a
decent potato in any supermarket and finding a good spud is a very hard
task
if one doesn't have a garden.

I have found one shop which does supply good potatoes (in a very large
regional hunt) and they are still in the hessian (burlap) bag that comes
from the grower. It is a matter of digging in and getting ones hands
dirty
in order to get the potatoes but they ARE good potoatoes (unlike anything
that comes in a plastic bag).

Another good reason to plant potatos is that they are a good way to
condition the soil. They have a lot of foiliage, and after they start to
grow nothing grow under them and the underground growth opens up the soil.
We always planted potatoes where we had weed problems the year before
because they were so good at crowding out the weeds. And home grown
potatoes ar emuch better than store bought for some reason. At least so i
recall.

North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:16:55 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:



North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:28:30 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:
(That is assuming that he and you
are not the same person.)

Learn to operate that computer Jim. Learn to read headers.

Hay any body can have a hot mail account and send mail from that
account
to hide his native email account. That is a old troll trick from
way
back. Have you native email account, then have a hot mail
account, a
america online account, have a IBM account, etc., etc.

That way you can post and answer it from 6 or 7 different accounts
so
no one know that your are the same person. Like I said an old
troll
trick and I don't put stock in anything anyone says that hides
behind
a unreachable address.

Since your writing style is like RAL and you bow and pray to every
utterance of RAL I suspect that you are RAL.

In to the kill file with yea.
The Independent

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 11:49:10 +1100, "Fran"
wrote:

The "slant towards isolation" is an interpretation and was not mentioned as
is the "guy building his own off-grid house".

Andrew may or may not intend to build and he may or may not intend to seek
isolation but he certainly didn't mention doing either thing. It is still
very possible in NZ to have a house built by a reasonably traditional
builder, to be off the grid and collect one's own water off the roof to
have a septic toilet (or even a composting toilet) and still live a full and
active socially involved life.

As did Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond.

He frequently walked into town to see family and friends, and people
visited him at the cabin.

He also would chat with the crews of the trains that passed nearby.

But for the most part, the food he ate was food he grew himself, and
he was able to devote a good deal of time to writing, the point of the
whole exercise.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)
------------------------------------------------
at the 51st percentile of ursine intelligence

Gary D. Schwartz, Needham, MA, USA
Please reply to: garyDOTschwartzATpoboxDOTcom

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 18:19:56 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:



North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:16:55 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:



North wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 11:28:30 -0800, Jim Dauven
said:
(That is assuming that he and you
are not the same person.)

Learn to operate that computer Jim. Learn to read headers.

Hay any body can have a hot mail account and send mail from that
account
to hide his native email account. That is a old troll trick from
way
back. Have you native email account, then have a hot mail
account, a
america online account, have a IBM account, etc., etc.

That way you can post and answer it from 6 or 7 different accounts
so
no one know that your are the same person. Like I said an old
troll
trick and I don't put stock in anything anyone says that hides
behind
a unreachable address.

Since your writing style is like RAL and you bow and pray to every
utterance of RAL I suspect that you are RAL.

In to the kill file with yea.
The Independent


Learn to read NNTP: posting hosts.
Damn dude, you sure are dence, if you think I write like RAL.
I can't help it if someone else, such as RAL, or anyother person calls
you out on your stupidity. And fwiw, my real addy has been posted to
the group, learn to use google, idiot.

North.

Charles Scripter wrote:

But if you treat these as "vitamins", and grow your _real_food_
elsewhere...

Then that 400 square feet begins to look pretty ridiculous in the
total, doesn't it? It still gets added into the total land you're
working and it makes the previous poster look pretty stupid for
suggesting it, Charles.

ral

--
Charles Scripter * Use this address to reply: cescript at progworks dot net
When encryption is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir rapelcgvba.
Note: my responses may be slow due to ISP/newsgroup issues

North wrote:

Here's my over all point.

Here's mine, since no one as of yet seems to have caught it....

The idiot made the claim that "three goats would keep you in
meat"....but then goes on to edit that into "a herd of 16 will keep
you in meat as long as you avoid eating meat for at least a year".

It's hard for them to reproduce if you're eating them.

The idiot then goes further to claim that the same three goats will
"keep you in milk"....but then goes on to edit that into "a herd of 16
will keep you in milk as long as you avoid all milk from them for at
least a year".

It's hard for them to reproduce when you're taking all the milk.

I really love the fact that not one "fact" cited be the idiot has
stood up to examination without being changed once being called on it.
Three goats became four and then sixteen....average weights went up
and down (he finally said he has pygmy goats and claims they range in
weight from 60-150 pounds, breed all year, and are absolutely trouble
free.

Pygmy goats almost never get above 70 pounds (45-60 is average), are
very prone to freezing and illness due to weather (they were bred in
desert Afrika), and will begin to modify their reproduction rate to
fit any other goat in a non-equatorial climate within three to five
years (do the research, idiot).

There is a reason why pygmy goats are almost exclusively used as pets
in the US and it isn't because it's they're supergoats that make the
rest feel bad due to inadequacies.

His original claim that "three goats will keep you in meat and milk"
for the average survivalist/minimalist lifestyle has thus become
"become a goatherd and maintain a minimum of 16 goats to keep yourself
in meat and milk".

ral

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:53:33 GMT, (Richard A.
Lewis) said:

North wrote:

Here's my over all point.

Here's mine, since no one as of yet seems to have caught it....

AH hell, you can't for trying to hold to retards hand.
And look where it gets me, he thinks I'm you... jezz
what a ****ing retard, in fact the funniest thing I have read all
month.