The Real Price of Food

That's a long list! Wow. Interesting article. What's the conversion ratio for livestock? I think it's 10-1, meaning it takes 10lbs of grain to get 1lb of meat. Maybe that's farm raised fish...can't remember. Anyway, one more reason to eat more veggies. Let's change some of those corn fields to produce fields.

 

Good post Douglas. I spend way more than 6% of income on food and I'm eating for one most of the time. It's expensive as hell buying healthy and that's with me getting wholesale prices on fish living on the coast. That Chobani adds up, so do things like almonds, walnuts and all-natural granola. Damn bro, how bouts you subsistence farmers drop the knowledge here? How much land you need for a year of food? Gotta sharpen my spear. My Class A gun license does me little good as I've eaten little to no red meat and not much chicken for the last 3 years. I'm all for living off the land but it ain't a simple chore. Oh yeah, screw soy. Poison.

 

this is why you shoot and grow your own.

 

I'd love to be a vegetarian.



But I don't like vegetables.

It's a paradox I tells ya.

 

Couldn't agree with this more. While theres a cost for everything, it doesn't always have to be monetary. My girlfriend and I had a garden that fed us, our landlord and her kids through an entire summer. This year we plan on canning and storing food for winter, building a greenhouse and giving all season growing a go.

Hunting has been on my list for a while, hopefully Ill aquire a bow and license for next season. We shall see.

 

small game too. rabbit is really good

 

I used to spear fish alot, but legal sizers on the shallow reefs you can freedive for are getting harder and harder to come by. I drag a rubbermaid bin mounted on a boogieboard with bungees, attached to my kayak with a longboard leash. That way fish go into the bin as soon as they are shot, leaving less blood in the water. I kind of gave that up, since I was getting less and less snapper and seeing more and more sharks. I figure the odds were eventually going to catch up with me. And fish is damn expensive.

 

mmmmm. shark steaks!

 

Being mostly a vegetarian or even a half ass vegan will save you $$ and potential health risks. I just saw on world news last night how the price of meat and milk are going "up"...eat mostly fruits and veggies... stay away from dairy and meat when ever possible, avoid foods that come in a box lol. Not only will your body benefit but your wallet will too. Im not saying you gotta stop eating meat and dairy all together, just really limit it. If you have the resources to do so, start growing. This is where you will save cash...It is pretty peaceful, rewarding and not very difficult. Try and shop local too, plenty of small farms who have fresh food and decent prices, and at least it isn't going to some big company like walmart or wholefoods. We must join up and become a more self sustainable surfing community.

 

Nothing better than shark steaks or plover burgers.

 

thanks. now I'm craving a plover burger with bacon and GMO rolls.

 

yesterday i shot and ate my own pheasant. i overcooked it and it was terrible...

 

There was a fall and winter when I was between jobs and had no money, we are talking church leaving boxes of food on porch poor, and I didn't belong to any church... where me, my wife and two kids under they age of 6 lived off what small game I shot, the three deer I got, veggies we had canned and potatoes. Looking back it was tough, but kind of rewarding. We didn't realize we were poor poor until the church gave us boxes of food for Christmas.
Now we still have a garden, and last week just finished off the last of this fall's venison.
During the summer, my wife and I try to do a couple of days a week living on what we grow and catch at the beach. Now it's more for fun, but it's good to knowledge to have.

 

Doug, you sound like you like gardening, right on! one day I will post some pics of my aquaponics setup.
There are rural areas in Colorado where you can buy a house for under 20k and make that back in a year as a gardener, then buy and setup a greenhouse for extended growing season. Julesburg Colorado: sugar beets galore!

did you see FINCEN allowed banks to process ganja money? a lot of mj stocks went up
"GrowLife (PHOT) shares increased 8.5% compared to 30% for Tranzbyte (ERBB) stock and 15% for AVT (AVTC) stock, according to the Marijuana Stock Index" http://www.mainstreet.com/article/m...ver-after-soaring-talk-bank-regulation-reform



Rural coastal Washington is also ripe for the burnt surfer to make their own paradise, start with ganja, grwo your food and income and voila, you are golden

 

Ahhhhh, but it gets even better kidz.

Just wait until the effects of the North American drought (ongoing) are felt in your supermarket & in your wallet in the very near future.

It's going to be bad. $6 bell peppers...? You betcha.

Cattle herds are at their lowest point in about 40 years in this country because ranchers can’t afford to feed them and the normal rangeland only supports 50% of what it did five years ago because of the drought all across the west.

With the drought in CA, here's a scary little chart:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zrvxYwKlHLc/UD2Nn4ZrfsI/AAAAAAAABD4/Z1qcM5SSczU/s400/dry4.png

You might want to grow a few staples along with that ganja, hermano.

 

Doug you and I are on the same wave length. Grow organic, wanna bail on the over populated NE but need an ocean... fukushima fuking up any dreams of going west... as bad as it sounds, surfing is holding people like us back from going into the wild and homesteading... we have been cursed..

here's the latest on the pacific.. http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Fukushima-radiation-could-reach-Pacific-coast-by-5264277.php

 

Don't discount NJ for year round crops quit yet mang. A little research and alot of hardwork and you could potentially grow all year.... (greenhouses with seasonable foods) New Jersey was a leading state in agriculture in the beginning of our existence in this country, no doubt it's much different today, but the farming concepts are generally the same.

Check out Geoff Lawton, hes a permaculture genius, and has a series on cold weather food forests.