Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 4 – Land

Finally, we are getting to something really interesting – how much land would a person need to be self-sufficient with food and firewood? It does, of course, depend on a lot of the previous factors, but let us talk about a moderate climate and moderately fertile soil, like I talked about at the end of the previous post.

I was not actually thinking about this whole issue that much until a few years ago, when one commenter on Affinity brought up the concept of vertical growing of vegetables at home. In their opinion, vertical farming was supposed to be an agricultural revolution, including this small-scale home version. I have immediately expressed deep skepticism about this idea, and in the years that followed, I feel fully vindicated. Vertical farming boomed off big way, and then busted, as I expected. Not to mention that most of the startups that I saw were growing salads and herbs, neither of which are foods; they are condiments.

And thus, there is one thing that I feel confident in saying right off the bat – the land use needed to feed one person is probably a lot more than an average city dweller’s idea. And one of the reasons for this is that most people actually have no real first-hand experience growing anything except perhaps that bonsai/orchid they got for a birthday from a clueless relative, which then hung on for dear life for a few months before it inevitably died.

Talking about my own experience in my garden, I estimate I’d need at least 500-600 m² of arable land for food, and ten times that for wood. However, I am currently heating the house for three people, not just one. With a domicile for one person only, it could probably be reduced to 2000 m², arriving at 2600 m² total. This counts only the production areas; there would need to be more for the house, the storage spaces, animal sheds, paths, etc. Let’s not count too much and round it up to 3000 m² overall, for just one, very thrifty person.

We shall see how I personally would use said land in order to meet my food and firewood needs.

All numbers are, and will be, estimates. After all, I am writing blog posts, not a PhD dissertation.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 4 – Rejuvenating Raspberries

Raspberries & Pears tea is delicious. And it looks just like real tea too.

Howevah, I harvested so many raspberries last year, and we made so much marmalade that I can afford to forgo them for at least a year. Therefore, I decided to not only prune out the dead two-year-old shoots, but to top the whole growth.

This is where it was. I will sprinkle a bucket of wood ash over the area sometime towards the end of February, and possibly also add some calcium nitrate/potassium nitrate for nitrogen in the growing season. This way, it should develop strong, over 1 m long and 1 cm thick shoots that will flower and fruit next year. And at the same time, I had paradoxically less work cutting down the whole growth than I would have if I just gone through carefully cutting out the dead wood. I only left a small patch inside my garden where I will just prune out the dead wood. That way, I could get a few cups of fresh raspberries to eventually replenish my tea for next winter. And if not, then not, this is not an essential crop.

This is a pile of all the shoots, with a significant portion of Symphoricarpos albus mixed in. My late neighbor planted it in the corner of her garden multiple decades ago, and over time, it spread and wandered outside and proved impossible to completely eradicate. I am constantly at war with the weed inside my own garden, where it encroaches near the water cleaning facility and makes the area difficult to access for maintenance. It is also extremely tough and dense wood – I could cut the raspberries with a hedge trimmer, but I had to use a chainsaw for the Symphoricarpos albus.

I will put all this through the shredder to make it into wood chips. And I probably will not use these particular woodchips as fuel; they are very light and not very suitable for that anyway. I will use them as mulch on my vegetable patches instead, to try to reduce the germination of Veronica chamaedrys.

Most of the snow melted, but freezing temperatures returned with a vengeance. I still cannot work in my workshop because it would take three-four hours of heating each day to get the temperature high enough that my protective gear does not fog and/or drip water condensate everywhere. However, it is freezing and sunny, so I can finally start to work outside. I cannot say how much I love working outdoors, despite my feeble body. So I am slowly cutting the hornbeam hedge around my front yard an hour-two a day, and in the remaining time I am pruning my coppice with my chainsaw. The chainsaw is significantly lighter than the hedge trimmer, so the second work is actually the one where I rest from the first. Wielding the hedge trimmer at shoulder-height is exhausting.

So far, I cut a few of the thickest trunks from the coppice, but I have not done a full harvest – I might do that next year again. In the next few days, I will go into the coppice with long pruning shears and cut out about 200 pieces of 2 m long shoots for beans, although I intend to concentrate mostly on bush beans this year.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 3 – Climate and Environment

Needless to say, not every environment is suitable for an attempt at self-sustainability. Neither desert nor tundra is a good choice. Funnily enough, in neither of those live very many people, for some reason.

