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Posted on June 11, 2024 | 41 Comments
The way that humans have messed with the Earth’s carbon cycle rightly figures as planetary eco-problem No.1 in public debate, but the way we’ve messed with its nitrogen cycle probably ought to get more attention than it does. In the former case, farming often gets a bit too much of the blame in my view, whereas in the latter case there’s no doubt that it’s the key culprit. The consequences for nature loss, human health and climate change are serious. If humans somehow manage to get over their fatal attraction to the fossil fuels that drive our messing with the carbon cycle while retaining anything like present patterns of energy use, then our messing with the nitrogen cycle will loom all the larger as a problem of high-energy human civilization. According to the planetary boundary framework, human use of nitrogen (and phosphorus) is already a long way past levels compatible with the stability and resilience of earth systems.
The inimitable Gunnar Rundgren has been writing an excellent series of articles about farming and the nitrogen cycle. I’m not going to cover much of the same ground, but I’d recommend taking a look at his analysis. Instead, I focus more on arguments about … well, arguments about arguments about nitrogen. And an argument about how we might get by with using less of it.
But let me get into that by outlining what seems to me a problematic modern mythology around nitrogen in agriculture that goes something like this: prior to the invention of the Haber-Bosch method for ammonia synthesis, people were miserably yoked to the soil as servants of the natural nitrogen cycle. But once Messrs Haber and Bosch had worked out how to transcend this nature-imposed limit, a world of abundant cheap food opened up for humanity. This led to enormous twentieth-century population growth, and today about half the nitrogen cycling through people’s bodies worldwide can be traced to the Haber-Bosch process. Suggestions that we should radically cut synthetic ammonia and rely on more organic forms of nitrogen cycling in agriculture would therefore condemn half of humanity to poverty, starvation or death. True, agricultural nitrogen pollution is a problem, but the path forward lies in technical innovation and more efficient nitrogen usage.
I don’t buy most of that narrative, and I’d reframe it as follows: prior to the invention of the Haber-Bosch method for ammonia synthesis, some people were miserably yoked to the soil while others weren’t, the differences in their situations being mostly political. Governments around that time were competing in a race for economic ‘development’ that required labouring populations to be available for industrial work, and the Haber-Bosch process proved an important labour-saving innovation for agriculture in that context. The relationship between the global industrial food system that emerged from developments like the Haber-Bosch process and our populous modern, high-energy, urbanized world is complex but there’s no doubt that today there are a lot of people, a lot of cheap foodstuffs and a lot of hunger in the worlds that this system has built. Currently, about half the nitrogen cycling through people’s bodies worldwide can be traced to the Haber-Bosch process. It’s definitely true that if this synthetic ammonia disappeared overnight there would be a lot of hunger. It may be true that we couldn’t do without some synthetic ammonia even in the longer term. It’s definitely untrue that relying on more organic forms of nitrogen cycling in agriculture would necessarily condemn half of humanity to poverty, starvation or death. Whether we can overcome the problem of agricultural nitrogen pollution through new technical innovation is unclear.
I’d argue that for various reasons – food security and resilience looming large among them – it would be good to greatly cut our usage of and reliance upon synthetic ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process. I don’t argue that we should do away with all of it overnight. That really would be a recipe for human suffering. But I believe people who say that dramatic but considered longer-term cuts would lead to mass hunger are mistaken, and I question their motives in saying it.
There’s a form of ‘land-sparing’ and purportedly pro-poor environmentalist/ecomodernist narrative that extols the high yields and low food prices achieved by modern agricultural methods. This achievement rests among other things on rigorously cutting input costs by maximizing mechanization, regional crop specialization, field sizes and the use of agri-chemicals, notably nitrogenous fertilizer. This is in absolute contrast to what benefits wildlife – less mechanization, local multi-cropping, smaller field sizes, mosaic landscapes, and minimal amounts of fugitive nitrogenous compounds in soils and watercourses. Sometimes, the same people who extol the virtues of high yields and cheap food lament agricultural pollution and call for more punitive regulations against farmers. I don’t think you can have it both ways.
