Off Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 8: Food Production 2

Continuing in our discussion on food production in Off-Grid Agrarianism. We have previously discussed meat production for the off-grid homestead. Today we will discuss other non-meat food production. Currently (or I guess in the past year we are raising or producing about 20% or less of our yearly non-meat needs. We have not yet raised any grain or dried bean supplies at all. We put up a year supply of green beans last year, and have only consumed about 10% of that because we have a pretty extensive food storage program and we have been rotating out our stored store-bought veggies first. We put up quite a few tomatoes for soups, stews, etc. We have not yet ever produced a potato or root crop, though we intend to do root crops this year. We have produced quite a bit of our herbs in the past, though we will hope to do much better on that this year and in the years to come. Vegetable, Herb/Spice, and grain/bean production ought to be combined with a very intensive home preparedness/food storage program. As you can see, my family has a need to increase our production of these staples.

One of the solutions to our situation is to really work on and emphasize a year-round growing program. In addition to our plans to add a greenhouse and cold-frames, we intend to do some other year-round growing of plants and vegetables that can be grown in our area throughout the fall and winter. We are currently installing double-dug garden beds and raised beds, and we also will be (if the Lord wills) building some 1 acre pens for free-range animal and crop rotation. So you can get a picture of the entire program, we intend (if the Lord allows) to produce some large scale dry bean and seed (oats/wheat/etc.) crops in rotating fields, as well as to move into intensive gardening of vegetables and other staples in order to move towards 100% production of our own supplies. This includes growing enough hay or other crops to feed our animals (those who are not actively participating in free-range or rotation schemes.

One of the first things the potential off-grid family can do is to get an idea of what you use, and how much of it. Sometimes for the gardener, it develops that you just kind of grow what you feel like growing and in an amount that seems right in order to just "have a garden". This is not a good idea. A garden and all growing programs, even for your small homestead, should be planned. Some old favorites or things you just like to have around may have to be sacrificed if they are not solid additions to an overall food supply plan. Vegetable or crops that take up a lot of space, but only produce a small amount of food and only for a short time are usually the first to go. In addition, some other crops that you may never have tried, or that may not currently be a part of your diet, may need to be adopted by you and your family. At present, all of the families here in the communities are getting into the idea of growing large amounts of sweet potatoes. The sweet potato is a great and healthy food source, it can be stored for quite a long time (through the winter), it is a combination of excellent people food, and excellent animal feed. Even though I am a southerner and I have eaten sweet potatoes most of my life, it has never been a "regular" food for me and my family, and we have never grown it. But we are convinced it will provide a basic staple for the family that grows very well in our climate.

My philosophy has always been to pick out 1 (or 2 or 3) major product per year and heavily focus on growing a bunch of that one thing. That product ought to be a) a major food source for your family - something you will eat a lot, b) something that stores or preserves well, and c) something that you can produce WAY more of than you can consume in one year. Last year that product for us was green beans. This year it will be something else, probably onions and 1 or 2 other things I haven't determined yet. Several years ago my big thing was dried beans. We grew several great crops of black and white beans and were able to store a good supply, much of which we subsequently used for seed in the years that followed. Dried beans are a great source of nutrition, and they store exceptionally well. I know that it is cheap and easy to buy and store commercially grown Pinto Beans and other dried beans. I myself have literally tons of them stored, and we eat them for several meals every week. Our main Sabbath meal every week is Pinto Beans. But you really ought to grow most of your beans yourself, because we really have no idea what kind of planting quality the beans we have in storage are. We have planted store bought pinto beans and gotten a crop before, but I certainly would not count on it, and I wouldn't be comfortable relying on being able to continue such a thing using (most likely) hybrid beans. The real answer in our area is going to be black beans and white beans, which grow well, are harvested easily, store easily, and taste great too. We regularly mix up our bean usage between stored Pintos and white beans. I want to emphasize too that if you get a good heritage seed or a good traditional non-hybrid seed for these beans, you can be pretty assured of being able to use all of your storage beans for seed if the need arrives. Your crop can also be nicely stored in 5 gallon buckets in a root cellar or other cool area. A 5 gallon bucket of beans will last a normal sized family for a good while.

As far as garden growing, there are as many opinions as there are growers, and I am still in the learning phase. The main point I want to make though is that I know some excellent gardeners who would make poor subsistence farmers. It is one thing to grow some great veggies or awesome marigolds. It is quite another to purposely work to provide a majority of the food for your family so that you do not have to buy food at stores - which is the goal and ideal of Off-Grid Agrarianism.