As a rule of thumb, anywhere where people can live, an attempt can be made. But let’s spell out what criteria the local climate and environment must meet in order for a person to be able to grow their own food/firewood in sufficient quantities.

The latitude dictates day length and seasons, which, to some extent, dictate what crops can and cannot be grown, regardless of any other factor. There is a bunch of edible plants originating from, for example, high altitudes in South America (Perú) that cannot be grown in temperate Europe or North America at lower altitudes, despite the climate being in all other regards suitable. And day length is the sole reason for this – the plants start bulking/flowering at a certain day length, which in Perú is achieved relatively early in the growing season, whereas in Europe that specific daytime length comes too late. This is one of two main reasons why my planned soybean experiment has a huge question mark over it. But other than that, it does not impede self-sustainability; there are plenty of crops to choose from for most latitudes except the farthest north/south extremes. At the extremes, heavily carnivorous sustenance through hunting becomes necessary because agriculture simply is not possible.
Altitude, together with latitude, determines temperature. The interval between the first and last frost of the season plays a huge role in the growth-season length for many crops, and climate change throws a wrench in the works here in a big way, pushing some environments higher up (or farther from the equator).
Sufficient rainfall is absolutely essential. Everything being soaking wet all the time is bad, but not as bad as everything being bone dry.

However, apart from these three main factors, multiple other factors also need to be taken into account.

Local geology. The bedrock often determines the soil chemistry. Not all soils are suitable for all crops. There are even soils that are more suitable for pastures than fields, and an attempt at self-sustenance would, by their very nature, have to be weighted more towards the meat-eater diet, with all its drawbacks.
Local light conditions. Living in the shadow of a huge mountain or on a north-facing slope (in Europe) can have a significant impact.
Local hydrology. Distance from a big body of water or a water stream affects temperature and air humidity. As well as how deep the underground water table is.
Local air currents. Frost hollows can be a real pain in the nethers. Huge winds are not pleasant either.

So, taking all this into account, what environment would be best suited for self-sustenance? Probably a tropical one, with thick topsoil rich in organic content, and reliable rain. I have only limited and purely theoretical knowledge about such environments. Of all the possibilities, I can only talk with some minuscule authority about hardiness zones 6b to 7b, with slightly acidic, loamy topsoil containing relatively little organic material, because that is the environment where I live. And that is what I will concentrate on when talking about detailed plans later on.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 2 – Diet

When talking about self-sustainability re: food, a healthy diet is paramount, and, in my opinion, not difficult to achieve – unless one constrains oneself, that is.

Right out of the gate, veganism is not a smart choice in this regard IMO (and it is only this regard that I am talking about now). Despite all the good arguments for veganism, it is often a luxury that not everyone can afford, and it is especially expensive when one pays for the nutrition with back-breaking labor. And fifth-level vegans would starve, since even potatoes cast a shadow ( I never liked that joke; it clashed with my literal-mindedness).

The biggest problem is, of course, vitamin B12. There are basically only two ways of getting it outside of eating animal products. One is to take supplements, which is not possible in a self-sustainable way. The other way is to use feces to fertilize vegetables, and not being too thorough when washing them for cooking afterward. Eating your own poop works for lagomorphs, but I would not be particularly thrilled about doing it.

The second problem is essential amino acids. There are plants that contain complete proteins, like potatoes and soy, and there are combinations of plants that, whilst having incomplete proteins each, complement each other, like beans and corn. However, all of these do come with some drawbacks – potatoes contain very little protein, all legumes contain chemicals that inhibit protein digestion, and any plant combination requires additional knowledge and work. There are workarounds for these drawbacks, but they sometimes do not scale down well from an industrial process to small-scale self-sustainability attempts (like fermenting, making tofu etc.).

The third problem is iron and calcium. Both of these are needed in relatively large amounts compared to other micronutrients, and both are contained in large-ish amounts in some plants, so intuitively, there should not be a problem here. But there is, because the large fiber content of fruits and vegetables makes both iron and calcium less bioavailable compared to animal products. Which also dovetails into the last problem.