Recently, I’ve become aware of a little local nitrogen dispute in my neck of the woods involving accusations against a local farmworker for polluting a watercourse while spreading slurry, and threatening those who reported it. I don’t condone the pollution nor the associated behaviour in any way, but whatever the rights and wrongs of the specific incident, ultimately I believe this kind of thing is a structural problem caused by the impossible demands our societies place upon farmers to produce abundant cheap food, care for the landscape and stay afloat financially. Of course, not all farmers engage in illegal acts of pollution, nor of threatening behaviour. Not all farmers stay in business, either. The result of that is a global race to the bottom in farmer incomes and wellbeing, and increasing reliance on distant, non-resilient food commodity chains. As always, behaviour at the extreme end of the distribution tells you something about wider systemic dysfunction. If you love low food prices and low input costs in agriculture, then the sad truth is that aggressive polluting of watercourses is also bundled in with the package you’re endorsing.
I don’t think the solution will come from toughening up regulatory regimes while failing to address the pressures on farmers. I believe a better way to go is to start rebuilding localism – agrarian localism, economic localism, political localism, community localism – as against the kind of top-down statism that I criticised in my previous post.
Suppose we thought of food production, polluted watercourses and antisocial behaviour as mainly local questions, affecting local people and wildlife. Suppose we established a local, bottom-up farmer-to-farmer extension system involving peer support with public and scientific input more than punitive regulation, along with local mediation approaches that brought together those who were affected to try to find solutions. I think such initiatives would quickly lead to local conversations about the poor balance between food prices, the cost of living and conservation, and these in turn could prompt efforts to create a local virtuous circle: less fertilizer use, less pollution, better rewards for farmers producing more nature-friendly local food, better and cheaper access to good housing for local residents.
No doubt that all sounds quite idealistic. I certainly don’t think it would be easy to pull off. But it may be easier in the long run than present arrangements involving legalistic regulation, low food prices, a questionable drive to high inputs and high yields, farmer immiseration, corporate profit-maximization and the creation of vast economic inequalities, all of which centralized states purport somehow to be able to resolve for the best. In the area where I live, some of the rudiments for local non-state alternatives are already in place in formal and informal organisations, and such approaches have deep roots in many historic societies outside the political orthodoxy of the modernist nation-state.
N-wrecking – another world is possible!
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Allow me a little digression.
As an impressionable high school kid, I saw a lot of turmoil in the country. The Vietnam War was raging, killing people I knew for no good reason. There was a lot of other social unrest. A back to the land movement was happening. There was an oil (and wheat ) embargo and gas (petrol) prices quadrupled in weeks. The production of nitrogen fertilizer uses a lot of energy and which was in short supply.
I wondered ‘how would we feed ourselves with out cheap fertilizer ?’ This led down the rabbit hole of organic agriculture and here we are today.
This posting hits home pretty directly. In 30 years of making a living from organic agriculture we have never used any Haber-Bosch nitrogen. I have bought a lot of compost that may have benefited from the H-B process but we have never used synthetic N on our fields.
The story about the farmer / farm worker over spreading manure is a fact of life for confinement livestock. Far more concentrated manure is produced than can be sustainably applied to the land. I looked into turkey manure as an input but the application rate was completely off the charts for what we needed. We are on a sandy soil, right on the river bank. It was very cheap but not worth doing.
“If you love low food prices and low input costs in agriculture, then the sad truth is that aggressive polluting of watercourses is also bundled in with the package you’re endorsing.” is exactly to the point. Externalized costs don’t need to be considered. Cheap food is what is important.
Maybe you should delve into politics.
I had a conversation with a Canadian Alberta ) wheat grower who was fuming at the Canadian government rules and penalties on fertiliser , his laptop showed he had cut fertilizer use by 80% over a decade by innovative use of machinery and sampling of crops , his gripe was that the water samples ( taken from ditches ) used in the legislation were taken 11 years ago and then they fired all the people taking the samples , the data is 11 years old , GPS hooked up to fertiliser spreaders linked to his database in field production levels taken by combines weighing samples every ten yards cut his use by 80% , was anyone from government intrested ? No .
Anecdotally — there is so much nitrogen around that my compost-making is very much more focused on scrounging around for carbon. Between coffee grounds, grass clippings, green crop residues and ramial wood chips (which are relatively high in nitrogen compared to the big chunky chips we sometimes get), I am simply not short of nitrogen for composting. How many sacks of coffee grounds I accept is essentially dictated by how much space I have to compost them and how much carbon I can get hold of (leaves, cardboard, less “green” woodchips, dry crop residues, charcoal).
@Kathryn
On a slight compost technical point……..
Do you know if charcoal (biochar) is a suitable source of carbon for the composting process (aerobic)?
