Could you feed your family from your farm.

mariaalice · 20-09-2019 3:26pm #1

This is connected to another thread.

If technology got distributed or society started to collapse some way.

Would you have the knowledge skills and abilities to feed your family from your farm?

Is there still a race memory of how grow potatoes, keep chicken, and a few pigs or is all to specialised for that.

epfff · 20-09-2019 3:27pm

Yep

Grueller · 20-09-2019 3:35pm

No. They live on avocados and mangoes

Danzy · 20-09-2019 4:20pm

Have ducks,chickens, few pigs and bees.

Plenty of Apple trees, can still snare a rabbit, looting.

Bad eating in bees but the honey makes up for it.

We'd be grand I think.

kerryjack · 20-09-2019 4:31pm

That stood out to me the other day a farmer on the picket line on RTE news said sure we might as well starve here in the picket line than to starve at home it says a lot about Irish farmers and the way they have gone.

Danzy · 20-09-2019 4:38pm

kerryjack wrote: »

That stood out to me the other day a farmer on the picket line on RTE news said sure we might as well starve here in the picket line than to starve at home it says a lot about Irish farmers and the way they have gone.

Figure of speech.

Let them eat cake.

Bullocks · 20-09-2019 4:42pm

We grow a few spuds and keep a glasshouse. My parents do most of the work in fairness. We don't grow or kill a fraction of what my grandparents did but I'd say I could if I had to or wanted to. There would be nothing in the short-term if something happened to our food supply though bar a few tins of kipper fillets. It would be one thing growing but we would want to be able keep stuff well through the winter aswell which is another part of the skill

mariaalice · 20-09-2019 4:50pm

Lots of people young farmers included would be consulting the farmers in their 80s on how to dig potato pits and store food without modern appliances or electricity.

mariaalice · 20-09-2019 5:22pm

Just remember this my ex-husband is friendly with a farmer in Spain he raiseds chicken and produced eggs, less than 20 years ago they were still killing a pig on the farm and making ham and salami both the parent and parent in law spend their days with their children minding their grandchildren raising the pigs and growing a huge amount of vegetables and fruit and packing the eggs they all lived beside each other as well.

The parents and parent in law had never been outside the local village except to go to the hospital.

They only went to the supermarket once a month and purchased olive oil and wine by the gallon from the local coop.

A family like that would have a much better chance of surviving if anything happened.

Muckit · 20-09-2019 5:33pm

mariaalice wrote: »

Would you have the knowledge skills and abilities to feed your family from your farm?

You forgot the most important parameter..... time

Lady Haywire · 20-09-2019 8:41pm

Currently? No.
If I had to? Yes.

Can grow all sorts of veg- spuds, onions, peas, carrots, turnip, courgette, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, spinach, lettuce, etc. Usually grow veg most years but a hectic spring/early summer curbed us this year.
I can also make jam/chutney & can store fruit in jars using sugar syrup (have some apple in spiced jelly from last Sept which is divine in porridge)
Know how to make cheese & butter, just not been bothered, but would have milk if needed. Plus beef & our own hens. And live next to a lake, can gut & clean fish too.
Think I'd be ok, though you wouldn't want to like bread too much :pac:

Wild stuff I actively eat- blackberries/raspberries/strawberries/bilberries/ peas/crab apples/sorrel/hazelnuts

_Brian · 20-09-2019 8:43pm

Obviously less bananas and oranges but we could do fine.

Castlekeeper · 20-09-2019 8:53pm

mariaalice wrote: »

This is connected to another thread.

If technology got distributed or society started to collapse some way.

Would you have the knowledge skills and abilities to feed your family from your farm?

Is there still a race memory of how grow potatoes, keep chicken, and a few pigs or is all to specialised for that.

There'd be a bit of a re-learning curve, and a person would want to be on good terms with the neighbours.

Birdnuts · 20-09-2019 9:33pm

I'd make a good go of it - plus I have shoreline for a tasty bit of seafood in season;)

Nekarsulm · 20-09-2019 9:44pm

If technology got disrupted, dairy farmers would have to sell off all their cows bar the dozen they and their family could milk by hand themselves.
Every farm would be back to having a cow or three.

longgonesilver · 20-09-2019 9:57pm

I would know how to grow fruit and veg. Seeds would be the major stumbling block especially the first year.

Time of the year would be important too, not a lot you could do at this time of the year except prepare ground for next year. We would have to survive on beef.!!
Electricity to run freezers would be very helpful. Not many would eat something preserved in salt anymore and even fewer would know how.

Spray for blight could also be problematic. Who would inspect the sprayer?

