Interesting article

[Zenbirder]

Quote:
Luckily many people have not forgotten, and while I applaud him trying to grow vegetables he misleads people into thinking he was "living off the land". I am sure he did not grow his own animal food, which makes having a chicken dinner NOT count. I could have eaten off my garden and chicken eggs last month and fed the chickens home grown food, granted with some different choices in food than what I actually ate, and that is just with normal gardening. I have calculated that I could actually live off our land (40 acres most of it unusable) if we invested in solar panels for the well. Our diet would change a lot, winter squash, corn, beans, the traditional native diet. Plus we would have eggs and I would buy a cow for milk, and we have a greenhouse to help with fresh things in the winter. While this was a fun intillectual experience, I don't have any desire to try it. I already spend a great deal of time gardening and preparing home made food from scratch, putting home grown food in proper storage, getting up three times a night in winter to put wood in the stove.... I understand the time committment involved in being self-sufficient and I don't want it. I don't want the stress of worrying about crop failure. I have talked to my ancestors who homesteaded in this area, and they went hungry at times. I think having this guy spend so much money to try the experiment is a sad commentary on our times.

 

[Davaroo]

I understand the time committment involved in being self-sufficient and I don't want it. I don't want the stress of worrying about crop failure. I have talked to my ancestors who homesteaded in this area, and they went hungry at times.
One of the benefits of modern, market based economics is you dont have to. We hear alot about the good old days - Im with you. No thanks.

I think having this guy spend so much money to try the experiment is a sad commentary on our times.
Or a real eye opener, depending on how you look at it. Im not one to assume we've completely hosed everything up, and that everything points to failure. What I feel we could be is more selective, less centralized and more self-reliant across the board. Don't you love this stuff?

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

i'm not fond of the whole slant of the interview. It was like a warning - "Don't try this at home, kids!".

There are folks who are successfully working towards self-sufficiency. Here is a family in Pasadena, California on 1/5th of an acre. i became aware of them when i bought my girl Penny from them. http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

i probably won't ever be off the grid. Hopefully, i will learn enough to grow a decent crop of veggies one of these years. And once my little flock get to laying, that will be one more thing i won't have to buy at the market. i thought the man in this article had some nice looking vegetables, much bigger than mine. Why didn't they concentrate on that aspect?

i don't know. Interesting article and news clip, wrong message (in my opinion).

 

[Frozen Feathers]

Quote:
I got that impression, too.

I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to be self-sufficient, but the guy must have not done any research at all. How on earth did he spend so much money? Why did his rabbits get maggots?

That's very cool about the Pasadena family. Of course they have a great advantage...being able to grow vegetables and fruits year round, something that most people can't really do. Unless you have a greenhouse.

 

[Southern28Chick]

 

[PeiTheCelt]

Quote:
That's how it read to me as well. I applaud him for wanting to make food more "real" - but it sounds too much like trying to sway public opinion based on the results of a reality show. "Don't do this because look at what happened on Big Brother when they did it!"

*shrug* But that's just me.

I have also told my husband that I will not be responsible for killing the roos that are for the stew pot, and that I won't even help with plucking until their heads have been removed.. So.. I can't give him too much grief for being squeamish. *grin*

 

[Mac in Wisco]

There's differing ideas about being self sufficient. Some have mentioned completely living off the grid or keeping a farm with no outside inputs, that's a little extreme.

When i was growing up (in the 80's), our family lived in town and both my parents worked blue collar jobs. My father grew up in the city , but was an avid outdoorsman. My mother grew up on a farm, but it wasn't her families sole source of income. The fields were leased to other people and my grandfather only kept a few steers and hogs.

Although we lived in town on a small lot, we found people nearby who allowed to garden on their land. An elderly lady let us use a 1/4 acre behind her home if we took care of the yard, in other years a friend of my father let us garden on his land. We planted close to 10,000 sq ft each year. We canned a lot of it, froze some of it, traded vegetables for fruit at the local market and canned that also.

In the summer we ran gill nets on the river for carp, anywhere from 5-10 tons a year to the fish markets. I ran setlines for catfish, 400 hooks a day, they got me 50 cents a pound at the market or more than enough catfish to fill our freezer. In the fall we trapped muskrat on the river. We sold close to 400 pelts a year. We had made our own airboat from a flat bottom boat, a volkswagon engine, and a 4 foot prop, this allowed us to keep trapping even after the river froze over. We would hunt ducks, geese, deer, and other small game to fill the freezer. My grandfather would give us a half side of beef each year for Christmas which went a long ways.

Of course we also went grocery shopping each week for milk, cereal, bread and such things, but most of our food we harvested ourselves.

We weren't tree huggers, hippies, grassroots revivalists, locavores, homesteaders or any other label, fashionable or not, that you could think of. We weren't try prove anything or advertise a lifestyle. We were just a family trying to make ends meet. Although we put a lot of work into these things, it wasn't seen as work, per se, or too much trouble. It was just things we enjoyed to do and did together as a family.

 

[Davaroo]

Nicely said, Mac.

Keep in mind, the whole article was sponsored by a magazine as a sort of "reality" show. In other words, it was scripted and predestined to fail. They won either way it went, so it was all good. The whole thing was prompted by a trendy fad, what they were calling "locavorism". Legitimate groups like TMEN and Rodale, to name a few, and many people around the world (including Mac) prove all the time you CAN do a lot with very little.

But dont see only the failure or mismanagement of our Brooklyn Farmer - there is far more to learn than that.
- For one, the guy got off his duff and tried it. He turned off Jerry Springer long enough to attempt it. That's worth something in my book.
- He also learned that nothing is as easy as armchair pundits or yuppy "locavores" with more money than sense would have you think.
- He got closer to his family, although there were trying moments when the whole thing drove a wedge between them. They will always remember the experience.
- He learned how market driven economics work, and how industry and conusumers interconnect.
- He learned that this self-sufficiency stuff is hard work and requires lots of sacrifice!
- And maybe most important, he learned to appreciate things he had taken for granted for so long.

I liked it and I appreciate the chance to see it. It taught much good, actually, if we want to see.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Yeah... but I really had to shake my head when he described breaking down and weeping after his wife was hit in the head with a twenty pound rabbit.

 

[Davaroo]

Okay, that WAS a little odd.