Living Off the Land – Gardening

Living Off the Land – Gardening

by JohnyMac

I am putting a series of articles together about living off the land in a job loss, economic downturn or a SHTF scenario over the next several months. This series of articles will cover gardening, protein raising, spirits making, among other fun things that you and your group will need to do to survive. Since we are now in harvesting time the first item will be about gardening.

I know the topic of gardening isn’t as exciting as the new XYZ carbine review however, if you think you are going to survive a job loss, economic downturn or even a SHTF scenario without food you are truly mistaken.

The AP Staff was batting some idea’s around the table the other day and one topic came up as it always does – Living off the land. There are two scenarios of living off the land that comes to mind. One is grabbing your GOD bag and rucking it to the hills and living off the land. The other is to plan and practice your living off the land scenario at your retreat, in suburbia, or even an urban environment.

Let’s first talk about hitting the mountains and living off the land, ala Jeremiah Johnson. I will use my AO area as an example because it is truly rural.

We are located in a small hamlet surrounded by thousands and thousands of miles of woods among mountains and more mountains. The town of 500 or so is about 5-miles away and the residents are made up of farmers, blue collar workers, retired, and unfortunately living off Uncle Sugar too. If things went south everybody would be hunting and fishing. You must ask yourself, “how long would the critters living in these mountains last?” I remember one of the old timers here telling me that the deer and bear really didn’t come back into these hills in any kind of quantities post the Great Depression until the late 1960’s.

Once the deer, bears, and other four-legged critters were hunted out what will one do? I theorize that two-legged hunting would begin.

Add to the above scenario, man cannot live healthily on protein alone. How many of us could gather the needed vegetables from the surrounding area? Once someone learns that you can eat cat-tail roots everybody will be digging around the ponds in the area. Again, how long will cat-tail roots last before they go the way of the game.

My point is that you nor your family will not survive. Therefore we have a garden. Not just for food today, but to practice growing food tomorrow.

Practice you ask? Yes, I grow vegetables to not only reap the rewards of fresh vegetables but to learn now while I can afford to make mistakes rather than later when there is no room for failure.

Our growing season starts in January. I set up grow lamps in a spare room first for flowers – Why buy expensive Agway plants in the late spring. Once the flowers are seedlings and been transplanted to their individual pots we start on vegetables. The flower plants are always the first to go into the greenhouse typically around the middle of February followed by the vegetable seedlings by the end of March.

2019 Seedlings ready to go into the garden. Notice the make-shift greenhouse in the rear.

My greenhouse is made up of one of my firewood racks wrapped in clear reinforced 7-mil. fabric. When empty of wood. The greenhouse is setup on the porch for easy access and proximity to an outside electrical outlet for the heater. The heater is an electrical one that has heating controls that keeps temperature in the greenhouse regulated at night. During the day, if it is sunny, no heater is needed.

Our garden is approximately 1,800 sf and is made up of raised beds with seedlings, and seeds planted directly into the tilled ground. The research that I have done is it takes about 900 sf at our latitude per person to grow enough veggies for one person. The current goal is to grow 80% of the veggies that we eat within a year. The best to that goal has been 70% due in part to the fact the vegetable garden is self-tending. We do not spend a lot of time weeding, watering, or general maintenance. I know though that if our garden was the only source of food, we would be in that garden every day weeding and doing general maintenance.

The latitude of the cabin is about 48-degrees North, so it is foolish to plant before Memorial Day due to the frost threat. The garden is rototilled at the beginning of April, weather permitting, and chicken manure is spread across the garden. At the end of April, the garden is rototilled once again.  Then just before it is planted with the seedlings and seeds, it is rototilled one last time. Rather than plant in rows we plant in 4×8-foot sections with 24-inches between each section. Instead of using the black planting cloth we use newsprint which comes in rolls 1,750-feet long and 48-inches wide – Much cheaper. Each 4×8-foot section is three layers thick. The first year we used the newsprint we only used one layer. Eventually, the weeds broke through the paper. The second year we used three layers. This seemed to do the trick. A roll lasts us four years or so.

Garden ready for seedlings and seed.

Along with the newsprint we use tires to grow potatoes and the raised beds which is planted with more delicate veggies like lettuce, carrots, radishes, herbs, swiss chard, and climbing veggies like pole beans.

To reiterate, we grow vegetables not only for the fresh food but to practice growing our own food. To wait for a job loss, economic downturn or a SHTF scenario to happen, is way to late. We have been doing this since 2014 and we only now are able to get 70% of our yearly intake of vegetables from our garden. Be honest with yourself – Could you grow 70% of your vegetables today let alone 100%?