Much less space is necessary for a small subsistence farm than most people think. I am convinced that a pretty large family can live and survive, providing near 100% of their own foodstuffs, on only a few acres OR LESS. While I own over 37 acres, my garden is less than 1/8th of an acre. I plan on making more and more land available for tillage every year, but I believe I can provide more than enough food for my family just from this one small garden, using intensive gardening techniques. Eventually, my plan (if the Lord wills it) is to build a garden that is nearly 1/4 acre, keep my current garden as an herb and tomato garden, and utilize the 1 acre rotation fields for growing some larger crops each year. So one year I might grow an acre of wheat, an acre of dry beans, and an acre of some feed crop; and the next I might grow an acre of oats, an acre of snap beans, etc. Any excess that cannot be eaten, stored, used for animal feed, or bartered - will be sold at the farmers market, or to some local stores who buy these things for resale. My gardens will consist mainly of double-dug beds used in rotation, and used year-round.

As I mentioned before, any good subsistence farming/gardening plan needs to be combined with ample food storage. Root cellars are a necessity, especially here in the hot south. We will also be needing dry storage, some barns and outbuildings for drying and curing foods, a smokehouse, a springhouse, and an icehouse - each which will be needed for different and necessary purposes. I will discuss those things in a later part to this series. Anyway, if you cannot store it, preserve it, etc., you probably should not produce it. Very few things, with the exception of Lettuces and other garden and salad greens and veggies, are going to be grown for immediate consumption - until we get a good sized greenhouse. It is an great thing to be able to go directly to the garden for a meal, and I relish such times, but I have to keep in mind that food production is for the whole year, and for our survival and for our safety and security. God provides these things for us because He cares about us and loves us, and our labor is bestowed for His glory alone, and we must always keep that in mind. God's provision in allowing us to work for Him in providing nearly 100% of our necessities constantly puts us in remembrance of Him and His goodness and kindness towards us. We pray to Him to wean us from the "store", and to provide for us completely and sovereignly RIGHT HERE where He has planted us. We, like plants, need our rain and food in due season, and we rely on Him for it. A good food subsistence program coupled with a sound storage and preservation plan is our way of being dutiful and diligent in God's commandments. It is HE that has commanded us to till the soil, and to work the land (Gen. 2:15, 3:23), and we all ought to do that diligently as unto a glorious and loving master.

Now, many people get into animal husbandry and they make some really big mistakes. Some go out and buy 100% of the most expensive feed you can buy, and they keep feeding those animals from the feed store, and they never can figure out that they are losing money and time on the deal. Not that we are in this for the money, but if I have to keep working a day job in order to feed my animals, then I have fallen from suburbanism (where I work all day to buy stuff from other people to feed myself), to sub-suburbanism (where I work all day to buy stuff from other people to feed animals). Not a good trade-off. Our plan must include a program to provide much of the food and supplies for our animals from our own labor and from the ground. Back in the old south, where sweet potatoes, turnips and turnip greens, carrots, etc. were major staple crops, MOST of the crop went to feed the animals! When you read some of the old farmer's almanacs you will find that most small farms in the south fed their animals sweet potatoes, rutabagas, turnips and turnip greens, and other root crops. Corn was a yankee animal crop. So many people automatically run to corn as a staple crop for feed animals, but historically, at least in this area, corn was not used for that purpose. In fact, in England potatoes (regular potatoes) were considered animal food and not people food. The English (perennially derisive of the Irish) considered it quite hilarious that Irishmen ate potatoes. There was an old English joke that potatoes were food only for horses and Irishmen. The Irish responded that that is why the Irish man is as strong as a horse. Anyway, I love potatoes and all these other root crops, but consider using the bulk of any crop for animal feed. They grow better with less problems and risk of a total crop failure than corn and above ground seed crops do. The point is we have to grow or gather what we feed our animals.

Here in Central Texas, we harvested acorns from the hundreds of oak trees on our land to feed to our pigs. We were able to feed them and fatten them for several months off of acorns from the land. If we were more diligent at it, or if we had already put in a good free-range program (we did free-range them for several months) we would have had to buy less and less feed for them. This year we will try to put a better effort into it. We still buy hay for our cattle, but we have a plan to free-range them on our land later this year. I intend to grow some root crops this year to feed our milk cow and any other cattle that won't be running with the herd.

There will always be some products we will likely not be able to produce. We cannot produce salt, though we do get salt from a lot of the foods we produce. We do not have a salt mine, so we buy and store large amounts of salt. We will never be able to produce quite a few other necessities, but that number is far smaller than I first thought. We ought to be able to produce honey, soaps, pepper, candles, even rope, string, furniture, tools, etc. God created us with the ability to solve many problems, and we have to divorce ourselves from the corporate mentality and industrial mindset that has crippled our individual creativity. Most people are like people deprived for their whole lives of the use of their eyes, ears, other senses, and their legs, arms and hands. These things atrophy from lack of use, as does all of our other creative senses and abilities. The industrial system paralyzes us and makes us completely dependent on the system, while simultaneously convincing men that they are better off than their forefathers, and "more advanced". Hardly.

Ok, that's it for this part. More coming up, if the Lord wills it.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker