This is my dream: To live as my forefathers once did - in harmony with the land that sustains us. A project to investigate and innovate the creation of a low impact home with methods of living in a form of permaculture designed to sustain my family and improve biodiversity. To leave the land richer than before and in doing so enable others to do so.
Food for the whole year
Posted 30/03/08 by Matt B in the Questions category
How little can we eat well on?I was reading up on an unrelated topic and came across an interesting little fact. Under the law of Moses the Israelites were people are instructed to have a feast this feast should take place at the temple and use 10% of the years increase. The idea was to share it with the priests (Levi), the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (poor and wageless people including voluntary workers basically).
So if one had 11 new cows this year and 28 new sheep the feast would consist of 1 cow and 2 sheep. You can read the passage in question in the book Deuteronomy (Chapter 14 in the Bible). One interesting thing was that if it was too far to go with all that food then you could sell it and buy what ever you wanted when you got to the city.
Now that got me thinking. In today's money, assuming that wages are similar, that would be £2,000 to £5,000 ($3,000 to $10,000 in America at a guess). I tried to work out how many cows that would buy and how many people that would feed. Given that a cow should feed a family of four or five for at least a year I made the total number of people getting something to eat would be around 8,000 people.
That in itself was a bit stunning but this led me to another thought - how little could you feed a family for?
Let us consider an average family of five people. £200 or so should get you a an entire cow from what I can work out add to that the cost of a very big freezer and the cost of running it. I wonder what the price would be. The price at the moment of buying beef every day from TESCO is between £1,000 and £1,500 ($2,000 - $3,000 in American money).
Can the same bulk results be obtained with vegetables? Even if they don't if you keep sharing the cost and result among friends and neighbours season by season fresh vegetables would be available.
Of course the price gets even lower if you take an allotment and grow the stuff yourself (idea suggested by my ever thoughtful wife).
My question therefore is this - what would the total estimated cost of feeding the family be for the year and using such methods how low could you drive the price of the year's food? How would it work? What are the hidden costs? (and) What would be needed (initial equipment investment)?
Your answers, thoughts and ideas please.
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One could live long and healthy on black beans and brown rice with a few legumes. Throw in some hormone free meat and you'd live a very robust lifestyle. It's the nasty carbs and chemical filled food that do us end and inflate our appetites.