Does the charcoal actually compost/break down? I’ve heard of charcoal, found in old camp fires, that is over a million years old.
I’m close to perfecting my biochar retort system, so getting enough biochar isn’t going to be a problem for me. Plenty of old pallets out there going free. (Only the HT type of course)
I’m actually picking up an old stainless steel water cylinder tomorrow for use as my inner barrel in the retort. Very excited!!!!
I think so; it does still have some bioavailable carbon, and it will retain some nitrogen resulting in a “richer” compost.
But you don’t want to overdo it as it can allegedly also tie up some of that nitrogen. See https://www.kansasforests.org/forest_products/forest_product_docs/biochar_info/How%20to%20Use%20Biochar%20in%20Compost_Print.pdf for a decent how-to guide (disclaimer: I haven’t read the whole thing yet).
Once you run out of pallets, growing the carbon is going to be the thing. Is there somewhere that you can coppice some hazels?
At last, the kind of rude retort we like to see on this blog… 😉
@Kathryn
Thanks for the link. Looks like it might answer a few of my questions.
I might up load a YouTube video of my retort once the latest upgrades have been completed. I’ll keep you posted 🙂
@Kathryn
I’m finding that biochar is a good cover material for a composting toilet.
I’ve been peeing in a bucket and covering with biochar. The biochar really cuts down on the smell. Yet to try it with a #2, but that’s next!!! 🙂
I then mix the bucket in with my food scraps and cardboard etc and put it in the compost bin.
Pallets are aplenty at the moment. I guess that when they become scarce, then we will be living in a very different world anyway.
I live in a rural area and there are lots hedges on the local footpaths ripe for “trimming”
Lots of kettles close to home as well, that I’ve got my eye on for compost fodder.
a better way to go is to start rebuilding localism – agrarian localism, economic localism, political localism, community localism – as against the kind of top-down statism that I criticised
now on the localism theme, I could repeat my fave David Fleming quote -“if you really want to save the planet the first thing you should do is join a choir”, but instead I’ll really annoy you by quoting an author you probably loathe and despise:
My intention in this book has been to argue the case for an approach to environmental problems in which local affections are made central to policy, and in which homeostasis and resilience, rather than social reordering and central control, are the primary outcomes.
It was Roger Scruton. Yeah. Surprised me too.
We watched a truly brilliant film last night, ‘A Hidden Life’ by Terence Malik. The glimpse into an Austrian mountain peasant life between the wars is luscious and wonderfully achieved.
What struck Alice was the fact that the world wars would have killed many men, making the local agrarian life involving more hands on the land vulnerable to the mechanisation and bureaucracy that characterised the wars.
I have listened to Dr Vandana Shiva describing the ‘poison cartel’ that was pioneered during these devastating wars becoming the agrochemical industry in peace time.
This fits in with the theory that we are not shaping our technology to nature but shaping nature to fit our technology.
Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, pray for us and for peace on earth!
Also worth checking out if you enjoyed the movie, the book that uncovered the story of Franz: “In Solitary Witness” by Gordon Zahn.
The film does a beautiful job of separating Franz Jagerstatter’s very personal act of conscience and conviction from any particular church, it seems to eminate from his love of his life, his family and especially the relationship with his wife, and they’re shared understanding of god. I’m sure this is a position many of us can connect with.
In fact, the Catholic Church abandon him and collaborate with the Nazi regime, his subsequent beatification is kind of shameful hypocrisy of the reality of the Catholic Church, which defines its corporate roots, annexing this act of conscience and changing nothing about its structure as an institution.
He is also failed and abandoned by the institution of his village and his mayor, who deliver suffering upon his family. It is an embodied portrait of the pitfalls of agrarian and religious patriarchal institutions and a powerful portrait of human love that transcends them both.
My main critique of the movie is precisely that incorrect depiction of the role the Catholic Faith played in Bl. Franz’s life. That’s why I recommend the book: it digs deep into the real history of the man, certainly betrayed by the false shepherds who should have supported him, but also only given the courage and conviction to die a martyr by his faith in Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of Mother Church.
It asks a hard question of all of us: would we be ready to die rather than commit an evil deed for an evil regime? And if we say “yes”, then where do we find the strength to do so?
I’m not going to pretend I know the innermost workings of anyone but it is certainly clear that Franz’s faith is communicated through the symbols and language of the Catholic Faith, undoubtedly. For me the film allows for the space that this faith transcends the technicalities of the symbols and language – it is embodied, which to me is a liberating prospect.
