Right, and I understand that must be aggravating. I do not intend to cause aggravation. My initial comment was in shock at the fact that while lots of folks are leaving desk jobs to farm, they aren't really doing anything other than effectively sharecropping. They don't own land, they only barely get to decide who they are selling their produce to. I suppose when I read that title, it suggests that people are buying and owning farms, rather than just doing the same old permadebt path that's so well worn by the Farm Bureau. Are these people going to have any savings in the 10, 20, 30 year term? Will they be able to own their property and pass it on to another, less indebted generation? I don't know the answer, but if we are doing the same things as ever, we will get the same results as ever. I have my Little House on the Prairie dreams like _refugee_, like lots of people our age. But that's all they are ever going to be, dreams.
Wakey wakey eggs and bakey. Look - the average American burns about 13,000 kWh a year. That's in electricity - we'll ignore transport for reasons that are about to become clear. That also doesn't cover things like heating. 13,000 kWh a year is 36 kWh a day. Let's assume you work 8 hours a day... and let's assume that the only thing you do is peddle an exercise bike to generate electricity. We're going to assume that because we have the best numbers there... depending on who you ask, a cyclist in good training can generate about a quarter horsepower indefinitely. That's about a fifth of a kilowatt, by the way. So. Sitting at your Peloton, which is one of the not-connected-to-the-internet, not-screened, not-powered spinning cycles, your workday involves generating 2 kW. You're burning 36. Before you get on the bus or get in the car. Before you heat a tea kettle on the stove. Before you take a warm shower. Before you heat the house. ___________________________________________________________ Now obviously - you can cut your consumption. You can put up a windmill. You can dam a waterfall. You can hang solar panels (we won't get into what it costs in energy to make a solar panel). But as far as your raw energy profile, your physical output as a human is a little over 5% of your physical input as a human, just in electricity (a gallon of gas is about 37kWh so if your commute is 25 miles each way you've doubled your footprint, for example, and that's if you're driving a brand new Prius). "Off the grid" is a lovely idea but in order for you to do it, you have to consume an awful lot of resources. You want water? You need water rights. You want access? You need a variance. Even if you wanna do subsistence farming you gotta be serious about it. The population of London is about 9 million right now. The population of London under Henry VIII was about 50,000. That delta is due to the modernization of agriculture. Little House on the Prairie was set in the 1870s, when the population of the United States was under 40 million people. It's over 400 now. You can have your dream. But you need to recognize that as envisioned by you, it's a selfish dream. Selfish dreams cost more money than selfless ones. If you want 5 acres and independence, you need to be producing enough crops to feed a CSA with 150 shares. That probably gives you $3000 a month from April through September. That's $18,000. So. you've got 5 acres, you're feeding yourself, and you've got $1500 a month in bills. Can you do it? I would argue you can. It's a pain in the ass, though. So it's not that you can't dream. It's that you can't dream easy.I have my Little House on the Prairie dreams like _refugee_, like lots of people our age. But that's all they are ever going to be, dreams.
Accurate. And energy mitigation looks a lot like shitting into sawdust compost, sleeping in a trailer-house hybrid, small gas engine pump irrigation, wood stove, all hand tools except a walk-behind tractor from '89 that has no easy-to-find replaceable parts. CSA shares supplemented by twice-weekly farmers markets might get you $3,600/month, but you've spent enough on gas and storage at this point that the real value you've incurred after a day at market is about $1.75/hr. The only decision point that makes any of that easier is growing for a market with a cashable crop like fruit/berries or wholesale grains (non-optional at the scale discussed here) instead of growing for self-sufficiency and a portfolio of produce. To speak of something I know about, you can pack a shit ton of blueberries into 5 acres.
Whatcom County grows 80% of the raspberries in the United States. Wholesale they make between $1.50 and $1.80 a pound. An acre of raspberries in Whatcom County costs $3500 to produce, and produces between 5,000 and 8,000 lbs of marketable raspberries. I was looking at a 20 acre raspberry farm for about a million dollars. That's somewhere between $100k and $300k gross every year. Clearly - it's a living. Clearly, it's something you can turn a profit on. But you better like raspberries. I was also looking at hazelnuts. Whatcom County used to produce 80% of the hazelnuts in the united states and I like trees. Unfortunately, the U of Oregon agriculture department determined that the break-even period on a hazelnut tree is 14 years, and they only produce for 20-25. And that is why there are no new hazelnut orchards.