Sustainable Agriculture, Post SHTF

[krapgame]

If this topic is better suited to a different forum, please feel free to move it there.

I've recently been in discussions regarding a "sudden stop" scenario and its impact on agriculture. A lot of us count on being able to garden and such on a small scale, and many seem to have a good idea how that works. However, I'm running up against some limitations of scalability for anything much bigger than a large garden.

Here's the scenario: For whatever reason, energy prices make chemical inputs (fertilizer, etc.) no longer viable for a sustained period of time. For folks running a medium to large sized garden, along with some chickens or rabbits or other small animals in small number, not a problem as we all know how to recycle all of that and can keep a garden sized plot viable for a long time. However, for people keeping a few draft animals, or a few head of larger livestock that are dependent on hay and/or grain supplements beyond what can be produced in the back yard, what then? What about the acreage needed to feed the 300 million people who haven't a clue that their food doesn't magically appear from the discharge chute of the magic "food making machine" at the local grocery store? The ag industry is gonna leave a lot of folks really hungry and poor as supply and demand pricing will undoubtedly cause the available products to skyrocket.

In southern Indiana, the following numbers I believe are generally safe assumptions with modern practices;
Corn - 175-200 bu/ac w/ fertilizer, non-irrigated
Wheat - 50-80 bu/ac w/ fertilizer
Hay - 2 1/2-3 tons per acre w/ fertilizer
Pasture - 2 cow/calf pair per acre w/fertilizer, plus grain inputs

Take away the fertilizer and the following happens:
Corn - 60-80 bu/ac
Wheat - 25-40 bu/ac
Hay - 1-2 tons per acre
Pasture - <1 cow/calf pair per acre, plus grain inputs

The 2nd set of numbers assumes a standard crop rotation of alternating corn, wheat and clover, which leads to the next potential problem; ground that is presently used for grain crops would decrease by 1/3 as it is rotated out in rebuilding years. So, if I'm looking at this correctly, with yields being cut by half, and productive ground being cut by a third, we're facing a situation where our food output could effectively drop to 33% of current levels.

A crop rotation that incorporates pasture in the cycle, corn>wheat>hay>pasture, for small scale operations would help, inasmuch as it would keep the animal waste on the ground where it would be most needed for the next years crop, but that essentially takes ground out of grain production for 2 years instead of 1, which cuts our available grain supply to 25% of current levels. This is significant because corn and wheat currently supply a pretty high percentage of our caloric intake, as has been discussed by others on this board.

Now consider that this rotation does nothing to address the depletion of micronutrients in the ground, which is already a problem in many places. Standard practice here is the addition of ag lime every 3rd year or so. That probably goes away as it becomes cost prohibitive due to the costs of grinding the stone and the delivery costs being tied to the aforementioned cost of energy. This also impacts the quantity of production as well as the quality.

What I conclude from this is that with our current agricultural model, we become a very hungry nation very fast, at least until food production can be converted to a more tradional, sustainable model and processing and distribution becomes more decentralized.

I mention all of this for 2 reasons. First, to bring awareness to the potential magnitude of the problem that we could be facing as the "city folk" start getting hungry and second to get folks thinking about the true carrying capacities of their own homesteads. If you're using outside inputs to make your production requirements (I certainly am) we need to be thinking about how to adjust for those inputs becoming effectively unavailable. Yes, it's true that the original settlers raised crops and livestock without these inputs, but they were working virgin land. Most of the land we have today has suffered from varying degrees of industrial ag practices for nearly 100 years and simply doesn't have the potential that it did when it was first tilled.

So, has anyone given any thought to this or has my little red choo-choo gone chugging merrily 'round the bend?

[grumble]

Excellent post, KG. I've been waiting for someone to come up with a "magic bullet" in reply, but it would seem you hit the nail on the head and there ARE no solutions. Except to say that if farm outputs are reduced to 25% of current levels, it would follow that so would populations. Not a pretty picture.

It could be that farm output is currently something like 125% of domestic consumption, and it is clear that the US consumes far more than a subsistence level of caloric intake. If so, rather than a reduction to only 25% of current population, it may be a more cheery picture, and populations would only be reduced to about 33% of current levels. Assuming transportation and distribution could be established, of course.

Societies aren't known for quietly sitting back and starving to death, so I'd guess there would be some sort of upheaval in conjunction with the shortages, probably resulting in some sort of more agrarian society and not many "economies of scale" such as we enjoy today.

[patience]

This topic was addressed to some degree in an old book, "Farmers for 40 Centuries", IIRC, about China and how agriculture was practiced there. The bottom line is, you waste nothing, and it is very labor intensive. You also end up eating lower on the food chain--less meat and more grains and vegetables. This won't sit well with cheeeseburger addicts, but there it is.

Check out "Diet for a Small Planet, by Francis Lappe', I think it was. This requires some careful use of land. Marginal, hilly, less fertile land is used for pasture for dairy animals, they are fed less grain, and lower milk production is the order of the day. More productive land is used for grain production, and vegetables are raised with intensive practices in odd small areas. Absolutely ALL animal and food wastes and even human wastes are returned to the soil, lest it be depleted. At least that is the general idea. Think Chinese, or Mexican peasant diet, instead of the present meat-intensive diet of the US.

This sort of methods can greatly increase carrying capacity, but not infinitely. I am sure that we have already exceeded carrying capacity in many places. Those who have the best land and other resources and make the best of them will thrive. Others will wither, and there will be strife about it all.

[bookwormom]

Not only that, but good farmland has been "devoloped" with factories and "developments" and good land does not grow on trees. I have been worrying about that scenario many times. By the time the population thinks about turning their big lawns into gardens, it will be too late. I do not dare tell anyone around here that we are composting humanure.

[DiggingDogFarm]

Keep in mind though, that a good share of the AG crop in this country goes to produce non-essential non-staple garbage!

[DiggingDogFarm]

Think Chinese, or Mexican peasant diet, instead of the present meat-intensive diet of the US.


The current US diet is much more a garbage-carbohydrate (sugar) based diet than anything else.

[krapgame]

Grumble and Patience,

I appreciate the thoughts. It's a relief to know that I'm not the only one who sees this as a potential problem.

Thinking further about this, I believe (anyone willing to make bets?) that the Earl Butz policies will kick into overdrive and, at least in the US, the .gov will attempt to subsidize the increased input prices in the short term to ensure that the peasants don't go hungry. To a large degree, this has already been happening since the early 70's when then ag commissioner Butz set the policy, otherwise grain prices, and everything associated with grain as an input expense would already be at 400%+ of its current street price.

That just kicks the can a little further down the road. As I see it, the long term answer, if you decrease the amount of production from the land in service and the production requirement remains the same then you have to put more land in service. With suburban sprawl in recent years, how much viable farmable ground is out of service because of a McMansion in the middle of it? Ultimately, I want to think that many of the owners of those plots will be forced by their own circumstances to become responsible for some portion of their own food requirements, and will probably do so, either because the owners can't afford commercially available food, commercially available food isn't available, or because the neighbors that used to share with them don't have the surplus to share anymore, or have adopted an attitude of not helping those who don't try to help themselves. Maybe a combination of these.

A good example, adjacent to me are (8) 3 acre tracts. 6 of them are improved, 2 are vacant and are owned by my brother and farmed by me. Of the 6, only one has a postage stamp sized garden (weed patch, really) and a couple of fruit trees. All 6 are viable farm ground (parents used to own it, I used to help farm it) and each could easily have at least 1 acre in garden and could support a variety of permanent fruit bearing plants on the balance. 3 of them own a dog but none have a single chicken, alrhough one does raise a few sheep for 4-H. Each of the 6 has the capacity to be net producers instead of net consumers. None of the 6 really, in my estimation, has the knowledge to produce anything yet. However, I'd gladly share what I know with any of them that asked and would be willing to prep their plots each year when I'm taking care of ours. In 20 years, none have ever asked. Now, that's just one small neighborhood. What would be the net result nationwide on the food demand if even 20% of these types took responsibility for their own well being?

Given the current trends of .gov, I can also see forced consolidation of McMansionvilles into higher density accommodations in order to free the ground for use for the "greater good of society as a whole."

To speak to what Grumble said about reduced populations, the irony is that as food production becomes more labor intensive, I think the trend will be toward larger families to help with the labor, a la the Amish model. This is also historically consistent with higher mortality rates associated with lower available standards of medical care that will probably follow in this scenario.

Using my 20 acres as a basis of experience, I'm going to try to calculate this weekend some estimates of caloric production potential and the logistics associated with sustaining that. I'm just curious how the model calculates compared to how I perceive that it will work.

Finally, to speak to Patience statement, I'll give up my cheeseburger when the scrape it from my cold, dead, plaque encrusted arteries. ;)

[ScrubbieLady]

Does anyone think that this type of situation will drive the govt to nationalize farmerland or food production?

[JarDude]

Grumble and Patience,

I appreciate the thoughts. It's a relief to know that I'm not the only one who sees this as a potential problem.

Thinking further about this, I believe (anyone willing to make bets?) that the Earl Butz policies will kick into overdrive and, at least in the US, the .gov will attempt to subsidize the increased input prices in the short term to ensure that the peasants don't go hungry. To a large degree, this has already been happening since the early 70's when then ag commissioner Butz set the policy, otherwise grain prices, and everything associated with grain as an input expense would already be at 400%+ of its current street price.

That just kicks the can a little further down the road. As I see it, the long term answer, if you decrease the amount of production from the land in service and the production requirement remains the same then you have to put more land in service. With suburban sprawl in recent years, how much viable farmable ground is out of service because of a McMansion in the middle of it? Ultimately, I want to think that many of the owners of those plots will be forced by their own circumstances to become responsible for some portion of their own food requirements, and will probably do so, either because the owners can't afford commercially available food, commercially available food isn't available, or because the neighbors that used to share with them don't have the surplus to share anymore, or have adopted an attitude of not helping those who don't try to help themselves. Maybe a combination of these.

A good example, adjacent to me are (8) 3 acre tracts. 6 of them are improved, 2 are vacant and are owned by my brother and farmed by me. Of the 6, only one has a postage stamp sized garden (weed patch, really) and a couple of fruit trees. All 6 are viable farm ground (parents used to own it, I used to help farm it) and each could easily have at least 1 acre in garden and could support a variety of permanent fruit bearing plants on the balance. 3 of them own a dog but none have a single chicken, alrhough one does raise a few sheep for 4-H. Each of the 6 has the capacity to be net producers instead of net consumers. None of the 6 really, in my estimation, has the knowledge to produce anything yet. However, I'd gladly share what I know with any of them that asked and would be willing to prep their plots each year when I'm taking care of ours. In 20 years, none have ever asked. Now, that's just one small neighborhood. What would be the net result nationwide on the food demand if even 20% of these types took responsibility for their own well being?

