greenspree.ca at The Sietch

Our yard has been a bit of a dilemma for us these past few years.  Our land is 2.6 acres and mowing the whole thing was never an option although the first year we mowed about 2/3’s of it.  This year we have reduced the amount we mow considerably.  The reasons are many but primarily we want to spend less time mowing the lawn and less energy too.  We recently purchased a reel mower and are attempting to go gas free with our lawn.  It’s hard, but not as hard as you would think, and I rather enjoy the exercise.  We sometimes revert back to the old ride on mower when the grass gets too high for the reel mower and the trails through the wild parts of the lawn are sometimes easier to cut on the ride on as well.

As the season passes and the meadow area of the lawn grows it is interesting and beautiful to see all the different kinds of plants growing in it.  By far the most apparent plant right now is goldenrod, but there are others too, thistles, vetch, daisies, and some I don’t know.

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How much (useful) energy can you derive from rain falling from your roof? How can you best capture wind energy with many small wind turbines? Are there other options for using solar energy besides PV’s and solar hot water heaters? What are some other small options anyone could use that have cumulative benefits and are easy and cheap to install?

It’s a thought I had the other day when considering energy production for our house in the future. While on the road for my job I passed by an off-grid (even though the grid was 100 feet away) 3000+sf home with solar hot water, solar PV panels and a 100′ tall 3 or 5 KW wind turbine. It was massive and made the property seem very out of place next to smallish 1400-1800sf bungalows all around it. I decided that one large scale device to provide all or nearly all of my energy needs was not a route I wanted to take. I started doing mental calculations and plans to incorporate many small unobtrusive energy production devices into our house and land. We have a hectare so we have some room to play with and it is a former farm field so can plan around future trees, wind rows, etc…

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How much land do you need to be self sufficient? Again inspired by Red State Green’s recents posts I decided to do some research on my own. Prior to this, in a comment on “A matter of national security”, I used some somewhat high output figures I found on another site that basically said about 0.11 of an acre would be all that is required for a family of four. I decided to find some better numbers and also instead of just going by 2000lbs of food per year per preson, use the recommended portions of the CanadaFood Guide.

Assuming everyone followed Canada’s food guide, and using chicken for meat and dairy alternatives and/or trading or somehow offsetting the cost of purchasing some of the food, this is how I see it breaking down (weights of food taken from http://www.stambaughfamily.com/equiv_1.html):

Food Guide per adult male:

10 servings (1/2cup) of vegatables and fruit. Lets say your servings are 1 cup of tomato, 1 cup of spinach, 1 cup of carrot, 1 cup of cabbage and 1 cup of potato. That corresponds 74kg of tomato, 50kg of spinach, 55kg of carrot, 110kg of cabbage, and 83kg of potato per year.

8 servings of grain products. Lets use 4 servings of oats and the equivalent in flour of four servings of bread. That corresponds to 21kg of oats and 20kg of wheat flour per year.

2 servings of dairy. Lets assume soy drink, 1 cup ea. or approx. 23kg of soya beans per year.

3 servings of meat and alternatives. Let’s use chicken for all three (75g ea.) That’s 82kg per year.

More after the fold.

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Red State Green » Blog Archive » A matter of national security

Fellow The Sietch blogger Red State Green has posted an interesting article on self sufficiency and food supplies.  She has garnered a lot of attention on the post with dozens of comments ranging from support to abject scorn.

Most of the scorn seems to be coming from folks who are saying things like:

Uh… don’t want to rain on your self-sufficiency parade or anything, but do you also intend to build a fortified castle around your Victory Garden? Because if you don’t and civilization collapses because we can’t get Big Macs anymore we’re heading straight for the homestead that has all the chickens, pigs, and home-made preserves.

Mmmm. Jellies and jams.

And:

Are you serious? This is the most ridiculous idea I have heard yet. Oil embargo equals starvation? Give me a break. For one, you aren’t right in saying most of the food is produced in other countries. Yes, most of what we eat is made in other countries, but we export far more food than we import. The breadbasket of the USA (you have heard of the entire midwest, right?) could easily support the entire country. Also, higher food costs aren’t really a big deal, given that we already have some of the lowest food costs in the world.

But let’s take a step back and assume that this absurd principle could work. No gas in the cars? Uh oh… I guess that means walking or biking are out of the question. I bet people would kill each other over gardens before thinking about, I don’t know, walking to the store.

Let’s take the other scenarios. Terrorists bombing all our pipelines is not only unreasonable (since the United States is in anti-terror mode), but given that this country runs on oil, it would probably take only a few days to fix, causing at most a small spike in prices. A flu pandemic is an unlikely but possible occurrence, though I think the flu might be slightly more concerning than plans for food. Come on. No quarantine causing starvation would be placed into effect — the starvation could kill far more than the flu.

Victory gardens were a wonderful way to make people feel involved in WWII, but they weren’t the difference between life and death for Americans. This situation isn’t any different.

And I have to wonder if these people really think it is better to not have any means of self sufficiency at all then learn how to garden and provide at least a portion of your own food?

Another common theme was “aconomies of scale” and the great myth that commercial agriculture is the only efficient way to raise crops and livestock.  I don’t even know where to start with that notion, I suggest those that believe that do some serious research on traditional and third world farming practices and let me know what they conclude.