Oddjob,
Good post....you are fortunate compared to most that you manage to grow or barter much of what you consume.
It's pretty obvious most of the highly processed foods are what makes most people sick....sticking to a whole food diet as much is possible is the way to go.
Regards + HH
Bill
I think that many could grow their own, perhaps not in the amount needed but they could still grow, bush harvest, fish or hunt. I think one of the biggest reasons is that people do not know how to.
Then you have people who will check out a video on how to grown something, but then every video they find has people showing them how to use chemicals, the same stuff they are wanting to get away from.
Soil is key and that is where people should start, with making their own soil in small batches, then using it to grow something. Even if they are just going to raise a single pepper plant and a tomato plant, that is all you need to start with, they will stay alive under proper care.
My tomato plants are old and stand a good 7 foot tall with stalks like a small tree. One of those alone gives use about 30 kilograms a year.
Another big issue in not knowing is not knowing how to store it and preserve it properly. Plenty of folks know how to grow and have lost of space but no clue as to how to store it, prep it or preserve it. Heck I did not know that you could buy small flow mills until about 12 years ago my self; after that it was game over man, all the spelt and rye I wanted. We even store our premixed breads in jars, marked with what bread or tortilla it will make, how much water to add, and or oil.
When it is said and done, it is all fast food. Most of our prep is done at the preserving stage from meats, spices, teas, coffee or whatever we can or bottle.
Trading I was just happy to fall into; that is something I was used to growing up in south Texas on a large ranch. Our beach house in Italy was and is a major farming, ranching and fishing area before the tourist stuff took root. Finding folks to make trade took a little time but man when folks know you trade then your name is added to that short list of people to call and for what.
I have a friend u in Sweden who is retired military, he has a little farm, mostly everything he needs to live really, nothing for profit. But he has some sheep and goats and he recently got into making string just because he traded someone an AK47 for this odd looking machine that takes in the wool and spits out string. He get like 10 bucks per 100 gram of string for that stuff. He actually blew off his claim up in Lapland because he got his hands on way too much wool and said he would make more from that than prospecting a site he has not been to yet. Crazy. Heck he purchased his Chevy truck new with money he got from Chaga, selling it to German stores.
He was with us in Austria over Christmas and he was telling us that the last time he touched his retirement check was back in 2002, that he has not had a need to touch that money at all since then. He makes lots of trades, does lots of fishing and hunting, has his gold sites and string.
For Christmas we gave him a Slovakian made flower mill. he sent us pictures in spring. He put in 5 acres of raised beds for rye and spelt. I could only laugh because come harvest time he is going to hate doing all that by hand.
You do not really need money to live this way, just knowledge and a good foundation of people to trade with and many other resources to hunt fish and wild harvest. You have all that, and the money will roll in and your health will get much better.
