Comment by jgershen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgershen | Hacker News Reader

What I really enjoyed about this article was hearing how difficult his experience really was -- and you can tell he A) actually knows what he's talking about and B) is still understating the difficulty. I've always assumed that I would "know how to survive off the land" -- my outdoor self-confidence pretty much comes from time backpacking in the Scouts as a kid, and from reading a lot of Heinlein. And I have power tool experience, and I can do physical labor. How hard could it be?

So at the beginning of the article, I was thinking "this seems incredible, I would love to do something like that." In the middle, I was beginning to appreciate how horribly difficult and unpleasant it would actually be. And by the end, I was realizing that if I absolutely had to live off the land on my own, without society to bail me out, I would almost certainly screw something up and starve. I think almost all of us would.

Anyway, you might have already known that. But for some reason this article hit just the right note to make me aware of the arrogance I've always had about how hard surviving via subsistence farming would really be. I'm going to go eat some cereal now and get back to work on the startup in the morning.

I thought he was being way too ambitious. If I had to make something like that work, my focus would be on potatoes and possibly a cow for milk, but it would of course depend on more land, the correct climate and probably better timing. He seemed dead-set on eating meat every day, which seems to me to have been very unrealistic, especially with such a tiny amount of land, unless he was cheating and using bought grain etc. to feed the animals.

You can probably go for eating eggs every day.

horribly difficult and unpleasant it would actually be.

I seriously doubt that he knew what he was talking about. The biggest problem in subsistence farming is the risk you take. All the knowledge you need is out there: we've been growing food for thousands of years and are still researching how to get better at it. Yes, it requires hard physical labor, but beyond that, it's not at all difficult on a small scale.

You want to have a small garden? Find a bit of land and prepare about 3'x3' of it: Dig it up, turn the soil over and make sure it isn't too sandy (add mulch if it is) or clayey (add sand if it is). If the area regularly gets flooded, then build a small wall around it and fill with dirt so you have a 3x3' raised bed that will drain properly.

Then plant one row each of squash, potatoes (for the experiment you can just cut an eye out of a potato you would eat and plant it) and tomato seeds. Potatoes go about 3" deep, squash and tomatoes about 1/2" deep. If you're in the Northern US you might need to use tomato plants instead of seeds since it's already July.

If you want to, you can build a no-effort compost heap next to it: just dump your organic kitchen waste in a pile next to the garden. At the end of the growing season, work the pile into the soil and it will get more fertile every year.

Check daily to make sure the soil doesn't get too dry (water in the evening) and pull any weeds you see. Don't do any more than this and you'll be eating squash, tomatoes and potatoes in three months. With a plot only 3'x3' it will take only a few minutes a day. It's that easy.

It's insanely difficult to start, but maintaining when you get in a habit isn't TOO bad.

I just moved to a new place a few months back and had to dig out a garden. The existing soil was CRAP, I literally spent 4 solid days of digging and amassed what I estimate to be nearly 1000 pounds of rocks in my driveway, merely from digging out a 30x8x1.5 foot section along my driveway. The soil is so poor that even bringing in 2.5 yards (two very full pickup truck loads) of premium organic soil and mixing it in has yielded horrible soil. It will take a year and some more serious cash to make that soil any decent.

However, once that is done, it's merely daily watering/weeding and thinning and eating. Of course, there are no chickens (yet, still have to make a run and coop) to complicate things, but it's all about making a habit and sticking to it.

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