Last, I would suggest when the job loss, economic downturn or a SHTF scenario happens try to grow extra veggies to sell or barter and to cover your bases if part of your crop fails.

The next subject I want to write about is making your own hard cider as we are approaching the fall apple season. This item would be a good product to make for many reasons.

Freedom Through Self-Reliance©

 

 

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26 Comments

  1. anonymous August 6, 2019 at 06:43

    Now is the time to research what naturally grows in your location and learn how to identify – prepare your locations foods. The internet is a good source of information for this.

    Sprouts are a resource not often mentioned. I’ve been meaning to learn more about this, which seeds provide the most ‘bang for the buck’.

    • johnyMac August 6, 2019 at 10:29

      Amen anonymous!

      Go back to the article now and read the whole thing. LOL. There was a glitch in the system this morning and the complete article was not published.

      Take care Brother!

  2. Anonymous August 6, 2019 at 10:27

    5

  3. MW PREPPER August 6, 2019 at 10:48

    Great info & looking forward to more on living off the land & growing your own veggies!

    • johnyMac August 6, 2019 at 11:01

      You bet-ya MW Prepper!

      Have some articles in the works about raising; rabbits, pig’s, cattle, etc. not to leave out making your own spirits. Should be a fun series of articles.

      Stay tuned Brother.

  4. Bryce Sharper August 6, 2019 at 23:07

    I have flailed at this. I’ve got a book on this topic I’ll review later. Strongly agree it’s something to figure out now.

    • johnyMac August 7, 2019 at 17:30

      Bryce wrote, I’ve got a book on this topic…, well heck Brother you are half way there. ;-) As is preached in AA, the first step is recognizing you have a problem. The next step is doing something about it.

      All good…

  5. Kilo August 7, 2019 at 21:03

    IMO, and from my experience, rabbits are the easiest and most productive animal to raise for protein. If you have a garden, as JohnyMac obviously does, you also have a lot of food for the rabbits in the form of the garden refuse…unless you’re composting that, which is a different subject. Next on the list of usable animals that I didn’t see specifically listed (besides the manure aspect) is chickens for both meat and eggs. These two animals are pound for pound of usable meat far easier and cheaper than pigs, cattle, or any of the larger animals mentioned so far. Not to mention, all of us can practice raising these animals now, for food, before things go bad, so we’ll have some experience and proficiency..Goats are a distant third, which also provide milk, but personally I have a personal adversity to them from spending too much time in the ME. If that is all there is, I’ll do what I have to do, but if given the choice, I’ll pass on goats.

    Just as the garden is a system, with companion planting, composting, switching out nitrogen generating crops with nitrogen absorbing crops so you don’t deplete your soil and many other various considerations, it is the same with animals. There is a cycle that must be adhered to for maximum production value from a quantifiable amount of effort. It is all about a return on your investment.

    One potential fallacy in the original article that I hear/see repeated time and time again is that animals living in the woods will be hunted out. I see two issues with this, one on each side of the fence. First, hunting takes a lot of time and effort…..and that is when you’re proficient at it. Most people aren’t. So, trapping, not hunting, becomes much more productive and a better use of time management. Traps work 24/7 while you sleep. So, if you do choose to use traps, don’t use killing traps. Use live traps. Then you can keep what you catch fresh and you can possibly breed them if you catch enough of the right species.

    I could go on and one, but these comments are supposed to be short, so I’ll taper it off here.

    • NC Scout August 7, 2019 at 21:59

      “One potential fallacy in the original article that I hear/see repeated time and time again is that animals living in the woods will be hunted out.”

      Piggy backing on that, how many people know why hunting seasons exist when they do? They’re structured to maintain the breeding cycles of the animals and further, there’s times when harvesting wild game is absolutely not advised. Spring and summer white tail are extremely gamey and almost inedible, squirrels and rodents carry most of their parasites in the warm seasons.

      • johnyMac August 8, 2019 at 18:39

        NCS, in a time of starvation, people will hunt anything with four legs to support their family regardless the time of year and without the conservation of the species in mind.

        A family in our group has a “bunny corral”. They harvest their herd twice a year – Always post two heavy frosts in the fall or before the last heavy freeze in the spring. As you wrote the reason is parasites.

        Good stuff Brother!

    • johnyMac August 8, 2019 at 19:46

      Thank you Kilo, for taking time to post several comments on my article.

      Let’s talk rabbits, which one of my future articles will address. One of our group raises rabbits for food. They have built a rabbit corral which is pretty cool – As long as you leave the gate shut. The rabbits are harvested twice a year. The first after the second hard frost and the last before the last hard frosts in the spring. Harvest times are done to reduce the possibility of parasites in your diet.

