Self-Sufficiency Without Meat

[Emeline]

Thanks kitty and Ludi.

Another advantage is I am HUGE fan of ease of storage. I only "can" fruit and pickles. I adore apples because you don't HAVE to do anything except store them correctly. Likewise I have a huge preference for vegetables which can be simply stored (potatoes, squash, onions, carrots etc). I've never home canned vegetables. I've frozen surpluses but mostly we never seem to need to eat them anyway because we have so much stored or fresh.

Likewise meat. I've pondered getting a pressure canner but I don't know if the extra trouble would be worth it, especially for just two of us. I don't even know anyone in NZ who ever home-canned meat. I think it's because we're in a place where there's always been fresh meat easily available, especially sheep.

I think for us, if we had to have meat, it would make more sense for us just to keep meat chickens or rabbits again. It takes the two of us about three days to eat a whole chicken as it is,

Forgoing meat altogether would mean making sure we gathered all the nuts and sunflower seeds rather than just a good quantity of them like we do now. Nuts and seeds are very easy to store.

As a system for someone in the right circumstances this would be such a simple, easy system. Use fresh and stored vegetables. Use fresh and stored nuts and seeds. Keep laying hens (also easy). Focus on apples for fruit (easily stored). If you didn't have access to water canners, pressure cookers or freezers, I think it's certainly a methodology to think about. You could see meat and milk products as optional additions if you could get them. I'd have to process the peaches, pears and other easily perishable fruit though because I do see that as part of our staple diet in our case.

Still I think nuts, seeds, fresh and stored vegetables, fresh, stored and preserved fruit and fresh eggs could be a very good system for some people as the staples of survival. Nothing to stop them adding extras through foraging, bartering and so on to top it up.

[badkitty]

I'm into ease of storage, also, Emeline, but climate dictates that we need to can a lot more if we are to get through the winter with anything interesting left to eat by April.

We pulled the garden out in September, and by now we only have onions and half-sprouted potatoes left in the root cellar. It'll be another couple weeks before we even have dandelion greens. I can see why grain is a big dietary inclusion at this latitude - at least with bread and pancakes, we can have a little variety. I normally can a fair bit of jam, plus some fruit, and we also put a lot of fruit and vegetables in the freezer. I am aiming to freeze a lot more stuff this year, too - we actually managed to run out of a bunch of different things this year - peas, strawberries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries - not good. If we did not have electricity for the freezer, I guess I would have to can or dehydrate a lot more food than I do, but for now, freezing works the best for us for the majority of the vegetables and a lot of fruit, in terms of quality of end product.

I have tried canning meat, but am not overly thrilled with the result - the texture does not do it for me. I mean to try canning beans, as it is much more convenient to open a jar of beans than to have to soak them the night before.

Still I think nuts, seeds, fresh and stored vegetables, fresh, stored and preserved fruit and fresh eggs could be a very good system for some people as the staples of survival. Nothing to stop them adding extras through foraging, bartering and so on to top it up.

I agree, though again, I say climate has to be taken into consideration. In our area, pine nuts and hazelnuts are the only nuts that will grow locally. A zone warmer, and you can get walnuts and butternuts, as well, but we're pretty limited here. The pine nut trees that I planted will take a decade or more to bear, so we're pretty much stuck with hazelnuts. I can grow sunflowers for seeds, but that's about it, short of canola, for oily seeds, as well. It would be a pretty dismal diet without preserved goods and some dairy, at the least. As I've said before, I'm not a heavy meat eater, but roast beef or chicken soup is something special when it's been -40 out for a week.

[K.B.]

Thanks for posting the links to the vegetarian survivalism info, Emeline. I've got some long flights coming up this next week, so it will give me something to "chew" on...

I do agree that your list of nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit and eggs would be a set of staples. I would also add honey to the list as one of my personal preferences and as a relatively easy substitute for refined sugar.

Here is a section of a spreadsheet I was playing around with a few months back after some discussion was going on over at permies, relating to a "full-diet" CSA:

weekly food allotment
item amount avg cal per day

eggs half dozen 60

greens 3.5lbs 15

veggies 14lbs 150

fruit 14lbs 500

nuts 1lb in shell 200

honey 1/2lb 100

grain/seeds 1.75lbs 400

dried beans 1lb 170
________________________
total 1595

It was helpful for me, even with the caveats of having to average types of foods into calorie amounts per category, to see how much I would have to produce (or store) on a per person basis in order to have the amount available each week.

***sorry the formatting sucks when pasting in from the spreadsheet. The categories are listed down the left, then the amount needed on a weekly basis, then the average amount of calories a consumer would get per day (assuming eating the same amount each day over the 7 day period - unlikely).

[K.B.]

Based on the above, the diet is not bad at ~1600 calories per day. Not enough for many young and active people, but supplementals with additional seeds/grains or nuts can bulk up the calories significantly. I'm still hoping to be able to add in several hundred calories a day, for my own preferences, from meat (fish, birds, mammals).

