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.

davidk1394 · 21-09-2019 10:51am

Used grow vegetable plots here for lettuce, carrots, onions and potatoes. Had a few apple and pear trees but they died because they weren't looked after. Have hens here aswell, put a few lambs in the freezer and half a heifer. I know how to grow vegetables but didn't do it in a fresh years because of wire worms and nematodes in the ground

uck51js9zml2yt · 21-09-2019 11:15am

Grueller wrote: »

No. They live on avocados and mangoes

That's them blow ins from Dublin giving them " notions"

Coming from the capital myself I have veg growing and chickens. Probably enough to keep me going till spring and it's only my 1st season.

My son planted an egg..I told him we'd get egg plants

amacca · 21-09-2019 11:32am

I couldn't feed myself from my farm I'm ashamed to admit or at least it would be a very steep learning curve.

Knowledge and skills would be the first barrier....they would be minimal especially when it comes to storage/preservation...I can grow some veg, I grow peas some years as supermarkets don't really seem to stock peas in the pods here that much, but butchering and preserving meat I'd only have a rough sketch of a idea, as for making cheese, butter etc and storing apples etc Id surely make a balls of that........give me a load of sugar though and Id make you a nice batch of jam.

Seeds might be a problem if were going full metal apocalypse here

It would depend on what time of the year civilisation shuts down too....coming into spring I might have a chance....if I had an internet connection or some survival/homesteading books

Freezer, solar panels and some leisure batteries could come in handy.

foxy farmer · 21-09-2019 4:42pm

Can't remember the exact words but I remember hearing a saying once about owning an acre of land. Something along the lines of
You'll never make a living off an acre of land but you could certainly live off it. In other words growing your own food.
The give a fish/ teach how to fish saying also comes to mind.
I grew up in a housing estate outside Cork city. We had a fairly substantial garden. Both parents came off farms. We had a few drills of spuds cabbage parsnips peas beans lettuce onions rhubarb apples.
Now I have land aplenty and cattle aplenty and every scrap of food is bought. Not a single item in the house is home produced. Bloody sad state of affairs.

kerryjack · 21-09-2019 5:59pm

Your not late yet foxy, start small is the key to success a few raised beds 8 by 4 and away you go.

uck51js9zml2yt · 21-09-2019 7:04pm

amacca wrote: »

I couldn't feed myself from my farm I'm ashamed to admit or at least it would be a very steep learning curve.

Knowledge and skills would be the first barrier....they would be minimal especially when it comes to storage/preservation...I can grow some veg, I grow peas some years as supermarkets don't really seem to stock peas in the pods here that much, but butchering and preserving meat I'd only have a rough sketch of a idea, as for making cheese, butter etc and storing apples etc Id surely make a balls of that........give me a load of sugar though and Id make you a nice batch of jam.

Seeds might be a problem if were going full metal apocalypse here

It would depend on what time of the year civilisation shuts down too....coming into spring I might have a chance....if I had an internet connection or some survival/homesteading books

Freezer, solar panels and some leisure batteries could come in handy.

My wife is eastern European and her dad has a small sheep farm.
She has knowledge of wild herbs and flowers that are edible. Some mushroom skills and know how to milk a goat, make cheese, look after chickens and preserve veg in jars.

Her dad also kills his own sheep and makes sausages.

lalababa · 21-09-2019 7:09pm

You can't butcher anything here AFAIK. I think you can kill a pig with a permit .... anybody know?

Hard Knocks · 21-09-2019 7:10pm

Vienna Shallow Stipend wrote: »

Her dad also kills his own sheep and makes sausages.

Do they have the same red tape there as we do here for slaughtering?

Base price · 21-09-2019 8:05pm

I used to enjoy (yet at the same time cringe) watching the RTE/TnaG ? programme (can't remember the name) about the ICA trying in vain to educate young women (men weren't allowed to participate cause it was the ICA) on how to prepare and cook meat/fowl/game/veg for the table, knit and stitch a button on a blouse/shirt etc.
Maybe it's time for a new TV programme like it but targeted at the next group of youngsters.

uck51js9zml2yt · 21-09-2019 8:21pm

Hard Knocks wrote: »

Do they have the same red tape there as we do here for slaughtering?