Given the current trends of .gov, I can also see forced consolidation of McMansionvilles into higher density accommodations in order to free the ground for use for the "greater good of society as a whole."

To speak to what Grumble said about reduced populations, the irony is that as food production becomes more labor intensive, I think the trend will be toward larger families to help with the labor, a la the Amish model. This is also historically consistent with higher mortality rates associated with lower available standards of medical care that will probably follow in this scenario.

Using my 20 acres as a basis of experience, I'm going to try to calculate this weekend some estimates of caloric production potential and the logistics associated with sustaining that. I'm just curious how the model calculates compared to how I perceive that it will work.

Finally, to speak to Patience statement, I'll give up my cheeseburger when the scrape it from my cold, dead, plaque encrusted arteries. ;)

I am curious how you figure that?

[JarDude]

Does anyone think that this type of situation will drive the govt to nationalize farmerland or food production?
No. I think even our gooberment is smart then that.

[S2man]

Detroit is talking about turning 1/4 of their blighted city back into farmland. Sounds like an awful expensive project (I've taken down a FEMA trailer city), and I'm not sure what would be left of the top soil...

I'll be experimenting with alternative grains next year: Amaranth, not a true grain, and flax, to start with. I like flax as it gives seed, oil and fiber. Getting a scythe and and Gene Logsdon's "Small-Scale Grain Raising" are on my wishlist.

[grumble]

Yep, KG, we're on the same page.

The topic started off as, "Here's the scenario: For whatever reason, energy prices make chemical inputs (fertilizer, etc.) no longer viable for a sustained period of time." It seems a logical progression to your latest post.

Depending on how long the transition period might be from the current situation (plenty of available and reasonably priced farm chemicals) to dire shortages, there may or may not be time for governmental interference. My opinion is that when things start to pop, they'll pop quickly, and there'll be a chain reaction affecting different aspects of our society and economy. My guess would be that our old buddy, Earl Butz, will be the last person in the president's cabinet that will be listened to until other brush fires have been addressed. By the time the priorities got around to him, it would be too late to worry about such things as crop subsidies. Depending on the time of year that a crisis became clear, it could be several months before any intervention would happen, especially if it happened in an election year. Then, if the past is a guide, the government will do too little of exactly the wrong thing.

And now, I have to hang my head in shame. I'm too much like those people you mention on the two acre "farmettes." I have a LOT more land than they do, but I haven't planted a garden in 15 years. My soil is poor, and rainfall here is about 9" a year, half of that in the winter when it does the land no good. Given the cost of commercial fertilizer and the trouble of pumping water to irrigate, it just seems cheaper to buy fresh stuff at the grocery store once a month. Same holds for livestock -- I've raised different beasties, but it was never economical to do so, what with supplemental feed, the occasional vet bill, vaccinations, etc, etc. Just enough expense to be a drain and never enough to get past the IRS definition of a "hobby farm" for tax purposes. So, I buy meat on sale at the Safeway and store it in a freezer or dry it. One lesson I've learned the hard way is that when you have livestock, you don't own your land, it owns you. I know how and am able to farm and ranch on a small scale, it just isn't worth it as a way of life.

When you finish your model of caloric production per unit of land, I sure hope you'll take the time to post it here. If it gets as involved as it sounds like it could, you might even consider making it a commercial item for sale. I've really enjoyed your thought process and expertise in this!

[krapgame]

I am curious how you figure that?

Sorry, best guestimate. Local information I have is that industrial corn production currently runs $500/ac in input costs (fertilizer@$1000/t, 500#/ac, rent @$125/ac, fuel@$25/ac, spray@$50/ac, seed@$50/ac.), less equipment amortization, if I understand correctly. Assuming 150bu average yields (Indiana) at $4.25/bu (approximate 2009 average), that makes a margin of less than $137.5/ac. Estimating equipment costs @ $1.2mil, with a life average of 3 years (trade in cycle) for say 2000 acres, that averages the cost of the equipment at $200/ac/year. Add labor @1 man hour/ac@$15/hr, total cost of crop, $715/ac, net loss of $77.50 ac. or $155k on 2000 ac crop sold at $1.275mil. Total production cost, $4.77/bu., minimum plus amortized costs of fixed structures (silos, storage facilities, etc.) and cost of drying (LP most common @$2.00/gal~) Estimate conservatively that these costs add an additional $.50/bu, total production cost of $5.26/bu.

The producer, if he has any business sense, should try to make at least a 15% margin on his product, so add an additional $.79 per bushel, now the crop is worth $6.05/bu. If it goes directly to a feedlot for that price, now the feedlot is paying $1.42 (plus delivery fees) for the same volume of grain that he was previously paying a dollar for. It takes the same volume of feed to finish a cow, so his input cost for his finished product is 42% higher. If finished beef cost $80/cwt @$4.25/bu, now it costs him $113.6/cwt. If he makes his 15%, he'll sell his product @$130.64/cwt, where beef was selling at $93/cwt.

The processor now paying $1.31/lb live weight, results in 60% final product to sell, so his cost for finished meat is $2.18/lb. Assume he sells to a wholesaler or broker of some fashion and gets a 15% markup. He sells his beef for $2.51/lb. The broker sells to the retailer, again targeting a 15% markup, for $2.88/lb (assume we're talking ground meat). According to information I have from my brother, who used to work in retail meats locally, figure that it will hit the shelf with a 50% markup (sometimes more), resulting in the street price of $4.33/lb. whereas I see that I can buy it today for $1.99, or a 218% increase.

That's the part I can demonstrate. What is harder to demonstrate is what I factored into that assumption that, without price supports, grain production would become more risky and as such would drive out more producers. With less producers (ie. less competition) I believe that prices would have continued to increase over the past 40 years, as was the concern of Butz. By keeping more producers in the game, it makes it more difficult for a few large producers to control the market. IMO, to say that this could have caused prices to double above this model is not unreasonable. Can I prove it? Nope. However, look at the increase in other commodities that do not have price supports. In 1970, gas was $.36, today it's $2.74 (761%) Crude oil was $15~, today $86 (573%) A car was $3900 (nominal), today $20,000 (513%) A house was $23,400, today $185,500 (793%) Corn was $1.35, today $4.24 (315%) or under my actual cost value argument, $6.05 (448%) Using this snapshot, average prices have increased 660%, while corn has increased less than half of that. Had it kept pace, it would now be in the $8.91.bu range. Plug that number into my equations above and see where it comes out.

As I said, it was a speculative guestimate on my part, but I maintain that the possibility exists. BTW, if anyone finds fault with any of my assumptions, PLEASE say so. I don't want to be propagating bad information.

[JarDude]

Sorry, best guestimate. Local information I have is that industrial corn production currently runs $500/ac in input costs (fertilizer@$1000/t, 500#/ac, rent @$125/ac, fuel@$25/ac, spray@$50/ac, seed@$50/ac.), less equipment amortization, if I understand correctly. Assuming 150bu average yields (Indiana) at $4.25/bu (approximate 2009 average), that makes a margin of less than $137.5/ac. Estimating equipment costs @ $1.2mil, with a life average of 3 years (trade in cycle) for say 2000 acres, that averages the cost of the equipment at $200/ac/year. Add labor @1 man hour/ac@$15/hr, total cost of crop, $715/ac, net loss of $77.50 ac. or $155k on 2000 ac crop sold at $1.275mil. Total production cost, $4.77/bu., minimum plus amortized costs of fixed structures (silos, storage facilities, etc.) and cost of drying (LP most common @$2.00/gal~) Estimate conservatively that these costs add an additional $.50/bu, total production cost of $5.26/bu.

The producer, if he has any business sense, should try to make at least a 15% margin on his product, so add an additional $.79 per bushel, now the crop is worth $6.05/bu. If it goes directly to a feedlot for that price, now the feedlot is paying $1.42 (plus delivery fees) for the same volume of grain that he was previously paying a dollar for. It takes the same volume of feed to finish a cow, so his input cost for his finished product is 42% higher. If finished beef cost $80/cwt @$4.25/bu, now it costs him $113.6/cwt. If he makes his 15%, he'll sell his product @$130.64/cwt, where beef was selling at $93/cwt.

The processor now paying $1.31/lb live weight, results in 60% final product to sell, so his cost for finished meat is $2.18/lb. Assume he sells to a wholesaler or broker of some fashion and gets a 15% markup. He sells his beef for $2.51/lb. The broker sells to the retailer, again targeting a 15% markup, for $2.88/lb (assume we're talking ground meat). According to information I have from my brother, who used to work in retail meats locally, figure that it will hit the shelf with a 50% markup (sometimes more), resulting in the street price of $4.33/lb. whereas I see that I can buy it today for $1.99, or a 218% increase.

That's the part I can demonstrate. What is harder to demonstrate is what I factored into that assumption that, without price supports, grain production would become more risky and as such would drive out more producers. With less producers (ie. less competition) I believe that prices would have continued to increase over the past 40 years, as was the concern of Butz. By keeping more producers in the game, it makes it more difficult for a few large producers to control the market. IMO, to say that this could have caused prices to double above this model is not unreasonable. Can I prove it? Nope. However, look at the increase in other commodities that do not have price supports. In 1970, gas was $.36, today it's $2.74 (761%) Crude oil was $15~, today $86 (573%) A car was $3900 (nominal), today $20,000 (513%) A house was $23,400, today $185,500 (793%) Corn was $1.35, today $4.24 (315%) or under my actual cost value argument, $6.05 (448%) Using this snapshot, average prices have increased 660%, while corn has increased less than half of that. Had it kept pace, it would now be in the $8.91.bu range. Plug that number into my equations above and see where it comes out.

As I said, it was a speculative guestimate on my part, but I maintain that the possibility exists. BTW, if anyone finds fault with any of my assumptions, PLEASE say so. I don't want to be propagating bad information.


I guess I am still not following your numbers. Some make sense some don't. The 1.2 million for equipment for example. Divided by 3 years is 400,000 a year. NOBODY is using up 400k a year in equipment to grow 2000 acres of corn, or other commodity crop.

I agree with your concern about agriculture as we know it coming to an end but I don't think it will be the result of energy/fertilizer costs. It it will be the result of a total economic collapse in which money will be worthless and inputs will be unavailable completely.

