We make hot serial from buckwheat, “kasha”. It is another very popular side dish in our family)) Though it is almost impossible to buy it around here in American stores, we rely on Russian stores.
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Thanks, haven’t heard of them before! I’ve got some reading to do.
I have a couple thoughts on this as well because I feel that self reliance is something that we should all strive for. There is also a huge difference between doing this as a hobby and an actual survival situation.
There is an old unit of measurement called a “hide” which is defined as the amount of land needed to support a family and generally standardized to 120 acres. This is presumably based on the whole family working sun up to sun down with a quality of life that would be pretty dismal. Very few of us have that amount of land and time. While it is certainly very difficult to become 100% self sufficient it is not hard to become 3-5% self sufficient through a home garden/orchard by supplementing store bought food. If this practice we’re more widespread it would ease the demand on the overall food supply chain which would improve resilience and food security across society as a whole.
Complex societies developed because it was a heck of a lot easier for everyone to do the 1 job they were good at and trading their goods, skills and labor for food. If it were easy to support yourself we would still be living in a hunter gather type of society.
There are so many intangible benifits to that 3-5% self reliance that I mentioned above. This applies both to adults and our children: better overall physical and mental health by getting outside and watching things grow, being observant, hard working and learning patience and delayed gratification.
A few other side thoughts: Electricity and preservation methods are are huge factors especially in more northern climates. Hunting is likely a must to achieve 100% self reliance as is the ability to defend what you have against other people who would be very desperate in times of need.
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Seems everybody “assumes” electricity is automatically going to be available…and that’s a bad assumption. Storms can knock out electric for days. Hackers can do the same by computer. But one strategic nuclear device can knock it out for a long long long time…and even if you had plenty of gasoline stored, computers in vehicles get zapped and cease to function. Livestock does not get to the slaughter houses, and fruits and veggies (not to mention toilet paper) do Not get to the grocery stores.
If security and resiliency are a serious topic and not just fun speculation, you have to at least think about all possibilities, including ones you hope don’t happen.
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OK. I grew up in an area where everyone who had a piece of land grew something edible. However, this was in the tropics/ subtropics where you could grow year round. In colder climates, you are forced to do a lot of preservation and annual production to max out the growing period. The truth is that large amounts of calorie crops are way beyond any small holder. You need mechanized agriculture to feed modern populations.
Now what growing your garden does help is in stretching the food quality. Herbs, vegetables, can help make rice, beans, potatoes, tubers, taste pretty good. The fruit and related jams, vinegars, and wines that we produce can make bread, and grains go down a lot easier. But the heavy lifting will still be grains, tubers, breadfruit for most of us.
Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere. In fact, we have more that we can afford to burn. But there will be food shortages and supply issues going forward. You can see it in the grocery/food rices right now! So the more you can produce, the more variety you will have in your diet, and the less money that you need to spend (and get taxed on), in the store.
In the era of OPEC shocks and CIA assassinations/ interventions that happened in the region growing up, neighbors exchanged produce and kept a trade/barter economy going. But no-one could grow everything. If you can convince your neighbors and friends to pick up gardening, that will be a lot more resilient than trying to grow everything yourself.
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That’s a lot!That means there are many people eating much more,like 5000.
About six months ago,I enrolled in a weight management course.Not being extremely fat,6’1" about 240lbs,at the time,but it was noticeable and more than ever before.One of the instructors,told me to shoot for 1700 calories,which I did and lost about 10lbs in 3 months.I’m now at about 225.Moving and exercise helps a lot too.
It looks like most people can and probably should eat less and more healthy food.
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If we are talking resiliency annuals are too much of a primadonna; the first drought they face they end up all dead. The poster child to illustrate the different is usually showing the roots of hybridized perennial wheat vs. the common annual winter wheat:
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I don’t want to sound too negative or that there isn’t hope to make meaningful gains in self sufficiency growing crops short of having 5 acres of land, but as I have stated several times, I like to make decisions with my eyes wide open.
On one hand it is doable. During WW II the 12 million victory gardens in cities plus another 6 million victory gardens in farms produced more veggies than the industrial side. Side note: the USDA was leery of Eleanor Roosevelt promoting victory gardens because they were afraid it would steal sales from agricultural farming…
On the other hand food shortages are just a side effect of so much worse… During the Argentinean economic collapse of 2001 the country was still producing enough food to feed Europe, but people did not have the money to buy it. Rampant malnutrition, crime, unemployment, it is an excellent case study on a modern society experiencing this sort of event. What did most people do? The same thing we are doing right now; try to go to work except you would listen to the radio hoping to catch were people were protesting or rioting (same difference if you are just trying to go home) so you could route around. If you were lucky enough to have a job you would go to your job and work for what amounted to monopoly money; quitting was suicidal as it would mean that once things eventually got to normal it would be impossible to get another job.
To somewhat wrap this train of thought up, all I’m saying is that preparedness takes a holistic approach and you better have some reality tests and study real world cases in order not to waste your precious time and resources.
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I think this touches on an important (possibly the most important?) point, being that humans throughout history have thrived as a community and died much faster trying to rough it on their own. Along with the likelihood that a higher percentage of children would die from various ailments (starvation, disease, animal attacks, lack of general modern safety devices), there is another reason families used to be much larger. It was to have more helping hands to produce enough food and resources to keep the “community” (in this case the community may have been only one family) alive and well. When you have million dollar tractors capable of driving themselves, you don’t need so many kids to manage a field of corn. But that’s the entire point of this thread, talking about the when the tractor is broken side of things.