My father was born in 1915 so was only one generation removed from people born around the time of the famine. He could name every plant and weed in both Irish and English and whether they were edible or not, how to cook them. He showed me the best places to snare rabbits and how to make traps for songbirds, quite acceptable and necessary when he was young.Different times, practical education.older people passing on knowledge in case.....

Lady Haywire · 20-09-2019 9:58pm

Can't bluestone & soda sub in for blight spray?

longgonesilver · 20-09-2019 10:01pm

Yes but what is soda?

Lady Haywire · 20-09-2019 10:07pm

longgonesilver wrote: »

Yes but what is soda?

Bread soda! What we'd also need for baking our hypothetical bread after the apocalypse
Tough dunno what I'd do after my couple of bags ran out....

longgonesilver · 20-09-2019 10:12pm

You can make bread without breadsoda, it's the small things that would make this difficult, salt, seeds, medicines, replacement tools,

K.G. · 20-09-2019 10:15pm

mariaalice wrote: »

This is connected to another thread.

If technology got distributed or society started to collapse some way.

Would you have the knowledge skills and abilities to feed your family from your farm?

Is there still a race memory of how grow potatoes, keep chicken, and a few pigs or is all to specialised for that.

Most of the replies have missed one point--no Google, now go and feed yourself
Also where the seeds going to come from

Nekarsulm · 20-09-2019 10:37pm

Always seem to have a dozen or so packets of seeds that don't get planted.
A half dozen ewes would be an excellent resource too.

Lady Haywire · 20-09-2019 10:39pm

Seeds would be the most difficult here at least. Have packs upon packs in the drawer never used so wonder if any would sprout after the bb date?
All digging here is done with a loy cause we're stone age :pac: Loys can be made of wood so no issue there.

Castlekeeper · 20-09-2019 11:41pm

Nekarsulm wrote: »

If technology got disrupted, dairy farmers would have to sell off all their cows bar the dozen they and their family could milk by hand themselves.
Every farm would be back to having a cow or three.

Depends on the price of milk/labour. One person would handmilk 5-7 cows. Milk would then have to be processed.

On another note seeds will last forever once dry.

Buford T. Justice XIX · 21-09-2019 12:15am

Castlekeeper wrote: »

There'd be a bit of a re-learning curve, and a person would want to be on good terms with the neighbours.

The tradition always was to take turns to kill a pig around with the neighbours and divide out the different cuts among them all with a small bit of swapping done for favourite cuts.

If it came to it, country folk would survive through swapping labour and resources but urban folk wouldn't have much of value to trade with for food.

Base price · 21-09-2019 12:32am

As a young child I remember that my Grandparents only purchases were flour, sugar, tea and salt, oh and pint bottles of guinness for Grandad. Everything else was sourced from the farm/garden, lake or from neighbours through bartering. The house only got electricity installed not long before I was born and there was a light bulb in every room, nothing else.

Bullocks · 21-09-2019 6:42am

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Always seem to have a dozen or so packets of seeds that don't get planted.
A half dozen ewes would be an excellent resource too.

Great eating in a lamb . I'd have to get a sow aswell for a few bonhams to kill , I'm woeful reliant on ham and rashers !

Who2 · 21-09-2019 9:20am

I’d want to be next to starved before I’d eat lamb. One of the most disgusting foul meats out there. And there isn’t much I wouldn’t eat. We don’t appreciate the little things anymore and spend half our lives chasing our tails working to buy things we think we need. Processed crap food the new car, sky packages we don’t even get time to watch and insurance packages to ensure our insurances. I for one wouldn’t mind a bit of the simple life where we get back to looking after ourselves and get time to enjoy things in between.

_Brian · 21-09-2019 9:24am

Bullocks wrote: »

Great eating in a lamb . I'd have to get a sow aswell for a few bonhams to kill , I'm woeful reliant on ham and rashers !

Couple of pigs are easy reared and savage feeding from them.

ganmo · 21-09-2019 10:33am

Who2 wrote: »

I’d want to be next to starved before I’d eat lamb. One of the most disgusting foul meats out there. And there isn’t much I wouldn’t eat. We don’t appreciate the little things anymore and spend half our lives chasing our tails working to buy things we think we need. Processed crap food the new car, sky packages we don’t even get time to watch and insurance packages to ensure our insurances. I for one wouldn’t mind a bit of the simple life where we get back to looking after ourselves and get time to enjoy things in between.

Theres no need to attack lamb like that. Taste is personal and that's the way you should talk about it.

We've raspberries and rhubarb in the garden so deserts for the summer and jam for the winter

lalababa · 21-09-2019 10:43am

Wouldn't be a great fan of lamb either as I was raised on tastier mutton. "You like what you know"
I'm in Cork City and most of what I see is the younger generation chasing their tails for shinyer cars & houses.

Could you feed your family from your farm.

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