Keep your eye on the ball folks. National crop report indicates $78 billion plus disaster is on the

My feelings about this corn crisis: nature hates a monoculture.

Why should the failure of one (or two) crops screw us all over so badly? It shouldn't. The loss of one crop (which happens to me all the time) is to be expected. It shouldn't be cause for a crisis. But industrialized agriculture makes it so. Herein lies the problem. (And note I understand that the crops at issue, in part, have repercussions beyond "food" per se...but it's a good lesson nonetheless).

We most of us don't understand what it takes to create the food we eat. Rather we are happy to let someone else figure it out, put it in a pretty package, and trust it will all work itself out. So long as it tastes good. Getting closer to where your food comes from will change your thinking about a lot of things.

I have a garden. By necessity I taught myself how to can, freeze and save seed from the food I grow (what do you do with five pounds of zucchini or cucumbers or tomatoes in one day? And again the day after? And the day after...This happens several times a week in the summer). I genuinely enjoy my garden but at the same time it is a huge burden. You are tied to it every day. There is always too much of one thing and not enough of another. You battle the elements, insects, animals and your own stupidity or laziness.

Do you know how many hours of work it takes to grow, pick and can four jars of green beans? I do. It is not for the faint of heart I can tell you.

Everyone should have a garden. I believe this. Everyone should grow at least part of their own food. But the truth is, if you haven't started a garden yet, you are in for a big surprise and quite probably a lot of failures. Growing food, while a miraculous blessing (akin in some ways to raising a child) is also an extreme burden. There is huge learning curve, and a lot of sweat and dirt and time and unforeseen problems that will trip you up along the way. So don't wait until you can't afford the prices at the supermarket to learn how to do it. I am still learning, and feeling like I started to late. But I started.

This is my first post on ATS and I am grateful to have the opportunity to share my corner of the world. Based on what I've seen about how threads are born and die so quickly I don't expect much response (and I don't really care about the popularity contest to be honest with you). I have been watching and learning so much from the threads I've followed. I thought it was time to throw my brick in the mix. Funny I picked this one to start. Maybe it's because it hit close to home.

Be kind to each other. But most importantly - be kind to yourselves. After all, chances are no one else will.

Sherrie

CUP O NOODLE SOUP, LOTS OF IT!

It's not good for the folks who grow corn.. but thinking a drought will cause a war is ridiculous. There has been many a drought in the worlds history. And much worse than this one. People will persevere.

I just bought some really nice looking, and just as cheap as always corn a couple days ago. My supermarket must have a secret stash!

reply to post by otherpotato


I couldn't have said it better myself. Although I disagree on the fact it's a burden. Providing for yourself should never be considered a burden. It is a lot of work sure, but it's not a burden.

The trial and error regarding home gardens is exponentially more in depth than you say tho. My advice is, once you get something to grow well... never change... document what you did and never change it. I changed a lot of things in my garden this year and I'm about 2 months behind where I was last year. I was canning tomatoes mid July last year... now I only look at the greenies hanging out.

More on topic, sure corn is used daily in many area's of our lives. It's like kicking out the bottom card on the food chain house of cards. I don't think its doomsday tho. Stock up on pet food tho. If you want to save yourself some cash in the long run, pet food will go up the most over this.

It never hurts to learn how your great grand father survived without electricity and fast food to survive. He somehow got you to this point, it's only right to at least learn what it was like.

Only thing that grows in Arizona this time of year is tumble weed and cotton. I think im out of luck there.
Hopefully fall I can grow some squash, if the bugs do not get it again. Tomatoes do not do to well her either.

reply to post by litterbaux


I debated about calling it a burden. I guess I was thinking about those people who have never grown their own food and think they can one day throw some seeds in the ground and be self-sufficient on a whim. I see a lot of that talk. People who think that are severely misinformed. It's hard work, no matter how you slice it. It's no paradise and you can't live off "the land" in any modern day sense of the word.

Regarding meat (which was brought up in a previous post and which much of this corn goes to): I considered raising chickens this year. We have a ready made chicken coop that we use for storage now. I was hell bent on getting some laying hens...until friends of ours in town had half of their flock wiped out by coyotes. During the day. It seems very noble and romantic to raise chickens until you consider the wildlife around you and how you are prepared to deal with that. I have four kids under the age of nine who play in the yard. I am not prepared to handle that risk. So how do I become prepared?

