You raise a decent amount of meat so you understand the amount of grain it takes to feed them plus grow your own vegetables. Not to mention oats, flour, etc for cooking. I’d be poorer for it if I had to give up my tea/coffee. Plus while I’m on reduced sugar/salt intake, I’d miss those as well. Not sure people understand what all we take for granted.We buy from the store. We don’t grow enough to meet all our needs. I can knock a hole in the grocery bill, but I can’t cover it all.
Maybe our family of 3 were huge eaters but 1/2 acre garden fed us 3, not counting meat as we hunted, fished, raised rabbits and chickens. Mom still bought bread, eggs in winter, dairy products, spices, etc... No way would it have fed us by itself. Some of us are old enough to remember the 50’s and the struggles.
@Beekissed Great poem-& I don’t like poetry.
I worry about anyone who likes milking 2X a day for the rest of their life. I call it dairy addiction worse than drug addiction. I tell my dairymen friends that I will visit them in jail for child abuse when they addict their children...Putting your head against the flank of a cow would help with that headache, @seedcorn . Besides that, it's the hands that do the milking.
I liked cows. Dad put in a compressor but it was like the cream separator - he wasn't happy with it. (Some animal loving mechanic, eh?) I never was out of the milking loop except those weeks before calfing. Bro and I each had a cow except he claimed that his hands were too big for his Jersey. So, I got her and Bro began to play hookie in every meaning of that word. Several years before that, when we were still new to the game, Dad and Bro had a chance to go on a hunting trip. I was stuck with only 3 cows at that point in time. I'm never going to forget. I could not have been over 9, probably 8. Mom wouldn't help, having promised her own mother that. She did carry my buckets. Like I said, I'll never forget ...
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Seems like I once figured that it would take about a half acre for a family of four and a nearly vegetarian diet with a few chickens. I could go back and try to do the math but, you know, that is with little margin of error and doesn't account for other necessities.
In my reading, it's interesting that the Irishman, wanting to gain public relief work, had to give up his land to the LandLord if he had claim to more than 1/4 acre. Landless, they began to flee the famine.
Steve