FOOD PRICE HIKES and SHORTAGES- A FRAMEWORK for FOOD PRODUCTION — Ep. 110

Hey guys so earlier in the year we discussed some of the projects that we wanted to tackle for 2022 and a lot of those projects are getting off the ground and running which is awesome but one of the projects that didn't really make the list was food production and that was something that I thought we would push off maybe to 2023 but the good news is is that we got it started in this year and it was a little unexpected and a little unanticipated but for us it became really important just the idea of producing our own food and having some food security was of utmost importance and you know for so many different reasons so many different reasons many of the ones that I probably don't have to list out for you but namely extraordinary food costs so so much of the that we're looking at on the market on a daily basis is just rising in price and so it actually hits the pocketbook a little bit more so our food bills are increasing in price and we'd rather be able to produce many of our own foodstuffs maybe not all of our foodstuffs because that's a tall task to ask but at least we could get started on that that process the second thing is just general food shortages and we saw that during the pandemic and we're seeing that now and we'll probably see that more if there's uh you know further distress that's happening in the world whether that's in what's happening in Ukraine or whether that's what's happening in the Netherlands or whether uh you know it's drought that's happening in the United States there's all sorts of larger forces at play that could contribute to food shortages and that are contributing to food shortages and then the third aspect is just like you know we've just came off the pandemic and we know kind of what happened during that time oftentimes you'd go to the grocery store and there'd be a limit on what you could get because people were food hoarding so at the very least we figured if we started food production will at least not have to be a drain on the system and then we'll be you know somewhat taken care of and so when we think about how we're going about food production here we started to think about a framework basically looking through the lens of food production of five different lenses and uh and we'll eventually ramp up to hopefully getting to a place where we're producing a good majority of our own food I think producing all of our own food is a tall task to ask but but that's something that is noble and that we could look to potentially achieve in the future but at least we wanted to get started on producing food so I thought I would share the framework that I'm thinking about in order to prioritize uh food production here because we can't do it all we can't focus on everything at once especially because food production wasn't even on the list of things to do this year so the five lenses that I'm looking at in order to start food production is the first one being do we actually even eat the food do we like the food is it something that we go to the farmer's market or the grocery store and that we pick up on a regular basis and that makes up a regular part of our diet so that's one lens that we're actually looking at the second lens is is it a perennial food crop now there's many different annual food crops like uh tomatoes for instance that we love and adore and that we eat but we're not going to be placing too much emphasis on annual crops this year and part of the reason is that perennial crops will come back year over year and keep producing for you year over year but also that they take a longer time to establish so it behooves us to actually plant those sooner rather than later so when I'm thinking perennial crops I'm thinking more along the lines of tree crops so maybe your fruit trees or your nut trees or your berry bushes for instance some of your perennial vegetables so you know we recently planted asparagus and sunchokes which are great perennial vegetables and that will only start to produce more and more as they age same thing with many of your fruit and nut plants but we also planted a bunch of berry bushes so I'm thinking blueberries honey berries currants both black and red and also gooseberries which I absolutely adore so many different types of things that you know we know that we'll eat and that we'll enjoy and that maybe won't produce so much this year but next year two years three years four years down the line we'll be great producers if we take care of the plants and help them establish essentially the next lens that I'm looking at is is it a premium product so is it something that was basically expensive already that we could take out of our grocery list so asparagus is a great example it's one of those perennial vegetables that usually fetches a higher price whether it's in season or out of season the other thing I could think of is berries especially raspberries every time I go I get this little container of raspberries and they are so extraordinarily expensive so if I could take the expense out of that and that we could grow our own berries like raspberries and that's really good and I will say on the raspberry part I was so happy to discover as we started to push more and more out into the landscape and create paths right behind the pond I found some amazing wild raspberry bushes and I picked about 200 raspberries just a couple days ago and I put them in my granola a yogurt and granola which was just marvelous then I just started to eat them out of hand because they're so good I didn't want to drown out their flavor in the yogurt and granola so it's it's just one of those many pleasures that you find in the landscape another another thing that we found is black currants like a whole bunch of them in the interstitial area which I introduced in another video but basically it's the area between the agroforestry slash forestry area and the meadow slash orchard and that was something that was pretty neat I don't love