What hope can we give people who are trying to grow their own food but find it arduous or don't have enough hours in the day? Are there examples of people growing their own diet without slaving in the garden all day?
Arduous gardening
What hope can we give people who are trying to grow their own food but find it arduous or don't have enough hours in the day? Are there examples of people growing their own diet without slaving in the garden all day?
Two Words. Ruth Stout.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organ...ts-System.aspx
Is there anyone here using that method and/or can link to photos and more details? Thanks!
I was really hoping someone in the permaculture community could offer some hope by example.
During some of my years in Georgia I probably attained about 75% self-sufficiency in food, while otherwise spending time running a homestead in other ways--cutting firewood, maintaining infrastructure, and conducting a social life. Some of these years there were interns or various forms of community around me, but quite a bit of the time not so. What I did was:
1. Find those things (by research and trial) which grow easily and effortlessly for you. For me it was sweet potatoes, greens, peas (southern, not "english" peas), dry corn, winter squash, tomatoes and a few other things, plus, usually, chickens for eggs and sometimes goats.
2. Base your diet around those things. This is usually more challenging. Having lived in a Third World country with a basic diet, I learned by example that it is quite possible to contentedly eat the same monotonous few things meal after meal, and in fact a large portion of humanity does just that. Little bits of variety added to the staples, as well as the use of spices, helps; but I got to the point of actually enjoying sweet potatoes at every meal. I didn't have to think about what to eat or spend a lot of time preparing it...freeing time in both the growing and the preparing for other things.
Growing a diverse diet will take more time and effort, especially at the early stages of a system before any perennials or fruit/nuts come online and you're still learning what works and what won't. As your system matures these longer-term crops will provide more variety, as well as your own knowledge about what might be available around you free, cheap, wildcrafted, etc. One year I canned some 50 pints of meat from a fresh roadkill deer....One of the benefits of not having every hour allocated to relentless toil is that you can observe more and be available to jump on windfall opportunities like this when they come.
Ruth Stout's method involves a huge amounts of imported mulch....fine if that source is on-site or nearby and cheap/free. Providing enough mulch is often a primary limiting factor in organic growing of any sort....
I think I have either a black thumb or am in an area where such things do not grow. So far I have not found anything which will grow effortlessly, except asparagus, which is only seasonal and can't form the basis of a diet. I have little hope I can ever grow much of my own food, but will keep trying.....Originally Posted by adiantum
Sounds like from your other posts about the shallow soil that you might have some serious site issues needing time and effort to improve. You might do well to start with some large containers or some small edged raised beds where you can start with wholly improved soil, so as to remove that variable from your trials, and then you should be able to grow some things that other gardeners in your climate zone grow. "Start at the back door and work out" Mollison says.
Thinking on a larger scale, self-sufficiency on a homestead scale might not be the primary aim of permaculture, as compared to local and regional self-reliance. Sites differ in their potential to grow food. There is plenty of land out there just plain unsuited for it...too steep, too wet or dry, too toxified, etc. Different sites grow different things well, and based on this a local economy can develop. Maybe you and your site aren't supposed to grow all your own food. Is there something that your site can grow, or that you can make or do, that you can trade with other LOCAL sources for food? (This is a very different thing than simply getting a job and participating fully in the global economy. The big difference being the opportunity to meet the people involved face to face and get to know them....)
Yes, I'm starting to have modest success by preparing a sheltered garden out the back door. I'm excavating down about 18 inches and replacing the rocks with buried wood beds.
As far as I can tell few people around here grow food. Ranching is the primary food-growing activity in my county but many ranchers are going out of business because of the extreme drought. Annual field crops are oats and sorghum, but they don't do well in drought either.
I feel like there must be ways people can grow food here. I like to believe permaculture can give hope to people who do not have green thumbs or who do not live in ideal climates. But there seem to be few examples of people actually growing food in difficult conditions.
Last edited by Ludi; 03-05-2012 at 06:26 AM.
Ludi, Have you done a PDC? Would you consider doing one? or would you consider getting a permaculture designer in to help you?
Water is a much more difficult thing to overcome than soil quality (look at rain forests for example). I think you really have to be harvesting as much water as you possibly can and then growing according to how much you can harvest. There are quite a variety of techniques. There are a couple of books all about water harvesting that would give you some great ideas, available from the PRI website, or if your lucky like me from your regional library system.
In your case I feel that you really need to do a lot of planning when it comes to water on your property. I reckon you will need to be accounting for each drop and possibly using it several times before it 'leaves' your system. If indeed it needs to leave your system at all.
You cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it - Einstein
www.greentemple.com.au
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