[krapgame]

Depending on how long the transition period might be from the current situation (plenty of available and reasonably priced farm chemicals) to dire shortages, there may or may not be time for governmental interference. My opinion is that when things start to pop, they'll pop quickly, and there'll be a chain reaction affecting different aspects of our society and economy. My guess would be that our old buddy, Earl Butz, will be the last person in the president's cabinet that will be listened to until other brush fires have been addressed. By the time the priorities got around to him, it would be too late to worry about such things as crop subsidies. Depending on the time of year that a crisis became clear, it could be several months before any intervention would happen, especially if it happened in an election year. Then, if the past is a guide, the government will do too little of exactly the wrong thing.

No arguments here. I'm betting that all of this will m/l happen in unison, centered around the rapid devaluation of the dollar. When it happens, I think there'll be an immediate knee jerk panic (a la bank bailouts) that will throw an extra trillion or so at the farm subsidies, but by the time it gets to the streets it'll have no buying power for any impact.

And now, I have to hang my head in shame. I'm too much like those people you mention on the two acre "farmettes." I have a LOT more land than they do, but I haven't planted a garden in 15 years. My soil is poor, and rainfall here is about 9" a year, half of that in the winter when it does the land no good. Given the cost of commercial fertilizer and the trouble of pumping water to irrigate, it just seems cheaper to buy fresh stuff at the grocery store once a month. Same holds for livestock -- I've raised different beasties, but it was never economical to do so, what with supplemental feed, the occasional vet bill, vaccinations, etc, etc. Just enough expense to be a drain and never enough to get past the IRS definition of a "hobby farm" for tax purposes. So, I buy meat on sale at the Safeway and store it in a freezer or dry it. One lesson I've learned the hard way is that when you have livestock, you don't own your land, it owns you. I know how and am able to farm and ranch on a small scale, it just isn't worth it as a way of life.

No shame in that. We're all just trying to do what makes the best sense for us given our present circumstances. I'm figuring that if the time comes that it makes sense for you, you'll already know how it all works and will be able to fire back up if you need to. Or maybe "lease" some property to some neighbors to use in exchange for some of the spoils.

Being the owner of a couple of business ventures, I'll say that any business owns you, and farming is a business. It's no different. I farm because it's diametrically opposed to what I do for a day job, therefore somewhat therapeutic, because I want to have control over the food my family gets, and because I want my kids to grow up with exposure to how it works so they will know how if the need ever arises for them.

When you finish your model of caloric production per unit of land, I sure hope you'll take the time to post it here. If it gets as involved as it sounds like it could, you might even consider making it a commercial item for sale. I've really enjoyed your thought process and expertise in this!

Expertise?? I'm making this up as I go. :D

[krapgame]

I guess I am still not following your numbers. Some make sense some don't. The 1.2 million for equipment for example. Divided by 3 years is 400,000 a year. NOBODY is using up 400k a year in equipment to grow 2000 acres of corn, or other commodity crop.

The case I'm basing that on is info from an ag equipment salesman that I'm acquainted with who services him. I can't state with certainty that ALL of the equipment is replaced on a 3 year cycle (I feel certain that some of it isn't) but I do know that this particular farmer rotates combines every 3 years, last year was at a cost of about $700k, $475k for the power unit and $125k each for 2 heads IIRC. I don't know how much trade in he gets toward that price or whether its a lease arrangement. This person I understand is pretty well off from other ventures, so the equipment trading may be for other tax related reasons. My belief is that he keeps most of his equipment up to date, possibly moreso than most. This is the case that I have the most knowledge about, so that's what I've based my assumptions on, although I think it's a moot point for the purpose of the original topic. I'm not trying to mislead anybody, just reporting with the best data available to me.

I agree with your concern about agriculture as we know it coming to an end but I don't think it will be the result of energy/fertilizer costs. It it will be the result of a total economic collapse in which money will be worthless and inputs will be unavailable completely.

I believe that they are opposite sides of the same coin. I just think that energy costs will be at the vanguard of the collapse, possibly by 2-3 years if the pump monkeys are able to keep it going. Indications right now are that the more they pump, the higher energy costs will go. The higher the energy costs, the worse the street level economy. The worse the street level economy the more need to pump, ad infinitum. IIRC, in 2008, fertilizer here got to the $1800/t range, when oil was at its peak. Largely because of the energy inputs required to produce the fertilizer and secondarily because of the transport costs involved in getting it here. My concern is that oil could get to that point again ahead of a full out collapse. The difference is, when it happened in 2008 it followed some fairly good economic years. If it happens in 2011, not so much. I don't think the cash reserves exist to work with like they did in '08, and the banks aren't as freely loaning money as they were in '08. But I think it could well be 2-3 years before the economy as a whole finishes it's death twitching. Maybe not though, in the case of Iceland. Regardless how the details unfold the end result is the same; a system of food production that's based on a model that will no longer work,

[JarDude]

but I do know that this particular farmer rotates combines every 3 years, last year was at a cost of about $700k, $475k for the power unit and $125k each for 2 heads IIRC.

Your number are exaggerated, plus they don't add up.

[krapgame]

Your number are exaggerated, plus they don't add up.

OK then, $725k to be completely accurate. As to the prices, I'm just relaying what I remember being told. Maybe he exaggerated, maybe he was wrong, maybe he overcharged the guy, maybe I misunderstood or remembered incorrectly. I see the same models of that year still lists used for $250-315k, and headers for $55-75k. I don't know anything about the depreciation on that kind of equipment in its first 2 years, but I'm guessing it's fairly aggressive. Maybe not. Regardless, adjust my number by $150k or whatever suits you and call it an honest mistake. It's a small matter.

The bottom line is still that in the past 40 years grain has increased in price less than half the amount that nearly everything else has. Had it been an open market instead of a .gov price supported one, IMO grain should be at least double the price that it currently is, and that would have affected everything depending on it. I maintain that the ripple effect of that increased price of grain dependent items throughout the economy should have affected costs of living, in turn affecting wages, in turn affecting production costs in everything, Compounded over 40 years, I believe that this easily should have increased the average inflation of prices from a 660% increase as I demonstrated to something significantly higher, and grain along with everything associated with it would have continued to follow that had it not been held artificially low (adjusted for inflation, a 1974 bushel of corn would sell for nearly $16 today - inflationdata.com), as was the stated policy of former ag secretay Butz. That's the basis of assumption from which I derived the 400% number you originally took issue with. Further, there is little dispute that his policies ("Get big or get out" and "plant fence row to fence row") are directly responsible for the industrial ag model we have today that is the basis for my original posting.

I guess we're gonna just have to agree to disagree about this.

[ScrubbieLady]

No. I think even our gooberment is smart then that.

Before the election, I would have thought that they weren't. They may not call it that but I can imagine them trying to do something that works out that way. Perhaps, in their food protection bills.

[ldsparamedic]

I too have thought of this. Here is my 2 cents: The Amish survive and prosper with no artificial inputs. Cattle are designed to convert milk to grass, hence the rumen. Grain increases milk production in the form of protein. Unfortunately, most dairy cattle probably would not thrive on a grass only system. Your smaller heritage breeds and less popular dairy breeds would do well, but the Holsteins have become hybridized to produce maximum milk from concentrated feeds.

Yes, I believe agriculture is possible without chemical inputs, the question is how willing will farmers be to produce it. My great grandparents were homesteaders in MN in the 19teens. Ag will become more labor intensive as draft animals may have to be used. Your narrow rows of 18" and 20" with large plant populations will be gone as the land will not naturally support it.

I think you will see more family sized farms which will be self supportive and the excess crop sold. Sadly, part of the population will die from starvation, but that is not our faults. We are preparing by acquiring the needed skills, tools and land to survive. I will feel sad but not guilty. Nobody is going to take anything from my family. Rather than purchasing RVs, boats, quads, video game systems, etc, I am spending my money prudently on supplies.

[cartershan]

Idsparamedic, AMEN!! Thanks, Shannon

[BigOBear]

By no means am I saying Amish aren't a good source for solutions to the OP, but I thought (some?) Amish used chemical inputs... pesticides, fertilizer, etc?

[Terri]

Grumble, Kansas grows wheat BEcause the climate is rather harsh.

Winter wheat is planted in the fall and it germinates in the fall rain. It is covered erratically by snow, and it starts to grow again in the spring. by the time the winter moisture is gone the grain is near harvest, and there is no rain to stop the farmer from getting into the field to harvest.

[krapgame]

By no means am I saying Amish aren't a good source for solutions to the OP, but I thought (some?) Amish used chemical inputs... pesticides, fertilizer, etc?

My experience, there are varying degrees of "Amish." In my area of the country, I have Swartzentruber Amish less than 15 miles away, who are the most traditional of all Amish (Absolutely no electricity, steel wheels on everything, etc.) and about 45 minutes away are Amish who use solar electric in their houses, some own their own cars but don't drive them, others actually drive as well, most wear soft soled shoes, as compared to the traditional ones who only wear leather shoes. In other nearby communities, you'll see virtually everything in between.

As would be expected, the more progressive Amish also use more modern farming practices. Many farm with horses, but use modern equipment that have power units adapted to run them. Most of these do use chemical fertilizers. As I understand, this is largely why there are so many divisions amongst them. As a subgroup determines that ideas not completely in keeping with the local community make sense to pursue, they will splinter from the community and start a new community but still hold onto the most core beliefs of the Amish order. Much like Catholics all hold onto celebrating Christmas and Easter, but everything else in Catholicism is fair game for debate. ;)

My closest experiences with Amish are the Old Order community about 15 miles away. They still practice crop rotations, use no or at least very minimal chemical inputs as best I can determine, plant open pollinated corn on 40" row spacings and 10" spacings in the row, control weeds with horse drawn cultivators, and consider 80 bu/ac to be a bumper crop. But, they don't just plant corn. They rotate corn with spelt, and oats and clover (among other crops) to keep the land from becoming depleted. They also have the livestock that goes into the rotation and adds fertilizer back to the crop ground. In spite of these low intensity ways, they still produce enough surplus calories in the form of sorghum, garden produce, baked goods, eggs and meat from their farms to earn the money necessary to purchase the outside inputs necessary for their operations. However, they don't have the surplus necessary to make the payments on a $100k tractor.

