WATER:

Water is the most important part of your farm.  If you live in Southern California, or any hot and dry climate,  either get out while you can or start planning for water scarcity.  You’ll want to start collecting as much rainwater as you can during the cold winter months when it rains hard. A 1000 sq. ft roof can collect 600 gallons of water in just one inch of rain.  Southern California receives about 5-10 in/year, which means you could theoretically collect as much as 6,000 gallons a year with a 1000 sq ft roof (not too bad).  However, Southern California is similar to the Gobi Desert, so your farming MUST be drought tolerant, or at least use minimal water. To prepare for a long-term water emergency, it’s crucial to have a way of filtering rainwater for drinking.

FOOD:

To start things off, I’d first like to say that it is my opinion that farming should be mostly about trees.  Before agriculture existed, people hunted animals and gathered nuts/fruits from trees.  It’s not backbreaking and you can collect a lot more food from trees, especially in a smaller area, than if you were growing grains/legumes over vast expanses of land.  In addition to this, trees tend to have deep root systems so they don’t necessarily require much irrigation after established.  Selecting the right trees for your environment as well returning all animal (human included) & plant waste to them is crucial in the creation and longevity of your food forest.  Think of today’s modern agriculture as one GIANT pump that takes minerals and life from the land, passes it through humans, and dumps it in the ocean.  Even organic farming, albeit a nobler approach to agriculture, does exactly the same thing.  To add more perspective to this picture, consider the fact that about 25% of the earth’s land is highly degraded and about 70% of the ocean’s fish are threatened with extinction.  Humans are systematically turning both land and sea into vast deserts.  The real problem here is YOU, the consumer who is flushing away the future of the world.  If you don’t believe me, read about phosphorus and learn about the history of human waste.   Please, get with the program and start pooping in your backyard compost pile!

If you don’t have any land but you know of some place where you can grow what you want, start practicing guerilla gardening.  You don’t need much space anyway, and if it isn’t being used by anyone, be civilly disobedient and take it.  This is your land, this is my land.  Don’t let your government scare you away from taking what’s yours.  Your biggest obstacle will be private land owners.  If they give you trouble, use your “sparkly eyes” and encourage them to join in your idea of farming for long-term food security.

Carbohydrates:

In trying to create a small-scale farm on less than one acre of land, one invariably encounters the obstacle of carbohydrates.    What do livestock eat primarily, nay, what usually makes up the majority of the human diet? Why of course, the bread of life, a good source of carbohydrates! Without some solid carbs, forget owning livestock, you’re going to barely survive just feeding yourself.  In fact, the body needs carbohydrates to break down proteins, and if there isn’t an ample supply, the body will start to draw from its muscle tissue in order to satisfy bodily demands. Since growing wheat or corn just isn’t an option for many of us urbanites, what can we do to produce a substantial source of carbohydrates on less than an acre of land? So far, I’ve discovered this:

Sweet Potato:  The sweet potato is a ground-covering vine that can easily take over your yard, which is great if you depend on it.  The sweet potato likes sandy, dry, hot conditions, unlike regular potatoes, and can be grown with much less water as well. You can easily get a sweet potato at any market and start growing it.  Since the weather is warm enough, there is about a 10 month window to grow these, each harvest taking about 4 months.  Plant one every few weeks in a different area of your yard to get a continual harvest throughout the year.

Cassava:  The cassava is a small perennial tree (aka Tapioca) that produces multiple tuberous roots that you can dig up, much like potatoes, after it matures.  It is drought tolerant, prefers a warm climate, and is considered to be the best producer of starch of any vegetable.  Each year, this plant feeds 500 million subsistence farmers throughout the world.  Most cassava is the bitter variety, which contains cyanide all throughout the plant.  To make this plant edible, peel away the skin and boil the cassava, discarding the poison water afterwards.  The best way to grow cassava is with cuttings.

 

 

 

 

 

Chestnut Tree:  A tree that shows promise as a carbohydrate source is the Chestnut tree.  This tree has been selectively bred to produce as much as 500 lbs of chestnuts annually.  Once they are dried or made into a flour, they are 78% carbohydrate.  The Colossal Chestnut trees is one cultivar that can produce large, abundant chestnuts.  It is drought tolerant, though produces the most nuts when irrigated.  Although this tree needs some care to get good production, it is much easier than growing grasses for carbs because all one needs to do is stoop down and pick them up.  An acre of grassland can produce about 1300 lbs of wheat, while an acre of chestnut trees can produce 6,000 lbs of chestnuts.  That’s way more than one family could ever use, but this demonstrates how just a few trees can easily outproduce our classic “grassland” approach to growing cereal grains.  Chestnuts generally require 400-450 hours of chill time for good nut production, so in a warm climate it may better to stick with cassava, though I’m trying both.

