So what would we be doing on Day366? That’s where my thinking led me after running though the minutia of planning, i.e. “oops I just ran out of everything” after surviving whatever it was. I realized that the situation would be analogous to being a homesteader. You get off the trail, go 300 miles into the wilderness with your wagon and set up shop. All you have is what you brought, and what you can grow/hunt/collect.

They key is having access to land. You need at least 1/4 acre to put in enough garden items in quantity to last the year. Most people (me included) live in built up areas and suburbs, so there’s some area but not enough to put in cereal crops and keep animals. Here’s my current plan for subdivision farming, it’s in the initial phase but I think it’s viable:

1. Go vertical.

There are planters that can be set up to grow in multiple layers, that’s needed to maximize the volume of plantable soil.

2. Potatoes.

 Spuds yield well in planters, and would have to be a staple to provide enough calories. I can’t think of any other crop that beats it for yield. They keep well, and propagate from eyes on the parent tuber.

3. Sunflowers.

Hugely important, as they provide nuts and vital oil. This is probably the only practical way to obtain vegetable oil off-grid, and without fats and oil you starve. There are small-scale screw drive oil presses on the ‘Net, they seem to do a good job of extracting the oil and are reasonably priced.  The sunflower plants would need a lot of area, it would be a split between those, a garden, and wheat.

4. Garden.

The usual mixes, planted in said vertical pots. You would need to devote more space to things that can be stored in a root cellar, like onions, carrots, beets, etc. Come winter that’s all that’s available.  My parents had these special wood bushel baskets for that, everything went in there and in the vented crawlspace/basement. I’d need to score baskets, I have nothing like this now.

5. Wheat, corn, and other cereals

I think you’d need some amount of corn and wheat, although I’m skeptical that you’d get enough in to make a large quantity of kernels. It takes a lot of plants to yield, typically 50 bushels/acre. So it looks tough to get enough cereals out of a small plot to live on.

6. Wood.

Technically not farming, but this would be the only way to cook and heat. Harbor Freight makes a $170 cast iron wood stove, that and some 6″ black pipe and I’m set. Have to go cut wood and season it, but we used to do this and I’m very familiar with it. Byproduct is ash, that can be used to make lye and then soap using the sunflower oil.  PITA, but doable.

Well, that’s the extent of the plan. If successful, I’d have the same standard of living of an 1850s Irish peasant, alive but none too happy.  This is what the plan lacks:

• Meat. Need chickens, that would be fabulous. We ran a small poultry farm, so again I know how but I have none on hand.
• Milk/butter/cream. This is pretty much out of the question, without dairy cattle.
• Sugar. Comes from beets and cane, not happening. Maybe bees, but once again I have none.
• Fruit. There’s a possibility for strawberries and blackberries, but they can be hard to start up. Can plant trees but takes years to produce.

I will be trying all these things out in small scale, to see how they work. I researched all of this, it’s just a matter of buying the seeds and a bit of equipment.