I agree, Franz’s example calls to us all a great question, that is so difficult to bear in these times. It seems, just to live, we are constantly ask to sign allegiance to a system that is unconscionable- that is evil. We are here because on some level we recognise this and are seeking a way to divest from it.
We intend to go to the villages where the film was made – what a way to live!
I agree that rebuilding localism of all kinds is the way to go, but may I suggest that in addition to the practical sides, what is needed is a COSMOPOLITAN localism which avoids the far-right blood-and-soil racist and violent ‘nativism’, and welcomes anyone from anywhere who wants to care for the land and work with other productive and constructive people to make ‘the local’ a better place to live for all.
Historic aside – my dad was a prisoner of war in Austria in WWII and the P.O.W.s supplied the farm labour which the young men who were sent to fight would have otherwise done. The local folk weren’t Nazis, so it wasn’t too bad a life – and the food was good. Especially chicken fried in pumpkin seed oil – a delicacy unheard of in NZ at the time. Now I grow oil seed pumpkins, but toast the seeds to add to batches of muesli – way cheaper than buying them! Plus they are easy to grow, and a great ground cover.
Agreed — we need a localism that doesn’t turn into xenophobia and violence.
If nothing else, I keep going on about ecological diversity in my gardens — I don’t only grow many different species, but also many varieties within each species, and I try to encourage wildlife — but the same applies in human communities.
We are going to need everyone.
I have had some success growing oil seed pumpkins but haven’t yet figured how to easily extract oil. There is another long storage cucumber/ melon called chilicoyote that produces lots of seed on very large vines( for summer ground cover ) I am a big fan of acorns because they produce every year and I can with a rake and a dustpan collect 200+ pounds a day on trees with mowed grass where the acorns fall. My wife and I have lived without store bought food utilizing a combination of vegetables from the garden, eggs, and acorns. .We have gone as long as three months without any trouble at all. Staples like dried corn, wheat, barley and amaranth are part of the diet but the volume and consistency of acorns make them the linchpin.
@Bruce
How do you process your acorns?
Dry acorns a couple months, crack with Davebilt #43 nutcracker, sort out good nuts from shells, rehydrate a day in cold water, grind 1 cup acorns two cups water in a blender, pour water and ground nuts into quart jars ,put into refrigerator and each day pour off water , careful to save the settled white starch just above the ground meal, repeat every day till water is mostly clear and the meal is no longer astringent. Pour through strainer but save the starch and water in a jar and let it settle again. The meal part is dried and ground for acorn flour. The clear water is poured off the starch and the starch can then be dried . Use for dotorimuk
Holm oak is the best acorn IMO because it likes to grow in an lawn, likes water, fast to grow and is one of the least astringent acorns. It is used for landscape trees here in Southern Calif. I have collected enough acorns in a couple days to feed several people ….hundreds of pounds and even fed a couple pigs a month on 100% acorn diet to finish.
They can be collected and dried and will store a couple years without degrading. So they are kinda backup and although eatable they are very plain and get kinda boring to eat all the time. The dotorimuk gives them some culinary variety.
I’ve also heard of people putting a bag of acorn meal in their toilet cistern. The water gets changed every time you flush and you can tell when it runs clear.
No good if you have a composting toilets, though — or squeamish housemates.
@Bruce.
Thanks for that. Really interesting.
Looks like I’ve got myself another project!!!!
Might have to look for a YouTube video on the subject.
Having a staple from a perennial crop, is a big plus.
I did read that acorns were a staple for some Native Americans, back in the day. I wonder how they did it without access to buckets/barrels/bowls for storing water? Soaked the acorns in rivers in baskets perhaps?
Kathryn. I like the idea of soaking them in the toilet cistern.
Is it possible/desirable to ferment the acorns?
Have you ever tried? I wonder what it does to the bitterness?
@John
Indigenous people in North America definitely had access to high-quality pottery, suitable for soaking acorns, or cooking down maple sap into syrup over a fire, or nixtamalisation of corn. It’s also possible to use leather bags for soaking things if you don’t mind a bit of the moisture getting out.
I don’t think fermentation would remove the tannins; soaking is the way to go, there.