I agree with ldsparamedic, these type "closed system" farms that were considered the standard pre 1950 will again have to become the standard. However, their carrying capacities will become significantly diminished without cheap energy related inputs. Since starting this thread, I've put several hours into researching data that I currently have in spreadsheet form that compares current caloric production capacities to pre 1950 capacities. I'm not yet entirely certain how to interpret what I've learned. Basically, I think it's this; Yes, the old ways still produce a surplus that can be exported from the farm (neighbors, etc.) or stored for future use on the farm (against crop failures, etc.) but the margins are MUCH more slim. In the example of my 20 acres, assuming a family of 4 has a caloric requirement of roughly 3 million calories per year, at my current rate of production I could easily export enough calories to feed approximately 26 families of 4, in addition to my own. Granted, it would become a pretty monotonous diet for them, and I've not done any research to evaluate the other nutritional needs produced, only calories. However, using production numbers consistent with pre 1950 practices, my exportable surplus would only feed 8 families of 4, plus my own. Also, it's worth noting that I don't practice truly "modern" farming practices, so the decrease for those who do would be even more pronounced.

The bottom line of that is that I believe that everyone is going to have to take a more active part in their own food production. As I stated on here earlier, my neighbors with their 3 acre plots could easily produce enough food to satisfy their needs, with surplus. Everyone in the eastern half of the US, as well as other parts, who has a standard sized city lot has the capacity to produce several hundred thousand calories per year. Given what I've first-hand seen Patience accomplish with his 1 acre of billy goat ground (very impressive!), I think there is no excuse for anyone to not be expected to take some part in producing for their own needs.

[firegirl969]

krapgame,

You mentioned monotinous diet. Now is the time to rectify that to some degree. For example, I just ordered a banana plant, almond tree, olive tree, raspberries, sugar maples, mayhaw trees, and pomegranete tree, to add to my plum trees, pear trees, blueberries, grapes, kiwi, and apple trees. The homestead already has wild blackberries and pecan trees established. Items added such as these will hopefully cure the food fatique we might experience as a result of eating lots of rice and beans. I know they won't start producing for several years but I have several years of fruits canned so that if we ration it carefully, we should make it until the trees start producing.

Another way that we plan to fight food fatique is to keep some veggies growing in the greenhouse all winter so that we can have some variety. I am having cucumbers and yellow summer squash growing this winter.

[BigOBear]

Just a wee bit of devil's advocate Krapgame... on your pre-50s numbers, do you think the caloric use will increase due to more physical work to produce on the farm?

While still fiction, I understand the Little House on the Prairie books were based on diaries? Take a look at Farmer Boy and pay attention to what that little 10 year old boy ate throughout the book. Hehe... evertime I've read those to the kids they go on and on about how he eats like I do :o

Thanks for starting the thread. Quite thought provoking.

[krapgame]

BigOBear,

I really don't know. I suspect it should, but I also suspect there will be lazy people postSHTF just like now, just like GD 1.0. However, in my calculations I used the requirements based on someone moderately active, exercise 3-5 times per week based on what our activity level is when we're more active (gardening/crop season, firewood cutting, etc.) I suspect that should go way up, but I'm not a dietitian.

I agree on the Little House books. Been years since I read any of them, but they do provide a reference insight. I guess I'm odd, but I also watch historical themed movies for the purpose of watching the background; seeing how the crops were handled, seeing what equipment was used and how, etc. Granted, there is a lot of BS in some of them, but some of the newer ones have paid much better attention to detail in these respects. I couldn't tell you the storyline in most of them, but if they had something cool happening in the background I probably took note of it. You take inspiration wherever you can find it.

[krapgame]

Firegirl,

I guess I should clarify that. Yes, we've done much of that already, and our diet will be better than some. I was referring to what we'll have to export to our neighbors, as much of our luxury items like that we don't currently grow in sufficient surplus to pass around. Maybe a small Christmas present or something, but not enough to supply regularly. The cool thing about this area, all one has to do is stop mowing their yard for a year and they will have all the wild blackberries they can stand. ;)

Now, if I could just find a way to grow cocoa in southern Indiana....

[grumble]

Grumble, Kansas grows wheat BEcause the climate is rather harsh.

Winter wheat is planted in the fall and it germinates in the fall rain. It is covered erratically by snow, and it starts to grow again in the spring. by the time the winter moisture is gone the grain is near harvest, and there is no rain to stop the farmer from getting into the field to harvest.


Thanks for the reply, Terri!

I wish we had weather as mild as Kansas here! :D

I live at about 7600 feet, and much of my ranch is an old playa, or ancient lakebed. Only the most hardy grasses will grow in that alkaline soil, mostly black gramma grass. Their roots extend down 6 to 8 feet. Our frost-to-frost growing season can be as short as June to September, or when we're lucky, from early April to mid-October. It just depends on the year and what the Weather Gods allow. Over the years, I've tried a number of grains as an experiment, but even the grasses advertised as the hardiest fail to establish themselves.

The treed hills have an inch or two of decent topsoil, but are very rocky. That's where my garden area is. It takes a lot of work to make a decent garden space.

This is one of the reasons I'm interested in KG's caloric model, to get an idea of what I'll need to feed my family should it be necessary.

[patience]

grumble,

I've seen krapgame's farm, and his soil is as good as you will find in this part of Indiana. He works hard at keeping that way. You'll have to make whatever adjustments to his data to make it work for your area. I have no idea what your ground is capable of, but his could easily do 160+ bushels of corn per acre, if he chose to use chemical fertilizers.

Most of krapgame's time is tied up with business off the farm, so bear in mind that what he gets done there is on evenings and weekends. That makes me think that if those neighbors of his on the 3 acre plots, would get off their collective backsides, they could easily feed themselves and others from that much land. It is as good as his, being originally part of the same farm he worked as a kid. Pretty well "useless eaters" living on it now. Big on couch time for football, and not much else, IMHO. Too many of those around now.

We are only raising maybe 50% of what we eat, mainly because we eat a lot of meat. If we chose to live on more grains, beans, and veggies, we could bump that to about 75%. I intend to put more emphasis on raising sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and grains as time goes by, to raise that as far as I can.

[grumble]

Patience, you, krapgame, and quite a few others seem to live in farm country, and I envy you that -- good soil and decent rainfall. I live in ranch country, miles and miles of hills and vegas. Each has its own advantages, I suppose. Still, we have to play the cards we're dealt. I know I'd never leave my place willingly even though it probably isn't ideal from a subsistence point of view. None-the-less, people have settled here for a couple hundred years, even though only the toughest were able to stick it out for for more than a couple generations. So, it IS possible, even if I can't grow a good stand of grain. Heck, if the elk can survive, so can we, by golly! <G>

[krapgame]

Out of curiosity, I plugged some numbers into my spreadsheet. It appears to me that a motivated family of 4 should, with a half acre of good usable ground, be able to provide for between 93 and 178% of their annual caloric requirements, and be able to do it all with simple tools and manual labor. I say motivated because it would definitely take some work. A lot of work. However, a mix of small patches of corn and small grains, a few fruit trees, a good array of fruits and vegetables and a half dozen laying hens should provide them a pretty decent diet. Definitely better than eating dirt. I even allowed for growing sugar beets for the purpose of extracting the sugar for canning purposes. That range includes modern practices with chemical inputs on the high end to lower intensity more traditional methods conservatively figured on the low end.

Granted, this represents an ideal scenario, but my original point still stands. Barring weather or other act of God problems, it can be done. Even if you take the grains and hens out of the equation, a quarter acre has the capability of producing 1/3 to 1/2 of the requirements. That in itself would take a significant burden off of whatever centralized production and distribution system is in place. If you added a small greenhouse to the equation, that should improve the scenario even more.

Does anybody know what a typical suburban family of 4 spends on groceries each month? I'm curious to know.

[grumble]

Good, practical, and very useful work, kg. Speaking for myself, I really appreciate the work you put into this. If a person would allow for a reduced harvest because of using old or heritage seeds, he could still use your computations as a guideline for what size garden would be needed.

Thanks to you, I now know that the area I had intended for a SHTF garden needs to be expanded for the number of people that might be using my place as a refuge. I'm also giving some serious thought to having some topsoil hauled in.

[West_TX_Desert_Rat]

Does anybody know what a typical suburban family of 4 spends on groceries each month? I'm curious to know.

I asked 6 familes with 4 members in the household that I know. They all live in suburban Chicago. The average was about $600 per month for groceries. Not a great sample I know but it's the best I could do.

[krapgame]

West TX,

That's great! Thanks for posting that. Because we, and most of our family and people we know, supplement so heavily with our own produce, we're kind of out of touch with reality.

FWIW, Patience mentioned a book called Farmers of Forty Centuries in an earlier posting. It's available here for free;

http://books.google.com/books?id=NOpEn8H1wmsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=farmers+of+forty+centuries&hl=en&ei=DD7jTPj-HoeglAeJx9XQDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

I haven't read or even looked at it yet, just happened to notice it and thought I'd pass it along for any interested parties.

[krapgame]

Good, practical, and very useful work, kg. Speaking for myself, I really appreciate the work you put into this. If a person would allow for a reduced harvest because of using old or heritage seeds, he could still use your computations as a guideline for what size garden would be needed.

Thanks to you, I now know that the area I had intended for a SHTF garden needs to be expanded for the number of people that might be using my place as a refuge. I'm also giving some serious thought to having some topsoil hauled in.

Glad it was of some use to you Grumble. Sorry to hear that it's going to result in some extra work for you tho. Hopefully my 10 minutes worth of tech documentation in the e-mail made some sense.

I agree, by tweaking the formulas in the spreadsheet, you should be able to modify it to almost any scenario. Maybe the next step would be to migrate that into a database that could have more extensive information based on plant varieties, regions, etc. Not sure if I have the expertise to pull that off or not. At some point I do want to add other nutritional information to determine the quality of diet and suitability for certain livestock, etc.

Like I said in the e-mail, as I was giving the final once over before I sent it, I found a couple of significant calculation errors. When I re-ran the details for my operation, I found that the capacities I mentioned earlier in this thread were off pretty significantly. Like you, I learned that I'm going to need to expand things a bit more than expected to cover everything I want to do. Fortunately, that only involves commandeering my brothers property that joins me for hay and pasture rotation.

Let me know if you have any ideas for things to add or fix.

[grumble]

Major kudos on the spreadsheet, kg. That's a downright professional job! And serious thanks for taking the time to send me the copy. It's going to take me a while to digest all the info you've included and see what modifications will be needed for my region and soil.

As a new guy, it isn't my place to say this, but you're a real asset to this forum!

[S2man]

krapgame, thanks for the encouraging words that most of our dietary needs can come from a small acreage. Bummer on revising your calc's to call for more land. I'd love to see your spreadsheet too, being a professional geek, AND a gardener. I'll show you my garden spreadsheet if you show me yours ;)

Concerning the average cost of food; Pre-prepping, our urban family of three regularly spent $200 / week at the grocery store, plus an occasionaly trip to Sam's. Subtract non-food items, and we were still well over $600 / month. Doing much better now, thank God.

