The potatoes were done growing, so I started to harvest them slowly the last week and I raked my way through the piled-up moss, compost, and soil.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The moss did not decompose much, but it did mostly die at least. And it certainly performed the task that I had in mind for it – it completely suffocated everything under it. The potato harvest was not spectacular, but I did not expect it to be.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I got about 50 kg of reasonably sized potatoes. I was hoping for a bit more, but I cannot complain, since I planted very small leftovers from last year. There were three problems with this crop this year – first, the plants were damaged by late frost, then they suffered through drought. Those that survived it did bounce back in July, and unlike pumpkins, they did thrive in the wet and cold weather. And then they suffered a third plague – rodents. A lot of tubers were damaged or completely eaten by voles. But we still have a lot of dehydrated potatoes from last year, and 50 kg of fresh potatoes should get us through the winter for foods where dehydrated potatoes do not work well.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The soil under the patches is now bare. I will pile up the moss in one heap and mix it with calcium cyanamide. That way, it should compost until spring, and I can use it to cover potatoes the next year, too. I will try to plough the bare patches of soil now to cultivate them. If I manage to do that, I will plant either beans or peas the next year in there. If I do not manage to do that, I will plant beans.
Next year, I will buy proper seed potatoes, and at least part of them will be planted properly underground. But I will also choose another grassy spot and do this method again. Potatoes are a lot of work in the spring and in the fall, but they are a fairly low-maintenance crop. And growing something means less grass to mow and more food to eat.
Our potato crop has been a bit disappointing too, though better than yours I think. I’m guessing it was the ‘either pissing it down and gloomy or baking the ground had hot’ combo ie when there was enough water there really wasn’t much light and when there was enough light there wasn’t any water unless we added it (not always possible). Our very clay-ey soil really doesn’t help at the extremes of water and lack of water we had this year. However we also had animal damage, something went down a whole row (4m) pulling out a potato from each plant and disturbing the rest, weirdly there was no damage to the exposed potatoes, so we ate them, but they were main crops an would have gone on bulking up for weeks more had they been left undisturbed.
The ground where the potato crop was does look very clean, in itself is a win.
how much farmable land do you think would be necessary to subsistence farm for a single adult individual?
I’m looking up some stuff in Reader’s Digest “Back to Basics” it’s a pretty cool book I picked up at a Public Library book sale at some point, and it has a lot of basic homesteading type stuff. Kinda generalized, but that’s to be expected for trying to cover such a wide range.
So far, ~1 acre woodlot for ~2/3 cord of wood, sustainably, so that varies on how much wood you need…
according to google, 1 acre = 43560 square feet (roughly 210 ft x 210 ft) (I think I read something about an acre being the area an averageish person can work in an averagish day, but that may be wrong)
And: “A garden to supply a family of two adults and two school-age children with staples year round should cover 2,500 square feet (50 by 50 feet or the equivalent).”
“An acre of corn can fill a year’s grain requirements for a pig, a milk cow, a beef steer, and 30 laying hens”
and:
“A plot of land only 20 by 55 feet can provide all the wheat an average family of four will need in a year”
“An aboveground wading pool, 12 feet across and 2 feet deep can yield 50 to 100 lbs of tasty trout, catfish, or other species in a single growing season of five to six months” -I’m pretty sure that’s with feeding, filters, etc., so probably a lot smaller yield, or need a much bigger pond for more passive production…
“If you want a dozen eggs a week, you will need about 15 birds. This allows for decreased productivity and for any deaths.”
And then a lot is going to vary by climate, soil, terrain, location, microclime, weather, luck, predation, luck, etc. But it seems like it might not take much room, if you can devote a lot of labor to it. And I imagine more area would allow for lower-labor efforts, like perennial plants, fruit/nut trees, etc.
Decades ago, my dream was to buy/build a small off-grid homestead, but then I got stuck in a chain of dead-end, minimum-wage and temp jobs, dealt with student loans, unemployment, etc., so it will remain nothing but a dream… :/
@Bébé Mélange, I will answer in metric, since customary units make even less sense for area measurement than they make for linear measurements.
It depends on quite a lot of variables -- elevation, latitude, soil quality, and local microclimate. No matter what, there is a huge “luck” component to it and whilst it might be possible to grow all one’s own food, full self-sustenance is not possible, there will always be a need for some inputs from outside (from essentials like machinery, fuel, fertilizers, clothes, & salt, to nice-to-haves like spices, electronics, etc.). So I have to reduce it to what I would need in my location to grow my food and firewood only.
Currently, I grow firewood on approximately 500 sqm, and it is approximately 10% of my yearly needs. Adding some safety for the margin of error and fluctuation, etc, I therefore guess I would need 6000 sqm, or 1,5 acres for firewood.
If one does not mind eating a lot of potatoes, growing food does not need as much space. I googled, and to maintain my (low) bodyweight, I would need to eat approximately 2500 calories per day (subsistence automatically means “heavy exercise every day”). That translates to 3 kg of potatoes per day, or 1200 kg per year. I can grow easily 300 kg of potatoes on just 40 sqm, so it would need 160 sqm to grow a year’s worth for a really potato-heavy diet. Let’s round it to 200 sqm for safety. Potatoes are low in protein, but the protein is of high quality. They also contain enough vitamin C. For proper crop rotation, I would need three such small fields, also 600 sqm, or 0,15 acre. Growing a few kg of beans and other vegetables that are not as calorie-dense, but provide other nutrients and flavors.
Getting enough vitamin B12 on a vegan diet via sustenance is not possible, unless one forgoes proper hygiene (you’d need to fertilize veggies with your own poop and not wash them properly afterwards). But with this many potatoes, it would be possible to feed some chickens with peels and offal; they also could graze in the coppice, etc. I would add two small fields for a movable coop. If one were squeamish about killing the chicken (I am not; they will die anyway after a few years, and the last year they no longer lay eggs in any meaningful way), just a few eggs a day should provide enough vitamins most of the year. Winter would be a problem, though.
Adding that up, I would need 7000 square meters, or 1,75 acres to get all the food and firewood I need, safely-ish, with overabundance some years and some lack others. I had complete crop failures (4 crops this year) in my own garden, so I really see the necessity to overproduce and preserve for such cases.
And here comes the kicker -- without heavy machinery, it is simply impossible to farm this much land solo. This work cannot be spread over manageable times -- all the potatoes need to be planted very quickly in the spring, the soil needs to be prepared within a week, some crops must be harvested and processed quickly during a dry spell, etc.
So, whilst this is a fun mental exercise, reality is brutal.
charly -- i had a feeling the answer would look something like that. rugged business.
I don’t know if there is any interest, but I’ve heard from a number of different places about a specific book about small farming which isn’t written with doomerism in mind.
Five Acres and Independence: A Practical Guide to the Selection and Management of a Small Farm, by M.G. Kains was written during the Great Depression in 1935. It’s entire goal is self-sustainable, small-scale, farming. Copies can be found used for $10-$20.
Obviously there have been advances in agriculture since then, but it’s supposed to be a classic. I have not read it.
Doh! Missed a backslash. My apologies, but you-all are smart enough to figure out the proper formatting without my help.