Is subsistence farming possiable in the midwest?

Hello all,

I saw a book on ebay that says you could farm all your food even in the northern midwest states. I was just wondering what you all think of it. Is it feasiable or is the growing season to short? Just looking into it with the way the economy is.

The intro to the book was at

http://cgi.ebay.com/Farming-for-the-Family-in-2009-Subsistence-Gardening_W0QQitemZ300298062904QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item300298062904&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50


First post so sorry for any spelling errors or if this is the wrong place for this post.

I think if you have a greenhouse or hoophouse or even cold frames for your tomatoes and peppers, pretty much everything else can be grown in the time you have.

Getting cold crops out there as early as possible and using row covers. Then doing the same thing in the early fall.

To make it sustainable, you would need to do a LOT of canning, freezing, and preservation as your fresh harvest time could be as little as 4 months.

I have not done any of this, I'm just thinking out loud. Hopefully folks who have actually done it will chime in. Might also do some Searches as I'm sure this topic has come up before and there are folks on DG who do this.

Have you looked at this site? http://pathtofreedom.com/

I haven't read it in awhile, but I believe self-sufficiency was their aim. Great reading, anyway.

Subsistence farming is no fun. Lots of folks did it in the thirties to a large degree but not completely. You can do most of your foodstuffs, if you have sufficient acreage. A vegetarian could grow grains ( corn , wheat or barley) potatoes and other root crops as well as more general fresh type vegetables. Canning and winter storage ( rootcellar or equivalent) short season sorghum for molasses and sweetener. They even parched wheat for a coffe substitute. It would not be a varied diet and short on many essential vitamins. Varius fruits can also be grown and canned or dried for year round use. A little more acreage and you could maintain cows for milk, Chickens and other fowl like guinea fowl for meat and eggs, hogs for meat and shortening. I have been there and it is work. A draft horse or mule would be necessary to do the farm work. Plus you need a wood lot for fuel. You will also have to come up with the money for taxes by hiring out or selling something. Ditto for clothing, altho it it was once possible to spin, weave and sew, tan your own leather to make shoes, it is very difficult. Forget about anything that has monthly bills like electricity, telephones etc. The old homestead had 4 rooms and a path and it was still very difficult to keep up.

I remember my grandparents subsistence farming.

Keep the day job.

Frank

Thanks for the responses! Ouch that does sound like alot of work. How much of your food can you resonablly expect to raise and still keep your day job?

Fresh vegetables in season, you should be able do. Those that freeze well and root crops like potatoes , onions, turnips etc you can store for extended use.

Also fresh fruits in season, canned, frozen and made into preserves.

Gees, Farmerdill you just described my life as a boy on my dad’s farm. Lot’s of work and little time for anything else. We were always planting, harvesting, preserving food, butchering, making hay, milking cows, feeding hogs or shoveling ditches. It’s a hard life it can be done but I would not want to go through that again. Anything like a surplus crop was sold to buy store goods and flour sacks were made into shirts.
The thing about those days is that neighbors were more than the guy that live next door. Whole communities pulled together shared, bartered and generally supported each other. Farmerdill I believe that we both pray that no one has to go through this again.
Oldude

You must have had it easy oldude. No mention of cutting 12 -15 cords of firewood for the winter, or getting up at 4 in the morning, breaking the ice on the waterbucket, hauling in wood and starting the fire in the cookstove and loading up the old box stove, before heading out to milk and feed those cows. You are right, I would not want to go thru that again. Do some of the city slickers good to experience a little of it tho. No frills living at its best. There are still a few Amish communities, pretty much living that way. Maybe a visit would make us all a little less like spoiled children. While I miss the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards catalogs, I don't miss the outhouse especially in the winter.

We better quit this. I bet some of these young folks are rolling their eyes thinking to themselves I bet they say I walked 5 mile to school uphill everyday. Seriously I respect anyone who is attempting to become self sufficient but it does not come without lots of sacrifice.
Oldude

Farmerdill and oldude,

You are both describing how my grandma lived on her farm in the MO Ozarks. You guys really take me back to that time. As a little kid, I thought the farm was great fun, but for the adults it was a terribly hard way to live.

She sold eggs, milk, and cream for the items the farm didn't produce - sugar, salt, coffee, chicken feed, kerosene, grain for the cows and horses, etc. She grew and cut the hay for her cows and horses. Her garden, apple orchard, and wild blackberries provided all the fruits and vegetables. Chicken was the main protein.

Her underground tornado shelter doubled as a storage area for potatoes, onions, turnips, apples, carrots, and canned goods.

She had a team of two horses for plowing and for hitching to the wagon to go into town. The only house water was what ran off the roof and into the cistern, which frankly wasn't all that big. Hot water was in the reservoir on the wood cook stove after it was hauled out of the cistern with a bucket and taken into the house. Wood was cut with a hand saw and split with an axe, several cords every year.

Before she got electricity in the late 1950s, clothes washing was done on a scrub board in a wash tub, ironing was done with flat irons heated on the kitchen stove, light was from kerosene lamps. Her dresses were made from flour and sugar sacks and her aprons from feed sacks.

While we really, really don't want to do that today you can still cut your food bill quite a lot by growing and preserving much of your own food. My brother's daughter and son-in-law have a house in Utah on a quarter acre. The entire front yard, back yard, and parkway are entirely planted with fruit trees and vegetables rather than a lawn and ornamental plants. This provides their family of four with all the fruit and vegetables they can use -- fresh in season and canned/frozen the rest of the year.

Personally, I'm not quite that ambitious. But I did grow enough last summer to provide me with enough vegetables that I've actually seen a dent in my food bill for the last 10 months. I'm going to double my vegetable planting this year.



Karen