As for the "markets" - who knows what they will do? Seems to me the way they price things has very little to do with reality and more to do with their arbitrary profit system. Profit or loss? Who cares? What matters to me is whether or not I can feed my children and myself and put a roof over our heads. What do I care for your "profits"? But that is what drives the price of food. How does this make sense?

BTW I heard edible corn (i.e. the corn you can eat, not the corn that is subsidized by the government which goes for feed and processed food production) isn't even covered by insurance. So the people I want to be protected (i.e. the family farmers) aren't. This is just a big business crisis which we all have to (once again) pay for. It has nothing to do with food, just money.

LOL! Seriously, if you want to start growing a garden the moment you NEED to instead of planning ahead and learning along the way, you better learn to like eating bugs and worms. You will be SHOCKED at all the pests that come literally out of nowhere to chow down on your garden plants. The bigger your garden the longer you will have to be battling them. They NEVER sleep and eat constantly.

Rabbits, deer, squirrels, rats, mice, birds, you name it, will want to enjoy your garden every it as much as you wish to. And they all outnumber you by a wide margin.

My wife has a very small garden plot out behind the garage, and she has just given up. None of the tomato plants have any leafs left. The mosquitoes were so bad that she couldn't get out, so the worms won. And the tomatoes that were ripe split open and then the bugs took advantage of that. Hell, I can't grow watermelons to save my soul. I've put in four different types and all of them fail to produce for me. I'll either have the budding melons blacken and fall off, or these undersized melons just reach a point where they split open and rot WAY before they should be ripe. And they are supposed to be LARGE melons. I water them frequently and the soil is well composted with manure, and well drained. I thought watermelons would be EASY to grow!

All three peach trees we put in two years ago produced fruit this year, then the leaves turned black as the trees just died. The pear, apple, cherry, and asian pear trees are too young to produce, so if there is going to be a food availability catastrophe, can it wait a few years, pretty please?

If you expect to need a garden now, and this is all brand new to you, you should have started three years ago learning how to grow one. If time is of the essense, don't bother with a garden, if you expect that will need to be the major source of your food items. Spend the money buying food that has a robust shelf life that you can keep stored away and use as needed.

IMHO, of course.

Originally posted by AkumaStreak

Originally posted by murch
There has been rain, but not the right type of rain.

Interesting, I thought there was only the wet kind. But I am the farthest thing from a farmer, so I'm obviously ignorant on this.

Short bursts of heavy rain is bad for crops as it erodes topsoil.

reply to post by Rich Z


It's funny you mention the bugs. I knew about earwigs in lettuce and the broccoli worms. I withheld that information from my current GF, she is deathly afraid of bugs... I didn't know how she'd handle them on her food. She was surprisingly receptive of the fact... its good food... bugs want it too.

It's kinda gross but I just eat the bugs. I just don't think about it.

reply to post by otherpotato


Yeah I understand about the burden thing. It's a big change from heading out to mickey D's and picking up a big mac. Takes time and knowledge. I gathered that was the burden you spoke of.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


What veggies do you recommend for fall harvest? Complete gardening noob here.

reply to post by tatankasoul


Let me google that

Originally posted by murch
The latest crop progress report makes for grim reading.

Nearly half of the nation’s corn fields are now rated in poor to very poor condition.
Corn: 45 percent in poor to very poor condition
The report showed that 86 percent of corn has now silked, which is well above last year’s report of 56 percent. Twenty-two percent of corn is now in the dough stage and 6 percent of corn has dented, compared to the five-year average of 9 and 2 percent.

Soybeans: Setting pods but baking
For soybeans, the news is just as grim. Though 36 percent of the soybeans have already set pods, compared to 16 percent last week, conditions continue to decline. This week soybeans fell by 3 percentage points, with 35 percent of soybeans in poor to very poor condition.

www.agprofessional.com...

I'd not be real eager to eat their GMO soy anyways.

Its already been linked to organ failure and cancer even in
the mainstream news.

Its bad that the harvest looks grim, but that stuff is not good for us.

reply to post by tatankasoul


It depends on where you live.
You COULD google it for yourself but my advice would be to not do that.
What you need to do, IMO, is talk to an old gardener in your area.

I have been growing vegetables and herbs for people from seed- a small nursery. Yet, what I learn stuff ALL the time from the very old gardeners that come by. They are a wealth of information and it will be very particular to your area - you won't get that over the Internet!

