Home Feeding Ideas and Solutions Discussion Thread

[SouthDakotan]

Good on you! And I totally concur.

I would add and elaborate that right now the real costs are not reflected in much of what we buy at a supermarket. Cheap fossil fuel energy has distorted and masked the real costs of doing things, in this case producing and distributing food. (Misplaced government subsidies on commodities don't help either.) I think many people are becoming more aware though of the real costs of these things. For example, I had someone express surprise that I occasionally cooked food to feed to the chickens. The idea being that it was wasteful to use propane energy just to make chicken feed. But the feed in question was sweetpotatoes or squash grown on my own farm using zero fossil fuels to cultivate or harvest, and the transportation costs were only the muscle energy it took to carry the produce the hundred feet from the field to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the chicken coop. Compare that to the feed mix one buys from the feed store, where the energy costs include (mainly in non-renewable fossil fuels) those from growing grains and soy on a mechanized farm, milling and processing, creating and mixing ingredients by machine, packaging and shipping thousands of miles, and driving to town and back to buy the stuff. And that's just looking at energy costs, to say nothing of environmental impact or anything else. Am I really gonna beat myself up about using a little propane to make my home-made feed? Give me a break! I know, it seems silly when you put it like that, but the truth behind this is that people, however well-meaning, aren't used to thinking about things this way. We take this all relatively cheap, non-local food for granted as if it were normal. Although I think the realities behind this distortion are becoming increasingly evident to people and will become more so in the near future as oil dwindles. Besides, grocery food is only cheap when measured by price point in dollars and cents right there at the check-out counter, and not counting such related things as environmental degradation, tax money, and future health care bills as "costs." Might as well start rethinking things now, I figure.

Very true Sky! I know I've had numerous discussions with Vegans and Vegetarians who don't like it that I raise "meat" animals. Then sit there talking to me about how they don't believe in harming other living things, while living in the urban/concrete jungles and having their dietary favs shipped half-way around the world or at least across the continent to their sterilized supermarkets, so that they can feel they aren't "harming" anything. One even said they don't "see bugs" in their city. I told them that was probably due to their taxes paying for their city to spray the unwanted life-forms out of existence! They didn't like being reminded that concrete isn't "natural" and that their sterile urban world does more to harm the environment than my small farmstead. Crazy how people don't recognize their participation in life's circle. They think they are "above" it.

And they sure don't like being reminded that we are not "better" or "worse" if we accept the fact we are not vegetarian creatures or meat eaters, but something in between.

 

[triplepurpose]

Very true Sky! I know I've had numerous discussions with Vegans and Vegetarians who don't like it that I raise "meat" animals. Then sit there talking to me about how they don't believe in harming other living things, while living in the urban/concrete jungles and having their dietary favs shipped half-way around the world or at least across the continent to their sterilized supermarkets, so that they can feel they aren't "harming" anything. One even said they don't "see bugs" in their city. I told them that was probably due to their taxes paying for their city to spray the unwanted life-forms out of existence! They didn't like being reminded that concrete isn't "natural" and that their sterile urban world does more to harm the environment than my small farmstead. Crazy how people don't recognize their participation in life's circle. They think they are "above" it.

And they sure don't like being reminded that we are not "better" or "worse" if we accept the fact we are not vegetarian creatures or meat eaters, but something in between.

It is my humble opinion that the unprecedented proliferation of dietary fads such as moral Veganism, the "Paleo Diet," the "Atkins Diet," etc, etc, and the rise in influence of wonky nutrition "experts" is an acute symptom of modern urban/suburban culture's disconnection with nature, and most specifically farm ecology.

In contrast, people who are connected more closely to the land (as virtually all people throughout history have been) aren't seduced by fad diets and don't need a scientist to tell them what to eat because they never lost their way in the first place (or they've rediscovered it).

Fad diets based on perverted scientific or moral guidelines will not fix things. The only thing that will is a conscious reconnection the land that has always sustained us and shaped us. Both as farmer and consumer alike.

 

[galanie]

All the billions of pounds of chemical fertilizers and insecticides going to grow those vegetables and soy they eat does more harm to animals than any meat eater possibly could.

You're both spot on. These people are lost. How on earth did people live this long without those crazy diets? And some have even lived to be 100!

 

[NanaRose]

It is my humble opinion that the unprecedented proliferation of dietary fads such as moral Veganism, the "Paleo Diet," the "Atkins Diet," etc, etc, and the rise in influence of wonky nutrition "experts" is an acute symptom of modern urban/suburban culture's disconnection with nature, and most specifically farm ecology.