Plant-based foods require more energy to digest than many animal-based products for the same caloric/nutritional gain. When doing a lot of hard labour, a vegan would need to eat (and grow) a bit more food just to keep up.

On the other hand, a strict carnivorous diet is an even less wise choice in this particular context. Although animal-based foods do contain the full gamut of nutrients and thus require less knowledge and processing, they do come with many health risks. All the way from constipation due to lack of fiber, across gout to heart disease. Animal-based foods also tend to be more difficult to preserve, and when they spoil, they are very dangerous to health. And these significant health negatives notwithstanding, even if one does not speak about an area that is sufficient enough for hunting and fishing throughout all seasons, one would still need to grow and store plant material for the animals to survive winter. So much so that it would be actually orders of magnitude more labor and area-intensive than directly growing said plant material suitable for direct human consumption.

So which diet lends itself best to an attempt at self-sufficiency? Omnivorous diet heavily weighted towards the vegetarian end, with fish, eggs, dairy, or occasionally poultry, and rabbit thrown in. Such a diet would fall at an optimum with regard to both labor and land use – orders of magnitude less land and labor than a carnivorous diet, and slightly less land and labor than a vegan diet. The animals could utilize the waste and offal that are not suitable for human consumption, and/or they could utilize marginal lands, where food for direct human consumption does not perform well.

And it is concerning such a diet that I will write my subsequent thoughts on the matter.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 3 – Molehills

The weather got warmer, a lot of the snow thawed, and my garden got covered in molehills, as well as the surrounding meadows. Usually, moles make a few hills throughout the winter, but this year, they have outdone themselves.

I do not mind them that much. They rarely go directly into the vegetable patches. And I do not maintain a lawn, my garden could be best described as a mown meadow.

The scale is not very well conveyed in the picture – the biggest one in the right lower corner was almost half a meter across and over 15 cm in height.

Normally, I just kick and spread these around when they thaw. But since this year I need to fill the vegetable patch between the row of bamboo and my greenhouse, I gathered them all into a wheelbarrow and carted them over there. And I got four full wheelbarrows this way, which is really a lot. They actually did save me some work this year.

Self-Sustainability Tangent – Part 1 – Thoughts

I wrote about this in some previous posts and in comments. Bébé Mélange mentioned it in one of my previous gardening posts, so while I cannot do much in the garden, I decided to write my thoughts about it in a series of somewhat organized blog posts. Please be aware that I still deeply care about social justice and current events. I am currently writing mostly about gardening as a form of self-care, a way of getting my thoughts away from the shit that goes on in the world, with the spewhole for said shit being currently the USA.

Self-sustainability is a modern fad on YouTube. I am highly skeptical of any videos that have it in either the title or the channel name, although I do watch some of them – they do, occasionally, contain good gardening tips. Some are probably delusional bullshit. I do not know for sure since I am highly selective about what I actually watch.

Because true self-sustainability is a myth; it is not possible, and it was not possible probably from around the time humans started to use stone tools and fire, i.e., from around the time of Homo habilis or just after. Some stone tools are made from materials that are not found in the vicinity of where they were used, suggesting, oftentimes, a long travel and therefore a form of early trade. Even today, so-called primitive hunter-gatherer tribes or communities do not consist of self-sustaining individuals – people do specialize in different skills and perform different tasks. Even the communities as a whole still engage in some form of trade for things they cannot obtain locally. For example, for steel tools, fabrics, and salt. etc.

Usually, the term is used in a very limited sense, with regard to just food and, sometimes, firewood. Those two things can almost, but still not entirely, be obtained on one’s own, provided some prerequisites are met. And it is about those prerequisites that the subsequent posts will be. I will be mostly writing from the top of my head, although most of what I write should have a solid basis in both my personal experience and the scientific knowledge that I got from my books and scientific studies. So stay tuned, if you are interested.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 2 – Winter Wood Woes

My coppice is not nearly big enough to suffice my needs for wood, so I have to buy some. When I was employed in a well-paying job, I bought mostly wooden briquettes. They take up little space, and they are a lot less work all year round, but they are also expensive. These last few years, I have more time than money, so I am buying wood scraps from making palettes.