[krapgame]

krapgame, thanks for the encouraging words that most of our dietary needs can come from a small acreage. Bummer on revising your calc's to call for more land. I'd love to see your spreadsheet too, being a professional geek, AND a gardener. I'll show you my garden spreadsheet if you show me yours ;)

Concerning the average cost of food; Pre-prepping, our urban family of three regularly spent $200 / week at the grocery store, plus an occasionaly trip to Sam's. Subtract non-food items, and we were still well over $600 / month. Doing much better now, thank God.

I sent you a PM with my e-mail address.

I've asked a few people around here as well, seems like $5-600/mo is pretty consistent. Makes a small garden look like a better investment all the time. I never dreamed it'd be quite that much. We generally spend $250/mo average to fill in the gaps of what we don't currently produce. That could be cut quite a bit, but doggone, I hate to give up chocolate. Hoping next year with the addition of more livestock to get that down to <$100/mo., including chocolate. ;)

[krapgame]

Along the theme of this thread, does anyone have any details for crop rotation schemes? The standard around here has always been corn>wheat>clover or corn>soybeans>wheat>clover. To a degree, that works.

Somewhere, once upon a time, I read a magazine article that detailed a crop rotation, at least used by if not developed by, Thomas Jefferson that was a 14 year rotation. IIRC, it dealt with many more produce items than just small grains. I recall beets, potatoes, onions and such being included in the rotation. It explained to some degree what benefits each crop brought, how it addressed the depletions caused by the previous crop and what it added for the next crop. I think I've got the magazine around here somewhere, but am having precious little luck laying my hands on it. If/when I do, I'll post it here.

Meantime, what rotations do y'all use or know of?

[grumble]

http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/environmental-studies/courses/es-399%20home/es-399-05/Projects/Kari%27s%20Senior%20Research%20Project/results.htm

This may be too basic for you, but it includes some interesting info for crop rotation in the Midwest used by the Amish.

I did a google on "sustainable crop rotation" and got a lot of interesting-looking hits. Most seem to concentrate on replenishing the nitrogen with cover crops and legumes.

[krapgame]

Grumble,

Not too basic at all. Thanks for sharing it!

[S2man]

krapgame, I haven't searched these sites for crop rotations, but given their themes I would suspect they'll be good resources:

ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (http://attra.ncat.org/horticultural.html)
Kerr Center: Farming and Gardening (http://www.kerrcenter.com/resources/farming-gardening.htm)
Rodale Institute (http://rodaleinstitute.org)

I've downloaded numerous pdf's on organic production from these sitesthis week, for the library. I'm currently working/researching on ordering fruit trees for spring delivery. I already grow organically, but as this thread has pointed out, should TSHTF we will be forced to go all organic. I want to know about all the non-chemical methods I can find.

[krapgame]

Good news, bad news and good news;

Good news, I found copies of the magazine I was thinking of. It's called Small Farmer's Journal. Expensive, but has some very informative, if somewhat esoteric, information.

Bad news, I can't seem to find the edition that had the article I'm trying to find. Still looking...

Good news, I found an aspect of the article online that details Jeffersons 7 year crop rotation plan.

http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2005_summer_fall/agronomist.htm

I remember the original article addressing this, but also had a 14 year rotation being mentioned in some detail. I may be remembering incorrectly, it may not have been Jeffersons, but I'm certain it was in the same article. That same edition had a story about an Amish farm family that was averaging $8000 per acre per year on a 10 acre vegetable farm. Believe it or not, it was a sort of no-till operation, in that each year he'd unroll big round bales of hay on the patch in a mat layer 6-8" thick, then plant his plants and seeds through the hay. No irrigation necessary, minimal weeding and the organic material content of the dirt was unbelievable, each years mulch becoming the next years fertilizer. I seem to recall it mentioning having developed a topsoil layer something like 30" deep over several years. IIRC, he was planting unreal plant population densities as well, nearly comparable with modern industrial ag planting rates with minimal or no chemical inputs. Lots of manual labor, but lots of kids.

Amazing what can be done when one breaks with conventional thinking.

[krapgame]

I ran across this last night:

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/nutrition_details.htm

and thought it worth mentioning. BigOBear posed the question about caloric requirements increasing as people had to do more manual labor in the scenario I posed originally in this thread. These folks have done an estimate of caloric consumption of the workday of a typical Viking. Seems they determined that 11,000 calories per day during the busy times could well have been required. I had suspected that caloric requirements should go up, but hadn't figured on anything like this. Plan your gardens accordingly.

Also, it's worth perusing the rest of their site, as they address other low tech means used by the Vikings in food prep, storage, etc. One I thought particularly interesting was storing cooked meats in sour whey, similar to packing in lard. I 'spect it'd take awhile to develop that taste.:p

Just food for thought, or maybe thought for food...

[patience]

I'm guessing that the sour whey has an acid content that prevents spoilage, sort of like pickling in vinegar. I suppose there is a reason for the existence of pickled pigs feet--although I was never tempted to try them. I have SEEN pigs feet, and I know where they have been. :fie:

[BonnyLake]

... a typical Viking. Seems they determined that 11,000 calories per day during the busy times could well have been required. I had suspected that caloric requirements should go up, but hadn't figured on anything like this. Plan your gardens accordingly.
...

I did some math and I don't think that there is any possible way to get an 11,000 calorie per day diet out of garden food!

Here are the highest calorie veggies & fruits as an example -
11,000 = 58 yams per day / 183 parsnips / 225 red onions / 344 carrots
fruit = 103 bananas / 73 avacoados / 250 apples

Wait a minute - how about spirits made from the garden =
54 large glasses of sweet white wine / only 32 lg mugs of port
28 - 24oz steins of stout beer / 33 steins of lager

You would have to eat non-stop and then add more. :eek:
You would have to eat lots of fatty meat, thats for certain !

thanks krapgame - that was interesting !!

[krapgame]

I did some math and I don't think that there is any possible way to get an 11,000 calorie per day diet out of garden food!


I would agree with that. We have corn available that is relatively high calories, where the Vikings didn't, but meat definitely has to be part of the equation. Otherwise, I'd have to spend so much time eating, I wouldn't have time to do any work. ;)

I remember 12 or so years ago both my brother and another friend went through kind of a body building phase. They were consuming 6-8000 calories a day each. I remember them saying what a chore it was to consume that many calories each day. I can't imagine 10k+.

[krapgame]

I'm guessing that the sour whey has an acid content that prevents spoilage, sort of like pickling in vinegar. I suppose there is a reason for the existence of pickled pigs feet--although I was never tempted to try them. I have SEEN pigs feet, and I know where they have been. :fie:

I think that's right. They made a product called skyr (pronounced skeer) that is a kind of cross between cheese and yogurt. It's an acid process of separation and I'm thinking the whey left over from that was likely the base that was used. Skyr is still pretty popular in parts of Scandinavia.

I'm with 'ya on the pigs feet. Best just cut them off short, along with the squeal. ;)

[S2man]

Ah, lardo. Breakfast of champions.

When I was young, and logging for a (semi) living, breakfast was a half dozen eggs and a half pound of bacon. My "lunch" sack was a paper grocery bag. I had to eat constantly, not just at lunch time. I used to get tired of eating, too.

I read an article once about some guys doing cross country skiing/camping in extreme weather. The only way they could consume enough calories was to eat fat. IIRC, breakfast was muffins soaked in butter. Dripping, soggy soaked.

I like your plan, Bonny. I'll store my wheat as beer :D

I'm reading Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook right now. His farm is 1.25 acres. He gets double or triple crops from every bed each year. He says the classic French intensive gardens, which his farm is modeled after, took six laborers to work 1.5 acres. Lots of food from a small area, but lots of labor.

[Dame]

I am wondering even with the best of practice, how many hours per day by what percentage of the adult, total population would be required for direct food production labour in order to generate adequate nutrition, calories and all the rest of it for the total population of say N.America.

Would we have any time left over for anything else.

[krapgame]

Dame,

Interesting question. The short answer is, I personally have no idea. However, I do have recollection of a documentary type thing I saw years ago that did address this indirectly. I remember them saying that among hunter/gatherer type societies the amount of time spent providing for basic needs of the tribe, family, whatever, was something like 3-4 hours per day average. This was based on studies of those type cultures that still exist in parts of the modern world. This was in contrast to the 8-12 hours spent by so-called "civilized" cultures working to support all of their perceived requirements, plus taxes, etc.

Again, this was some time ago, and I may be off a bit on the details, but the point they were trying to make was that less civilized cultures had much lower time requirements for their basic existence.

Using the Amish for another point of comparison, my experience with them is that the whole family has a pretty long day. But, they are providing for themselves, their animals and their community as well as machinery and equipment to maintain. Many have mortgages to pay, and I believe they have property taxes to pay. So, they're not exactly hunter/gatherers either.

My personal experience, my wife, oldest boy (14) and myself are able to produce enough food (at somewhere close to a mid 1950's technology level) that we could live from our own production exclusively pretty comfortably. Yeah, we have some big days, but averaged over the year, it's not that bad, especially if we didn't have to work full time. Now, take the petrol powered equipment and electricity out of the equation and that would be much different, but then again so would our approach. That's the reason we've made contingency plans to make sure we don't have to give up our semi-modern equipment any sooner than necessary.

So, I guess it goes back to what level of lifestyle you're trying to sustain. As I've said elsewhere on here before, to exist doesn't take much, but to exist with modern conveniences is a good bit more complicated. You may well be right; we could all spend so much time producing our food that we won't have any time to eat it. ;)

[patience]

Two factors that I see as important to this question of food raising are 1) the scale of your operation, and 2) what energy sources you use. Scale must be appropriate to #2. They are a package deal. Once those are decided, then labor time available will limit what you can produce, given adequate other resources of quantity and fertility of land, climate, and methods/practices.

Based very crudely on my experiences raising gardens with only my own labor, or with the benefit of work horses, or with modern farm equipment, I would say that it would take all the best methods and other resources you could muster to provide for your own needs with only your own labor. I think I read somewhere long ago that a man with a team of horses and a suitable size operation could support 2 dozen people (?), and a man with a tractor (probably about 20-30 HP) could support 100 or more. The farm magazines of the early 1960's used toextol the virtues of "modern farming" back then, so I think that is where it came from.