      As my neighbors have found out, rabbits are easy to raise and are a great source of protein. Not protein and fat though. Other species give you both as I pointed out in a past article, I authored about raising chickens titled, Renewable Resources.

      I disagree with your last paragraph Kilo. Living in the community that I described in my article, the deer would be the first to go. Followed by bear and then many other two and four legged critters. Have you ever worked a “deer drive” which are popular in my neck of the woods? Where a line of hunters push the woods to some strategically placed shooters. It is common for a ten-man-team using the drive method of hunting to harvest 5 to 7-deer and 1-bear in just one drive – All, does, bucks, sow, and bores. To feed a 500-person population, how long do you think it would take to wipe out the deer population within my community’s area? Yours? In a SHTF scenario, anything that is driven to those hunters would be shot along with the deer; turkey, grouse, bear, coyotes, to name a few. Not much effort or time is needed for several teams to harvest a winters worth of protein. Protein loaded with winter fat. But, what about next year’s harvest? To reduce the herd (s) by 90% of both male and female critters would not generate enough quantities to do it again the following year. Hungry people are not worried about conservation.

      Again, thanks for commenting Brother.

  6. BLACK August 7, 2019 at 22:15

    just wanted to share a gardening success for this years crop. last year i tried a hugal bed, think of it as a elongated mound, of rotting horse manure. i tried to few cabbage and maters in 2018 and failed. along comes 2019. i had the local kids fair calf manury used straw coming in. till i could haul it out on the fields. i ended up pushing it up onto the 2018 hugal bed, to rot and store for later. along came 21 ys of straight rain , for ohio.i mudded in my peppers and maters. just before the bad rains came. then i was left with several muskmelon and water melon, with no place to be planted, but the hugal bed. they didn’t just grow , but thrived. i’m still picking muskmelons everyday.

    if i had to do it over again and i just might. i would lay the hugal bed perpendicular , to the grounds natural slope. so it would catch more rain fall.[terracing it]. then maybe in the construction, drop in a green pvc tube with holes in it. used for tiling your yards, about 1/3 from the top [horizontal]. with a 90 degree elbow extending up and out. this would allow me to irrigate the whole hugal bed, with captured rain water, quickly. with out wetting the leaves and possibly spreading disease.

    i guess, my hugal, is a hybrid with straw bale gardening. you could even stack in a pyramid shape, several bales, long ways. then compost ontop of it. then plant directly in it.

    when weeding, you hand weed as long as you can, then switch over to a hooked corn knife and just cut off and burn those invasive weeds. so you dont damage the root systems of your wanted plants.

    • johnyMac August 8, 2019 at 18:34

      AWESOME Black!

      Thanks for taking the time to share your success. PLEASE, keep me informed how things workout.

      Take care Brother!

  7. Matt in Oklahoma August 8, 2019 at 12:25

    Oklahoma wiped out all the deer, elk and bear except for far southeastern Oklahoma in the 30s. In 1964 there was a front page article of a deer track outside Vici Oklahoma on the western side of the state. That deer population only happened after serious conservation efforts, corp water sheds and increased farming. Without all the it could have been another 30-40 years to recovery. Elk have never recovered and the bear are just now almost back to their previous range.
    Gardening, farming, ranching etc. is exciting as the new carbine if your real about it all. I like to eat and I’m very fond of keeping my grandkids fed. Keep’em coming

    • johnyMac August 8, 2019 at 19:57

      Amen Matt!

      Here in PA. the deer suffered greatly post the Great Depression AND the flight of jobless folks to cities post that drama. The old farm fields grew into renewed forest’s which do not lend well to grasses deer rely on for survival. Probably similar to what happened in Oklahoma and other states. When folks are hungry they do not concern them selves with conservation.

      Thanks for your comments Brother!

  8. Jackalope in TN August 8, 2019 at 18:24

    I don’t think it can be over emphasized how important a greenhouse can be. Greenhouses don’t only control temperatures for plants, they also allow you to optimize the environment for the plants to provide maximum production. With the right crops growing in your greenhouse you can prevent a number of diseases like scurvy. I would consider a greenhouse to be a priority on a patriot homestead. Good article Johny!

    • johnyMac August 8, 2019 at 19:52

      I love it Jackalope! YES, yes, yes – A greenhouse is a must. My cheapo one with a clear tarp is the easiest but it works. Having a greenhouse hooked up to your chicken coup is a great source of heat for the chickens when the temps hover in the single digits and for growing some greens in the winter months. Obviously with a added heat source at night of course.

