(George Cleveland) wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:44:09 GMT, (Richard Lewis)
wrote:

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

Here's the quote from the original post:

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

No idea, George.

The first post in the thread here on MS is....

"""On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 06:56:32 -0800, 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."""

That's it in its entirety.

ral

"Fran" wrote:

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".

As I said, the original post as seen here in misc.survivalism was....

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.

The post does in fact state "long-term plans for self-sufficiency" as
well as "building an off-grid house".

I can only reply to what I read.

ral

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:53:33 GMT, Richard A. Lewis wrote:


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


Doesn't it take at least 40 of them to prevent genetic deterioration?

Keeping that many animals safe from predators and rustlers and from just
wandering off, milking X number of them every day at dawn and dusk, keeping
them out of his gardens and supplies and the acres of winter fodder that
he'll have to grow, processing everything he harvests from them so that it
will keep, preventing all the females from being pregnant all the time....
Does he know how destructive these animals are to the land and therefore
how many acres it will take to feed them, shifting them from one area to
the next on a regular schedule to keep them from destroying whatever
area they are in?

Is he going to *fence* all that land (8' fences *might* do it) or keep the
whole herd on tethers?

Does he know how hard it is to make a goat do something it doesn't want to do?
Or not-do anything it *wants* to do?

I wonder just who it is that is going to be doing the *other* 500 jobs
that a truly self-sufficient homestead is going to require?

-dir

--
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making
of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Abraham Lincoln

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 05:37:32 GMT, David I. Raines
said:

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 04:53:33 GMT, Richard A. Lewis wrote:


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


Doesn't it take at least 40 of them to prevent genetic deterioration?

Keeping that many animals safe from predators and rustlers and from just
wandering off, milking X number of them every day at dawn and dusk, keeping
them out of his gardens and supplies and the acres of winter fodder that
he'll have to grow, processing everything he harvests from them so that it
will keep, preventing all the females from being pregnant all the time....
Does he know how destructive these animals are to the land and therefore
how many acres it will take to feed them, shifting them from one area to
the next on a regular schedule to keep them from destroying whatever
area they are in?

Is he going to *fence* all that land (8' fences *might* do it) or keep the
whole herd on tethers?

Does he know how hard it is to make a goat do something it doesn't want to do?
Or not-do anything it *wants* to do?

I wonder just who it is that is going to be doing the *other* 500 jobs
that a truly self-sufficient homestead is going to require?

-dir
You haven't got a ****ing clue do you sockpuppet ?
You're starting to sound like your old self alan.
Eight foot fence huh ? I see you have never been out of the city and
seen a farm. Do a bit of research and get out more, before you make a
complete fool of yourself, moron.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 05:17:44 GMT, (Richard A. Lewis)
wrote:

"Fran" wrote:

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".

As I said, the original post as seen here in misc.survivalism was....

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.

The post does in fact state "long-term plans for self-sufficiency" as
well as "building an off-grid house".

I can only reply to what I read.

ral


Ah, the joys of cross posting.

g.c.

"rick etter" wrote in message ...
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







Did you take a look at how much time was spent on this project? I
don't doubt it took every minute he admitted to. If you think self
suffiency is for you think about the amount of effort just to grow
enough food to starve.

If you translate this to a real life situation where you have 10 hours
a day worth of other work to do just to survive, its clear that this
type of arrangement is only for desperation mode, and even then you
probably cannot do it alone.

Jonathan Ball wrote:

I'm reading this in misc.rural, where people frequently
inquire about living "off the grid". I think they are,
for the most part, overly taken with the American
frontier mythology. They all want to be Jim Bridger or
Kit Carson. I have no doubt that if a Wenzel propane
stove (http://tinyurl.com/ytfl) had been available in
their time, Bridger and Carson would have used them.

So you've formed an opinion about off-gridders based on misc.rural
postings? That makes a lot of sense in an
I-read-that-you-can-get-spray-hair-in-a-can sorta' way. So keep
posting, your thoughts on the subject must be useful for something.

Wayne

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 11:59:11 +1100, "Fran"
wrote:

"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 :-))

Now I wouldn't be that hasty to ditch those books.
One of my favorites, Square Foot Gardening ignores potatoes. I did make up for
that by finding a whole book on potatoes.
(snip)


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

I have read the the self-sufficiency requirements and have
noticed some inconsistencies. The all talk about being a
vegetarian but they seem to ignore that they are wearing
leather shoes, and cotton or wool clothing.

If they are indeed self sufficient then perhaps the should
be raising livestock for wool, fleece, and leather.

Also the intensive cultivation of the land will require the
use of fertilizer and I have seen no one post about the
cultivation of nitrogen fixing plants.

I think that a lot of this self-sufficiency is more dreaming
than actual fact. Any one who lives off he land knows that
land and water are things that you cannot have enough of.

The Independent

wmbjk wrote:

Jonathan Ball wrote:

I'm reading this in misc.rural, where people frequently
inquire about living "off the grid". I think they are,
for the most part, overly taken with the American
frontier mythology. They all want to be Jim Bridger or
Kit Carson. I have no doubt that if a Wenzel propane
stove (http://tinyurl.com/ytfl) had been available in
their time, Bridger and Carson would have used them.