I wrote about this before – this stuff is four times cheaper than briquettes or ordinary firewood (and about six-eight times cheaper than natural gas would be), but it is a lot of work. A lot. I bought 6 tonnes, and I spent 2 months sorting, bagging, and piling them up. And now, in winter, I have to spend a lot of time and effort carrying it into the cellar. Which, funnily enough, I was able to do even when I had trouble with my sciatic nerve. Go figure.

Normally, I use about 3-4 tonnes of wood throughout the whole winter, supplementing it with 1 tonne of briquettes in the coldest months. This year, I would like to forgo the briquettes completely because the money is really tight. Which is not going to be easy…

Looks nice, doesn’t it? So idyllic and peaceful, the garden covered in a blanket of pure white snow, the calm air, the quiet.

Yeah, about that. This was taken today, after I woke up from a sleepless night due to wind rattling the whole house, and after I spent an hour cleaning the walkway from the garden gate to my house and from the house to the greenhouse. An hour later, everything was covered in 1 cm of fresh snow again.

This is an ordinary winter, something we haven’t had for a few years. We had some frost and snow last year, but nowhere near enough to what we used to have when I was a kid. This winter started early, and we have freezing temperatures nearly continuously for several weeks now. I could calculate it precisely (I have a weather station), but I won’t (yet) – I estimate this year’s winter is about 4°C colder than the last one so far. Up to today, I have burned through 2,5 tonnes of firewood. Only 250 kg were from my garden, because this year I was not harvesting the coppice; I merely trimmed the hedge and cut a few poles here and there for beans. At this rate, I might burn through the whole 6 tonnes of firewood that I bought last year.

As far as gardening goes, this is actually a good thing. Snow cover means the soil won’t be parched straightaway, early in the spring. Long, consistent freezing temperatures should do a real number on the spanish slugs, as well as a lot of other pests that migrated up here from warmer climates in the last decades. The mice and voles should be inconvenienced greatly, too. And if I burn through a lot of wood, I will get a lot of wood ash to sprinkle on my vegetable beds for potassium and calcium supplementation. And to kill the slugs that I survived the winter.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 1 – Starting Seed Snails

This part of the 2026 gardening work started actually in 2025, a few days before Christmas. And not only is it the first gardening work of the season, it is also the first experiment.

I found this idea on YouTube last year, unfortunately, after I had already started all my small-seed plants. But since I decided to have one more try at growing my own onions from seeds, I also decided to try out this idea. It is, in principle, very simple. First, wet planting substrate is put in a roll of some sort of rot-resistant material (people were using bubble-wrap, mirelon, or other plastics). I am using old black landscaping cloth. The rolls are then bound together with a string or with a container and sprinkled with seeds on the top.

I switched my yoghurt-buying to big, 1 l buckets, because I have enough of the 500 ml ones and I need the bigger ones too. And their first use this season is to contain the seed snails.

I am trying three varieties, one red, one yellow, and one shallot, and I marked them with popsicle sticks to keep track of which is which. The shallot packet had really few seeds, barely enough for one snail, whereas both the red (č=červená) and yellow (ž=žlutá) had each enough for three.

Everything sprouted nicely so far. After about one month, I will probably try to move these into even bigger pots, or possibly split each snail into two pots.

The idea of sowing small seeds into seed snails is that when the snail is unrolled, one gets a row of tiny plants that is much easier to separate than the tangled mess one gets when simply sowing them in a container. It should be especially easy on the roots. I will also try it for the initial sowing of tomatoes, and maybe even other plants with tiny seeds, yet to be determined.

Gingerbready New Year!

The pigs with 2025 on them are date tags for the gingerbread houses. This way, we can keep track of them and eat them before they spoil. But gingerbread piglets are also associated with Christmas and New Year through the concept of Glückschwein (Google that to your heart’s content, there was a short discussion about it under the 2023 posts ).

My grandmother was Sudetendeutsch, and the cookie-cutting forms my mom inherited from her are in high probability of German origin. And although my mother is not consciously superstitious or religious, some things she learned as a kid are in the bone – and one of those things is making ornamental pigs, sometimes even adorned with shamrocks, for good luck on Christmas and New Year.

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