[bookwormom]

quote
I too have thought of this. Here is my 2 cents: The Amish survive and prosper with no artificial inputs. Cattle are designed to convert milk to grass, hence the rumen.


both points are incorrect. The Amish use lots of artificial input. Tut not all. I am sure the rest was not meant the way it sounds.

what kind of SHTF? so many factors to be considered. I can only speak for my area as it is quite different from other parts of the country. High on the list of priorities should be soil fertility, it is the A and O of your operation. Otherwise you are wasting your time. If you want to hope to keep yourself from starving, you better start getting ready now.
If you have horses to work with, the 12 people you can feed better be working to help take care of the horses, they want to eat everyday. Forget the tractor.

[patience]

bookwormom said:
"If you have horses to work with, the 12 people you can feed better be working to help take care of the horses, they want to eat everyday. Forget the tractor."

YES! DD and her DH have a deal worked out with neighbors to share the neighbors' horses--DD has the harness and implements, and the know-how to feed, care for and work the horses. They will also contribute some pasture. Everybody gets their garden worked, and they share the upkeep on the horses. DD grew up with horses, has trained a few, and takes care of their feet, etc..

Horses can be problematic, no doubt. But so can tractors, and horses tend to grow their own replacements, while tractors do not.

In the short term they will use their own Bobcat loader and a neighbor's tractor to get stuff done fast. Long term, they have the horses for backup. We are collecting and growing open pollinated seed and doing our best at soil improvement. That is the only really sustainable way I can think of.

[Dame]

Keep in mind that West Nile desease is almost always fatal for horses. The reason they use oxen, donkey etc in the Middle East. Does anyone know how it affects mules.

And with large herbavoirs there is the issue of pasture, winter feed (&storage) and fences. Might want to through in some leather tanning for harness as well.

[krapgame]

Good news for sustainability! Well, at least sort of. Saw this article this evening;

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2010/12/10/make-lard/

Seems that the eggheads have decided now, like eggs and so many other things once thought to be suicide on a plate, lard actually has some health benefits. 2/3 unsaturated and contains oleic acid (considered good in olive oil - helps break down cholesterol) and doesn't contain trans fats and hydrogenated fats like vegetable shortening and margarine. Also, will help make up that 10,000 daily calorie requirement I referenced a few days ago.

Be sure and get your rendering kettle now before they're all gone. :sarcastic:

Sorry, didn't mean to change the topic, just had to share.

[Dame]

Not a change of topic. Turkey roasters work ok as rendering kettles (on low heat in the oven) Lard is easily canned for a long storage life and if it starts to turn rancid (because you did not get it canned), make some soap.

[patience]

Ah! The virtues of lard!

Render it and skim out the cracklings, press them to get the last of the lard out of them, then salt them for a snack while you finish processing the meat. It's cold enough at butchering time that you need the fat calories to stay warm anyway. If you have a kettle to render it outdoors over a wood fire, it saves cooking gas and frees up the kitchen range for other cooking chores--needful when you have a couple hogs to process.

Make your sausage and fry it in patties to sterilize it, then pack it in a crock layered with hot lard poured over it. It will keep until the lard starts to go rancid--at least a couple months in cold weather, and longer if you seal the crock with close fitting wood cover, sealed with lard. Leave it in a cold room.

Pour the rest of the lard into cans or crocks for later use, also sealed with wooden lid. Fry your potatoes in it, make pie crusts, etc.. If it starts to darken on top and get rancid, carefully scrape off the top layer and put the darkened rancid stuff in a can for greasing the wooden bearings on the farm disc, lubricating drill bits and threading taps for steel, and preventing rust on plow shovels stored in a shed. You can wipe warm lard on leather harness to waterproof and soften it, but it attracts mice to chew on it, so hang the harness on high pegs where they can't get to it. Bait some mousetraps with bacon rind and lard to catch those mice, and keep a few barn cats around.

When a container of lard goes rancid it starts to smell "off". To get rid of the smell, fry some discarded potatoes in it (the ones in the root cellar that have shrivelled and started to sprout) and skim them off the kettle to throw out. The dogs will love them, but leave the dogs outside until they process it--it may upset their digestion if they eat too much. The potatoes apparently absorb the odors, so now you can make soap out of the lard. Add your choice of garden herbs to the soap for scent, if you prefer.

Outdoor dogs need a lot of calories to stay warm, so make them a kettle of cooked cornmeal (ground for general feed use on the farm) with added lard (the not so good stuff), some meat trimmings, and whatever else you have to throw in it. Let that set up in a cool room, and dip out what they need at feeding time. It will keep for a few days if it's cool.

Snapping corn from the stalk by hand is rough on the skin, so protect your hands against dryness with lard. Grease you leather work boots with it to keep them waterproof. This stuff is has no end of uses on the farm! And you can raise as many pigs as it takes to have a sustainable supply. :D

[Dame]

patience, I really like when you expand a topic this way, it adds so much to my knowledge base. Particularly when I already have the unrendered lard.

Another use is using it as a hand cleaner or greesy stains on clothing (still tacky oil paint, mechanical greese etc.) Then wash with soap and water.

[patience]

Dame,

Thanks. I enjoy recalling what my folks tried to teach me as a kid. :)

They also had about a million uses for vinegar. Dad said his family always tried to make at least a barrel of vinegar each year when he was a kid, and seldom had any excess. Somebody should start a thread on that one by itself, but it has its' place on a sustainable farm.

[Dame]

More on lard:
On the sustainable agriculture side of things there is the little issue of reproducing pigs for lard. For those of us with limited time and young children in our care, actually breeding pigs/hogs (whichever) is a high risk part of homesteading. I actually have little use for the number of piglets one breeding pair of adult pigs would produce in a year. What we would need ideally would be 3-6 weenling pigs pre year and not all at the same time. They could then be used to prep next years garden, dispose of most of the old garden refuge and then provide food and lard.

For people with the inclination, raising and selling pastured weenling pigs to their neighbours might just be a sustainable source of income.

...and vinegar:

Have not yet tried to make our own vinegar. Not sure why because we use at least 6 gallons of it a year. Cooking, pickling, cleaning etc. A small wooden keg would be ideal.

[patience]

Dame,

So right on the pig supply! When it comes to breeding livestock, all of a sudden you are talking about a community situation. As in, who keeps the one male animal you need for reproduction, when that critter is BIG and DANGEROUS?

There are good reasons why the Amish live in communities, and this is one of the best. Not much different than what I grew up with, really. One neighbor had a boar hog which he hauled to wherever the service were needed. The hog was trained. The guy didn't even have a tailgate in his trailer!! :sarcastic:

[BonnyLake]

Dame,

So right on the pig supply! When it comes to breeding livestock, all of a sudden you are talking about a community situation. As in, who keeps the one male animal you need for reproduction, when that critter is BIG and DANGEROUS?

There are good reasons why the Amish live in communities, and this is one of the best. Not much different than what I grew up with, really. One neighbor had a boar hog which he hauled to wherever the service were needed. The hog was trained. The guy didn't even have a tailgate in his trailer!! :sarcastic:

Great mind-picture this afternoon! Boar jumping tailgates - get outa my way, those ladies need lovin! :D That is a great idea though - having the males and getting your pick of the litter of lil sqeelers when you want to raise a few lil sausages.

[Dame]

Maybe I am simply a little squeemish, but as a grandmother with little kids around here almost all the time I do not even want a sow around. Stikes me as a chore for the young married before they have kids and for the people with adult kids before they have grandkids.

It also needs to be someone with good fencing skills who sees the need to keep these animals confined. Ferrel pigs are a major community safety issue.

[patience]

I have some pictures of myself when I was about 5 years old feeding Dad's pigs. Yes, they can be very dangerous, but kids can also be taught, and must be, whatever their surroundings. I knew better than to go in the pigpen unless Dad was there, and likewise my kids knew what it took to be safe around them.

Yeah, fencing is an issue. The old saying about how to build a fence? "Horse high, bull strong, and pig tight!" There are several pretty standard ways to keep pigs where they belong. Some involve strong oak board fences with barbed wire around the bottom, some use woven wire fence with barbed wire, and some use electric fence. I'm not a fan of electric fence, because it DOES fail occassionally--weeds short it out, limbs fall on it, and thus I don't want it, no matter how cheap it is. Because, pigs have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to plot their escapes, and they WILL do so. Therefore, I want a mechanical fence that give you some warning if they try to dig out under it, or push the wire enough to wiggle under it. Barbed wire stops that. Build GOOD fence, and only build it once, then you are finished and the pigs aren't going anywhere. It's the amateurs that have trouble here, trying to cut costs.

I had a throw down with an old sow once at feeding time, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I was a pig veteran by then, so, with judicious use of the hard edge of a metal bucket, I put her back in the pen. But this sow was insane. She had stepped on one of her pigs, and thought I had made it squeal! So she tried to climb over the fence to get at me. The door to the hog house was stuck with snow and ice, so there I was! I found a 16 ounce claw hammer and we came to an understanding--she would quit trying to attack me and I would stop pounding her nose with the hammer. She kept that bargain as long as we owned her, too. :mad:

A sow with new pigs is nothing to trifle with, but feeder pigs are altogether different. Yes, they are pig-headed, eat like pigs and they can be dirty as a pig, if you don't give them enough room to stay out of the mess. With a generous size pen, good fence and proper care, no problem raising 2 to a dozen from weaning to butcher size.

But no, I don't advocate that a beginner try to breed and raise pigs. Feral (wild) pigs, are best dealt with using a good rifle and butcher knife.

[krapgame]

On the sustainable agriculture side of things there is the little issue of reproducing pigs for lard. For those of us with limited time and young children in our care, actually breeding pigs/hogs (whichever) is a high risk part of homesteading. I actually have little use for the number of piglets one breeding pair of adult pigs would produce in a year. What we would need ideally would be 3-6 weenling pigs pre year and not all at the same time. They could then be used to prep next years garden, dispose of most of the old garden refuge and then provide food and lard.

For people with the inclination, raising and selling pastured weenling pigs to their neighbours might just be a sustainable source of income.



I've got a little different idea on pig consumption. Roast piglet used to be considered something of a delicacy, so I'm thinking that keeping 2 sows, averaging 2 litters each per year with 6-10 piglets per litter, and timed appropriately, most of the pigs would be eaten in the 10 to 50 lb range. A 10 lb piglet should produce about 4 lbs of usable meat, or enough for a couple of days meals. Work it out so that you fatten out 1 or 2 ready for butcher about the start of cold weather, maybe more if you've got a market with your neighbors, process your lard from these, cure the hams and can the rest or whatever. Kind of like raising rabbits, but they're a little more self sufficient.

