[AtE] [Low Tech] Farming in AtE

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by (E)

For minutemans list
Liver has a huge range of vitamins if the settlement has livestock. Carnivores livers are off the list though.
Ideas in vague order of importance not complete
- staple, energy or starch rich food (calories)
- legume (Nitrogen fixers)
- deep rooting crop (soil conditioners)
- animals (Rotation as many species as possible)
- variety foods
- off season crops too.
- Medicinal plants, Garlic, Myrtle, Manuka (NZ), fennel, rosemary, willow, poppies, there are whole books on what to plant in medicinal herb gardens
- Functional plants Flax, cotton etc
- There are ranges of plants that repel insects as well
- Sugar cane has an additional use for gaming purposes, the sugar can be combined with potassium nitrate to fuel a rocket or make explosives.

Y'know what might be useful? If people in different regions post the most likely crop rotations, with some notes about additional needs.

For instance, I think that in much of what is now the lower 48 states of the U.S. the following might work out, pretty well:

Main field rotation
Year 1, Field 1: Three Sisters (maize, beans, squash)
Year 1, Field 2: Potatoes
Year 1, Field 3: Sugar beets or peanuts
Year 1, Field 4: Alfalfa

For year 2, shift the Three Sisters down to Field 4, and move everything else up by one field.

As for the garden vegetables, I think it would depend on what you have available, and what grows best in the area.

I'd actually use the list on page 3 of that Mother Earth News article, to select what's available. After three generations, or so, the local people will have figured out the best rotations -- and if they had an extension agent or a group of hippy organic farmers, they'd have learned that right away.

As for the main crop rotations, sugar beets are nice, because the settlement can boil the beets for sugar, and after that's done, the beets usually have enough nutrients left over to make good cattle feed. At least, that's what I learned while I worked out in Fort Morgan, which had a Great Western sugar plant.

The beets would come in by late October or early November, and then the processing "campaign" would take five or six weeks (depending on how large the beet crop was, and how many farmers chose to plant them). As the beets were processed, the plant sold the remains to the local feed lots for fodder, at low cost, since it was basically wasted if they didn't.

The whole town smelled like boiling cardboard, during the campaign. It wasn't unpleasant (unlike the blood incineration at the meat-packing plant, or the eye-watering odors of the dairy north of Wiggins, when the wind blew from that direction), but it took some getting used to.

The presence of meat animals is really important, for the presence of the liver, and the B-complex, iron and enzymes from the meat. I know the consumption of red meat is particularly important for growing young girls. My sister frequently craved it, growing up, as did all three of her daughters.

In the absence of meat, some combinations of foods were vital:

Beans and rice
Beans and maize
Potatoes and milk products

There may be others to substitute in. Look for "complete protein" combinations of vegetables, although if the local diet includes lots of meats, the vegetable combinations aren't necessary.

One other thing, in inland areas with no access to fish or seafood, iodine deficiency is a real problem. It could result in goiter, which is a nutritional deficiency disease almost unheard of in any developed nation, these days, because most table salt has added iodine to prevent it.

In the absence of iodized salt, some other source of iodine is needed, and fish and seafood normally provide it. Fortunately, some soils are also rich in iodine, and crops and vegetables will absorb it, but that's not always the case.

[ericthered]

Of course, it all depends on what's available.

Though going on a quest to find heirloom bean seeds at the request of a wealthy agriculturist who has determined that's what's needed sounds like a decent campaign premise.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Of course, it all depends on what's available.

Though going on a quest to find heirloom bean seeds at the request of a wealthy agriculturist who has determined that's what's needed sounds like a decent campaign premise.

Doesn't it? It would be great way to start a campaign. Moreover, you could almost set up a decent trade campaign by working out the various resources and foods available, in three or five different communities, along lines more reasonable (if less fun) than the Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Doesn't it? It would be great way to start a campaign. Moreover, you could almost set up a decent trade campaign by working out the various resources and foods available, in three or five different communities, along lines more reasonable (if less fun) than the Citadel, Gastown and the Bullet Farm.

There were trade routes even during the stone age among Homo sapiens. Luxury goods like shells and ornamental stone, found significant distances from shore, etc.
They don't even have to be that huge of distances in places with different biomes near each other. Oregon has everything from wet coast to mountains to desert to agricultural valley, etc.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

There were trade routes even during the stone age among Homo sapiens. Luxury goods like shells and ornamental stone, found significant distances from shore, etc.

Non-perishable goods can take a very long time to get from point A to point Z without spoiling. It's hard to tell how the shells moved around - but it can also be that the guys at A living next to the guys at B and trading them at a party, then the guys at B living next to the guys at C trading them at a wedding, and so forth down the alphabet and years later you're at the top of inland mountains with some seashells.

It's a lot harder to move food any distance, because it's always spoiling (even with modern refrigeration technology).

[Flyndaran]

Of course I understand that time matters a lot with such goods. Speed becomes much more important. I can see food transport being the only allowed use for valuable fuels like ethanol, for example.
Mad Max fighting veggie raiders would be quite a trope twister.

[(E)]

This is an optimal range of plants, they are all grown currently within 20km of where I farm. The area covers 6 major soil types, heavy clay, Sandy, volcanic, pan, limestone and peat so there is a huge range of plants available. There is also 2 organic farming operations. A heritage seed business. A university of Tokyo rice trial facility. Multiple orchards. The largest harbour (by coastline) in the southern hemisphere. Huge plant nursery. 50kms to a petrol refinery.

From fallow, prepare soil structure, decide if rich or poor soil is desired. Decide how much drainage is required. Set acidity by adding lime as required.