Oak Trees:  The native oaks that adorn the foothills of southern California can provide a reliable source of carbohydrates, as their acorns are high in carbohydrates and fat.  Unfortunately, an individual oak tree has inconsistent yields of acorns each year, making it difficult to rely on a particular tree.  However, if you have access to an oak forest, you can certainly collect a bounty of acorns, just make sure you save a few for the squirrels.  The right time to collect acorns is in the fall just before the rain comes.  When you peel back the thin shell of the nut, it should reveal a bright yellow nut-meat.  It helps to have a wooden mallet or rock to crack the shell and peel it off.  If you notice a tiny hole in the acorn or the nut-meat is brownish to dark in color, it’s no good.  After you’ve separated enough of the yellow ones, you can grind them into a flour-like meal.  After that, you need to leach the acorns to remove the tannic acid, which gives the acorn a bitter taste.  To quickly remove, boil the acorns and pour off the dark brown liquid.  A slower method involves letting it soak in cold water for a day, pouring off the dark liquid, adding more water, and repeat for about a week.  Natives used to fill a basket with acorns and dunk it in a river for a  week, letting the flowing water leach away the tannins.

Fats:

Many nut trees other than the chestnut have high amounts of fat, which includes almonds, walnuts, pecans, and pistachios, and of course the native oaks.  I’ve planted a Western Schley Pecan tree, though there are many other options available for Californians at bay laurel nursery.  If you use your trees to feed chickens, this can provide additional fats and proteins.

Proteins:

The mesquite tree is a super drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing legume tree and is a great source of protein, which can be dried and stored through the winter.  I like to call this the survival tree because it can give an abundance of protein and sugars even in years with no rainfall.  Native peoples of the Sonoran desert depended on this tree for centuries.  It’s hard to find these trees for sale online, but since they are fast growing trees, they are easily grown from seed.  If you visit the Living Desert Museum in Mojave, the garden center sells honey mesquite trees there.

Aquaponics:

This is a challenging, yet fun way of using fish to grow plants.  I’ve built a series of ponds that are all connected by pipes.  I grow catfish in the top pond, lettuces and herbs in the middle pond, and duckweed in the bottom pond.  Fish constantly excrete ammonia as waste.  As the ammonia comes in contact with media (hydroton pebbles), bacteria will grow there and convert this ammonia into nitrite and nitrate.  Nitrate is what plants use to make leaves.  The lettuce will take in the nitrates through its roots, which will clean up the water.  Still more water passes through the pond into the duckweed pond, where even more nitrates can be taken in so that a small fountain pump can send the cleaned water back to the top pond.  Aquaponics may seem to be a heavy water consumer, but once you fill your pond, the biggest water losses are due to evaporation and transpiration, while your vegetables can continually use what is contained by the pond liner.  It’s generally believed that lettuces can’t be grown in water, but if it is clean and full of nutrients, it is one of the fastest ways to do it.

The Basics:

The growbed, where lettuce and herbs can grow, is about a foot deep with water and has polystyrene rafts that float on the surface.  The roots of the plants are submerged in the water at all times and will grow all the way to the floor, being supported by hydroponic pots filled with hydroton.

Since the plant roots are always in water, the water in the growbed must be kept as clean as possible.  When I say “clean” I mean that the water doesn’t have solid organic particles (fish poop & uneaten fish food) that are being added from the fish pond because you’ll start to create a smelly bog and the plant roots will rot.  Liquid fish poop (ammonia) is what you want in your growbed, though in order to turn that ammonia into nitrate, there must be some place for bacteria to grow.  I fill some buckets with hydroton media that will be flooded for a day and drained at night (with timers).  The buckets are made to slowly leak out at the bottom so the water can drain out at night, but during the day water is being pumped in faster than it can leak out.

