Going Vegan Off The Grid

There is a very strong argument for going Vegan or Vegetarian if you decide to live "off the grid".

Becoming self-sufficient using gardening - without the need to buy groceries, butchering farm animals, going hunting or fishing - means you will have a lot less hassle with hunting and fishing licenses, taking care of animals such as pigs, chickens and goats (and later butchering them for their meat) and you really only need to worry about one thing - GROWING PLANTS.

The problem with having your own garden is that a lot of people don't realize the sheer amount of food the average human consumes in a year.

I even had an argument with a friend less than a month ago while she was BBQing meat in her backyard, and her claim that her tiny backyard was large enough to feed a whole family for a year. So assuming she was talking about a momma, a poppa, and two kids (which might be teenagers and eat like pigs) stop and do the math on how much food she is talking about.

Well lets assume that the average adult consumes about the equivalent of 6 carrots per day. I say equivalent because they would be eating other things too, lettuce, cabbage, potatoes, beans, nuts, berries, etc... but for simplicity's sake lets use the "equivalent of six carrots" per day rule. Little kids might eat only 3 carrots per day and teenagers might eat between 4 and 6 carrots per day, so lets assume an average of 5 carrots per teenager.

Thus assuming 1 kid, 1 teenager, and 2 adults a family of 4 should be eating roughly 20 carrots per day. (Because 6 + 6 + 5 + 3 = 20.)

364.25 days in a year, x 20... 7,825 carrots. Or the equivalent thereof.

My friend's tiny backyard was a mere 25 feet long by 15 feet wide. There is no way she could 2185.5 carrots needed to feed herself - let alone a whole family of 4 people.

Lets pretend for a moment you decided to become a carrot farmer - and then sell / trade your carrots with other farmers for potatoes, corn, beans, flour, rice, etc, whatever you happen to need. Well then you are going to need a LOT of land to grow your intended crop of 8,000+ carrots.

Ideally you shouldn't be putting all of your eggs in one basket either.

Most subsistence farmers plant many different things because some years the weather will be bad for certain plants and you can have a famine of that one kind of plant. (Research the topic "Irish Potato Famine" sometime.)

Thus you will want to plant many different kinds of vegetables.

And you will also need to go berry picking, grow an orchard for apples, pears, grapes, etc.

It wouldn't hurt if you also researched edible flowers and wild plants too.

And if there is sugar maples nearby you could also tap them for sap for making maple syrup.

And once you've done all this, what about storage for the winter? Learning how to can and make preservatives? Making pickles, jams, jellies, etc.

The point I am getting at is, yes, you can go vegan or vegetarian and that will certainly save you time away from hunting, fishing, growing/butchering animals, milking goats, etc... but you will need to learn a lot about farming.

And lets face it, unless you grew up on a farm, you probably know diddly squat about farming.

For example.

Do you know what YIELD means when talking about farmland?

Yield means the crops you get off a particular piece of land. Typically measured in bushels per acre.

1 acre is 43,560 square feet. Roughly half the size of a soccer field.

When I was growing up and living with my parents the farm they lived on was 97 acres, but only about 70 acres was arable farmland (the other 27 acres was the house, barn, shed, grass, trees, wetlands, river, etc).

So with 70 acres of arable land - 3,049,200 square feet (enough to grow about 12 million carrots assuming a high yield rate) - then yes, absolutely, a family could grow enough food to feed themselves and still have lots left over to sell at the local farmer's market. Because lets face it, you might still need money for trips to the dentist, school supplies for the kids, new clothes (note to self, write a post about growing your own cotton for clothing), medical supplies, etc.

But what if your yield rate is really low during a particular year? The carrots could get blight, insects, thick weeds, and even wildlife like deer and ground hogs can destroy a lot of your crops.

The point is, with a small garden you're going to have a percentage of your crop that either fails to grow, is ruined by environmental hazards (too much water, too much sun, or not enough of either), plus pests, deer, rabbits, ground hogs, etc.

The biggest threats vary from year to year. One year it might be drought. Another year you might from problems with insects and wishing you had sprayed pesticides, another year several families of rodents might move into your farmland and start tearing up all your lovingly planted carrots.

I am personally a fan of intercropping. Intercropping is a method whereby you plant certain things in rows next to each other and they form a symbiotic relationship in order to keep certain pests and blights away. It raises the yield per acre of the different crops, but you have to harvest everything either by hand or use special machinery.

That is the reason why most modern farmers don't do intercropping, because its easier - machinery wise - just to plant an entire field with only 1 crop.

Then there is the issue of rotating crops. You can't plant the same thing every year in the same spot, because it will eat up the nutrients in the soil and then after several years most of the nutrients will be gone - especially if its plants like corn, which suck a lot of the nutrients out of the soil.

Even with small gardens you should be rotating your plants every year.

I argue therefore that if you have a large field that you would be better off sectioning it into 4 different quadrants and planting 4 different plants each year in that field, rotating the crops clockwise every year.

If you are serious about gardening and farming, well then I strongly recommend you research the topic a lot more so you have a better idea of how much food you will need, what kind of yield you can expect, how much land you will need to accomplish a minimal yield (assuming bad weather and conditions), what plants you will need to grow on a yearly basis and how much of each.

Its a lot of things to research - and a lot of things to grow. Have fun!

Falling Off The Grid - Homeless People in Ontario

It may seem silly to some people that there are people who deliberately want to get "off the grid" so to speak, when homeless people "fall of the grid" accidentally when they get evicted, can't find a new place to live, can't afford a new place to live, and end up homeless on the street because there isn't enough affordable housing.