      Thanks Brother!

  9. Bryce Sharper August 8, 2019 at 23:40

    Kilo,

    Can you do a post on gardening, rabbits, and trapping? There is a ton of game in the suburbs such as turkeys, black tails, raccoons, possums, and rabbits, but if you put out a kill trap you’ll kill your neighbor’s cat or wound a toddler. Carol Deppe is a big fan of ducks. Do you have an opinion on ducks?

    Johny,

    Mexicans and other third worlders don’t seem to have much respect for game management laws. They do deer drives and the Asians poach abalone.

  10. MossHammer August 9, 2019 at 08:05

    Inspiring and a solid warning. Thank you. I’m paying attention and looking to flatten my learning curve asap. Is there a guide, site, person or book you’d recommend to get started?

    • johnyMac August 9, 2019 at 09:50

      MossHammer,
      First I must confess one of our group is a retired gentleman who grew up on a farm. He helped me a lot. Here are the titles of several books I used and continue to use.

      > “Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth”
      > “Maximizing Your Mini Farm: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre” by, Brett Markham
      Hope that helps Brother.

  11. james August 9, 2019 at 21:26

    I recently helped a friend reclaer some old fields on his property for more orchards and considering garden stock that will hopefully become part of the landscape and thus a lower work for harvest yield long term,cool part is have grazing privaleges on his lands including hunting.I have considered trying a pvc vertical hydro setup,can here in New England roll em out in early spring/late fall and roll em in garage to avoid frosts and increase yield times(in theory).I always liked this as even a apt. dwellor with a patio could do at least a little gardening.

    Of course,have me hands full at moment helping a family member many days and in theory studying for ham which will admit is for me a very slow slog,may take a break and keep at projects while the weather nice outdoor related,hmmmm…..,excuses to not do more,I have plenty of em!

  12. H P August 16, 2019 at 08:12

    We finished our 3rd greenhouse this summer. This “hybrid” greenhouse has clear flexo glass film on top with poly netting on the sides and ends and permanently houses all of our berry varieties. Main purpose of this build is to keep birds and rain off of the berry crop. I made the bows myself with a pipe bender from bootstrap farmer.
    Other 2 greenhouses have been rotating between housing hens and hot crops (peppers, tomatoes, cukes, melons, etc). The soil inputs from the chickens has really proven to be a gamechanger in terms of yields. Thinking about trying corn and beans in there next year.
    We started seriously building our homestead garden 7 years ago and have been finding new ways to fail every day! Still trying to find success with the fruit and nut trees. In our area of NE Ohio, we’ve found greenhouses to be absolutely necessary to anyone who is serious about producing their own food.

    • johnyMac August 16, 2019 at 10:13

      Some great comments HP!

      Yeah I always seem to screw things up too when it comes to gardening. That is why I push people to start now so their will be less mistakes made when you rely on it.

      I love the idea of using conduit or pipe for the infrastructure. When we owned Mad Max, our BaBa 30 sailboat we use to put the boat on the winter when we lived in Rhode Island. I used 1-inch PVC pipe for the infrastructure then shrink wrap on top.

      All good stuff Brother. Thx for sharing your experiences Brother!

  13. Mas Casa August 16, 2019 at 19:17

    johnyMac,

    I just now saw this article; but its a good one! Here in SC, we’ve a couple of raised beds that we made four years ago. They’ve only really produced for the last two years; we mulch heavily with straw to reduce water consumption. Through trial and error, we learned what grows best here, sometimes better than the varieties the locals SWEAR grow well here. Point is, experiences differ, so best to start now.

    We decided to try a “food forest” this year as well. We laid down flattened cardboard boxes over a roughly 6′ x 16′ area and topped it with 6″ of woodchips (pine and fir). The trick is, when planting, to not mix the dirt with the chips, you pull the chips back, plant and then place the chips back a few inches from the plant. No tilling, no fuel use, very little weeding. The tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers have done as well the first year as the same crops in the older raised beds. You can go deeper on the mulch, but 6″ is a start and the gradual decomposition of the chips puts nutrients back in the ground. We’ve also found the nitrogen from used coffee grounds work wonders when put around plants and watered in.

    • johnyMac August 17, 2019 at 09:22

      Mas Casa,
      Too cool, Food Forest!

      That would be a great way to start for someone just starting a expert farming in a urban or suburbia setting.

      Thx for sharing Brother!

  14. […] Whether it be cutting wood for the wood stove, (Heating With Wood) growing our own vegetables, (Living Off The Land – Gardening) having our own egg laying chickens, (Renewable Resources-Eggs) attempting to master amateur radio, […]

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