The most important thing you can do in aquaponics is to regularly manage solid fish poop because this can harm both fish and plants if it accumulates enough.  Fish are constantly excreting ammonia, which is great, but they also poop out solids that will deposit somewhere in your pond, begin to decompose, and lead to a rise in toxic nitrite.  To prevent this, you MUST remove these solids periodically.  Some people use clarifiers, which have baffles (walls) to allow solids to settle on the bottom where they can be removed by opening and closing a valve or by sucking them out with a vacuum.  I treat the top fish bed as one big clarifier.

If the water pump is sending water into the top fish bed too fast, then fish solids won’t settle there and they’ll get sucked into the pipe that leads to the growbed (not good).  To slow down the flow, I divert the water with a “T-valve”so that it goes into three buckets filled with clay media before the water reaches the top pond, and finally comes out as a slow trickle.

This means that water slowly trickles from the fish pond into the growbed, and most of the solid fish waste stays in the fish pond at the bottom, where it can be sucked out periodically.  Duckweed (fish food), on the other hand, is always floating on the top, so to keep it from getting sucked into the pipe, I use a baffle to keep it confined.  It’s a good idea to have a pipe that drains from the top of your pond so that if you get a power failure, your fish won’t die.

I use two air-powered sponge filters in the fish pond to suck up as many solids as possible, which also allows aerobic bacteria to colonize and release nitrates into the water.  To learn more about professional aquaponics, read this.

What do you feed the fish?

1.  Duckweed is the fastest growing plant second to algae, and has a full range of amino acids that your fish require.  With nutrient rich water  (which can be supplied by fish or urine), duckweed can have a protein content as high as 50% (dry weight).  Duckweed is considered a complete feed for Tilapia, though they won’t grow very fast if that’s all they get.  In order to feed catfish, I use duckweed to feed guppies, and feed the guppies to the catfish.  Guppies are live-bearing fish that rapidly reproduce each month.  I keep 10 gallon aquariums in the garage, which is much warmer than the outside, as guppies are tropical.  Duckweed is high in Omega-3′s, which will concentrate in the guppies and be passed onto the catfish in greater quantities.

Guppies are omnivores, so they would prefer both a plant and insect food source.  I think duckweed and mosquito larvae should be adequate.  Since guppies are quite small, they seem to have trouble eating duckweed in its raw form.  To solve this problem, I blend it in a small food processor until it it’s the consistency of a thick green paste.  I put the paste into some muffin trays and freeze them for a while, and periodically add them to the guppy tanks.  This may also work for guppy fry, though adding some small sponge filters can help to create an environment of micro-organisms that the fry can feed on.  With the aquarium lights, algae can also grow and provide food for fish and fry.  Algae competes with duckweed, though since I grow the duckweed in the pond outside, both algae and duckweed can be consumed in these 10 gal aquariums.

To grow the mosquito larvae, I just place a plastic cement-mixing trough that is placed in dappled sunlight.  Take some grass clippings and add them to a mesh bag (this will be a carbon source for the algae), and add a very dilute amount of urine.  Once the algae takes off, there should soon be a healthy population of mosquito larvae that can be scooped out on a daily basis with a kitchen strainer.  The larvae could be blended up with the duckweed to create a balanced meal, or simply added to the tank to feed the adults.  Harvesting mosquito larvae is not something to be taken lightly and is usually met with much disagreement for most people.   Only do this if you can monitor the larvae on a daily basis.  Otherwise, mosquito larvae are a nutritious meal for guppies that are full of omega 3′s.

Where do you get duckweed?  I recommend searching for a local duckweed species in rivers, reservoirs, and lakes.  During the summer, I was able to find a large amount of duckweed growing in a concrete channel next to Puddingstone Lake in San Dimas, California.  I drove past the lake parking lot where they charge you to get in and half a mile down the road there’s a loosely chained gate that you can slip into.  Once there, search for a concrete river basin and check for duckweed, which prefers slow-moving nutrient-rich water.  Scoop off as much as much of it as you can and make sure to bring a strainer and some Tupperware to carry it home.

