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I'm still trying to figure out why I have to have horseradish to survive a SHTF scenario. Garlic for vampires I can understand. Is horseradish to scare away wild horses?
This is a pretty silly analogy, when I was in High School I took an agriculture class and I don't recall a single student having a garden that did not produce anything. Growing vegetables, etc is not that hard ... now starting a successful farm and with high yields per acre is a different story.
Nearly everyone can start a garden and the first year they can yield some amount of harvest.
I know gardeners who produce and can as much as 100qts of tomatoes each year. They put a lot of work into their gardens and they are very proud of what the accomplish.
Now consider; a quart of tomato paste, or whole, or puree, is still not an entire meal. It may account for as much as 1/3 of a meal for a family. So that household can now eat a tomato-based meal twice a week for the next year.
The home-gardener is proud and happy for after all the work they have done, and how much canned food they have to show for their labor.
3 meals/day X 7 days/week = 21 meals/week.
52 weeks/year =1092 meals in a year.
2 tomato-based meals/week X 52 = 110 tomato-based meals/year. But they only grew 1/3 of the food in those meals. So they have in fact produced 36 meals for the following year [1/3 x 110].
36 meals out of a total of 1092 meals in a year, means for all of their hard work they have produced 0.03% of their next year's food [36 / 1092].
A big garden, a lot of work for the home-gardener, plus canning, and after all that work is done they have produced less than half of one-percent of their family's food until the next harvest season.
Yes nearly everyone can garden.
Some suburban gardeners have large gardens.
Some suburban gardeners manage to produce lots of veggies, and some industrious Home Economics folk 'put-up' all of their harvest to eat during the following year.
What I am trying to show is that if you put their harvest into perspective; it may not account for very much of their total food consumption.
I know a guy who grows grains. Wheat, barley, spelt, oats, actually he grows a very wide variety of grains. All by hand or beast, no mechanized equipment. His family eats breads and pastas that all came from his grain production. No off-site grain products come into his home.
However he is a seriously dedicated individual and that is all he does. He spends an enormous amount of time doing that.
I'm still trying to figure out why I have to have horseradish to survive a SHTF scenario. Garlic for vampires I can understand. Is horseradish to scare away wild horses?
I use about 2 acres of my forest floor for gardening of crops that grow well beneath the forest canopy. I have been planting fruit, nut and herb orchards along the edges of our forest canopy, up to alongside our driveway. We have raised beds, and greenhouses.
In the many crops that we have tried so far, only some of them have been successful for us. [so far]. Again it takes time, trial and error.
Garlic: we have had success with. But this year our garlic was overtaken by a garlic-specific black fungus. So we did good for a while producing garlic and had four raised beds of garlic. Now that soil is contaminated with this fungus, and it can no longer be used for garlic.
Horseradish has been a success for us. It grows really well for us. So we have been incorporating it more into our diet. Dried and powdered it makes a wonderful replacement for black pepper in cooking.
Not everything will grow in every region. A part of each year's trial and error is to modify and adapt what you did the previous year, hoping to get larger harvests. Assessing which crops failed entirely and why. Trying other crops to see if they will prosper in your region.
We do well with pumpkins, squashes, onions, ...
If your plan is to become a farmer, it takes trial and error, a lot of effort, land, and in my case a degree in Horticulture.
36 meals out of a total of 1092 meals in a year, means for all of their hard work they have produced 0.03% of their next year's food [36 / 1092].
That would be 3.2%.....regardless what is your point in all of this? You are pretend like growing your own food is on par with building an automobile..and that is ridiculous.
The idea that society is going to collapse to the point where every has to grow their own food is also ridiculous. If the financial system collapsed would all the farmers just vanish? No, they would still produce and they would barter for what they produce. This if the "SHTF" situation has never occurred in any civilization, civilizations don't just collapse one day. They transform, the US has experienced far worse events...yet its still here.
By the way all this talk about Gardening ignores the fact that the most calorie rich foods are meat and diary. If the "SHTF" I would first focus my energy on collecting animals. Such as rabbits, chickens, pigs, pigeons, etc. All things that are rather easy to bread. I would hunt Coyotes (they are every where here) in the short term.
I feel things are getting worst every day. I remember the days I will just walk into a store and shop just because the store was having a sale. Presantly, to make ends meet I spent time on the internet looking for bagains for only things I really need. For those of you who are looking for a good pair of shoes at a deal go to raymondstore.com. I also use yahooshopping to compare prices. I will love to shop for my kids this Christmas, if anyone knows good stores please share. We all need help in this economy.
I really need to move to Texas. I am living in a big city and having a hard time making ends meet. I find myself having to spend time on the internet looking for deals to cloth my family. Well I remember the good old days when I will shop just because I felt like shopping. Today, I am only able to shop for needs. I found one good store to shop for shoes raymondstore.com, and I am looking for stores to shop for kids toys for the Christmas. If any one knows of some good bargains please share. We all need to help each other in this economy.
This is a pretty silly analogy, when I was in High School I took an agriculture class and I don't recall a single student having a garden that did not produce anything. Growing vegetables, etc is not that hard...now starting a successful farm and with high yields per acre is a different story.
A healthy garden doesn't grow overnight. In my part of the country, it takes a decade or more just to make decent soil. Trees take just as long to grow, and canning supplies don't appear out of thin air. If the S really HTF, most people here wouldn't even have water to irrigate with, so gardens would wither and die without alternate water sources which take years or decades to develop under the best of circumstances.
I'll grant that under optimal conditions, anybody can produce a garden the first year, but SHTF pretty much ensures that there won't be optimal conditions. While you're out with a couple thousand other people hunting coyotes, the ones who are really prepared will be busy tending the crops they had planted before it became an emergency.
Last edited by sterlinggirl; 10-18-2009 at 12:53 AM..
A healthy garden doesn't grow overnight. In my part of the country, it takes a decade or more just to make decent soil.
Obviously some areas are more difficult to grow things in than others, but that does not make gardening at all similar to building a car.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sterlinggirl
While you're out with a couple thousand other people hunting coyotes, the ones who are really prepared will be busy tending the crops they had planted before it became an emergency.
You mean like the people that own farms that produce thousands/millions more food stuffs than they can consume?
This entire "meltdown" scenario being discussed here is just rather delusional. Never has a civilization collapsed in the way that is being discussed here. The financial system is NOT the economy, rather its there to support the economy. Under the situation being described here, gardening, breeding animals, etc is all irrelevant. The person with the biggest guns is the one that is going to eat.
You think for a second people are going to starve to death, while you tend to your garden? The whole thing is just nuts.
The US currently exports approximately 1.4 trillion of products/services and you can't think of anything? The list would be extremely long, but here are some obvious things:
and so on. This "the US does not make anything" is a complete fabrication of reality.
Very good post User_id. I've been hearing a lot of the same thing as well and have been reminding people who say this that we Americans do continue to manufacture many things that the world continues to envy - and copy as well.
Its funny how strong a sense of "ownership" people have over things like land, but tell me if the "TSHTF" who is going to guarantee your property rights?
Buying land for when the "TSHTF" makes no sense, property rights will mean nothing. This is not to mention that the vast majority of the country is empty land, why purchase what you can simply claim for free?
The only thing that means anything when the "TSHTF" is what is in your head, nothing else matters.
I agree with this post. It seems like people haven't been outside of the country or seen what goes on in other countries. Places like Pakistan and India, people will just build a little house on a property they don't own. It's very hard to get them off too when you find out.
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Well things are bad.