IE one turned me on to growing horseradish here and exactly how to do it. Another gave me his tips on broccoli - plant 3 different crops in each season! Another cucumbers- He told me, he said "Go ahead and start more cucumbers now even though most people have theirs in the ground and they've quit selling. June will be dry and these folks will let theirs die, then they'll want some more." He also advised me to plant each season.

I did and it worked!

Listen to your OLD gardeners. The older the better. Locals. They won't just know your weather, they'll know your soil!

reply to post by otherpotato


On the edge of your property setup some coyote traps,
setup one of the kinds that your children can't hurt themselves on.

You can do live capture if you want or do like we do here, we kill them.

Some farmers around here pay to have them killed.

You are the first person I have heard of that was ready to lay down and
quit something because of stupid coyotes.

reply to post by hadriana


Good advice. Let me find the bag I find my stars in, I think its in the garage.

If you want to take a shortcut of learning experience, gardening is actually more resourceful than any that comes to mind. Since you can only produce crops 2/3rds of the year and one little mistake sends you back to square one... it's in your best interest to save some time.

Really good advice

Star for you

Originally posted by Ex_MislTech
reply to post by otherpotato

 

On the edge of your property setup some coyote traps,
setup one of the kinds that your children can't hurt themselves on.

You can do live capture if you want or do like we do here, we kill them.

Some farmers around here pay to have them killed.

You are the first person I have heard of that was ready to lay down and
quit something because of stupid coyotes.

Coyotes suck. They don't like banging metal and they don't like windchimes. We have sprinklers with motion detectors too and it works to keep a lot of stuff away.
If you look at the $$$$ critter repellant, it's usually just a witches brew of rotten eggs, peppers and such. I've been making my own. Kinda fun in a stinky, ewww smell this - kid kind of way. My homebrew keeps the deer away.

To the folks who are discussing the burdens, hard work, and pests attacking their gardens, PLEASE READ THIS POST.

I cannot more highly recommend this two volume set, called Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. Here is an Amazon link. (Mods, this is not an affiliate link, merely for reference.)

This book discusses how we can make an attempt to grow food, medicine, and 'craft' plants including herbs, nuts, fruits, and vegetables in a forest like environment in our own yards. When gardening in this manner the amount of labor and pests is severely diminished.

Yes, the book is expensive but well worth it. Please give it a look, it has changed my life.

reply to post by otherpotato


I agree. I have my first tomato plant, ever. I have learned the snails take to the leaves if I don't kill them. I have 2 or 3 tomatoes growing right now, still green. It's taken weeks to get to this stage. Know how long that will feed me once they are ripe? Not even enough for breakfast.

If it comes down to it, I'm going to have to rely on the gov't to provide food for me. I can't even buy a gun to hunt, not that I would probably have gas to get to the places to hunt anyway.

I have money, and that's it. I guess I better get buckets and buckets of rice. Anyone know the cheapest place to get rice?

Originally posted by daynight42
reply to post by otherpotato

 

I agree. I have my first tomato plant, ever. I have learned the snails take to the leaves if I don't kill them. I have 2 or 3 tomatoes growing right now, still green. It's taken weeks to get to this stage. Know how long that will feed me once they are ripe? Not even enough for breakfast.

If it comes down to it, I'm going to have to rely on the gov't to provide food for me. I can't even buy a gun to hunt, not that I would probably have gas to get to the places to hunt anyway.

I have money, and that's it. I guess I better get buckets and buckets of rice. Anyone know the cheapest place to get rice?

Sunflowers fair better, they do well during dry conditions.

Find out what weeds are actually edible like lamb's quarter, etc etc
with a wild edible plants guide, laminated preferred.

Stay away from poisonous look a likes.

Also consider aquaculture.

One man in wisconsin grows 1 million lbs. of food on 3 acres year round using only compost for heat.



It can be done super lazy with Tilapia and duckweed.

With this man's method you could feed 2 lbs of food everyday to everyone on
the planet, using non arable land that would equal the size of West Virginia.

And for the trolls, I am not advocating growing all the food for the world in one location,
it should be done locally.

I got used food grade buckets and cleaned them up, and I got my rice from Sam's club for
about $16 for a 50 lb. bag, beans cost a bit more, winter wheat was super cheap and
I just plan to do wheat berries with it.

I also plan to do wild edibles as a source of food.

Ojibwa bird traps are simple to make, and if you bait with mice you can clear out
the predator birds so the others come around more.

Some of this is illegal in some states unless you are in a survival situation, chk ur local laws.