When we first started on this "path," I had some simple delusions. The
goal was self-sufficiency, so, in my mind, that meant put up solar
panels, drink rain water, and grow food. Easy, right? Having spent my
entire life learning everything I need to know from reading, I bought a
dozen books on each subject. Things like Backyard Homesteading, Edible Food Forest,
and a few permaculture guidebooks. One of the books claimed that a
family of two could grow all the food they need on 1/4 of an acre and it
had this neat little diagram of a farm house, some pigs, chickens,
fruit trees, and a little wheat patch. I was inspired. I have an acre
and we live in the land of the endless growing season, growing all of
our own food should be a piece of cake. I had this vision that within a
few years I'd just walk into my yard for a bit of grazing when I got
hungry. The vision was so strong that, for a moment, I thought I was a
farmer. Or at least a master gardener.
I don't think I've ever been more wrong on anything in my life. I've been working on the land for exactly three years and put in somewhere around 2500 hours into creating sustainable food production systems. I've put in a comparable amount of time reading on the subject, and spend much of the rest of my life thinking about it. For the vast majority of human history, people grew their own food. With access to the internet and some gas powered tools, how could I fail so miserably?
My garden has never produced anything except eggplant and herbs. I had some beautiful peas once, but the wild chickens ate them all. My sprawling watermelon vine produced one massive watermelon, but in our excitement we picked it before it was ripe. The wild pigs destroyed my sweet potato patch (I have since successfully grown sweet potato in barrels) and my lo'i. All of my avocado trees died. My ducks and chickens are alive and very happy, but every egg they produce probably cost 4 times more in feed costs than a store bought egg. While I'm starting to figure some aspects out, if this were the pre-industrial society that my repressed inner-hippy seems to yearn for, I would've been dead long ago.
I don't think I've ever been more wrong on anything in my life. I've been working on the land for exactly three years and put in somewhere around 2500 hours into creating sustainable food production systems. I've put in a comparable amount of time reading on the subject, and spend much of the rest of my life thinking about it. For the vast majority of human history, people grew their own food. With access to the internet and some gas powered tools, how could I fail so miserably?
My garden has never produced anything except eggplant and herbs. I had some beautiful peas once, but the wild chickens ate them all. My sprawling watermelon vine produced one massive watermelon, but in our excitement we picked it before it was ripe. The wild pigs destroyed my sweet potato patch (I have since successfully grown sweet potato in barrels) and my lo'i. All of my avocado trees died. My ducks and chickens are alive and very happy, but every egg they produce probably cost 4 times more in feed costs than a store bought egg. While I'm starting to figure some aspects out, if this were the pre-industrial society that my repressed inner-hippy seems to yearn for, I would've been dead long ago.
In a few years the rest of the fruit trees will begin fruiting, but
I'm not sure how much that will help. I've gone many stubborn days
where I would attempt to only eat food from my land. That basically
meant eating 15 bananas, a papaya, and a lilikoi, and still feeling
famished at the end of the day. The amount of fruit that you need to
consume to satisfy hunger is mind-blowing. I could have every fruit
tree in my yard bursting with fruit, and I'd still only be a small step
closer to self-sufficiency than when I lived in Honolulu.
I was beginning to think that self-sufficiency was a pipe dream. Then we went to Cambodia, and my view of food was turned completely upside down. The country is nearly entirely agriculturally self sufficient. And you can see why from the instant you get off the plane.
Every inch of land is cultivated. We drove through half of the country (the equivalent of driving from Houston to Seattle to LA and back to Houston) and for the entire drive there are rice fields from horizon to horizon on both sides of the road. Every home has a mango tree, a lotus patch (which they eat), a banana patch, and a small herb garden. Nearly every home has ducks and chickens and a cow. The animals double as sources of protein and lawn mowers (of which you won't find one in the entire country). Any hillsides (and therefore not suitable for rice cultivation) are massive orchards, most of which seem to be cassava or mango. But, the biggest single difference is that nothing is wasted and everything edible is eaten. You'll never see a banana blossom still hanging from a fruiting banana tree, because it gets eaten. The trunk of the banana tree itself is even eaten. When we eat a shrimp, we eat 1/3rd of the body; when they eat a shrimp, it's the entire thing, head, shell, and digestive track. What we see as weeds (such as Wandering Jew) are eaten. What we see as pests (spiders, rats, crickets, and ants) are eaten. And whatever isn't eaten, is used for something. For example, take rice: the stalk is fed to the cattle (the manure fertilizes the field and the cows are eventually eaten), the shelled husk is used as mulch and as a fuel source, and the rice kernel itself is eaten.
I realized that my problem isn't that I'm a terrible gardener (which I am), it's that my relationship to food is skewed. I'm used to looking at food as it comes out of the grocery store: perfect, predictable, and plastic looking. I don't salivate when I look at my bamboo patch. I don't see a potential meal from the fruit of our hala tree. And I definitely never thought about grazing through my hillside overcome by Wandering Jew. Our acre is overflowing with food. Just not the food that I intended. I've been approaching the problem from the wrong end. I will continue to be an abysmal failure if I'm trying to replicate our current food system in my backyard, because it's not possible. But I think it'll be awhile before we start roasting rats or sauteing spiders.
I was beginning to think that self-sufficiency was a pipe dream. Then we went to Cambodia, and my view of food was turned completely upside down. The country is nearly entirely agriculturally self sufficient. And you can see why from the instant you get off the plane.
Every inch of land is cultivated. We drove through half of the country (the equivalent of driving from Houston to Seattle to LA and back to Houston) and for the entire drive there are rice fields from horizon to horizon on both sides of the road. Every home has a mango tree, a lotus patch (which they eat), a banana patch, and a small herb garden. Nearly every home has ducks and chickens and a cow. The animals double as sources of protein and lawn mowers (of which you won't find one in the entire country). Any hillsides (and therefore not suitable for rice cultivation) are massive orchards, most of which seem to be cassava or mango. But, the biggest single difference is that nothing is wasted and everything edible is eaten. You'll never see a banana blossom still hanging from a fruiting banana tree, because it gets eaten. The trunk of the banana tree itself is even eaten. When we eat a shrimp, we eat 1/3rd of the body; when they eat a shrimp, it's the entire thing, head, shell, and digestive track. What we see as weeds (such as Wandering Jew) are eaten. What we see as pests (spiders, rats, crickets, and ants) are eaten. And whatever isn't eaten, is used for something. For example, take rice: the stalk is fed to the cattle (the manure fertilizes the field and the cows are eventually eaten), the shelled husk is used as mulch and as a fuel source, and the rice kernel itself is eaten.
I realized that my problem isn't that I'm a terrible gardener (which I am), it's that my relationship to food is skewed. I'm used to looking at food as it comes out of the grocery store: perfect, predictable, and plastic looking. I don't salivate when I look at my bamboo patch. I don't see a potential meal from the fruit of our hala tree. And I definitely never thought about grazing through my hillside overcome by Wandering Jew. Our acre is overflowing with food. Just not the food that I intended. I've been approaching the problem from the wrong end. I will continue to be an abysmal failure if I'm trying to replicate our current food system in my backyard, because it's not possible. But I think it'll be awhile before we start roasting rats or sauteing spiders.
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