The veggie category can also be quite a bit higher with regard to average calories per day if the emphasis is on mostly starchy components (potato, sweet potato, sunchoke, water chestnut, etc...).

If you add up the total amount of food (by weight/mass) per day, it does get pretty hefty...

[Emeline]

kitty, oh yes, absolutely - it's not even just general locations which will have differing circumstances but even within a fairly localized area what people can access could be quite diverse. At our place we're lucky enough to have mature fruit and nut trees (some planted by my grandfather in the 1940's) which are prolific producers most years. That means we're fortunate enough to have ready access to a lot of fruit and nuts every year. Even in our area, because of "development", a lot of those old fruit and nut trees have been torn out. Even in our small country town there's only a small number of properties left which have those old orchards and walnut trees. Given that vegetable gardens are pretty easy to set up around here (very fertile soil) and it also doesn't take a lot to get some laying hens up and running - or er laying - if someone was considering the system I pondered above for most of them (in our area anyway) finding a property with enough mature fruit and nuts trees would probably be the most difficult part of it. Still - there may be ways in which they can adapt it. I really think adaption is what it's all about anyway. If you could live somewhere where there were enough fruit and nut trees which were good producers I think it's definitely worth considering this kind of a system.

The other thing is I'd love to hear of anyone who actually trialled such a system. That's why I did my Great Experiment in 2011 to determine how self sufficient we could really be when the rubber hit the road. I learned quite a bit from that - that we could markedly reduce the number of vegetables we produce, that hens are not only self-supporting all year round but very profitable and fresh, free range eggs are a great barter item, that walnuts and sunflower seeds stored for a year or more do NOT go rancid (at least ours didn't), that we need even more apple trees, we really do NOT need any more grapevines (even though my father's just struck and planted another 20!), that our sunflowers had on average 750grams of seeds each, but mostly - THIS. Although I enjoy making jam, relishes, pickles, canning/bottling peaches, pears etc there is a BIG difference between doing it as an option/hobby (doing it when you like it/feel like it) to deciding you WILL process all the fruit you can from a large number of fruit trees and not waste ANY of it. At the time I was pondering importing a pressure canner to can vegetables/meat/fish etc but by the time I'd just processed all the fruit for several hours a day for a number of weeks I was dreading being stuck in the kitchen doing it for another day. I don't WANT to spend weeks in the kitchen processing vegetables, meat, fish etc, especially when I have much easier alternatives, ergo, just STORE plenty of vegetables and buy or barter a small amount of meat locally. And as I say, if we find we do really want to go on having meat in the future, it'd be easier to get meat chickens and rabbits up and running again and maybe just eat one a week fresh (because we're no longer huge meat eaters anyway). This might not work for a family with ravenous, growing kids but it will certainly work for us.

Of course this hugely comes down to what you also like to eat. Like I say my father and I seem to have gone through some natural progression where we just want meat less and less. Some people might be miserable without a lot of meat. Other people might need to depend a lot more on meat because of their circumstances. I'm not suggesting for a moment there are any right and wrong answers. As I see it it's all about ideas and options.

KB, thanks for that. Honey, yes - great point! I forgot about it because our family has been getting it from a particular local apiary since my grandparents got it from their grandparents. I've never kept bees but like you say, they would be a great addition to the kind of system being discussed in this thread.

I've done a lot of similar equations, ergo, how many calories do we need, how can we get them etc. I think it's the first "survival" question we should ask ourselves. I think it's kind of lucky for us that I only need about 1200 and my 80 year old father only needs about 1500 (he's still very active but he also easily gains weight), but honestly, I think a LOT of people will find they need a lot LESS calories than they think they do if they go by generic guidelines. I think it's very individual, but I think the point where you start gaining excess weight you neither want or need is a pretty good indicator of the point where you need to stop eating calories!

I've thought, if one day we had to go into "survival mode", we could do something like this from what we produce here:'

Potatoes 300 calories
Other vegetables, especially corn, squash, yams etc 300 calories
Eggs 160 calories
Fruit 200 calories
Nuts 100 calories
Seeds 100 calories

We could also get serious about using the things like the acorns, elderberries, "weeds" etc and you've inspired me too KB to start growing mushrooms! We could barter some of our own produce for meat or fish or we could just get meat chickens and rabbits again as I mentioned. Ducks, geese etc are another fairly easy option. A couple of milking goats to top it up if needed would be my first choice though. If for some reason we felt we HAD to get another large meat animal again it would probably be a pig but last time we did that we actually went halves in it with someone else anyway. Even half a pig lasts two of us a long time. Again, in a way we're lucky in some ways we're at this point in our lives. I remember when I was a kid our family of five ate a whole sheep a fortnight just for starters!

Right now of course at our place, we're still eating all the meat, fish and dairy products we want. Not a huge amount but they're certainly topping up what we produce ourselves, they give variety, more nutrition and I LIKE fish, milk and cheese in particular! This thread is more about "how could we do without them" if need be? Could we do without them? What other options would we have? At what point would we RATHER die than eat another sunflower seed, hahaha! What would happen if the day came when we could no longer afford them?

