"Richard A. Lewis" wrote in message
"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.

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!)

You have put in what YOU think he will (or should perhaps) do BUT not what
he specifically said.

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.

"Fran" wrote in message . au...
"Bob Peterson" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message
snipped

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.

hehe.....the ground must not freeze solid where you are!

Linda h.

(Noah Simoneaux) wrote in message ...

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)

Couple of nights ago, I surfed the Square Foot Gardening website, and
the authors now include growing potatos and carrots. They build *up*
from the original square foot gardening spot.

Interesting concept, plus uses raised beds. Seems to me, though, the
zuchinis and potatos that I usually grow have much MORE than a one
foot radius. Tomatoes too.

Linda H.

On 12 Dec 2003 21:42:14 -0800,
(Tallgrass) said:

(Noah Simoneaux) wrote in message ...

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)

Couple of nights ago, I surfed the Square Foot Gardening website, and
the authors now include growing potatos and carrots. They build *up*
from the original square foot gardening spot.

Interesting concept, plus uses raised beds. Seems to me, though, the
zuchinis and potatos that I usually grow have much MORE than a one
foot radius. Tomatoes too.

Linda H.

Well, I square foot garden, I sware by it ! However, when its comes to
a great many plants (tomatoes, zuchinis, corn, and many types of
beans, etc... ) You have to kinda guess at how much space you think
you will need based on past experince. I generaly allow two sqft for
the larger plants. The SQFT gardening method has boosted my food
production 5 fold over what a traditional garden would have, on the
same amount of land.

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:28:38 +1300, Peter Huebner
wrote:

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.
snip

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.
snip

Good to hear from someone who's been there. I believe one person
*could* be "self-sufficient" for at least a few years in an area rich
in 'wild' foods and with a very mild climate. But even Robinson
Crusoe salvaged some pretty nifty stuff from his shipwreck. :-)

Whether in a single or group situation, true self-sufficiency would
seem to require a *whole* lot of work -- unremitting toil, in fact.
And no days off. Complain as we do about industrialized food
production, economies of scale and specialization *do* make a
difference. We laugh about our US$5 tomatoes, considering cost of
plants, boughten-dirt, fertilizer, water, and labor to bring one
forth, but it's not far off in many cases. How much space and time and
labor (and luck with bugs!) does it take to produce a pound of dried
beans?

The pioneer ideal notwithstanding, most pioneers were in it for the
land and hopes of subsequent monetary success, not an Eden-like
existance. You *always* need money for the things you don't/can't
produce. Try paying for a pair of glasses or boots with tomatoes!

The Bucket person hasn't been back, as far as I've seen. So we have no
idea of what he actually meant by "self-sufficiency." At least it's
generated a lot of interesting posts and references.

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

(bob peterson) wrote in message . com...

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,

Nope... Not really. Growing your own food makes more or less sense,
depending on the economy. Our dollar is getting weaker. We are having
both inflation and deflation at the same time. Money is harder to get
(deflation) but worth less and less over time (inflation).

If one can meet most of their needs without using dollars, they're
better off. Of course, this presupposes they can raise the food
efficiently.

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

and even then you
probably cannot do it alone.

That's the catch: raise something that is useful to anyone. Eggs,
butter, meat. Supplement it with garden produce.

Then trade for things other raise or make.

In article ,
(Edgar S.) wrote:

(bob peterson) wrote in message
. com...

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,

Nope... Not really. Growing your own food makes more or less sense,
depending on the economy. Our dollar is getting weaker. We are having
both inflation and deflation at the same time. Money is harder to get
(deflation) but worth less and less over time (inflation).

If one can meet most of their needs without using dollars, they're
better off. Of course, this presupposes they can raise the food
efficiently.

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

You almost convinced me but then you created this image of the sort of
trashoids who have worn out tires stacked up in their yards as planters --
no doubt lined up in front of the rusting vehicles up on blocks with those
very tires removed, in front of a doublewide that's settling at an odd
angle with a roof that goes BANG! on hot days.