to eat black currants out of hand I mean those are things that I would you know more or less like prepare maybe in a jam or something along those lines but still regardless it was really awesome to see that we had those there and I know in the forest area we actually have some low bush blueberries and I haven't really gone out there to see whether they are about to fruit or going to fruit this year usually July August is the time that we get blueberries but again that's something that as we start to go out into the landscape some more and see what type of food is out there already then that's something that we could maybe enjoy or maybe take one of those plants and transplant it into an area that's closer to the common house in the central living area so that we could actually engage with those plants on a more regular basis so just to recap the first three lenses are do we eat it the second one is is it a perennial vegetable or fruit or not and the third aspect is is it a premium product the fourth aspect is is it nutritionally dense and can it be used for a medicinal purpose and or can it be used for a medicinal purpose and I think the reason why I put that in there as one of the lenses that we're looking through is because if ---- hits the fan and ---- is hitting the fan a little bit arguably is it a food crop that you could rely on being nutritionally dense and nutritionally healthy can it be something that you could use as a medicine because as you know so much of our food can be used as medicine if we're not eating snacks and junk food all the time a lot of that food will be our medicine and keep us healthy which I think is really important in this day and age not just in this day and age but all time but especially in this day and age with like the pandemic and everything else that's going around then I would say that the final lens is is it versatile and I think what I mean by versatility is just a broader term of versatility so is it a food that I could use across a range of dishes that I could cook and prepare in many different ways is it something that could be canned or pickled or preserved or frozen in some type of way I'm thinking like asparagus is a great product that can be pickled canned frozen eaten fresh same thing with so many berries as a matter of fact like my dad has tons of blueberry bushes outside of his house and he often just picks like gallons of blueberries like literal gallons of blueberries and then he puts them into plastic bags or sealed containers and freezes them and then over the late fall and winter months he has those berries to use in his yogurt or in his cereals or they make blueberry muffins or blueberry pies things along those lines so those are great ways for your plants to be able to produce for you across the seasons particularly when you're under like several feet of snow which happens around here one of the other things that we're kind of placing emphasis on that I will I will share so those are the five lenses I'm kind of getting ahead of myself but those are the five lenses and one of the things that we're going to start placing emphasis on and one of the renovation projects that we have for the common house is developing a root cellar so many of these you know plants even if they were producing we wouldn't be able to store it in many different ways it would take up so much of the refrigerator and freezer space that we have so when thinking about this and thinking about food security and food production I think a root cellar really comes to mind so that's definitely high on the agenda and something that we might even be able to kick off this year if not next year but that I think goes hand in hand with food security as far as planting food goes we really got off to a great start and it's partially because we had already prepared the orchard beds last year in the fall because we had a tractor here and that was one of the things that we did was we got a bunch of compost topsoil and we created these berms and then I mulched those berms just to prevent any kind of weeds from coming in or if they did come in it would be easy for for us to be able to pick them out and then we planted up the trees and the shrubs and some of the herbaceous plants in the spring now one thing is I haven't gotten all the permaculture guilds built out within that orchard bed I think I'll have everything planted that I want to plant by fall and it's just because I wasn't able to get the plants in time or you know time was of the essence and I was only able to get so many but the main trees and shrubs are in so we planted a ton of apples, pears, crab apples, cherries, peaches, pears, a bunch of berry bushes so like blueberries, honey berries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, things like that and a number of you know interesting and kind of novel plants a bunch of medicinal plants that we've planted in there some alliums things along those lines so we did get quite a bit in the orchard beds I did perhaps purchase maybe one too many trees larger trees and I wanted to give them the space so we started to dot them in the interstitial which as I mentioned is like the area between the agroforestry slash forestry area and the meadow and the orchard so it's this one acre area and we started to think about well what are the trees and shrubs that we could plant that have wildlife value and many of those are fruiting trees and shrubs and probably ones that we won't eat as much but will be totally fine for us to to eat but we'd probably leave a number of those for the the birds and the wildlife which we're placing a big emphasis on as well here but we ended up having an overflow so I planted some of those peaches and pears like in the interstitial area and then down from the interstitial area is the nut grove and I kind of went nuts in the nut grove and we already have a bunch of hickories and oaks there but I planted some more hickories and primarily hazelnut I think I got about 50 whips and hazelnut trees in