INTERESTING FACTS

#1. Toronto has approx. 50,000 homeless people - enough for a small city!

#2. 80% of Toronto's homeless population already have jobs (minimum wage type jobs). The problem is that the cost of rent is too high and despite having a job, they still cannot find an affordable place to live.

#3. Only 6% of homeless people have schizophrenia. So the stereotype that all homeless people are "crazy and lazy" is completely false. Most homeless people are actually hard working and perfectly sane, they just can't find a place that can afford while working a crappy minimum wage job.

It makes you realize we could problem solve a lot of our homelessness problems just by raising the minimum wage and making sure we are building affordable homes. See my other post "Solving Toronto's Homeless Problem".

What is weird is how for the 20% of homeless people who don't have a job, why do they stay in Toronto? Or any city for that matter? Why aren't they learning how to fish, how to hunt, how to garden, finding some piece of government owned land in northern Canada - and living off the land?

Well, it is because many of them still hold out hope that they will find a job (somehow) and find a place they can afford to live in. They simply haven't given up hope that they can somehow do those things.

Which to me means they should be coming up with more business savvy things to write on their cardboard placards when begging. Things like:

"I have a master's degree in engineering. Hire me!" and then begging outside the building of some kind of engineering company.

or

"I have a bachelor's degree in marketing. Hire me!" and sit outside an advertising agency.

Eventually someone walking by will see their placard and think "Hey, why shouldn't I hire that guy?"

Well you might think "Oh, he might have a drug addiction or be an alcoholic." True, but there are also lots of alcoholics and drug addicts that manage to hold down a job anyway, regardless. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford for example has a long history of drug and alcohol addiction dating back to the 1980s.

No, the sad fact is that most homeless people simply cannot afford a place to stay.

Check out the following quotes about homelessness and energy costs by Toronto charity worker Edward de Gale.

"Canada is the second coldest country on earth and with a climate like Canada’s, energy, like food and housing is a necessity of life." - Edward de Gale. 

"It is a little known fact that the inability to pay basic utilities/energy is the second leading economic cause of homelessness in this country." - Edward de Gale.

"Over 50,000 households a year have their power disconnected in Ontario while thousands of others struggle to provide the necessary energy to stay warm and cook meals. That’s one household with their power cut every 10 minutes, every hour, of every day, for a year." - Edward de Gale.

"Many Ontario households must choose between eating and heating, and seniors and those with special needs must choose between medication and heating." - Edward de Gale.

"Families, with minor children, unable to provide basic utilities/energy for their children are vulnerable to child protection orders because they are unable to provide the necessities of life." - Edward de Gale.

Bowfishing Off the Grid

Fishing and Bowfishing are two great ways to get added fish and protein for your diet when living off the grid.

Part of this will be learning how to gut and cook the fish.

Gutting a fish is relatively easy once you learn.

1. Rinse the fish off.
2. Make a cut behind the dorsal fin, over the back, and under the other dorsal fin. Grasp the head to anchor yourself during this process.
   • Slice off the dorsal and ventral fins if you wish. If you're working with a particularly spiny catfish, the skinning process may be easier if you remove the fins. This isn't necessary if your catfish is less spiny.
3. Make a perpendicular cut along the spine. Take care not to break the spine with your knife; just make a shallow cut to help in the skinning process.
4. Use the pliers to peel back the skin. Lay the fish on it's side and use the pliers to grasp the skin where you made a cut at the dorsal fin. Pull the skin toward the tail. Flip the fish and peel back the skin on the other side.
   • Use a knife to help loosen the skin if it's difficult to peel.
   • Remove remaining bits of skin with your fingers, if necessary.
5. Rinse the fish again. If possible use a hose, or the faucet provided by the marina. The pressure should be just strong enough to remove loose scales; avoid blasting the fish with water, as the meat inside is delicate.

Regardless of whether you fish with a traditional reel and rod, or with a bow and reel, you will still need a local fishing license that is valid.

So in Ontario you need an Ontario Fishing License, which you can get from your local Ministry of Natural Resources office - which means getting an Outdoors Card - which allows you to buy fishing and hunting tag licenses.

Which Card is Right For You?

Activity	Card	Licence Tag
Fish Only	Fishing	Fishing
Hunt Only	Hunting	Hunting
Fish and Hunt	Hunting	Fishing and Hunting

A variety of different rules apply for fishing and hunting, so you will need to read up on all the relevant laws and licenses on government websites for wherever you happen to live.

In Ontario the only kind of fish you can do bowfishing for is carp. Everything else is illegal. So it is important that you know what carp looks like before you try bowfishing for carp.

See the photo on the right and also the top right to see what carp look like. I also have a detailed photo below of what carp look like.

As you can see they get pretty big. They're not dinky fish. Not huge either.

It is also important that you know how to shoot a bow. If you are new to archery it is recommended you take some archery lessons first. You can also get free archery tips from a variety of websites.

Most people who do bowfishing use a compound bow because that is what is commonly sold at hunting and fishing stores. However if you are skilled archer you can also use a recurve bow or even a longbow. The photo way at the top of this post is of a man with a longbow showing off the carp he caught.

In theory you could even use a low poundage crossbow. But crossbows are pretty much overkill when it comes to fishing - and they are not commonly use for fishing so it will be difficult to find a bowfishing reel designed for a crossbow.

I also found the YouTube video below, a guide to bowfishing. The guy in the video does a VERY GOOD job of explaining how to bowfish. Very handy to watch and learn.



This second video is NOT a how to video. But it is a video about bowfishing for carp so I thought I would include it so people can see them in action.



Note to Self... Spearfishing! :)