Consider this:  When adding nutrients to your duckweed pond over time, you will likely discover that the pH of the water shoots up to an  8 or 10.  This happens because of the ammonia (weak base) in urine, which has not turned into nitrate yet.  Duckweed can take up some ammonia, but in limited amounts (it prefers nitrate).  The duckweed growth will start to slow down, and algae will start to take over because it prefers a higher pH.  The goal is to bring the pH back down to 6.7 and have a lot of nitrates for the duckweed to take in.  In order to do this, you need hydroton or some media to convert that ammonia (NH4) into nitrate (NO3).  As bacteria take the nitrogen, they bump off the hydrogens, which make the water more acidic.  Try getting an inexpensive fountain water pump (they’re quite small) and attach a drip irrigation line to trickle in some water into a bucket filled with hydroton that is periodically flooded and drained.  It’s crucial to purchase a water quality test kit to test for pH, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, so that you’re not in dark about your pond’s chemistry.  which is around $30.00 dollars at PetSmart.

If using urine to fertilize duckweed, make sure the urine is aged a bit.  Containers that work really well are those 2 liter plastic vinegar bottles with a screw-cap and handle.  Just store your urine under the sink for a few weeks so that the urea turns into ammonia, then pour it into your pond (but not too much at a time).

Ammonia (toxic):  Raises the pH of your water and needs to be turned to nitrate

Nitrite (more toxic):  Needs to be turned into nitrate, and is a symptom of anaerobic conditions in the pond, such as an accumulation of sludge or organic debris on the bottom.

Nitrate (less toxic):  Plants pull this out of the water to produce leaves,, which cleans up the water for the fish.

Other ways to feed your fish:

2.  In the warm seasons, hang a bug zapper over your pond at night and watch as throngs of insects get incinerated and gulped up by hungry fish.

3.  Black Soldier Fly Larvae have a lot of good protein for your fish, but also have a lot of fat.  Feeding your Tilapia too much of these larvae can be injurious to their health,, causing liver damage and reproductive problems. (see below)

Additional thoughts:  Stay away from fish meal!  It’s so easy to fall into the convenience of fish meal as fish food, but it is not healthy to consume a fish with a fish meal diet.  This feed source is significantly contributing to the collapse of whole ecosystems in the ocean AND it leads to the bio-accumulation of mercury and PCB’s in the fatty tissues of your fish.  Learn about it here.

Chickens:

What you get:  Eggs and meat.  With limited resources, it makes sense  to just eat eggs because eating the bird is a one-time meal.  If you keep a laying hen alive, you will get far more calories from her eggs than if you just ate her one time (besides, hens can start to grow on you if you give them a chance to develop some personality).  Read more about looking after chickens here.

What do you feed them?

A good way to think of feeding your chickens is the three G’s:  Greens, Grains, and Grubs.  Duckweed can supply the greens for your hens, and milled chesnuts can provide the grains.  To supply the grubs, consider this:

Black Soldier Fly Larvae:

The Black Soldier Fly is no ordinary fly which lays eggs in a “biopod”, which is where you put a lot of organic waste to attract female flies.  You can put spoiled food in here and the larvae can consume as much as 5 lbs/day.  They’re self-harvesting, which means that after they’re done eating, they willingly leave the “eating area” to become a mature fly by climbing out of the biopod and dropping into a collection jar.  Many of these won’t become flies because you can feed them directly to your hens.  A fair portion of them should be allowed to become flies to replenish the population for more egg laying.

This is easily my flock’s favorite thing to eat, as they will greedily gulp these down as quickly as I empty them out of the collection jar.  To learn more, check out www.thebiopod.com to purchase a biopod or try building your own like me.   If you’re looking for the most readily available waste source to feed these grubs, look no further than your own excrement (just poo, not pee).  If you poop into a biopod with an active population of black soldier fly larvae, it will be gone within 24 hrs and biologically transformed into protein-rich grubs.  This is a great way to remove human waste and at the same time provide food for your chickens or fish.  The major concern here is with pathogens, but these larvae are very aerobic digesters that secrete anti-microbial juices into their food, thereby reducing pathogens.  In addition, residues will be left behind by the larvae (mostly cellulose) once they have consumed roughly 98% of waste.  This residue should be given to red worms not only to complete the breakdown process but for further pathogen reduction.  You can feed the worms to your chickens and fish as well.

3.  Chestnuts:

The Chestnut tree can act as the grain because it’s high in carbohydrates.  I’m still experimenting with feeding this to chickens, but it looks promising.

4.  Mulberry tree:

Mullberry trees can produce immense amounts of berry-like fruits that chickens love to eat.  This is a drought-tolerant deciduous tree that can produce tons of fruit.  The leaves are known to have a high-protein content that chickens can benefit from as well.

