Peter writes about how a bunch of folks underestimate just how hard subsistence farming really is. "Green Acres" is funny because Oliver Wendell Douglas doesn't have the faintest idea how to farm, but it's just a TV show. Reality is different.
Just how different is shown nicely by a very interesting young lady from China. Li Ziqi has a farm where she grows pretty much everything she eats. The Queen Of The World found her Youtube channel and I find it to be very relaxing to watch - the music is soothing and the videography is simply spectacular. There's a reason that her videos have been viewed almost 3 billion times.
But if you watch you will see just how hard she works. Her life looks rewarding, but she works increibly hard for it. Folks thinking that they'll set up a couple acre farm for the End Times should really watch a few of her videos just to get a sense of what they are getting in for.
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We had grand dreams when he finally retired. I was just turning 60. For a couple years he would till up this big area that he used to do when he was a teen.
The first year he was able to help with planting and weeding. A coon ate most of our corn. :-)
The second year he tore his rotator cuff so I did the planting and weeding. Crows are smart. They pulled up the corn as it sprouted. They like healthy food, too. ;-) Oh, and the garden became muck from red dirt/clay and a LOT of rain.
The third year, it was fire ants more than the other two.
When he decided he wanted to travel, I said no garden. It was just getting too frustrating.
Potatoes are easy though. You can grow them in a 5 gallon bucket.
You all be safe and God bless.
What woks well in any particular area can only be determined by experience. Start small with things that are easy to grow and that you like to eat.
Then, experiment with different varieties. It is the difference between restaurant food and what you cook to your own taste. Supermarket varieties are extremely constrained by consumer's expectations and what is tough enough to make it market. And, of course, yours can be very fresh.
On an old tyme farme, the husband and boys would do all the hard labor of the farm while the womenfolk would do the housework (which is hard without electricity or other modern-fuel) and raise a garden that fed the family because the farm produce went to market.
Subsistence farming is very hard even for just a garden. And, of course, then there's storing everything one produces. Canning, drying, storing potatoes (which is deadly in a non-ventilated area, seriously, will kill you dead from fumes) and, if raising meat animals, preserving meat.
Yeah. Great if you live somewhere where you can have a root cellar that doesn't flood.
But...
Go find a copy of Readers' Digest's "Back to Basics." Read it cover to cover. And you'll find the sudden urge to not try that.
In the comments to Peter's post, Divemedic commented on the special fun of gardening in Florida.
Everything in Florida wants to eat either you or what you're growing. Well, there might be a few that want to eat both us and what we're growing.
We did OK on tomatoes, although I'm sure in total costs we barely broke even. We'd get one or two strawberries in a season. Never could harvest zucchini or cucumbers. The bugs never sleep. The birds get the blueberries.
The thing about the fire ants is that there's a new species that kill the fire ants, but are more likely to get into your house and try to carry off your pantry. Those are big head ants.
Without air conditioning and grocery stores, this place would be uninhabitable.
"Homesteading," even on a MINUTE LEVEL, is A LOT of work! It also takes YEARS to get things right! My take is that if you don't get things going when you're young, you're screwed! If you don't get things to the point where you can even SUPPLEMENT what you buy at the store by the time you retire, you're going to be selling the place off for a place in Sun City out of shear frustration and lack of energy!
I've been on my acre for about eight years, and am JUST NOW getting somewhere!
Li ZiQi is Chinese soft propaganda. There is no way a rural Chinese woman could post videos to YouTube. That is highly illegal to do in China (they can't even access the non-Chinese internet much less post to it). Her videos had to be approved by the CCP's propaganda ministry.
She's also a business woman (she makes a lot of money peddling her products). Some time ago she got in some sort of legal spat with her production company and has been slightly disappeared ever since. Her trade marks also all got rejected by the Chinese government, which isn't a good sign for her
About Li ZiQi's problems.
That said, they're well-done videos and are entertaining to watch. I've posted some along time ago to my blog.
Damnit, ambisinistral, I knew it was too good to be true! Now I will have to rethink the marriage proposal I was preparing.
Do remember that, when TSHTF, the shithole hive dwellers are going to come charging like the zombie horde they are to rape the countryside. Never forget that YOU owe them!
I grew up on a family farm. There was SOMETHING to do EVERY DAY. Milking, tending crops, fixing fence or equipment. Even in winter it was a rare day there wasn't something to do.
It is harder than people who haven't farmed imagine.
I don't know how many women wear makeup to do the farm work when they're doing it for realz. Or wear soft knits while digging their gardens. And don't sweat. Or have hands that look like that.
The pretty Chinese ladies I've known don't like sun on their faces; getting tan makes them look like peasants.
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