Sustainability - really?

Our Little Farm · #21 02/28/12, 05:09 PM

Well let's see. We had a dozen or so chickens and a couple of roosters. From Early Spring to Fall we did not feed them anything other than scraps from the kitchen or garden. They foraged seed, and bugs on our farm. The hens laid wonderful eggs but a few would always go broody and then we would have 20 or so little chicks running around too, which in turn would grow and become hens or roosters and destined for the freezer.

Cost per year? Very little. Feed only bought late Nov?Dec to end Feb/March, extra eggs sold would pay for this.

SO for me, this venture was sustainable.

BobbyB · #22 02/28/12, 06:17 PM

I guess I look at it differently than most. I looked up the definition for sustainability and it is all about the agenda .

But to me to sustain something means in the long run.

If any one thing goes awry and screws the pooch so to speak, it is no longer sustainable.

I believe the term self sufficient as mentioned earlier is better suited.

Or in actuality, " as self sufficient as possible "

But I still believe its a feel good word, but I also am a firm believer in " If it feels good, do it ! "

JHinCA · #23 02/28/12, 06:24 PM

I like this cartoon about the use of the word "sustainable"
http://xkcd.com/1007/

EasyDay · #24 02/28/12, 08:45 PM

I hate to bring it up again... but "sustainability" is the UNs buzzword for "Agenda 21" to keep people sidetracked. It's not about the animals. That's all I'll say, or this thread will have to be moved to CE or GC.

Faith · #25 02/28/12, 09:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EasyDay

I hate to bring it up again... but "sustainability" is the UNs buzzword for "Agenda 21" to keep people sidetracked. It's not about the animals. That's all I'll say, or this thread will have to be moved to CE or GC.

I'd like to hear more about that.

billooo2 · #26 02/28/12, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwal10

Sustainability, Homesteading....Sure it can be done, even homesteaders bought what was needed. Some more than others. Simple....Depends on how you look at it. I live simply. I raise a garden, have a greenhouse, smokehouse, springhouse. Goats, rabbits, chickens and pigeons. From life to my stomach in minutes. Not much simpler than that.

Do you raise your pigeons for squab?????

BobbyB · #27 02/28/12, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faith

I'd like to hear more about that.

This should get you started

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...o_a_neigh.html

ronbre · #28 02/29/12, 11:23 AM

in working toward more sustainability here I feel that the key ..at least for us..is planting more trees, bushes, perennials, self seeders and open pollinated food plants..

I have put in dozens of varities of fruit trees, nut trees, berry trees and bushes, food bearing vines, perennial edibles, self sowing edibles and open pollinated edibles so we can save our own seed and re sow it.

I used One Straw Revolution by fukoka and Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway to get most of my more recent ideas but started in the 1970's with Bill Mollisons permaculture book.

Here at this time I'm not raising domestic animals but we have a lot of wildlife

EasyDay · #29 02/29/12, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faith

I'd like to hear more about that.

I would recommend going straight to the sources' websites.

The UN links, ICLEI links, etc., are in this thread:

Agenda 21 and Property Ownership

lmrose · #30 02/29/12, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SFM in KY

Whenever I read anything about homesteading and 'sustainability' I think about my grandparents and for that matter, my early childhood years. I suspect that was about as 'sustainable' as it gets and more so than most of the modern 'sustainable' homesteads.

The ranch was primarily a cow/calf beef operation. Sold calves at weaning. Had one 8N Ford tractor and a team of draft horses. We did most of the haying, field work and winter feeding with the horses. Had chickens, hogs and 4 or 5 cows that had some Shorthorn breeding that gave more milk than the others that we milked. Kitchen garden for fresh summer eating and big garden and potato patch for canning and winter cellar storage. We ate mostly what we raised or could hunt, bought flour, sugar, salt, coffee, chocolate, spices. I don't remember that we bought much else in the way of groceries although I do remember buying corn flakes because my grandfather liked those and cheerios because I liked them. Those were our 'luxuries'. We were 60 miles from town, all gravel road, and we might have gone to town once a month in good weather and not at all during the winter months, a majority of the time in MT.

We raised all of our own hay, had some grain fields and raised oats, barley and wheat. The horses got grained when they were working and we fed the other grain to the hogs and chickens. I don't remember ever buying any livestock feed from the store except for an occasional bag of crushed oyster shells for the hens.

No electricity, no indoor plumbing, coal stoves for heating and cooking. My grandmother and mother made most of our clothing, using a Singer treadle sewing machine. Much of what we did buy actually came from Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs.

When I read articles about 'sustainability' I often wonder how those folks would manage if they were somehow set back in time into a situouation like this and how long it would be before they would be in serious trouble.

SFM-What you described is similar to how my husband grew up on the family farm. They were 99% self sufficient. Farming was a way of life not a job. I however grew up in the country dirt poor. My Dad drove truck to pay off debts my mother left behind when she moved on. Our garden and chickens fed us.

When Bill and I married almost 34 years ago we were poor money wise. Now we are 99% self-sufficient and could be 100% if we gave up the phone and electricity. It may come to that if costs keep rising here. We don't consider our life style a job; work or sustainable living. It is a way of life- a simple life of simple pleasures, family and friends; hard satisfying work, rewarded by eating healthy food and having good health. Our goal was never to make money but to live a good life in tune with nature. People say we are poor because they don't understand our thinking about life.In truth we are rich in the things that count and very happy together.What else could we want?

Heritagefarm · #31 03/01/12, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lazy J

Sustainability is a word thrown around in Agriculture a lot. I just read the results of chicken production from a "Sustainable" chicken farmer. Their production system used twice as much feed per chicken and the feed cost twice as much per ton of feed than the commercial feed we use for our own chickens. The farmer bragged about how "Sustainable" they were because of their feed.

How sustainable is a 200% decrease in efficiency and a 400% increase in cost?

Actually you did that wrong. They used twice as much feed; that was a 100% increase in feed which, when drawn from the end result, is a 50% decrease in efficiency.

Yknot · #32 03/01/12, 12:35 PM

Nothing that uses non-renewable products is sustainable. We will run out of oil, limestone, copper, ect. Recycling will help, but eventually we will run out. Therefore only agriculture and aquaculture are really sustainable, but not for 7 billion people without the use of non-renewable products.