07-16-2008, 04:43 AM
As Jay says, there is a huge learning curve in producing your own food. You don't just decide to "live off the land" and immediately start eating food produced there. The garden salad on the table took a minimum of three months to produce. The steak next to it took almost two years. Both of them required a lot of fairly intricate systems to be produced. (Knowledge of what to do, how to do it and when to do it, fencing, garden tools, seeds, feed/fertilizer, etcetera.) Fruit from trees takes four years or more before you will see an appreciable crop. Pineapples take two years. An established garden can take up to a decade to reach full production.
We started last year trying to produce a lot of our own food and after almost one year we've managed about 20% of it. That does help with the grocery bills, but if we lose the grocery stores for some reason (barge strike, too high of fuel prices, dockworkers strike, big earthquake in California ruins all the docks) we will be in dire straits. And that is after a year of putting in a garden, getting the chickens organized, canning extras, etc. Building a pig trap has added as much food as just about everything else all put together.
For almost immediate food production, sprouts work well - although you have to buy the seeds to sprout. A large glass jar, some alfalfa seeds from the bulk jars at the health food store and in about a week you will have sprouts to eat. Soak the sprouts in water overnight, drain it off the next morning and put a towel over the mouth of the jar or a screen to keep it moist inside and bugs out. I like to put the jar on it's side so there is more room for the seeds to spread out. Rinse the seeds twice a day pouring the water off each time. In about a week there should be a jar full of sprouts.
Chickens take five to six months from the time they are hatched until you start getting eggs but once they start they are good for six to eight years although the egg production goes down as the chickens age. They also take several weeks off during the year to molt and sometimes they go broody and want to sit on the eggs and hatch them and sometimes they hide the eggs. They take some care and management but they are also fun to watch and interact with so that's almost fun food production. To make chickens economical, it is good to have some sort of food source for them that isn't all store bought feed. Free range and kitchen scraps if you have just a few birds works pretty well. You get lower egg production but you aren't paying for feed.
These chickens also provide meat since half the chicks hatched out are roosters and you only need one rooster per every six to ten hens. It is much more humane to eat a chicken that has been kept almost as a pet than one of those industrial raised meat birds. The chickens in the back yard have a (at least I like to think so) much nicer life than those raised in industrial barns. However, I only have enough room for a dozen chickens at the most so no more than one or two roosters and once the hens stop laying after seven or eight years they become soup. If I kept "retired" hens and extra roosters I wouldn't get any eggs and wouldn't have any reason to keep the chickens in the first place so un-useful birds get eaten around here. However, providing chicken for the table is another huge step in the chicken learning curve. First off you have to get past the "She's a pet! How can I eat Petunia?!" stage. Sometimes naming them Noodle, Soup and Fricassee might enforce the idea of eventual chicken dinner - kinda like the chickens pay their rent all at once and at the end instead of every month like everyone else. Then there is the how to turn a feathered squawky thing into something tasty on your plate. The first several tries will not result in Kentucky Fried Chicken results however you can get some really good chicken soup fairly easily.
Another part of this food production is that it is more labor intensive than going to the grocery store and wandering up and down the isles with a grocery cart. (At least if you don't factor in the amount of time and labor it takes to get the money so you can shop at the grocery in the first place.) Tending a garden (once it is set up) and tending chickens doesn't take much hard physical labor so it is suited to something older kids can help grandparents with. A multi-generational family is what was traditional prior to the industrial age. Now many folks going off to work a nine-to-five job have trouble figuring out child care. With a multi-generational family, the elders and children can tend each other to some extent. It can be a really nice thing although with the fractured families of today it seems there will be another learning curve of how everyone should all get along with each other again.
We started last year trying to produce a lot of our own food and after almost one year we've managed about 20% of it. That does help with the grocery bills, but if we lose the grocery stores for some reason (barge strike, too high of fuel prices, dockworkers strike, big earthquake in California ruins all the docks) we will be in dire straits. And that is after a year of putting in a garden, getting the chickens organized, canning extras, etc. Building a pig trap has added as much food as just about everything else all put together.
For almost immediate food production, sprouts work well - although you have to buy the seeds to sprout. A large glass jar, some alfalfa seeds from the bulk jars at the health food store and in about a week you will have sprouts to eat. Soak the sprouts in water overnight, drain it off the next morning and put a towel over the mouth of the jar or a screen to keep it moist inside and bugs out. I like to put the jar on it's side so there is more room for the seeds to spread out. Rinse the seeds twice a day pouring the water off each time. In about a week there should be a jar full of sprouts.
Chickens take five to six months from the time they are hatched until you start getting eggs but once they start they are good for six to eight years although the egg production goes down as the chickens age. They also take several weeks off during the year to molt and sometimes they go broody and want to sit on the eggs and hatch them and sometimes they hide the eggs. They take some care and management but they are also fun to watch and interact with so that's almost fun food production. To make chickens economical, it is good to have some sort of food source for them that isn't all store bought feed. Free range and kitchen scraps if you have just a few birds works pretty well. You get lower egg production but you aren't paying for feed.
These chickens also provide meat since half the chicks hatched out are roosters and you only need one rooster per every six to ten hens. It is much more humane to eat a chicken that has been kept almost as a pet than one of those industrial raised meat birds. The chickens in the back yard have a (at least I like to think so) much nicer life than those raised in industrial barns. However, I only have enough room for a dozen chickens at the most so no more than one or two roosters and once the hens stop laying after seven or eight years they become soup. If I kept "retired" hens and extra roosters I wouldn't get any eggs and wouldn't have any reason to keep the chickens in the first place so un-useful birds get eaten around here. However, providing chicken for the table is another huge step in the chicken learning curve. First off you have to get past the "She's a pet! How can I eat Petunia?!" stage. Sometimes naming them Noodle, Soup and Fricassee might enforce the idea of eventual chicken dinner - kinda like the chickens pay their rent all at once and at the end instead of every month like everyone else. Then there is the how to turn a feathered squawky thing into something tasty on your plate. The first several tries will not result in Kentucky Fried Chicken results however you can get some really good chicken soup fairly easily.
Another part of this food production is that it is more labor intensive than going to the grocery store and wandering up and down the isles with a grocery cart. (At least if you don't factor in the amount of time and labor it takes to get the money so you can shop at the grocery in the first place.) Tending a garden (once it is set up) and tending chickens doesn't take much hard physical labor so it is suited to something older kids can help grandparents with. A multi-generational family is what was traditional prior to the industrial age. Now many folks going off to work a nine-to-five job have trouble figuring out child care. With a multi-generational family, the elders and children can tend each other to some extent. It can be a really nice thing although with the fractured families of today it seems there will be another learning curve of how everyone should all get along with each other again.
Kurt Wilson