Starving off the Land: Figuring out first-hand food
I always thought of myself as a city mouse, but it wasn’t until I left Manhattan for a very rural part of Cape Cod that I realized I didn’t know jack about mice.
Three years ago my husband Kevin and I traded in our Upper West Side condo for two wooded lakeside acres and a house that puts the ‘shack’ in ramshackle. When we moved in, we discovered that we had insects taking up residence in our floor joists. We had woodpeckers bent on turning our siding into Swiss cheese. And, naturally, we had mice.
But we also had land. Land!
I’ve been a food writer for nigh-on two decades but, until we moved to the country, just about everything that I cooked, ate, and wrote about had passed through someone else’s hands. But having land meant we could put an end to all that. Land means food!
We can grow it, we can raise it, we can fish for it in our back yard! We’ll garden, we’ll compost, we’ll can! We’ll hunt, we’ll gather! Primitive peoples have been doing it since time began —how hard can it be?
The answer, of course, is really bloody hard. You have to get up early, and spend your days doing dirty, difficult jobs. You have to battle the elements and the insects. You have to know things like whether your soil is acidic or alkaline and what kinds of bugs trout eat in April and which mushrooms have “death” in their name. The spirit was willing but the skill set was weak.
What I needed was a goal. A reasonable, achievable goal to give my efforts some structure. Just such a goal occurred to me, coincidentally, on New Year’s Day of 2009. I thought it was a pretty good idea, so I ran it by my husband. “Honey,” I said, “do you think we can go the whole year and eat one thing every day that we grow or fish or hunt or gather?”
Kevin is always supportive of me and my work, likes the idea of living off the land, and is possessed of an irrepressible can-do attitude. “Not a chance,” he said.
Not a chance?
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I really enjoyed reading your blog post, Tamar!
This post comes from an urban homesteader in (soon to be flooded) Baton Rouge, LA. I loved this article. It had a really quirky feel when I read it. Thanks for that. Sometimes I think there really is a parallel in the sense of life as we know it in Louisiana to those of you on the northern shores in New England – how you experience the humidity and often unforgiving climate that we do here in this deep south neck’o'the woods. I’m going to check your blog post out. You’ve got a fan!
Danielle — Growing food is never easy, no matter where you live. It’s particularly difficult if you’re in danger of flooding! Thanks for the kind words, and good luck with the homestead.
And, Heather, thanks!