I echo pretty much everything Patience said re: the temperament of pigs. Teach yourself and the kids to steer clear when the sow has babies, but also make sure the pigs know who the boss is. I think they act differently when they sense fear. If you keep a boar, they're usually pretty docile (learn his temperament!) unless cornered, or at least that was our experience with them. Dad used to keep 30 or so utility sows and raised and sold 4-500 fat hogs each year. Usually, by the time a boar is 3-4 years old, he'll just get fat and lazy (a boar NEVER stops growing, well, as long as they're alive anyhow) and be content to find a cool place to just hide out. Don't torment him and he'll usually not be a problem. Remember though, temperament does vary from animal to animal, and your experiences may differ from mine because of this.

My best pig experience was when I was in my early teens and all of about 85 lbs. We were loading fat hogs for market from the barn. See if I can describe this; there was a loading chute to the truck outside, then a squeeze pen immediately ahead of the chute, big enough to hold a 8 or maybe 10. We'd bring around a group to load from the main pen into the squeeze pen, and it was my job to close the 10' gate behind them and get it wired shut so they couldn't get back to the main pen before we could persuade them up the loading chute. One particular batch, the hogs ran into the squeeze pen, looked up the loading chute and decided even though they didn't quite know what it was for, they weren't terribly keen to find out. So, roughly 2000lbs of hogs decided to make a break for it just about the time I got the gate swung shut, but not quite wired tight. They hit the gate at a dead run, which acted roughly like a big lever, and swung it open with me still sort of holding onto it. At least that's the last thing I think I remember. The next thing I remember for certain was picking myself up out of the hog manure, 20 or so feet from where I started, somewhat bewildered and mostly unhurt except for a little bruise on my pride. I guess landing in a big pile of hog manure isn't ALL bad. In 15 years of raising hogs, that's one of the few experiences that I remember with that much clarity.

Now, on the issue of sustainability re: livestock; eventually breeding stock will need to be replaced. Inbreeding, except amongst certain European royalty, is generally considered not desirable. So, I'm still trying to work out in my head how small scale livestock husbandry works out over an extended period of time, especially within the original context of this thread where replacement genetics may not be readily available. Even with 2 females from distinct bloodlines and one male, at best the offspring will be related by at least one parent. This isn't anything I've ever really studied, so can anybody educate me how to work around this? Everything I know about points to the conclusion that this will eventually be a problem without access to genetic diversity.

[Dame]

Genetic diversity could be maintained with a limited number of breeding lines if tracked and managed well. Then imports from far away would only need to be arranged every number of years and then likely with an adjacent community.

As for learning to be safe around these animals, a couple of generations back into "raised on a farm" would likely make it reasonably safe; in the meantime the people transitioning from city to country would be at a far greater risk; particularly the children and adolecents.

[Terri]

I have heard that mutton and cheese were staples in the Vikings diet. Now I know why! 11,000 is a lot of calories!

And, a cook once said that in an old lumber camp, if you could not keep enough pie cooked and ready for the men, you were fired. They ate pie with their breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

[Dame]

This 11000 calories thing: has anyone actually tried to maximize calories, this is one heap of eating even if someone else is doing the producing, processing and cooking. M. Phelps was eating about 9000 calories a day while in training and his mother was making it her full time job, just doing the cooking. This is only sustainable for short periods of time. 4000 is really hard to maintain over the long term. And at this rate of eating, your teeth and digestive system will just wear out.

The history of the Vikings also talks of times when food was scarce, particularly in the late winter. Excess calories stored when eating heavily would be consumed and bodies would get a bit of a break.

[krapgame]

This 11000 calories thing: has anyone actually tried to maximize calories, this is one heap of eating even if someone else is doing the producing, processing and cooking. M. Phelps was eating about 9000 calories a day while in training and his mother was making it her full time job, just doing the cooking. This is only sustainable for short periods of time. 4000 is really hard to maintain over the long term. And at this rate of eating, your teeth and digestive system will just wear out.

The history of the Vikings also talks of times when food was scarce, particularly in the late winter. Excess calories stored when eating heavily would be consumed and bodies would get a bit of a break.

I personally wouldn't get too hung up on the 11000 calorie thing. I posted that as a reference to their calculations as an item of interest. Lots of variables in that which probably wouldn't apply directly to most of us. First, consider the geography. The vikings were mostly located in Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and the British Isles. Areas that would (I believe) require significant calories to be burned just to maintain body temperature, at least during the winter. The work schedule that was detailed in the link posted also would likely have been seasonal peak. Most of us currently would be working with more sophisticated tools which should be at least somewhat less labor intensive. We also have more intensive agricultural practices, even in a SHTF scenario, that make for more efficient use of space, therefore less ground to actually cover. So, based on this, I think you could safely plan to cut back to an 8000 cal/day diet. ;)

As for the body wearing out, consider the lifestyle. If you're part of a seafaring culture (in some of the most demanding waters on the planet no less) which regularly goes on pillaging raids where those you are attempting to liberate from their bounty may take exception to your efforts, living long enough to have your digestive system wear out from overuse probably doesn't enter your list of daily concerns too often.

I have read stories from professional bodybuilders talking about super high intakes when they are actively training for events. I think it was a story about Nasser El Sonbaty taking about having to eat every 3 hours to get it all in, even having to wake up throughout the night just to eat. IIRC, he was consuming upwards of 12-13000 calories per day. That's 1500+ calories, 8 times per day. I recall him saying it was almost as much work to eat that much as it was doing the exercises. But when you have the muscle mass that he has, the amount of calories burned just to maintain basic metabolism is unbelievable.

Some time ago, Patience was telling me about the new Amish diet. Basically, you get to eat all you want 3 times a day then try to keep up with a team of horses for 12 hours. Guaranteed to shed unwanted pounds. I think even that would be a stretch relative to what most people would actually have to do.

[bookwormom]

Some time ago, Patience was telling me about the new Amish diet. Basically, you get to eat all you want 3 times a day then try to keep up with a team of horses for 12 hours. Guaranteed to shed unwanted pounds. I think even that would be a stretch relative to what most people would actually have to do.
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Hmm, now that you mention it, the Amish men around here are all trim, not a fat one among them. the ladies are a tad heftier, but not obese either.

[krapgame]

And y'all were worried about 11,000 calories;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1341683/Donna-Simpsons-feast-The-30-000-calorie-Christmas-feast-eaten-worlds-fattest-mum-ONE-hour-sitting.html

:eek:

[Dame]

I doubt this woman gets a great deal of physical work done in a day. The 11000 calories per day routine started as an amount believed to fuel a manual ag production work load.

[krapgame]

I agree, I diverged from the OT. Just thought it interesting 1) what a 30,000 calorie meal consisted of and 2) that it could be consumed in a single sitting, let alone a single day. Wasn't intended to be any kind of commentary on the person consuming it. I should have been more clear.

[krapgame]

Some new reference items to pass along;

A week or two ago Patience told me about a series of videos on Youtube that I just finished watching and think are worth mentioning. It's called Victorian Farm, and is a BBC documentary about 3 people who move into an authentic Victorian era farmstead for 1 year. Everything they do for that year is completely authentic to the technology available to that period. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I think it's worth a watch. Warning, it's (36) 10 minute long clips, and it's pretty addictive. You may find yourself neglecting other responsibilities until you finish it.

In that series, they reference a book called "The Family Save-All," which was a period reference book, mostly a cookbook, but having focus on efficient use of leftovers and general frugality. It's available at http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23299248M/The_family_save-all. free for the viewing. I've not yet read it all, but have read enough to think it worth passing along.

Over at http://books.google.com/ I've been reading a couple that are worth passing along. "Farming with Green Manures" and "Traditional American Farming Techniques." The latter is a 2001 reprint of a 1916 text, the former a reproduction of a 1876 text. Both have some good information on land rejuvenation by sustainable methods. For those not familiar, Google has a LOT of worthwhile books available for free viewing like this on a pretty wide variety of topics. I recommend checking them out.

[S2man]

Thanks for the tips, kg.

On the Sustainable Agriculture: I don't see why it shouldn't be achievable, farmers have been doing it for centuries. Eliot Coleman is big on compost, with some additional Nitrogen coming from local sources. Harvey Ussery, in a recent article on cover crops, says he hasn't used outside resources for fertility in decades. Post SHTF, Eliot will have to either grow or haul his additional nitrogen. And, assuming Harvey is buying the seed for his cover crops, he will have to start harvesting and storing the crop, instead of letting the livestock eat it. More labor for both scenarios, but doable.

I, myself, prefer and practice intensive gardening in permanent beds so all food and water goes to the plants, not in the paths. Then I subscribe to the deep mulch/no till method. First, I don't see the efficiency in hauling organic matter from meadow A, to compost bin B, perhaps being turned a few times, then hauled to garden location C, to feed the plants. I just take all organic matter straight from A to C, the garden, and let it rot there. And before it rots, as mulch it retains moisture and deters weeds; two more garden labor savers . Harvey does me one better by growing his mulch right there in the bed, so he doesn't have to haul it. A = C! LOL.

We do have a compost bin for kitchen scraps and yard waste. As we bring livestock into the equation, I see the scraps going to them and manure going to the compost bin. I'll always have a compost bin, I just don't build cord-sized piles, like I used to. (Scalded myself on one of those big piles, once :) )

Second, I save labor by not tilling. I can just spread the mulch and transplant directly into it. For seed beds such as say, carrots, I peel the mulch back, work the surface quickly with a rotary-rake thingy, spread the seed and cover with a fine layer of mulch. Mulch is re-applied to the bed as the plants grow taller. Root crops are similar; the mulch is peeled back, the roots or tubers are placed directly on top of the soil and the mulch is return to its place. Harvest on the root crops is also easier, as the crops are on top of soil instead of beneath it; Just peel back the mulch and pick them up. Potatoes get mulched really deep.

Throw in some cloches or hoop tunnels, to extend the growing season, and you should be in better shape than farmers of the millennia.

[patience]

S2man,

I'm working toward the same approach. My garden soil is still pretty bad clay, but is improving each year. The goal is to get to mulch and no-till. I'm trying to hurry the process by adding copious quantities of mulch and manure. ;)

[krapgame]

S2,

I agree completely, sustainability is a viable concern. I just don't see it being viable for the industrial ag model currently being used. I think the short term result will be yields drop sufficiently that commercial ethanol production, in its current model, dies, I think that the high fructose corn syrup industry also dies and probably others (go long on honey, sorghum and sugar beets!) will be affected as well. But on an individual farm basis, you right, the old ways have been working pretty well for hundreds of years.