Crop rotation 1 heavily manured bed. *
- gross feeder crop, pumpkin, melon, rhubarb. To break down the manure and to facilitate reducing the total amount of weeds in the soil.
- heavy fruiting crops tomatoes etc
- winter crops, shallots, garlic, onions
- semi fallow for 6 months, pigs or chickens.
- blood and bone applied (from under the grating where the animals are killed) Potatoes.
- a legume, peas chickpeas and beans.
- root crops turnips, carrots, radish (hopefully including horseradish)
- Last crop kumara
- clovers from hay and provided with extra nitrogen to start. To build up a rich pasture for milking animals.

Herb garden, poorer soil, lots of work on drainage. Probably a semi annual turn over to keep drainage good.

Other crop rotations field 2, less fertilizer intensive. (I have only tried the companion planting with corn once and didn't have much luck)
- potatoes
- maize and sweetcorn, the maize would be a silage variety, unsure of its palatabilty for humans.
- legumes
- sunflowers
- tobacco* (nicotine is an anti parasitic)
- fodder beats (massive dry matter yields but hard to propagate seed) as animal feed for chickens and pigs.

Fallow plants
- artichokes, basically a weed.

Wetland plantings
- Flax, Raupo, willow, taro.

Cattle yard run off and effluent field plantings
- bananas
- sugar cane

Tree plantings
- as many fruit trees as possible, fruit can be made into alchohol, alchohol can be made into vinager.
- Nuts, macadamia, pine nuts and walnut
- local hard wood varieties, totara, puriri, manuka, kanuka. Possibly pinus radiata as well.
- olives, bay.
- eukalypts(excuse spelling)
- avocados
- Bamboo

Hot house
- bananas
- seedlings
- pineapple
- if I travel about 50kms I could find coffee too. Unfortunately not in the arbitrary 20km radius.

Animals within 20kms
- sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, beef cattle, dairy cattle, world champion working dogs, cats, horses, alpacas, ostrich.Edit also farmed deer, grass carp, donkeys, guinea fowl, quail, 70km to water buffalo.

Animal rotations set up to minimize parasitic worm burden.

Aside from the single rice facility and the silage maize there is a shortage of cereals. An outside possibility of fodder cereal crops exists though.

Full irrigation is easy due to springs located above flat land. Trenched in drainage coil can in some situations be hooked directly up to water pipe. The swamp around the spring acts a very good filter if planted correctly.

Everything grows fairly well where I am, the want list would be heavily weighted towards the means to kill of unwanted growth. Herbicide, insecticides and medicines. Wool and meat surplus.

* alkathene pipe from wool shed, milking shed and cattle yards all located higher than garden means all the nutrients can be slurried to the gardens.

Edit another possibility for the list of desirables is heavy machinery. Even with just the fuel in the tank earthmovers and cultivators would convert a large area for gardens.

Edit the second
Bullock teams where used locally to move timber. The last team stopped in the 1970s. All the harness is still present, some in museums some in my dad's shed. On the very edge of the 20km zone is someone who farms Chianina cattle. 8 eight years would be required to raise a bullock team.

[DanHoward]

Winter veges: beans, asparagus, garlic, onions, Asian greens, beetroot, parsnip, lettuce, cabbage, spinach. Some plants like spinach can survive even if frozen solid.

Climate is important. I have a front yard full of sub-tropical fruit trees that would have died when I was a kid because of the heavy frosts. Because of climate change, we haven't had a single day of frost in ten years. I no longer really have to worry about seasonality. Where I live I can grow pretty much anything that doesn't require a winter chill. We have tomatoes that happily grow right through winter.

For anyone interested here are all of my fruit trees I can recall: achacha, several different guavas, black and white sapote, avocado, mango, banana, loquat, longan, orange (x3), lemon, lime, wampi, Brazillian cherry, grumichama, pecan, pitaya, custard apple, Davidsons plum, peachcott, kumquat, jelly palm, fig, olive. The smaller plants are growing in containers.

I'm also growing two different grapes, passionfruit, four different blueberries, loganberry, strawberry, midyim, lillypilly, pineapple, peanut, coffee.

All this is on a quarter acre block with a lot of lawn still in the back yard for the kids to play on and a forest of bamboo along a fence to use for building material (the shoots are edible too). There are also six garden beds for vege rotation. I reckon that if I had to I could ramp things up to supply around 80% of my family's needs if there was a food crisis. The first thing I'd do is dig up the back lawn and do mass plantings of beans and sweet potato.

There is also a large plot of bushland a block away from my place. I've started a "guerilla gardening" operation by appropriating that and planting food bearing plants amongst the existing vegetation as an emergency reserve. I have to select plants that can survive without regular tending so I'm mainly planting native foods.
http://www.daleysfruit.com.au/bushfoodintro.htm

[DanHoward]

Collect urine. It is a free resource and people waste it down the toilet. Fresh urine is sterile and makes an excellent fertilizer and antiseptic. Stale urine is essentially ammonia; in the past it was called lant and was used for tanning leather, fulling wool, bleaching cloth, fixing dye, making soap.

There are plenty of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of urine as fertilizer. Here is one on the combination of urine and wood ash.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0902112750.htm

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Collect urine. It is a free resource and people waste it down the toilet. Fresh urine is sterile and makes an excellent fertilizer and antiseptic. Stale urine is essentially bleach (in the past it was called lant).

There are plenty of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of urine as fertilizer. Here is one on the combination of urine and wood ash.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0902112750.htm

Yup. Dilute 20:1 with water, apply directly.