One likes to fantasize living an aesthetic & ascetic life in concert with
nature, bathing in pure-water streams or a beaver pond, gathering
pine-nuts & wild blueberries, gathering douglas-sugar from the tips of
firs or tapping a maple tree, a veggy garden out behind a two-bedroom log
cabin very expertly put together like a giant Lincoln Log set. The rudest
thing ever done would be perhaps killing an occasional blackbear if you're
not a vegetarian & can make good use of every part of the animal. Might
have a sun-panel to run the PC off of, or to read past sundown. With such
an existence one would simply not to be so polluting & dollar-dependent
in order to live in a pleasing manner, while every hour of every day
learning first-hand about woodlore, herblore, & natural history of one's
extremely immediate environment. O!, how lovely that would be to just be a
good little Girl Scout or Boy Scout right up to the age of 93, friend to
birds & squirrels, then die smiling & buried out back under a favorite
madronna.

Sadly what one encounters instead is crackers squatting on public lands or
with some unperkable cheaply obtained property that could not be legally
built on nailing "do not trespass!" & death's-head warnings to every tree,
a growing pile of beer bottles in front of a tar paper shack housing
paranoids ready to shoot park rangers or, if even slightly legally
ensconsed, shoot at tax assessors & housing inspectors, on guard against
the police who might find out about the lab some Hell's Angels buddies
dashed together in that broken-down old postal truck -- & ultimately no
closer to nature than is that row of ugly-ass tires with dried up potato
vines poking out.

It's true, though, an unbathed paranoid with diptheria living in a shanty,
even with his open sess-hole just out the back door, is polluting the
world a lot less than those of us with our hot showers & a dumbass
lawnmowers, microwaving Hungry Man dinners three or five times a day, &
driving two miles & back just for a twenty-ounce latte. It would perhaps
be better for the earth overall if more of us just stopped bathing & went
out on the fringes of the forest & tried to get some of our sustenance
from shedded fir needles & owl scat. But it's a bit like hoping to save
the earth with some new strain of TB that properly takes out most of our
own harmful species, & from then on surivalism will mean going without
elevators while gleaning the emptied skyscrapers for useful stuff &
warring against other survivors for possession of the biggest piles of
rusted cans of peaches or pork & beans in the ruins of Safeway or the A&P.

-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/

(dstvns) wrote:

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?

You really want to know?

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.

If that sounds easy to you, go to your local commissary and buy a ten
pound bag of spuds and *try* to finish it in one day.

ral



Dan

"Tallgrass" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message

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.

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 :-))

"paghat" wrote in message
(Edgar S.) wrote:

(snip) Growing your own food makes more or less sense,
depending on the economy. (snip)
If one can meet most of their needs without using dollars, they're
better off. Of course, this presupposes they can raise the food
efficiently.

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

You almost convinced me but then you created this image of the sort of
trashoids who have worn out tires stacked up in their yards as planters --
no doubt lined up in front of the rusting vehicles up on blocks with those
very tires removed, in front of a doublewide that's settling at an odd
angle with a roof that goes BANG! on hot days.

Boy, I don't think I've ever seen anyone drop so quickly into stereotyping
about such a simple thing.

I've grown spuds in tyres and I live in a house that friends who live in the
city think is quite posh. (Possibly the sauna impresses them but the only
thing I find it useful for is to house the mushroom growing kit).

Spuds don't care where they grow and if you have a problem with a few car
tyres then what about an upturned plastic garbage bin with the bottom cut
out of it? Same principle but does that offend you so much? Recycling can
be done with both taste and effectiveness. You of all people should know
that given your own site (which, BTW, is quite impressive [especially the
crataegus which I love]: but where are the veggies????).

Putting a stack of car tyres behind a big healthy rhubarb plant isn't going
to cause any real offence and if the plants are growing vigorously then most
people will see the lushness and productiveness and not have your "eyesore"
reaction.