that area that and dotted it throughout the the forest as well so again those things will take some time to develop and to produce so I thought well it's better to get them in now and I was able to get a good deal on some hazelnut whips from our county cooperative extension and that's something to maybe look into as well if you have a county cooperative extension sometimes they have great plant sales and you could get some wonderful native plants for cheap or at least a more affordable price so that's something to definitely look into especially if you're looking to to plant in bulk. We got some hardy pecans that still need to go in and we have a hardy almond that we just put in not too long ago but the pecans and some of the other hickories that we have I wanted to get them in in spring I thought we were going to get them in in spring and unfortunately we didn't because we need to have a tractor to help us get those in and I thought we'd have somebody help us but he got really busy so I think we have to wait until our we get our access to our friend's tractor and and then we'll start to put some of those other trees in the landscape so that's something else that we've we've really started to to work on but unfortunately again time is time just didn't wasn't on our side for that type of stuff. The other thing that Sondra and I recently did is that we put together two raised beds and we put some of our perennial vegetables there so asparagus and sunchokes those are two crops that I wasn't really comfortable yet planting within the landscape itself because they they are a long-term crop and they do tend to kind of push out so I decided to actually plant those in raised beds near the building that we're treating as a future chicken coop so that was important for us to do and get off the ground and running and again those asparagus I put them in in early summer it was something that I would have loved to plant in spring but I was busy with so many other things and you know obviously traveling back and forth and it was uh it was hard for me to to get it in in spring but at least we got them in in early summer. Now if you recall we planted some of those strepheria mushrooms in the forest area in the agroforestry area and we planted those last spring and they actually came up this year which was awesome so I started to put those in some of our dishes truth be told I haven't really gone back there as many times as I should in order to collect them so I haven't been monitoring them very well and knowing that I ended up taking some of that mycelium and that spawn and I started to spread it around other plant beds that are closer to the commonhouse area so that we can engage and interact with them more but mushrooms is a crop that we eat a ton of like we eat a lot of mushrooms so I suspect within the next two to three years we'll probably increase a lot of our mushroom production and and do that here especially because mushrooms are one of those things that I would say is a premium product we really love to eat eat it they actually store well if you could dry them and yeah I mean you can also freeze some of the mushrooms too depending on the mushroom so there's there's a lot of things that we could work on and that we're going to be working on and that we're excited to work on it's just like the effort of it's just basically an issue of time I would say the other thing that we will probably finish by I would say maybe the end of August is that we're doing something that's a bit more elaborate but we're building two raised stone beds around a gazebo and it's going to be a really significant design element within the landscape but our idea is that we would plant some of our annual vegetables in that stone raised bed and so I'm excited for that but the reality is that we'll probably end up prepping that bed in the fall similarly to how we did that with the orchard last fall and that we'll end up planting it more in the spring so that's something that we could like really look forward to but it's just not there yet for us and then eventually I think we'll start to look into colder climate food production meaning when the weather starts to turn into fall and winter and that may require us to look into hoop houses and greenhouses and things along those lines but again that's probably you know future projects at the very least we're putting one foot in front of the other and we're getting our food production on this year unexpectedly but you know obviously for a lot of valid reasons that again I don't have to to reiterate and even if those reasons weren't happening I mean I think that just food production in general is just such a noble act you know to be able to grow your own food and eat what you have grown is it's priceless it's I you know it's it's something that I grew up with as a child and I'm so grateful that I had that experience as a child and it's something that I could actually come back to in my adult life so so yeah so that's the framework that we're really thinking about in approaching and growing our own food particularly for this year since it really didn't make the agenda or the list but now it kind of like shot up to a high priority and hopefully you know that framework will be helpful for you if you're thinking about starting your own food production or you're already doing your food production and it's like a little overwhelming for you I think you know stepping back and setting a framework and setting parameters and guidelines to focus on what you're going to grow and why you're growing it is really important so I hope that's helpful for you and I guess I'll see you guys in the next video all right bye are you enjoying the videos we produce consider liking subscribing tipping and hitting the notifications bell it helps support the channel and the greater community we're reinvesting 10 of our google ads sense revenue back into the finger lakes community so your viewership and support goes a long way we'll see you in the next video