If our world turns even more upside down than it already is and there is a shortage of food, those of us that have taken the time to collect a reserve should fare a little better than someone that hasn't, plus the experience of how to raise practical livestock (edible) should stand us in good stead.
I've made it a point to go out on a limb to raise vegetables that I knew little about, just to get a more varied experience in sustainable agriculture.
I don't buy commercial fertilizer, I use what I have on my little farm. I combine various manures chicken, horse and goat along with leaves, straw, old hay and grass clippings onto a mulch pile. Every spring just as the strawberry plants start emerging I sprinkle the dry matter of a chicken coop right in amongst them. It produces the most amazing flavored strawberries ever. Several times in our local church we had a potluck type lunch after services. We were asked to provide a fruit so we took a thirteen quart bowl heaping full of fresh picked strawberries.
A lot of people commented on how good they were and wondered if they could buy a couple plants as a starter garden for themselves? We said sure no problem! They took the plants but were never able to get the strawberries to get the full robust flavor that we were producing. Finally one day (in the church setting) after we had taken another bowl of fresh strawberries and they were just as they had remembered from previous times, they wondered how we get them to taste so good?
My reply: You know how you get that really fine dust in a chicken coop from the poop and litter etc. . . ?
Them: Yes.
Me: Sprinkle that amongst the strawberry plants just as they are emerging from the ground. Just enough that it looks like everything is lightly covered. If you have rabbits do the same with their droppings as well as the chicken litter.
Them: Shocked! Is that what you are doing to get this flavor?
Eeewww. . . . they go away almost gagging at the thought that they ate those delicious strawberries that had been fertilized by chicken droppings, not even remembering the delicious flavor they had just experienced not half an hour before then.
A couple years later I asked them if they had figured out a way to get their strawberries to taste as good as they wanted? They answered no and they're not about to fertilize them with chicken poop either!