One likes to fantasize living an aesthetic & ascetic life in concert with
nature, bathing in pure-water streams or a beaver pond, gathering
pine-nuts & wild blueberries, gathering douglas-sugar from the tips of
firs or tapping a maple tree, a veggy garden out behind a two-bedroom log
cabin very expertly put together like a giant Lincoln Log set. The rudest
thing ever done would be perhaps killing an occasional blackbear if you're
not a vegetarian & can make good use of every part of the animal. Might
have a sun-panel to run the PC off of, or to read past sundown. With such
an existence one would simply not to be so polluting & dollar-dependent
in order to live in a pleasing manner, while every hour of every day
learning first-hand about woodlore, herblore, & natural history of one's
extremely immediate environment. O!, how lovely that would be to just be a
good little Girl Scout or Boy Scout right up to the age of 93, friend to
birds & squirrels, then die smiling & buried out back under a favorite
madronna.

Sadly what one encounters instead is crackers squatting on public lands or
with some unperkable cheaply obtained property that could not be legally
built on nailing "do not trespass!" & death's-head warnings to every tree,
a growing pile of beer bottles in front of a tar paper shack housing
paranoids ready to shoot park rangers or, if even slightly legally
ensconsed, shoot at tax assessors & housing inspectors, on guard against
the police who might find out about the lab some Hell's Angels buddies
dashed together in that broken-down old postal truck -- & ultimately no
closer to nature than is that row of ugly-ass tires with dried up potato
vines poking out.

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?

It's true, though, an unbathed paranoid with diptheria living in a shanty,
even with his open sess-hole just out the back door, is polluting the
world a lot less than those of us with our hot showers & a dumbass
lawnmowers, microwaving Hungry Man dinners three or five times a day, &
driving two miles & back just for a twenty-ounce latte. It would perhaps
be better for the earth overall if more of us just stopped bathing & went
out on the fringes of the forest & tried to get some of our sustenance
from shedded fir needles & owl scat.

I find your comments extremely odd. ALL of the ngs that are given as
receiving this post, will have regular readers who understand that one
doesn't need to live like any of your stereotypes in order to lead
productive and useful lives or to even have a garden which produces at least
some, if not a lot, of a household's food and that such a garden can
incorporate a huge amount of low impact or recycling principles and
practices and still be extremely beautiful, bountiful and restful places.

But it's a bit like hoping to save
the earth with some new strain of TB that properly takes out most of our
own harmful species, & from then on surivalism will mean going without
elevators while gleaning the emptied skyscrapers for useful stuff &
warring against other survivors for possession of the biggest piles of
rusted cans of peaches or pork & beans in the ruins of Safeway or the A&P.

Phew! That sounds like some of the more loopy misc.survivalism fringe
dwellers. Get out of there before it's too late!

-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/

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."



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 don't have the info. 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.

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).

g.c.

"Fran" wrote in message
u...
"Tallgrass" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message

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.

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!!

In article , "Fran"
wrote:

"paghat" wrote in message
(Edgar S.) wrote:

(snip) Growing your own food makes more or less sense,
depending on the economy. (snip)
If one can meet most of their needs without using dollars, they're
better off. Of course, this presupposes they can raise the food
efficiently.

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

You almost convinced me but then you created this image of the sort of
trashoids who have worn out tires stacked up in their yards as planters --
no doubt lined up in front of the rusting vehicles up on blocks with those
very tires removed, in front of a doublewide that's settling at an odd
angle with a roof that goes BANG! on hot days.

Boy, I don't think I've ever seen anyone drop so quickly into stereotyping
about such a simple thing.

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.

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!

-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/

"Tina Gibson" wrote in message news:ZHZCb.704796$9l5.280683@pd7tw2no...
"Fran" wrote in message
u...
"Tallgrass" wrote in message
"Fran" wrote in message

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.

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!!

You just have to have enough Ethanol Warmer in your veins to stay
warm!!

In Madison WI, the multiple lakes freeze solid and the fishermen build
their fishing shanties on the ice. Several bets are placed as to when
the first shanty will fall thru the ice in the spring!!

Linda H., disliking the snow and cold more and more