I suspect acorns were a staple, but not “the” staple, if that makes sense… I’ve already mentioned corn, but chestnuts would also have played an important role (I’ve heard on one podcast or another that a quarter of all trees in eastern North America were chestnuts, before the blight came — I am not sure whether they are including e.g. Quebec in “eastern North America” there, but other than the furthest north areas it does seem plausible), and they don’t require leaching to remove tannins. I think there was some controlled fire management of woodland areas, low-temperature fires that killed off things like weevils but didn’t damage the trees too badly. Hickory and pecans would also have been used, further south. And my understanding is that in fire-managed landscapes, Apios americana (American groundnut, not to be confused with peanuts which are also legumes) does pretty well and was also used.
Jerusalem artichokes are another quite prolific perennial starchy crop, which also produce quite a bit of above-ground biomass for the compost heap. If you decide to grow them, do yourself a favour and grow them in a container. Oca is also pretty nice; strongly flavoured, so I wouldn’t want to make it a staple exactly, but I have some in a container that I basically just weed once or twice in spring and then ignore all year until I want to harvest them.
Here in the UK I think there’s quite a lot to be said for a mixed coppice of hazel, oak and chestnut for providing a reasonable quantity of calories on trees while also allowing for some building materials and firewood to be produced, but I would also still want to have spuds, Jerusalem artichokes, squashes, and some grains.
That is impressive, Bruce! Both the yield of the acorns, and their contribution to your household food provisioning.
You will lose the starch if you use the toilet tank method. In Calif. acorns were the main staple for most tribes. It’s consistent production was important. There are numerous oaks but some were favored due to oil content or taste. The local tribes did make woven baskets sealed with asphaltum. Acorn processing sites are associated with reliable water sources and year round springs and deep bedrock mortars pecked into a large Boulder near the village where women could pound acorns and sing acorn pounding songs communally. Try to find holm oaks to collect from.
Interesting, especially the bit about consistent production — here, oak trees exhibit a behaviour known as masting, where some years they produce very heavily and others much more sparsely. Beech trees do similar.
I’ve heard multiple explanations for masting, usually having to do with population’s of either squirrels or weevils.
Holm oaks are relatively new in the UK (introduced in the 16th century) but are easy enough to find in London.
“I don’t think the solution will come from toughening up regulatory regimes while failing to address the pressures on farmers. I believe a better way to go is to start rebuilding localism – agrarian localism, economic localism, political localism, community localism – as against the kind of top-down statism that I criticised in my previous post.”
I get into repeated conflicts with my environmental (climate) activist friends, most of whom love things like the EU nature restauration law and “tough governmental regulations”. I try to promote local management of and adaptation to nature and that is in conflict with those top-down approaches. Of course, local communities may very well make “wrong” decision, such as exterminating wolves, but I don’t see the other path as very appealing – you get poachers instead…..
Thanks for referral btw!
Thinking of dairy farmers centralisation caused a lot of the problems , in 1960 there were 7 dairy / bottling plants around where I lived ( within 30 miles or so ) not there is none , milk now travels LOTS of miles to get to a dairy and if you can’t half fill a tanker they will not collect your milk , that’s why the 20/30/50 cow herd is gone get big or get out and the poop problem is here .
Here in TX milk produced in Erath ,Brown , Comanche and Eastland counties is sent to as far away as Wyoming , Georgia and Ohio , that’s up to 36 hours away …..
I have no idea how the finances of that works .
slaynews.com/news/un-calls-water-rationing-secure-climate-justice/
Thanks for the interesting comments and stories. Indeed, we seem to have created a strange world that’s awash with cheap and dangerous energy and nitrogen, and in which we then lash out randomly and ineffectually at the consequences.
On which note, thanks Gunnar for your observations about local management vs regulation. You’ve put your finger on a tension I’m also increasingly noticing between localist and agrarian eco-activists and eco-activists more generally. Thanks Kathryn, Greg & Diogenes also for feeding into this. An important issue, I think.
Appreciate the David Fleming quotation, Martin. I’ve come to see the wisdom of his words. And also Roger Scruton’s, through slightly gritted teeth. I guess we’re all a mass of contradictions, but him more than many.
Good point from Joel about fitting nature to social tech rather than vice versa. And thanks to you & Sean for pointing me to Franz Jagerstatter – hope to follow up.
Thanks finally to Christine – yes, absolutely, cosmopolitan localism. Challenging to achieve but vital to try. I’ll have more about this here soon. Also yes to pumpkin seeds, and to the pumpkin tribe in general for their gifts. I’m interested in stories about edible seeds and seed oils, especially in cooler climates.
