Anyone read the $64 Tomato?

[Kassaundra]

Haven't read the book, but definately eaten the $64 tomato, and the $7000 egg!


And get aggitated when my family (or aquaintences) want me to give them fruits, veggies, and eggs b/c they "are free"!!!!!

 

[SuperChemicalGirl]

My neighbor had the audacity to ask me to give her one of my ducks to eat (after I had of course hatched it, raised it, cleaned its house and water daily, kept it warm in the winter, broke ice out of its tub, hauled buckets of hot water over ice and snow, then sadly killed it, plucked it and eviscerated it).

But it was free, right? (and goodness it was delicious roasted with a bit of butter and salt and pepper). I told her where she could stick it but did offer to sell her some ducklings.


To me it's not the cost of the act. It's the interaction of yourself and the land or animals, being frustrated, happy, anxious, and inpatient to get something and so relieved when something goes right, so sad when it doesn't. It's knowing where your food came from and how it was raised. And it's work that keeps you busy and fulfilled from sunup to sundown (so some of us don't get in trouble!).

I can't tell you how I squealed when I stuck my finger in dirt a few minutes ago to unearth a carrot and see how they were doing. I actually have something that looks like a carrot (albeit it's purple). No matter how simple that makes me, it's the best feeling in the world.

I'll take my 65$ tomatoes, my 7000$ eggs (that's probably a very bad underestimate) any day over the alternative.

Where's the smiley for getting off my soapbox?

 

[ninnymary]

Haven't read the book, but definately eaten the $64 tomato, and the $7000 egg!


And get aggitated when my family (or aquaintences) want me to give them fruits, veggies, and eggs b/c they "are free"!!!!!

Oh Kassaundra, you are so right!

Mary

 

[digitS']

. . . Where's the smiley for getting off my soapbox?

There is no need to get down off that soapbox, SCG.

An old saying was that for many of our ancestors, nothing left the farm that couldn't either fly or walk. Those were multi-talented people! What it meant often was that the farmer had to know how to grow his crops AND care for livestock with those crops as feed thru the winters, at least. (Along with the walking & flying, maybe you could include the rolling egg.) "Polyculture" they are calling it these days.

The generalized approach meant that there were more things that could go wrong. Specialized production allowed for in-depth but limited knowledge that can lead to business success. Of course, things can go catastrophically wrong when all the eggs are in 1 basket, also.

I was just talking about a potato farmer I know who got into the beef business because of all the potatoes that he had that were not otherwise marketable. Going with his strengths, he just had to start cutting some hay and he put up some decent fencing - altho' if I understand correctly, he rents pasture for his animals and buys feeder calves.

We probably don't have to re-invent the wheel to gain some control over family food production and we can build on what we have had success with. Those successes probably reflect where we find ourselves. As an example: alfalfa grows wild around here in vacant lots. I've wondered how many vacant lots it would take to support how many rabbits . I remember Hoodat growing things specifically for his rabbits but stopping at a few stands of tasty alfalfa could go along way to turning some plant food into animal protein.

Chickens are a little tricky. When it comes right down to it -- they need a diet very similar to ours. It has to be quite easily digestible, about as high in protein and variable so as to provide necessary vitamins and minerals. We might do fairly well on a diet of chicken feed so, why not carry the chicken feed right into the kitchen and bypass the chicken coop?

Well, that's possible. But, if we could grow a balanced diet for X number of humans but there are only X minus 1 humans in our household . . . we could take that 2 pounds of human food unneeded each day and give it to 5 or 6 chickens. Some thought about supplementing would need to go into the plan if what we have in surplus doesn't add up to a balanced diet for the birds but heading down this road, however far we can take it, could be a reasonable trip .

Anyway, back to the subject of literature . . . folks like Wes Jackson have decided to leave the specialized study of agriculture and take a more holistic approach to production. His friend, Wendell Berry has certainly written quite a bit on the need to do that.

Okay, that's my little stand on the soapbox . . .

Steve

 

[fair weather chicken]

oh good soap box time, 64$ tomato, 7000$ egg, 99$ a pound deer meat, but the taste is worth these prices and more. besides it does keep us out of some trouble, except when we bring home animals that we are not quite ready for. and who can't say baby animals are not cute. then they grow up to be very tasty.

 

[nittygrittydirtdigger]

Lets' see, about 21 weeks of gardening at, oh, maybe 10 hours a week, so 210 hours of gardening. (We're kind of casual about weeding and such around here.)

In those 210 hours of gardening, I'll grow about $1500 of food, which will all be organic. I'll also have lots of sunflower seeds and greens for the chickens, and trimmings for the compost heap.

So I'm "earning" much less than minimum wage for my gardening, much less than the income I could make by working online at home for 210 hours, as I usually do.

BUT! My gardening time is my vacation, spa, gym, diet plan and health insurance, all rolled into one.

Gardening is a bargain!

 

[hoodat]

All too many people start gardening by imitating farmers and for the home garden That's the wrong approach. Planting seperate crops in seperate rows just makes things easy for pests to go right down the row and ruin everything. Mixing them up may look like a jumble but makes it harder for pests to find the plants they feed on. If you pull every last weed where will the predators hide and what will they feed on? Let some plants go to flower even if you don't want to save the seed. It makes the predators happy.
Sources of compost are all around us once we learn to recognize them.

 

[Nyboy]

Wow that makes so much sence that a pest can go straight down the row. learned something good today.