It would be kinda cool to actually TRIAL eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs and honey basically for some months and see how it went. I don't know that I want to "trial it" before we have to though!

I would guess most of us are still eating pretty "middle class" but what if ongoing global/economic collapse means some of us have to "step down" to a more basic diet like much of the world already eats? How could we as individuals adapt given our own personal circumstances and resources?

I think it's good to consider/discuss the alternatives even now, because after all even on this board most of us are positioning ourselves to a changing world in the way that we think best suits US as individuals or families. It's interesting to compare, share ideas, experiences....take what you want, leave the rest.

[sos]

"It would be kinda cool to actually TRIAL eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs and honey basically for some months and see how it went. I don't know that I want to "trial it" before we have to though!"

I've been doing this, sans eggs, for almost 3 months. Last year I ate off of nothing but my preps for around three months. You're right in that you really learn a lot from such trial.

"At what point would we RATHER die than eat another sunflower seed, hahaha!"

Just last night I found out I would rather die than eat another maple seed. I tried a few of them yesterday after reading they were nontoxic. I had a really bad night and wasn't able to move an inch without throwing up. Finally it stopped this morning when there wasn't even any green liquid left to come up. I'm glad I only ate a few seeds.

[K.B.]

I've thought, if one day we had to go into "survival mode", we could do something like this from what we produce here:'

Potatoes 300 calories
Other vegetables, especially corn, squash, yams etc 300 calories
Eggs 160 calories
Fruit 200 calories
Nuts 100 calories
Seeds 100 calories

We could also get serious about using the things like the acorns, elderberries, "weeds" etc and you've inspired me too KB to start growing mushrooms! .

Emeline - your numbers look pretty well balanced in terms of protein, carb and some nice oils from the seeds and nuts. Plus you wouldn't have to eat 5lbs a day to get your calories!

Seriously though, whenever I think of how it may be difficult to eat more food that is less calorie "dense", I then think back on how it is just a matter of growing more of what you like... for example, my 8 year old son, who is very active in general, can eat a nice big lunch and then sit down and eat a whole quart of pear sauce by himself (what is that, 6-8 medium size pears???). He just burns through it... I had thought the apples would be the big hit, but the pears have kept us in fruit through the winter, instead.

Very glad to hear you've gotten interested in cultivating some mushrooms! any thoughts on which type and how you will go about it?

[Emeline]

"It would be kinda cool to actually TRIAL eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs and honey basically for some months and see how it went. I don't know that I want to "trial it" before we have to though!"

I've been doing this, sans eggs, for almost 3 months. Last year I ate off of nothing but my preps for around three months. You're right in that you really learn a lot from such trial.

"At what point would we RATHER die than eat another sunflower seed, hahaha!"

Just last night I found out I would rather die than eat another maple seed. I tried a few of them yesterday after reading they were nontoxic. I had a really bad night and wasn't able to move an inch without throwing up. Finally it stopped this morning when there wasn't even any green liquid left to come up. I'm glad I only ate a few seeds.

sos, so how do you feel about it now you've eaten that way for 3 months? Do you feel healthier? Do you feel there's enough variety?

[Emeline]

Emeline - your numbers look pretty well balanced in terms of protein, carb and some nice oils from the seeds and nuts. Plus you wouldn't have to eat 5lbs a day to get your calories!

Seriously though, whenever I think of how it may be difficult to eat more food that is less calorie "dense", I then think back on how it is just a matter of growing more of what you like... for example, my 8 year old son, who is very active in general, can eat a nice big lunch and then sit down and eat a whole quart of pear sauce by himself (what is that, 6-8 medium size pears???). He just burns through it... I had thought the apples would be the big hit, but the pears have kept us in fruit through the winter, instead.

Very glad to hear you've gotten interested in cultivating some mushrooms! any thoughts on which type and how you will go about it?

KB, right, it's kinda funny out things work out when you actually begin to observe and document it as it were, rather than "believing this is so". That's an impressive son who I'm sure will grow up to be a big, strong, young man!

I find too in terms of thinking something like fruit for example is bulky and that it would be hard to eat THAT much, that firing it in the blender reduces it to almost nothing. Quite often for breakfast I'll fire four large pieces of fruit in the blender with some cottage cheese or yoghurt and a few other things but it really blends down to just one medium size shake. I have half for breakfast and half for lunch. It's the same with green smoothies - great way to get lots of raw, green vegetables without much effort even in eating them. Just drink them down! Apparently you can get hand crank blenders too.

Re the mushrooms there was actually a good article in a magazine I subscribe to, the NZ Gardener, this month which was pretty timely. Fungi are very fascinating. I never realised how important they actually were - in this article it says all life on earth would cease without fungi.

I thought I'd give the oyster mushrooms a try first.

Here's the dealer I'll get them from:

http://mushroomgourmet.co.nz/