I’m growing two types of oilseed pumpkin this year, and one that claims to be triple use (carving, hulless seeds, and tasty flesh… we’ll see) and will let you know how I get on. But they’re all C. pepo and saving seed from those at the allotment is a real mess, I am not very good at getting there in the mornings to hand-pollinate and the genus is so variable (and enough people are growing courgettes, and the odd ornamental gourd) that open-pollination often has unpleasant results. C. maxima and C. moschata are better bets. Pressed Styrian pumpkin seed oil is absolutely delicious, as well as visually beautiful, exhibiting a red-green dichromatism.
I think sunflowers for oil are known to do well in Ukraine, which is not exactly a warm climate.
I am not fond of rapeseed oil.
I suspect that unrefined seed oils don’t keep particularly well; in a colder climate, animal fat starts to become quite a bit more useful. But the seeds themselves often do keep for several months, and there’s something to be said for that. Flax seeds are pretty good. I’ve had zero luck with sesame.
I don’t know how easy it is to extract soybean oil from homegrown soya beans; I think they are daylength sensitive so there might need to be some breeding work there.
I have been listening to some anarchist gardening podcasts and there is quite a bit of talk of agroforestry and using things like hickory nuts for edible oil or nut milk because you can basically grind them up and then use water to extract the nut milk or the oil. I have also heard of watermelon seed oil and musk melon seed oil being used, I can’t remember the name of the particular glorious weirdo who is semi-famous in some circles for doing this, but maybe I’ll try it this summer — I saw my first female flower on a melon plant this very afternoon, in the greenhouse, so I’m in with a chance at actually getting some melons this year. I like the idea of using seeds from things I’m growing anyway.
Another potential use of pumpkins, though: in some cultures the leaves of pumpkins and other winter squash are eaten. I think they’re cooked first? They would be rather prickly in a salad! There are some, though, where I absolutely adore the smell of the foliage, and that got me thinking maybe they’d be good as microgreens or similar over winter. They wouldn’t get enough light, but an awful lot of the energy for those first leaves is contained in the seed anyway (as with pea and broad bean microgreens), and if I put them in the airing cupboard they should still get warm enough to germinate. (Absent an airing cupboard, it’s possible a covered hot bed would provide enough heat.) If I do get around to experimenting with this I’ll let you know, but for now I have quite enough produce and not much need for new-to-me leaf crops.
Meanwhile, either I’ve messed up my labelling, or the Boddington’s soup peas I am growing are also pretty decent as a fresh pea. (The Latvian soup peas are not, by comparison, very nice as fresh peas — starchy and tough.)
I’m quite excited about this as I love fresh peas but had been wondering whether it’s really worth growing them given how much work they are when you don’t even eat the pods.
I suspect there are a lot of fresh peas that also do all right as soup peas, but Boddington’s are a round-seeded pea that is pretty cold-hardy, which means it’s possible to start them in lengths of guttering in the greenhouse and then plant them out very early, maximising the amount of the crop that matures before the weevils get in. Most of the fresh-eating peas I have grown are wrinkly and, while fairly happy in cool weather, don’t do so well in outright cold.
I put some sunflower seed through my electric mill with a gap set to crack the shells but allow most of the seed meats trough whole. Winnowed then floated off the remaining shells in water. Worked surprisingly well . Could easily collect gallons of shelled meats if I put a few hours into the project. I used oil seed sunflower which are black and kinda small but they separated out nicely.
I guess I need to see if I can get starch out of them like processing acorns for starch. Cracking sunflowers with my teeth has always been more trouble than it’s worth so my new techniques make sunflowers a new garden staple . Always been there but never quite figured out what to do with them before.
Anyhow provisioning with staple crops like acorn, sunflower, corn and wheat make the rest of gardening more of a search for flavor / vitamins and crop failure by vegetables easier to handle. My current crop of barley has a lot of ergot and way easier to handle when other staples can cover till I get another crop of barley through. As example.
I farm without fossil fuel power and believe the tools could easily support several families .
My wife has agreed to quantify some this and actually enjoys most all my cooking. I has to taste good in the end , variety helps greatly.
Off topic but farm solar produced 8500kWh and I used 500kWh from grid. This powered all tools for farming/ gardening , refrigeration, A/C and well pumps for agriculture and home use. I think I can get grid use to zero while still producing thousands of pounds of crops. Not just produce crops but process them also.
Another use for sunflower seeds is for micro-greens in winter.
Also we use them to bait mouse traps. Sigh.