As has been discussed already, simply having the skills (and tools) needed to be self sufficient is almost as important as having the funding to buy said resources if push came to shove and an EOTWAWKI scenario took place.
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Won’t go wrong learning to grow sweet potatoes. Historians believe that the slaves in the antebellum south were remarkably well-fed simply because of their access to sweet potatoes. (‘Time On The Cross’)
I understand that a ‘Golden Delicious’ apple tree is considerably more productive than almost anything else.
I understand your impulse. Being completely self-sufficient in anything important will be a bit of a challenge though.
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If I was aiming for anywhere close to self sufficiency down here, I would be pulling out some of my trees to grow sweet potatoes, beans, and maybe oil camelias. There you have your carbs, proteins, and fats. However, I like fruit more!
I think a lot of people don’t understand how labor intensive some of these old time crops were too. Without slaves, the Southern economy would have collapsed. These sweet potatoes, cotton, peanuts, used vast amounts of slave labor. Even after the civil war, slave labor is still used, courtesy of the prison pipeline.
The Maya, Aztecs, Egyptians used huge amounts of captive labor as well.
I always laugh at these people with 200 plus acre farms thinking that they would keep trucking along if SHTF or an EOTWAWKI event. In Europe or the USA when fuel taxes hit, the farmers freak out because the fuel provides the machine labor to keep these massive operations running. If fossil fuels slow down, farmers will be begging for any possible labor to keep these running.
An interesting thing I like to look at is cooking during supply restrictions, such as during World War 2. There are a few interesting videos here. Not sure how appetizing some of these were though…
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I would dread the life of being self sufficient. Resilient on the other hand lets me live in the now while being able to live through what tomorrow will bring.
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Honestly the ability to grow plants and the infrastructure you have develop goes a long way towards improving your resiliency, produce is just a nice side benefit. I barely get enough raspberry jam to last me the hole year, but my patch has given me hundreds of dollars. Once they go dormant I’ll transplant into grow bags the baby ones growing where they shouldn’t. Established ready to fruit named variety canes sell easily for $10 a pop, so I usually harvest about $200 a year from my patch. I just spent hour and a half harvesting haskaps, those I’ll get enough preserves to last me the year. Then again the 50+ rooted cuttings will move readily at $15 each next year.
Right now it is just fun and games, but one day this may really come handy.
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One additional consideration with self sufficiency is growing plants with few inputs other than your own time and labor. There is probably just as likely to be a disruption in the pesticide/fertilizer supply chain than there is with the food supply itself. If your “system” of resilience and security requires an elaborate spray schedule then you will be out of luck once your trees succumb to disease when left to their own devices.
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Just one acre well cared for in a southeast climate can go a long way toward mostly supporting a familys food supply if it is amended garden soil that can be well irrigated with secure independent well water and pumping ability to grow intensive crops like tomato, potato, beans, lentils, winter squash, and the leftovers and plant matter to support some pigs and chickens for their egg and meat to have some calorie to go with the carbs in a small space.
Yes their diet will be different than the american high calorie high meat diet,… Instead u would have to eat lots of beans, vegis, tomato, corn, parsnip, greens, turnip, carbs and less calories, yes it will take tremendous lifestyle and diet change, but actually that is how my great grandparents lived they didnt eat 2000 calories much less 3000 or go to the store… If you had extra acres of grass enough for a milk cow(2 to 15 acres depending on location/rainfall etx) this my grandma said was a major help to their family of 8’s diet for milk, cream, clabber, yes extra calories to add to their high carb bean/pea/corn/potato diet… Deer and such were pretty much extinct back then and people were lean, and I will underline that having a pasture for a few cows or a herd of goats or a good fish pond would help your abilities tremendously… Millions still live this way in places like Guatemala they eat lots of beans and tortillas and a little cheese really helps… But they dont eat no 2000 or 3000 calorie american diet… Actually I eat plenty and could loose 20 lbs but usually i eat in the 1,700 calorie range but i eat more carbs/beans &fruits. But anyway, yeah 10 acres with secure independent alternative water supply in a decent rainfall place like say Kentucky a family can survive if they know what to do and have the tools needed. And yes 25 or 80 acres would be lots better… But yeah climate is a big factor to determine so many things because 5 acres in Louisiana is very different from 5 acres in Montana…
But anyway…
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Good topic! I suggest growing vegetables and starches that can be consumed while growing plus store well, for potatoes all of these store very well: 1. Red Norland. 2. Viking purple. 3. Red Lasoda. 4. Red Potomac 5. Russian Banana Fingerling Potatoes, 6.Yellow Finn 7.Yukon Gold
Add veggies like zucchini, pumpkin, garlic, basil, polebeans, dill, onion, etc. all can be consumed yet store thru the winter along with fruit that sore well such as Cortland and Chehallis apples.
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Do you know anything about the King Harry potato?
These crops were absolutely time intensive and I remember my father plowing with a mule. I wouldn’t want to try to farm all the corn or beans we’d need to survive without a tractor or mule. While about a third of southerners owned slaves back in those regrettable times, that leaves two thirds who did not. One of my grandfathers was a sharecropper and neither side of my family ever had a history of slave ownership. They were all farmers and labored hard to feed their own families. I’m proud of that heritage.
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Hi Kelby,
I am not at all familiar with that one, I have tried many but not that one, the ones I listed are my forever keepers! Especially Yukon Gold and Viking purple.
Dennis
Kent, wa
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