Tag Archives: food

My 10-10-10 challenge

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I often hear a lot of people claiming that the world cannot feed itself. They say there are too many people. They say there isn’t enough land to grow all that food. Some, even recognize that there aren’t enough farmers to grow the food we need. They throw up their hands and lament that we somehow need to reduce the population if any of us are going to survive.

I call bullshit on their entire line of reasoning.

There’s plenty of arable land and plenty of people to grow on it. When I say plenty of land, I mean your yard. When I say there are plenty of people to grow food, I mean you.

In other words, I challenge you to grow your own food, starting right now.

It’s really simple, and it doesn’t even require you to plow, till, or anything else. Find a 10 foot by 10 foot section of your yard. Mow it like you normally would at this time of year. Get a stick and poke holes in rows in that 100 square food patch about 5 inches apart with the rows around a foot apart.

Into those holes, plant Maris Widgeon Wheat or Hard Red Winter Wheat. If you live in an area where the winters are warmer, consider planting Hard Red Spring Wheat the same way in the spring. If you live in an apartment, consider asking your landlord or a friend with a yard if you can plant there. Do all of this by 10 October 2010.

Do nothing else.

Do nothing else, at least until next summer, that is. I cannot guarantee your little plot of wheat will grow or thrive, but statistically most of you will grow some amount of wheat in the coming year. Further, you won’t have to mow that patch of grass at all, and the combination of grass and wheat will keep down the weeds, attract beneficial insects, and improve the fertility of that section of yard. It is entirely possible, come next June or July, you will have a harvest of wheat that will fill a five gallon bucket.

From there, you can cut your wheat down with a weed cutter, garden sheers, or even a weed wacker (you’ll probably lose some that way). You can thresh it with a pillow case and a plastic bat and winnow it with a sheet and a box fan. You can dry it for a few minutes in a low temperature oven. You can grind it with a blender. From there, it’s flour and you can do whatever you want with it.

What you could very well have done, by next summer, is have grown enough wheat to make a loaf of bread a week for a year. You will have also prove that you can grow your own food and feed yourself without a lot of extra work. If you can do that, what else can you do?

It all starts by 10-10-10.

DLH

Why do you have grass?

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One of the arguments I hear often about why we have to continue modern industrial farming practices is because there just isn’t enough arable land to grow enough food for everyone. I almost always wonder what the latest person who said such a thing is doing with his or her yard.

Seriously, what are you doing with your yard? How much did you spend seeding it, weeding it, mowing it, and fertilizing it this year? For what? Because it looks pretty?

See, my farm has several dozen acres of grass: grass that cows eat right off the ground or that we mow and bale for hay. For me, grass is a foodstuff for animals and part of a system that promotes good soil health and fertility. Frankly, other than a patch of grass around the houses and other buildings that we mow to keep the critters and building destroying plants at bay, the rest of our grass is food for something or unmowed meadow.

What about you?

I’ll grant that, especially in cities, controlling the places that pest animals tend to congregate is an always pressing problem, but does the answer have to be grass? What about vegetable gardens? What about replacing grass with attractive–and edible–stands of wheat or oats or barley? What about fruit trees or creeping vines like squash, pumpkin, or watermelon?

Heck, you wouldn’t even have to do all that work yourself. I’m betting that, if you advertised your yard as available for planting, someone would be willing to do the work for you for rent or in return for part of the proceeds.

Imagine all the arable ground that would suddenly become available if yards became, essentially, micro farms. This isn’t a new idea either. In many other parts of the world, entire large, extended families feed themselves every year on a fraction of an acre.

Now, I know that people have all kinds of aversions to this kind of idea, most of which I do not understand. But, beyond the perceived images of degraded status and the irrational fear of one’s home looking like a farm, what is the real problem?

To me the idea of growing one’s own food under one’s own control represents the height of independence. If your yard is a garden, do you have to worry about the price of food or the gas needed to get it? If things go badly and you lose your job or the economy goes south, will you go hungry if your yard is full of food?

Of course, for what I am suggesting here to have any real meaning, all sorts of things would have to change. People would have to be willing to do the work. Cities would have to realize that small plot raising of fruits, vegetables, and grains will not diminish the property values in their borders any more than the bursting of unsustainable, speculative housing value bubbles might. Communities would have to believe that a fundamental level of self-sufficiency is  a far better way to ensure their continued existence than begging for grants from state and local governments might appear to be.

And once those changes occur, then even more radical practical ideas can move forward. Ask yourself what’s worse: the occasional cluck or crow of a chicken or the incessant barking of your neighbor’s yippy dog?

DLH

Pondering

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Part of the revolution in food production I am joining is to reject commodity markets in favor if finding ways to raise food that we will sell directly to the people who eat it. The last time I checked, no one eats the GMO field corn and soybeans that dominate our agriculture sector, mostly because they can’t. That field corn and soybeans are only good for industrial food factories that churn out products that have names many people can’t even pronounce and have to be regulated by the FDA.

Instead of raising chemicals for the industrial food supply, my goal is to raise food that belongs in your pantry and flour jar. To that end, I’m experimenting with a variety of grain and legume products, including amaranth, barely, flour corn, oats, quinoa, and rye. This year, I’ll be able to harvest what I’ve planted by hand, but at some point I’d like to grow more, and the easiest way to do that is with machinery.

Unfortunately, if you’ve looked recently, the entire food production world is geared toward making growing anything but commodity products on a huge scale in the United States almost impossible. The big equipment companies assume you want to farm 2000 acres of the same plant, and the small equipment manufacturers in Asia and Europe can’t find distributors in the US because most implement sellers don’t think anyone is interested in buying.

It seems like an impossible situation unless you’re stubborn like me and have a habit of looking at every implement yard you pass.

Allis-Chalmers All-Crop Harvester 72

In which case you would see this very good condition Allis-Chalmers All-Crop Harvester 72 sitting in an implement yard. In basic terms, this is a small combine that you pull behind a tractor, and it’s perfect for harvesting small amounts of grain without the headaches of a regular combine, which includes having another engine to maintain and fuel.

If I were to buy this thing, I would be able to harvest small stands of any kind of field harvestable product–from alfalfa to zinnias–even just an acre. Perfect for what I need, except that it requires me to spend money–really my mother-in-law who owns the farm’ money–and that’s hard to do when one is trying to be as responsible and frugal as possible.

So for the moment, I ponder and I pray. Here’s a chance to take another step toward what I know I want to do. Now I just have to decide if it’s the right time to do it.

DLH