I'm sure they do but the traditionalists just ignore it.

kollegeknight · 21-09-2019 8:34pm

Have some basic skills in growing veg it I’m trying new things when I can and can rear animals. My dad was great for rearing animals but the one thing he couldn’t do is kill them. (Although he used kill turkeys) A lad called the captain used come to kill the pig for us. I’d be the same. I would find it difficult to be the executioner.

I plant berry bushes and fruit trees whenever I’ve money, at moment it is for the birds but when they are plentiful, I will take some too.

I have a friend who is unreal at jams, preserves and ciders. Her black pudding is divine.

My FIL in Australia butchers a pig he buys and makes sausages and salamis but I know very little of that also.

amacca · 21-09-2019 8:48pm

lalababa wrote: »

You can't butcher anything here AFAIK. I think you can kill a pig with a permit .... anybody know?

I don't know for sure but I heard you can't be stopped killing a pig for personal use...........apparently its EU law ??????

could be nonsense but if true it would mean much less red tape....id imagine if it was a case of providing for yourself nobody would pay too h=much heed to regulations anyway.

bb12 · 21-09-2019 8:52pm

if society got that disrupted you'd also have to have a plan in place on how to protect those veg you're growing and cows your milking etc. the starving hordes wouldn't allow you to carry on regardless.

CelticRambler · 21-09-2019 9:01pm

foxy farmer wrote: »

You'll never make a living off an acre of land but you could certainly live off it. In other words growing your own food.

Could certainly feed a family of six off it! Been there, done that (up to a point). But as someone said above, it takes a lot of time.

After a few years of working away too much, I put a about 500m² to the metaphorical plough this year, and despite the (severe) drought, it's been great to see kilos of veg coming through the back door every few days. Having lost a lot of (shop-bought) stuff due to powercuts while I've been away, I'm making a determined effort to improve my non-electricity-dempendent storage. Plum chutney is all bottled, currently pickling a load of beetroot, have a batch of figs sun-drying for the last week or so, early spuds are bagged up and in the dark, late spuds will stay in the ground till October or November.

The farming genes skipped over my parents, but somehow I managed to absorb a "feel" for the land from the cousins&uncles, and my mother was a great wan for making jam. So between that and a good gardening book and a decent cookbook and fair knowledge of science, I reckon I'd be grand without th'internet. Now if I could just land a job that allows me to work from home, I'd get a few chickens - really miss having them around.

amacca · 21-09-2019 9:03pm

Ill start whittlin a good knobbly hawthorn stick/club for myself

theres a birch tree in a nearby field I've being eyeing up as a possible long bow candidate

Genghis Cant · 21-09-2019 9:13pm

amacca wrote: »

Ill start whittlin a good knobbly hawthorn stick/club for myself

theres a birch tree in a nearby field I've being eyeing up as a possible long bow candidate

Forget about the birch. Elm was the wood of choice for the English Longbow.
I used a beaut of a selfbow ( home made bow) made from native Ash. Lovely bow it was too.

Danzy · 21-09-2019 9:22pm

Genghis Cant wrote: »

Forget about the birch. Elm was the wood of choice for the English Longbow.
I used a beaut of a selfbow ( home made bow) made from native Ash. Lovely bow it was too.

Black alder is great as well.

The Irish short bow was often made with it

amacca · 21-09-2019 10:00pm

Genghis Cant wrote: »

Forget about the birch. Elm was the wood of choice for the English Longbow.
I used a beaut of a selfbow ( home made bow) made from native Ash. Lovely bow it was too.

interesting ...theres lots of ash around here....I thought it wouldn't be great for a bow at all.

haven't seen elm locally.

Nekarsulm · 21-09-2019 11:00pm

I always thought yew was the ultimate wood for a long bow?

Who2 · 21-09-2019 11:12pm

Nekarsulm wrote: »

I always thought yew was the ultimate wood for a long bow?

Yew holds the cursed souls in a graveyard , or so I was told but beautiful timber. Elm is extremely hard got here due to Dutch elm disease. I could see ash being suitable but I know nothing about bows.

Could you feed your family from your farm.

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