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Post by ottawagardener on Dec 13, 2010 17:34:08 GMT -5
Another thing about the parallel of the 70s to now is that because there was a similar interest, there are a lot of kick*ss books on food production from that time. One important way they often differ is that without reference to the interent megabrain, they had to be a one stop source of information. I love my 70s book collection for its comprehensive information but also for author's one off observational brilliance.
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Post by synergy on Dec 14, 2010 0:08:33 GMT -5
I hung onto shelves of Organic Gardening magazine from the 70's
I also believe eating low on the food chain to be a better strategy . But I am hedging my bets with ducks that eat slugs and flies and geese that eat grass and produce eggs, fatty meat, and down , just in case...
I deeply regret the money and energy I sunk into underground drainage and now I am racking my brain to turn it all to my advantage and combine that with swales and catchment ponds to conserve water for some kind of food production, carp, frogs, aquatic plants , irrigating plants?
The more you start connecting the dots , the more you get a clearer vision of the big picture of what is coming to be . I live a few blocks from the US border with a clear open view of anyone traipsing up the hill : )
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Dec 14, 2010 10:09:37 GMT -5
I want to grow olives. I think they are more cold hardy than some might think since they grow beautifully in the northern climes of Spain and Italy which are, globally speaking, at the same latitudes as much of the US. Methinks I'm going to be taking a closer look at the globe later today. Regardless, I hear a whole lot of stuff about why I shouldn't be trying to grow them here, but no one says anything about ever trying so how would anyone know? quote] I live (now) in SE-OH. I have kept an olive as bonsai for 10+ years. During my tinkering Ihave managed to kill several propagated (cuttings) by cold. Lower thirties will get leaf-drop, but the tree will recover. Lower twenties and the tree is toast. |
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Post by castanea on Dec 14, 2010 10:33:32 GMT -5
I want to grow olives. I think they are more cold hardy than some might think since they grow beautifully in the northern climes of Spain and Italy which are, globally speaking, at the same latitudes as much of the US. Methinks I'm going to be taking a closer look at the globe later today. Regardless, I hear a whole lot of stuff about why I shouldn't be trying to grow them here, but no one says anything about ever trying so how would anyone know? quote] I live (now) in SE-OH. I have kept an olive as bonsai for 10+ years. During my tinkering Ihave managed to kill several propagated (cuttings) by cold. Lower thirties will get leaf-drop, but the tree will recover. Lower twenties and the tree is toast. I agree that they are more cold hardy than most would think, but the big problem is that we do not have that cold hardy germ plasm in the US. |
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Post by synergy on Dec 14, 2010 13:57:38 GMT -5
With the expectation of olives, well small commercial enterprises are producing crops here in Coastal British Columbia and Oregon , so you can google and read about their varieties they imported. I have posted it on here somewhere before. We are 7b on climate charts so hardiness is not the toughest but we get isolated bouts to minus 16 celsius and I am told to minius 20 .
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Post by atash on Dec 17, 2010 1:10:46 GMT -5
I dunno if it is still there but there used to be an old olive tree in the courtyard of the Chelsea Physic Garden in England. I dunno if that area has seen temps significantly below 5C in about a century. But the tree is older than that and may have survived some brutal winters in the 1700s. I would be sweating bullets if I had an olive tree worrying about its survival. I usually let other people experiment first. I am a lot more optimistic about the seemingly equally improbable Feijoa. I had a newly planted one heave right out of the ground at 14F. I thought it was dead. The wood was split. For some reason I replanted it and it shot right back up from the base as if nothing had happened. I've never lost one to cold. And they have the same sort of rugged handsomeness of an olive tree, even fairly young. But I think they bear quicker. Not that you can squeeze oil out of them.  Probably not as long-lived either? |
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Post by steev on Dec 28, 2010 13:54:25 GMT -5
They look really odd on a toothpick in a martini.