I think I posted something about an article I read several years ago about an Amish farmer who was using a permanent mulch method, similar to what you described. He was using big round bales of hay and rolling out a new layer of mulch each year right over his previous beds. This years mulch turns into next years compost basically. It sounded like it was working very well for him. I think it's got a lot to be said for it.

I'm having a hard time making this sale at home, but this year I want to fence portions of our yard and invest in a few sheep. I figure they'll keep the yard reasonably manicured, adequately fertilized, make much better use of otherwise non-productive, high maintenance land and should be pretty tasty at the end of the year. Mama Bear, who's on board with pretty much everything else we've done, still thinks that sounds too hill-billy. We'll see how that one comes out. ;)

Chickens are very good recyclers of kitchen scraps. Any kind of fruit or fruit left overs (peelings, etc), non poultry meat scraps (they'll eat poultry scraps as well, I just don't think it's a good idea) and they especially seem to like green beans. They make a pretty quick and easy entry point into livestock and you'll get an almost immediate return on them in the form of eggs.

As heavy livestock comes into the equation, I'm thinking about drying the bones after butchering and running them through my hammer mill and using for fertilizer. A chart I have here shows that ground raw bones like that contains 100 pounds or so of nitrogen per ton, in addition to supplementing Calcium. That could work especially well if, in addition to what we butcher for ourselves, we could sell our surplus livestock in such a way that we could also butcher them here and add that bone mass to the total. That would make a good booster to N hungry crops like corn, and in conjunction with cover crop clover should be enough to do the trick. I seem to recall blood meal also being pretty high N content as well. Hmmm...

Something else I want to pass along in the event that I haven't already. For those of us intending to hold onto row cropping in some fashion, rye is worth knowing about. It seems rye has releases some enzyme as it grows that tends to prohibit the sprouting of other smaller seeded plants, ie: weeds. If main crop planting is delayed a week or two, rye will make enough growth to add a considerable amount of N in its own right, as well as vegetative matter. As a plow down crop ahead of corn or other bare earth crops (potatoes maybe?) it sounds like it has quite a bit to offer. Also, it can be pastured lightly in early spring before other pastures are ready for traffic with minimal effect on yield.

So, I have no doubt the old ways still work, it's just a matter of learning all the interactions like these to personalize the formula that'll best suit each individual situation.

BTW, I believe it was you who mentioned, I think in another thread, a book that you recently acquired which sounded interesting to me. Unfortunately I can't recall the name right off. Am I remembering correctly? If so, do you care to share any impressions of it? I was thinking of getting a copy, depending on your recommendation of it.

[BigOBear]

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology. Saw it on this site once and bought it. This one has no where near the details yall are getting into but I found it a nice read. About a fellow and his new wife who spent a year in an "Minimite" style community as part of his advanced degree.

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Flipping-Switch-Technology/dp/0060570040/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1294072265&sr=8-4

[krapgame]

I'm working toward the same approach. My garden soil is still pretty bad clay, but is improving each year. The goal is to get to mulch and no-till. I'm trying to hurry the process by adding copious quantities of mulch and manure. ;)

That's a fact! When you first built that garden, seeing all that red dirt, if anyone had told me that within 3 years it'd be growing a fairly high density crop of OP corn that would stand 15' tall, I'd have likely busted a gut. No doubt in my mind, whatever you're doing, WORKS!

[krapgame]

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology. Saw it on this site once and bought it. This one has no where near the details yall are getting into but I found it a nice read. About a fellow and his new wife who spent a year in an "Minimite" style community as part of his advanced degree.

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Flipping-Switch-Technology/dp/0060570040/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1294072265&sr=8-4

Thanks for the link! I've added it to my list of things to keep an eye out for. It sounds interesting.

[patience]

krapgame,

The secret is liberal and frequent applications of horse manure, then Fall cover crops mowed down to mush in the Spring. Add more manure, and plow it all under. Add the winter collection of wood ashes when a rain is coming to soak it into the ground. Then, pick rocks after the rain... :sarcastic:

[krapgame]

krapgame,

The secret is liberal and frequent applications of horse manure, then Fall cover crops mowed down to mush in the Spring. Add more manure, and plow it all under. Add the winter collection of wood ashes when a rain is coming to soak it into the ground. Then, pick rocks after the rain... :sarcastic:

Yep, that's pretty much the age old formula. Your place is definitely a testament to the effectiveness of it.

[BigOBear]

S2man... what are you using for your deep mulch?

[S2man]

BigOBear, in the city I could pick up all the paper bags full of leaves and grass clipping I desired. The plan out here in the country is to mow the meadow with a scythe and use it for mulch and feed. I'll also be looking for spoiled hay from nearby farmers in the spring.

kg, your Amish deep mulcher reminds me of an article I read about a guy who would unroll a bale of hay on his garden each fall, preferably a late cutting, full of weeds. The chickens spent the winter in the greenhouse next to the garden. They got to scratch, peck the weed seeds and spread manure on the garden all winter. He also had pits under the walkways in the GH where worms turned manure into chicken feed. Nice bio-system/rotation.

I recently finished reading Eliot Coleman's "The Winter Harvest Handbook". That's probably the book I mentioned. The title is accurate; we can not grow crops during the winter, but we can continue to HARVEST them for most of the winter. I can not share all of his wisdom here, but I'll give you a summary:

Eliot starts with staggered, late-fall plantings of cold hardy crops. They get covered with a unheated green house or hoop tunnel in the fall, and a layer of row cover of temps will be dropping below freezing. He calls them "cold houses". Once the daylight gets less than 10hrs/day the plants quit growing. But they do not get old and tough, they just go into a kind of hibernation and he can continue to harvest fresh veggies through the winter. Come February, when the days get longer again, he starts planting early crops in the GH to beat the other guys to market. Once those are harvested he plants heat-loving crops like tomatoes and melons for the summer. After those are harvested, he moves the GH to protect the next winter's crops, which are already planted outdoors, and the crop rotation repeats on another patch of ground.

The cold-hardy crops can handle below-freezing temps when protected from frost and wind. Eliot says if you add a little heat to make it a "cool house" (just above freezing at night) the number of possible winter crops rises greatly. I give the book two thumbs up.

Now, to apply these methods to post-SHTF ag:
I think we all will want to extend our growing seasons by using cold frames or greenhouses. They decrease the step/labor/energy of storing the crops between garden and table by providing garden-to-table produce for more of the year. Fresh veggies provide better nutrition than stored. And the labor of harvesting is spread out over the year as opposed to several late-summer months of intense harvesting and preservation.

Concerning the post-SHTF farmer, Mr. Coleman's market of grocery stores and restaurants will be gone; I think Post-SHTF ag will be focused on staples instead of baby-green salads . But it would be nice, as a farmer, to go to town with a bushel of freshly picked carrots in January, instead of some which have been in the root cellar for three months. And they could be harvested in January, when farm life is slow, instead of September, when farm chores are at a peak.

Since the post-SHTF farmer will need to be located close to a town for effecient transportation of goods to market, being able to squeeze the maximum output from a small acreage, near town, would be optimum (There will be no 1000ac farms without petro energy). I think human energy will need to be concentrated on small plots, like the Chinese or French Intensive methods. By extending the harvest and using the land for more months of the year, the output per acre is increased and the labor is spread out. I think those attributes are key to productivity, post-SHTF or not.

Logistics: Good green/hoop house plastic should last five years. If you keep an extra set on hand, you would have average 7.5 years of plastic on hand after TSHTF. I just bought 100' of plastice for a 40' GH, so I should be good for 10 yrs, barring accidents. After the plastic has run out, society will have either recovered and we can acquire more plastic, or we'll have reverted to more traditional methods. In a truely TEOTWAWKI situation, there will be plenty of empty houses to harvest for building materials for cold frames and such.

[firegirl969]

We visited DH's uncle this past weekend. He has a unique set-up that he has instituted this past year. He has a nice-sized fenced garden that has not produced for him because it is a sandbed. He has added numerous soil amendments over the past couple of years to no avail. Last winter I recommended the book "Square Foot Gardening" to him. Well, he did his research and boy is it working great! He tore down an old house for someone and took the lumber and built him a nice chicken house on the backside of his garden fence about 8 feet from it. He has since made a "chicken moat" all the way around the garden and a fenced-in area on the back of his chicken house. With gates for limited access, he has three "pastures" to turn his chickens into. He lives about 10 miles outside a large city in northern GA. He has a market for pastured eggs at $4 a dozen. He is in a co-op that takes orders for the eggs, collect the money, and email him so that he delivers the eggs to the three pickup areas around the city. He then gets a deposit into his paypal account for the eggs less 10% charge by the co-op. What a gig!!! He also took 8 inch concrete blocks and made six 12 X 3' raised beds with weed barrier on the bottom and a mixture of compost, vermiculite, and peat moss which is a wonderful mixture and loam and he just takes a handheld trowel and turns the 8" of mixture over and then plants in it. He also has the beds separated into 12" X 12" blocks for easy planting. These blocks are made up by some kind of small white colored 1" wide material and attached to it is small black hose such as one would use to build a waterfall garden. He has all of this hose connected at the end with a little gate valve so that he can water one bed at a time. He grew more last year in those beds than DH did in his traditional gardening method. Now DH is getting onboard with me for raised bed gardening. I have done this for years with the five 8' X 3' raised beds I brought with me from the ex's house. His uncle also got lots of carpet from installers that had been removed from houses for free and put it between the beds. He now has worked it out with a company that cuts trees and shrubs around power lines to get dumptruck loads of the mulched material delivered to his garden spot for free because they have to pay their local landfill to take this material. Imagine that! DH is considering changing his traditional garden to this growing method using concrete blocks as well. This year, his uncle plans to add some halves of 30 gallon plastic barrels into the ground to plant in as well. He plans to use the same growing medium and to add small fruits and who knows what else. I can't wait to go back up there later in the year just to see what he has come up with. He is also adding hoops made from PVC pipe pieces from buildings he tears down and put plastic over them to add to the growing season up there. He raised 50 baby chicks last year and has 49 hens and 1 rooster (sexing mistake) that are beautiful. He looks forward to them keeping down bugs by exercising in the "chicken moat." This summer and fall he will also sell "naturally-grown" veggies through the co-op to add to his retirement income.

[BigOBear]

Thanks S2man

:) I read about a chicken moat once before somewhere Firegirl... sure sounded like a neat idea :)

[krapgame]

Firegirl,

I love it! The next time you go visit, I'd enjoy getting to see some pictures of his setup.

We've only just started using the square foot methods, but I've been very impressed with the results we've seen so far. I expect to expand our efforts in this over the next year. Having read this, I see some new ideas that I think I will "borrow' as well.