Just going through my various blogs this morning, I am acutely aware that this one is in limbo.
Obviously, there is no gardening going on here, we're still under a blanket of snow.
But there is also no planning going on, my time has been taken up with too many other things, I will get to it.
What I will just mention briefly is something that cropped up again in conversation on some random Facebook conversation.
Without expensive technology (at the very least a heated greenhouse, and probably some automatic irrigation) actual self-sufficiency is only possible this far north if:
a) You also hunt, because livestock limited to a finite area are a finite resource, and
b) You are willing to TOTALLY change your diet.
Native people managed just fine at these latitudes, with a few weeks of hunger round about this time of year, but so long as things went according to plan living off the land was doable.
I like my diet the way it is, and have no intention of ever switching to subsistence level living if I can help it.
AND...even going halfway, by which I mean half your food comes from your own land, be it half by quantity, or half by grocery budget, or half by summer/winter, or whatever would actually require more financial investment than could be justified by the dollar value of the harvest.
I just want to inject that realism into the whole issue before I do anything else, because I'm getting bored by those whose dream is to "live off the land". Even if they succeed (which I doubt) that is not my dream, not here. I'd be willing to give it a shot somewhere warmer, but I live HERE. So I write about HERE. I am neither a show gardener nor a wannabe "homesteader". I'm a realist.