In contrast, people who are connected more closely to the land (as virtually all people throughout history have been) aren't seduced by fad diets and don't need a scientist to tell them what to eat because they never lost their way in the first place (or they've rediscovered it).

Fad diets based on perverted scientific or moral guidelines will not fix things. The only thing that will is a conscious reconnection the land that has always sustained us and shaped us. Both as farmer and consumer alike.

And I humbly must interject that it is my personal experience that many people are on the "Paleo Diet" and the Atkins Diet because they are so very sick; the doctors can't help them because they are corrupted by the pharmacuetical companies, and it is indeed the normal American diet, heavy in wheat, soy, and all manner of chemicals, that has made them sick. I have Celiac Disease, a form of gluten-intolerance. I do not live gluten-free because of a fad but because I almost died from eating wheat. There is growing experience among masses of Americans that gluten-intolerance is the culprit for a myriad of maladies. I have seen miracles of healing in my family from members going gluten-free. Wheat that is touted as so very healthy for people. People are unaware of what happens to the wheat, of the GMO and the 'improvements' to the protein, increasing the protein far beyond what the original grain contained. There there are all preservatives put into the grains at harvest and refining into flour. There are many people so damaged by gluten-intolerance, overlooked by doctors, that their health is permanently impaired, and the only thing that helps them is the Paleo Diet. I also experienced an enormous growth in compassion to those people who are struggling with their health, once my own crashed.

 

[FireTigeris]

Wow- way off topic-

What's a good price for figs- I love fresh figs but my fig tree got some kind of fungus...

I can find dry figs for about 3.99ish that good?

 

[WI FarmChick]

This is only how me and my family see things........we do what we need to do.

There is a lot wrong with the food we are "told" is OK to eat. Pink slim is one good one. I would just love to feed that to MY children.

Genetically altered grains and vegetables. tainted vegetables, meat, eggs. list goes on. recalls every where.

Grown on land that has been chemically treated and so depleted from its vitamins and minerals there are none left for the grain or vegetables that we in turn eat and with no benefit from them. just bad health.

So you take vitamins. more chemicals.

Everything sanitized to the point we have no resistance left. everyone is sick with something.

All this is just sad.


What I do for MY family.....I grow my own vegetables. Raise my own meat. Eggs.
Make my own bread. noodles, Grind my own flour, make my own soap, shampoo, conditioner, laundry soap, toothpaste, My own healing salve.....Etc.
Everything and anything I can.

So.... i have taken my families health very seriously. We rarely get sick. Maybe only one of us in a years time.

"Diet" is the wrong word in my house.... "healthy" would be more accurate.

 

[NanaRose]

Wow- way off topic-

What's a good price for figs- I love fresh figs but my fig tree got some kind of fungus...

I can find dry figs for about 3.99ish that good?

Not a clue as to good price or not. But do you mean to feed them to chickens? I have a fig tree, hoping for a good harvest this year, bought netting to protect from birds.

 

[NanaRose]

This is only how me and my family see things........we do what we need to do.

There is a lot wrong with the food we are "told" is OK to eat. Pink slim is one good one. I would just love to feed that to MY children.

Genetically altered grains and vegetables. tainted vegetables, meat, eggs. list goes on. recalls every where.

Grown on land that has been chemically treated and so depleted from its vitamins and minerals there are none left for the grain or vegetables that we in turn eat and with no benefit from them. just bad health.

So you take vitamins. more chemicals.

Everything sanitized to the point we have no resistance left. everyone is sick with something.

All this is just sad.


What I do for MY family.....I grow my own vegetables. Raise my own meat. Eggs.
Make my own bread. noodles, Grind my own flour, make my own soap, shampoo, conditioner, laundry soap, toothpaste, My own healing salve.....Etc.
Everything and anything I can.

So.... i have taken my families health very seriously. We rarely get sick. Maybe only one of us in a years time.

"Diet" is the wrong word in my house.... "healthy" would be more accurate.

My admiration to you! I did all that when young. Now I do as you say-- what I can. And enjoy it!

 

[FireTigeris]

I like the figs for me, if I had a huge amount I'd share- but not at those prices.

 

[WI FarmChick]

My admiration to you! I did all that when young. Now I do as you say-- what I can. And enjoy it!

Thank you

we try.