Re: OT - Tomatoes
- From: Chuck Rhode <CRhode@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:30:27 -0600
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:10:55 +0000, The Older Gentleman wrote:
BryanUT <nestle12@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Grow as much food as you can (and preserve it), it is easy.
Berries, fruit trees, roots, nuts, veggies, meat, eggs, dairy,
enjoy your land, I only have 1/4 acre.
Share and cooperate with you neighbors. The earth wants to grow
things.
In our back garden, we have several fruit trees. Plus three
beehives, and a chicken coop with three chooks. (OK, so that's not
really 'growing').
Nothing tastes as good as vegetables that have spent an hour or two,
no more, between ground and table.
I knew this topic would come back around what with the economy and
all.... I need to take a crack at it, too, because I sent TOGs link
to a bunch of friends. Here's what I said:
Having grown up in the Great Depression, Dad would not pay money for
chicken when we went out to eat. In the 1930s (in the country)
everyone raised chickens in their back yards. Consequently, chicken
was plentiful and the next best thing to free food. Now you, too,
can relive hard times by keeping hens in an "eglu:"
o http://www.omlet.co.uk/products_services/products_services.php?view=Chickens
I got my ass handed to me for posting that. The sum and substance of
objections was that I didn't know what I was talking about:
o People did *not* eat chicken during the Great Depression.
o Chicken was a delicacy, reserved for the upper crust in only the
biggest cities. It was not rough or common food.
o Anyway, development of suitable strains of broilers and their
production in retail quantities did not occur until World War II.
o Chicken became popular during World War II because it was not
rationed.
o People grew sick of eating chicken during World War II.
o Layers were *not* fit to eat during the Depression, which preceded
World War II, because they were tough and strong flavored.
o People could not *afford* to raise chickens in any quantity then
when a lot of livestock was being slaughtered to supplement meager
human food stocks and to save on maintenance.
o People did not raise chickens to eat because they needed the eggs.
o People ate a lot of eggs during the Depression.
As you can see, this topic is a minefield of ignorance on every hand.
I posted the UK Website in jest because I thought it incredibly funny
that anyone would dream that they could get away with raising
livestock in their backyard in suburban America.
My friends remain convinced that some sort of clarification can and
should be made, however.
They have had recent deplorable but practical experience with
neighbors offering to specialize in growing certain vegetables in
backyard gardens in return for significant shares of what they were
planting in theirs. The obvious pitfalls loom: ineptitude on the part
of the beneficiary's planting, cultivating and harvesting unfamiliar
crops, unfortunate site selection, incompetent pest management (IPM),
underestimated cost and labor, wildly optimistic valuation of poor
returns.
Economists are still saying the current downturn will reverse itself
within a year or two even while they maintain we haven't hit bottom
yet. I think there is a major amount of uncertainty out there. The
defects in my friends' friends' and BryanUT's romantic aspirations
could, no doubt, be corrected over time. (... and now for something
politically incorrect: Remember that Utahns have far more experience
at banking food than other Americans. They do this in ongoing
preparation for the return of pogroms from their religious past, and
in never ending anticipation that they will be able to outlast the
lean years spelling the doom of their rivals.) It is foolish, though,
for me to suggest -- even in jest as it turns out -- that there is
enough time. If everyone had to start raising a portion of his own
food right now, everyone would succumb to malnutrition. That's the
stark reality. It's not funny.
My brother sent me some *.pdf files of Depression-Era Kansas research
indicating that small, diversified farms, which were prevalent then
but which cannot be recreated now in anything like an immediate time
frame, *did* keep significant flocks of poultry. The authors did not
descend into imputing opportunity costs to available on-farm labor or
to salvaged grain and food scraps as their immediate successors would
do, have done, and are still doing. They merely noted that sale of
eggs and meat supplemented farm income. They noted that farm
residents consumed 30+ dozen eggs per year.
o Evans, Morris, and H. L. Collins. _Farm Production and Consumption
of Poultry in Kansas_. Manhattan, KS: Kansas State College of
Agriculture and Applied Science, Jan. 1932. Bulletin 256. 15 Jan. 2009
<http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/historicpublications/Pubs/SB256.PDF>.
My own observation is that something made that worthwhile at the time.
I guess I still harbor a kernel of vicarious nostalgia for the good
old days.
In this age we view the efforts to get by of our forebearers, our
neighbors, and ourselves with a certain disdain not unlike that with
which we assess out neighbors' gardens. I am willing to stipulate
that there have been, during the last 80 years, material advances in
the science of chicken feed. The needs for digestible salts of light
metals and for vitamin D to amplify and prolong the egglaying season
are examples. Our modern chickens depend on modern diet. You could
no more turn them out to fend for themselves than you could rely on
your neighbor to weed carrots; nevertheless, I think you underestimate
chickenkind if you go so far as to suggest they would starve.
--
... Be Seeing You,
... Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
... Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX
... -12° — Wind WNW 15 mph
.
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