My biggest challenge is that, while my kitchen isn’t small for a two-bedroom terraced house, I really can’t store all the food for three adults in the 720 square feet we have to play with. Space for processing tools is also limited — I desperately want a decent stand mixer but have literally nowhere to put one — and our solar power is pretty much useless in winter.
But it isn’t a disaster if some of my excess produce goes to the soup kitchen and improves community food resilience that way; and even though we do still purchase some of our staples, like you we find the variety and flavour of the fruit and veg garden to be excellent. The loganberry bushes I planted a couple of years ago are fruiting this year and the berries are absolutely delicious.
Have you read Carol Deppe’s book, The Resilient Gardener? It sounds like you’ve got your own system pretty much sorted out; her system is based on corn, squash, potatoes, beans and ducks.
(The 720 square feet is the whole house, not just the kitchen!)
@Kathryn
I’m contemplating creating a “cellar” under my downstairs floor to store my fermented veg jars.
The floor is suspended. There is a void underneath that’s about 12″ deep. The void is vented via air bricks. Thinking of putting a thermometer down there and seeing what the temperature is. I’m guessing it might be quite stable all year round (like a cave).
If the temperature is cool enough to store my ferments then I might convert the floorboards into a trap door and cover it with a rug.
I guess, if you are in a rented property, this might not be an option, or if the floor is solid.
@John
Yeah, I think the landlord would have some pretty strong opinions on us digging up the floor for a cellar. The previous house we rented did still have one. I have considered building a shed in the garden but any structure that is outdoors and free from predator access (cats, foxes) and also full of food is going to be mighty attractive to rats. I think I would rather give what we can’t store to the soup kitchen, honestly.
@Kathryn
I get your point about the landlord not being best pleased 🙂
I’m not going to do any digging. The void already exists. The floor joists don’t sit on the earth below the house. It’s an untapped source of extra space in my otherwise, small house. Ideal for a few kilner jars.
If you have floorboards on you ground floor, then you will also have a void under there.
I think there are floorboards under the kitchen linoleum but, again, I don’t fancy trying to lift it to find out. A few kilner jars is not even enough to store my saved seeds, never mind my food!
I am, however, in the process of a Big Paperwork Cull, and that should free up at least a little bit of space in due course.
@Kathryn
I’m looking/thinking about cool places to store my fermentations to stop/slow the fermentation once they are “done”.
Not enough room in the fridge and I would rather come up with nonelectric solutions anyway.
Roots cellar is appealing but lots of work and space required. Under the floor seems like a possible solution.
Another project to add to the list………..
@Bruce,
Are you using coarse or fine burrs ? Have you tried dehulling barley or wheat with your mill ?
I have not tried sunflowers but have not had much success taking the hulls off buckwheat or oats with a mill. Flour yes, groats no.
Greg, It is an electric stone mill and I can adjust the gap.I have had great success with buckwheat in the mill, similar to sunflower seed. I usually rub spelt on a rough concrete pad with an old tennis shoe. A threshing floor that I also use to thresh wheat by beating whole staffs. Yes I need to try running spelt through the mill. Some crops winnow nicely like amaranth , threshing spelt or wheat is much benefited by a strong wind to blow the chaff to one end of the threshing floor. But others like sunflower resist so I finish by floating the shells away. Once I had a whole bunch of safflower so I put it in the back of a pickup truck bed, pointed the bed into the wind and threshed it with a weed wacker ( string trimmer )
Scale gets to be an issue but processing crops for personal( small family ) use isn’t difficult .
Corn , especially flint corn, has very hard seeds that really taxes the mill . Most seed is much softer and easy on the mill.
Amaranth is easy to winnow but difficult to grind. I use a small handheld electric coffee grinder. A couple tablespoons at a time. Ground amaranth can be treated like wheat flour to make a rue and very good gravy for potatoes. The amaranth I harvest makes purple gravy !
I use nixtamalization on dent corn which seems to soften the seed a bit before grinding. Called harina
It needs to be throughly sundried before it will grind but again it seems softer after nixtamal and dried ( then ground ) compared to grinding the corn right off the dried cobs.
He who we do not name made an interesting point about Peak Phosphorous.
There are relatively limited supplies and in many ways it is far more important than nitrogen, so what happens as supplies start to dwindle>
Secondly, after the post Covid & Ukraine price hikes the experience seems to be that we dont need as much fertiliser as we have been using in the past which looks like a win-win