So you've formed an opinion about off-gridders based on misc.rural
postings? That makes a lot of sense in an
I-read-that-you-can-get-spray-hair-in-a-can sorta' way. So keep
posting, your thoughts on the subject must be useful for something.

Wayne

In article ,
says...
Did you take a look at how much time was spent on this project? I
don't doubt it took every minute he admitted to. If you think self
suffiency is for you think about the amount of effort just to grow
enough food to starve.

If you translate this to a real life situation where you have 10 hours
a day worth of other work to do just to survive, its clear that this
type of arrangement is only for desperation mode, and even then you
probably cannot do it alone.


I think this is a very good summing up. I took part for nearly three
years in a project that was 4 people on some 200+ acres trying to live
self sufficiently.
You work work work work work, and you get absolutely nowhere, fast.
You just can't grow your own grains - unless you have a bunch of people
and suitable land, make cheese, sugar, beer , have a sufficiency of
fruit and veg all year round (even in Northern New Zealand) and even
growing your own potatoes for all year round is a pretty hard slog
without help.

Not to mention the fact that you just do NOT generate a cashflow that
way.

"No problem, I don't need money", you think. So how are you going to buy
petrol, how are you going to pay if that expensive solar water heater
gets a leak, or your power plant batteries suck the kumara (NZ
expression for die) or if your car has an incident?
How are you going to cope if you get sick at a critical time?

People who genuinely live in a self-sufficiency-farming situation out of
necessity, not by choice, have a very low life expectancy, take that
into consideration.

If you really try to grow and make all your own food, you won't have
time to think about outside work, so you won't be generating an income.

I bowed out of that project I was in after 3 years, and bought a cattle
ranch 1 mile down the road. The two who stayed are still scrabbling
(courtesy of social welfare payments) and barely eeking out a life,
nearly 20 years later. Desperately poor ...

Sorry, but I define quality of life differently. "Back to nature, by
living in a subsistance environment, gaining wisdom, health and
happyness" is an idea that has been shown to be romantic nonsense in my
not so humble experience. Nearly everybody I know (and there were quite
a lot of old hippies in the valleys around here who tried) has dropped
out of that particular lifestyle.

Not that these observations are going to be of any help to a person
committed to the experiment: I am sure I won't change their outlook :-)

All the same, and all the best, -Peter

"bob peterson" wrote in message
om...
"rick etter" wrote in message
...
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


did you really mean the other posted site?
That's the one I'll refer to below...







Did you take a look at how much time was spent on this project?
===========================
Yes. When we grew a large garden, we spent nearly that much time, and we
weren't trying to depend on it.


I
don't doubt it took every minute he admitted to. If you think self
suffiency is for you think about the amount of effort just to grow
enough food to starve.

If you translate this to a real life situation where you have 10 hours
a day worth of other work to do just to survive, its clear that this
type of arrangement is only for desperation mode, and even then you
probably cannot do it alone.
=====================
As the site said, it wasn't 'scientific' in any way. Obviously he knew he
had options to fall back on and still not suffer any. I just liked the data
about how many pounds of what was produced in what size area.

(George Cleveland) wrote:

Ah, the joys of cross posting.

I know. It's a hoot sometimes.

ral

g.c.

(paghat) wrote in message ...
I remember visiting a commune not terribly far from Eugene that pretended
to be an Eco-friendly self-sufficient village capable of sustaining a
hundred people, but usually had no more than ten to twenty unbathed
over-the-hill hippies in insufficient housing.

That's a well known commune here in the Eugene area.

The dream or plan sounded
lovely if a little bit cultic in that they would literally promise "inner
wealth" in trade for all the money you could bring their marginal outfit,
& used all kinds of far-left ecological catch-phrases mixed with
Rashneeshi-like promises of perfect happiness, in a shockingly
religious-sounding rather than environmental context. The fact that they
lasted thirty years instead of vanishing like all the other Eugene
communes of the 70s sounds impressive, until one realizes their
"self-sufficiency" is actually reliance on lumberjacks & saw mills as they
sell off the trees surrounding the place.

In part. MOSTLY, however, it's grants from the Univerity that pumps
money into the commune. They did experiments in a few things: Straw
bale housing and a small hobo type stove.

They found out the climate is too damp for straw bale housing to work
here.

"Bob Peterson" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message


growing even a few
potatoes
(snip) 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.

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.

They are indeed very good soil conditioners and weed controllers and even
more so the way I have now taken to growing them.

I drop the seed spuds on the ground about a ft apart and 2 ft between rows
and then cover them with a ft or more of old hay/straw/weeds.manure and then
water. I top up the bedding material with more hay/weeds etc as it beds
down to make sure the spuds don't get green.

At harvest I shove a hand into the decomposing mass and wriggle out what I
need for eating over the next few days and the rest I leave till I need to
get rid of them to make use of the newly made potato compost.

(Richard A. Lewis) expounded:

The first post in the thread here on MS is....

"""On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 06:56:32 -0800, 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."""

That's it in its entirety.

ral

Well, no, that isn't it entirely. Here it is, entirely (headers
abbreviated):
Newsgroups:
rec.gardens.edible,rec.gardens,misc.survivalism,mi sc.rural,rec.backcountry
X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.30
X-Mailer:
From: Down Under On The Bucket Farm

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)
--
Ann, Gardening in zone 6a
Just south of Boston, MA
********************************