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Post by atash on Jan 5, 2011 15:26:20 GMT -5
No news to longtime readers but here is the latest commodity news from Bloomberg. www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-05/global-food-prices-climb-to-record-on-cereal-sugar-costs-un-agency-says.htmlI have said for years that contrary to some orthodoxies that state that it is impossible to manipulate markets, they CAN manipulate markets, JUST NOT WITHOUT SIDE-EFFECTS. I think this is one of the side-effects. Instead of bond prices crashing and "bond vigilantes" raising interest rates, surreptitious monetization on the one hand, and lack of capital available to would-be farmers on the other, is resulting in soaring commodity prices. They thought they could monetize debt without inflation by bailing out banks and certain "too big to fail" corporations, while discouraging the new money from flowing in the economy ostensibly to "prevent inflation". OK, it's not flowing in the economy. SO PRODUCTION ITSELF IS BREAKING DOWN for lack of new infusions of capital. We're expanding our production of food and seed crops...on a shoe-string budget. That's because I don't know what else to do. I do feel that we are fighting the current--even while "doing the right thing". Inefficiency and moral hazard have come to have their machine. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 5, 2011 15:53:40 GMT -5
We're expanding our production of food and seed crops...on a shoe-string budget. That's because I don't know what else to do. I do feel that we are fighting the current--even while "doing the right thing". Inefficiency and moral hazard have come to have their machine. What I want to do is to trade my truck for a solar powered electric tractor, and never leave my village again... Why should I have to haul food to market? I am a farmer not a teamster. I don't mind hauling food the 3 blocks to the village square for market, but I really dislike going 70 miles to a market in the city. I bank a huge quantity of seeds, enough to radically upscale my operations, or enough to provide garden seeds for much of my village. Every year I say, "perhaps this is the year that all hell will break loose and I will make money farming." Each year I am disappointed with the make-money part of the hope, but I am immensely pleased with the good health and satisfaction that I receive from growing food for my family and village. Farming doesn't make economic sense right now, but it is the safest occupation I can imagine if times get rough. |
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Post by steev on Jan 5, 2011 16:53:23 GMT -5
food or money? Raise what you want, not what you can sell to buy what you want. It's sustain or extract, optimism or pessimism.
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Post by synergy on Jan 5, 2011 19:15:31 GMT -5
In this day and age I think non modified , organically home grown food and the endeavour of gardening and who it makes us as people, are as important to me as commodity prices. I am not proud of jewellry or vehicles, I am proud of the produce of my sweat and the fact i can live a lifestyle and steward a garden that is significantly less toxic than most. Certainly food security is now a looming issue. I pause to wonder if that is a rising concern on this forum because we are gardening or if we are gardening because of that concern. But undoubtedly many of you sound like you are adapting to being in a prepper mentality , I know I am and I just started waking up to that point a year ago. Most of you seem steaped in gardening experience and so i am a little surprised this hits home with so many on this forum but then again it should. I am one too for expanding what I grow for my own family and working hard at trying to reduce fossil fuel dependency and live entirely differently than I was raised and differently than everything I see around me, which is why I ended up looking to forums like this.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 5, 2011 21:39:27 GMT -5
food or money? Raise what you want, not what you can sell to buy what you want. It's sustain or extract, optimism or pessimism. My fields produce approximately 700,000 Calories of plant material per day. A weeks worth of production from my fields is enough to feed my family for a year. Then I have maybe 50,000 meals left over. My fondest hope is to become a sustenance farmer: The problem is the violence that my neighbors are willing to do to me to prevent that from happening. (They make me pay property taxes...) So I gotta sell something or I don't garden. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jan 6, 2011 3:22:22 GMT -5
What I want to do is to trade my truck for a solar powered electric tractor, and never leave my village again... It's interesting you mention a solar powered tractor. When I watched the BBC documentary "a farm for the future", the main thing that i kept thinking was SOLAR POWERED TRACTOR. Because a main theme in the doc was that Fossil fuels are going to be gone by the end of this century. ...And even if they don't run out for awhile, the prices for oil and gasoline are practically guaranteed to skyrocket again. I'm currently researching this idea, and am finding that it might actually be cheaper to build one than buying a pre-made solar tractor than one might think. The solar panels might cost an arm and a leg, but the investment would be worth it. topdocumentaryfilms.com/farm-for-the-future/www.youtube.com/watch?v=R26RdfqGvUEwww.youtube.com/watch?v=reUGbjwkd7A |
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Post by castanea on Jan 8, 2011 15:29:31 GMT -5
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Post by synergy on Jan 13, 2011 20:31:27 GMT -5
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Probably not as long-lived either?