 

 

Low-Tech Food Ideas:

“In northwestern Peru, in the extremely arid, deforested region of Piura, an innovative project is using a four-legged tool for widespread reforestation: goats. This grassless place lost most of its native mesquite forests to human refugees who were pushed out of greener places, settled here, and cut down most of the trees for firewood. Goats can subsist on the seedpods of the remaining mesquites (without damaging the thorny trees) and spread the seeds, depositing them across the land inside neat fertilizer pellets. The goats also provide their keepers with meat and milk, in a place where rainfall is so scarce (zero, in some years), it’s impossible to subsist on vegetable crops. The herds forage freely when mesquite beans are in season, and live the rest of the year on pods stored in cement-block granaries. These low-maintenance animals also reproduce themselves free of charge, so the project broadens its reforesting and hunger-relief capacities throughout the region, year by year.”

From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

 

Trees packed with nutrition:

The Moringa tree, also known as “The Miracle Tree” is a fast growing deciduous tree.  It is being grown around the globe as a means to reduce poverty and mal-nutrition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fig tree is incredibly drought-tolerant, and in fact is known for having the deepest root system of any tree (400 ft).  Fig trees  are a must have for hot, dry climates with little water.  They are incredibly healthy to eat, packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and even omega 3′s.

The Pomegranate tree is a very drought tolerant tree that will not disappoint.  Year after year, without the help of fertilizers or frequent irrigation, this tree can produce an immense amount of pomegranates filled with antioxidants.

SHELTER:

Ever since people got the “American Dream” into their heads, they started believing they would be millionaire tycoons who would have a mansion, a sport’s car, a supermodel wife, and 2.5 kids.  Our children grow up, leave the house, and pursue their unrealistic dreams.  The truth is, in this anthropic era, there are only a select few who live “the good life” while the rest of us submit to employment and spend our lives holding up the blocks of the pyramid so that the elites can keep living in luxury.  All of you can rage against this unfair division of wealth that exists, and you can start by becoming an independent, resourceful micro-farmer. If you were fortunate enough to grow up in a house that your parents own, then you’re almost there.

What about this idea:  A man and woman meet, fall in love, buy a house, and raise a family.  They have two children–their kingdom now has heirs to the throne, and when they grow up they work together to maintain and expand this kingdom.  While the parents were strong, they looked after and educated their children, and when the parents grew old, the children looked after the parents until they passed away.  The now grown adults inherit the house, grow food on their land, and have some friends and lovers to help them expand their kingdom.  Since they don’t rely on corporations for their sustenance, they can live quite well with very little money.  Other  members of the family may work outside the home and earn money, which provides additional security to  the kingdom.  Because of the ease with which they live, they are able to reach out to wayward kings and queens to raise their standard of living.  If families stay together for generations they are extremely stable and remain strong.

But what if the children grew up and left the house to pursue their own dreams, or were kicked out by the parents for being lazy deadbeats?   In this case, the kingdom fades away, and the family becomes weak because their powers are divided.  The children will most likely become economic slaves, the parents will grow old and live the remainder of their lives in a miserable nursing home, and someone else will enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Think of your house as a kingdom and you are the king or queen, but you have no need for peasants.  How is this possible?  Technology allows you to grow food with very little space, it doesn’t require much labor or time, and it’s manageable enough that you can do it yourself or with friends.  Instead of an endless consumption of products that make others rich, rely on your own and start building your kingdom.  Workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Energy:

People are always talking about going “off-the-grid,” but I’ve learned that this isn’t necessarily a worthwhile idea, since battery technology isn’t very good yet.  If you get a bunch of solar panels on your roof and start storing that energy in some top-of-the-line batteries, you’ll be spending a huge amount of money on batteries that may only last 3-5 years.  Forget about batteries, at least until their technology gets better.  If instead you get a bunch of solar panels and start feeding the grid, you can actually make a difference in the amount of fossil fuels we burn.  On top of that, you’ll not only make your house more sustainable but your neighbor’s house as well.  If you can get your meter to run backwards (you produce more energy than you use), your electric company will start sending you a check in the mail, because you’re now a small-scale power plant.  Now imagine if an entire city had a few solar panels on every roof feeding their grid, and how much of a difference that would make.