 Before it happened, most of us thought about fossil fuels only when we filled up our cars. Then the whole extraction industry collapsed and we realized that something more important than transportation was completely dependent on these fuels. That was the food system. We never thought about the fact that from growing and harvesting to processing and transportation, our food was made using fossil fuels. This is the story of a family trying to cope with the loss of those fuels. We have to grow, harvest, and forage for ourselves in a new world. It's called foodmageddon. Welcome back. Things continue to deteriorate this week as gas prices continue to rise. Most things are still functioning though, but we're starting to see growing concern even among the naysayers about how long this fossil fuel crisis is going to last. This week I wanted to give you a quick tour of our village. Although the people who lived here in the 1870s probably wouldn't think so, it was lucky that the train never came here. Our little village was allowed to stay small, and so we might stand a better than average chance to make it through this thing. But I want to stress that our situation isn't that unusual even though we're in the country. Most of suburbia would be able to adapt like this. They could create a local community. They could use a lot of their green space more effectively. So what we're doing isn't probably that different from what's going to happen over a large part of the U.S. We don't know what's going to happen in the cities because green space is at more of a premium. The country is going to be an easier place to live. So maybe people will be leaving the cities to join us out here in the more rural areas. I don't know. We need to figure out what we want to grow. Okay. We need like 5,000 calories a day. Okay. So that's almost 2 million calories for years. But it's not all going to come from the garden. 5,000 pounds of potatoes. Yeah. That would be enough. No, thank you. I went through and calculated how many calories per pound of all these different foods that we usually grow. Also probably need to forage and add acorn meal and walnuts and stuff to stretch our flour and all those things. I haven't looked at flour and stuff like that but we need to grow a lot. So in the past, we've grown... For winter storage. For winter storage. Potatoes. Potatoes. Some form of squash. Yeah. Pumpkin, butternut squash, spaghetti squash. Long Island cheese. Long Island cheese. Squash. Squash. We've had some coal robbies and carrots and turnips. Right. Root vegetables, typical winter stuff. Mm-hmm. We have had sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste. Oh, that you're... Okay. Can stuff. Stuff that we can. Yeah, so enough tomatoes to make tomato paste. We had plenty of green tomatoes to make lots of salsa. Yeah. And in the past, we've done sun-dried tomatoes. So very good tomatoes. We've done sun-dried tomatoes. And then we've done jams. We live in the village of Cooksville. It was founded in the 1840s. Most of the buildings were built in the 1850s. It existed before fossil fuels were a big thing. We're hoping now that as fossil fuels diminish, that we'll continue to survive as a community. Here at the edge of town is the Bad Fish River. It comes from Madison, and we'll have to use it for fish, and maybe even transportation. I don't quite know how we're going to use this resource yet, but having a river is going to be a big help for us. Our general store is the longest continually operating general store in Wisconsin. And things are still running so we can order both goods and things through here, but I don't know how much longer that's going to last. Next door to the general store is a blacksmith shop. Obviously today it uses a lot more electricity for welding and things like that, but there is a forge in there that does work, and there is someone that knows how to use it, which is going to be really important coming down the road. Cooksville has a busy crossroads and a whole bunch of great old buildings. We also have stuff like this apple tree and a lot of random resources from way back in the day when people were a lot more self-sufficient. It's still here. It's just been unused and kind of left to fallow for decades. I know in the past it's different though. We could always just go buy pinto beans. Right. Beans have always been such a staple of our diet, but I don't see us being able to make enough for it. I feel like beans would be something better worth stacking up at the store. Yeah, but that's only going to work for a finite amount of time. We don't know how to... So I'm saying for this year we stack it up and then we find some way... Why don't we stack up and also try and grow? Sure. Then when the rabbits eat all the beans, we'll still have some beans. Correct. So you're supposed to get about a pound of dry beans per 10 feet of beans that you grow. I don't feel like we got that. I know because the rabbits ate every one of them. Obviously we didn't get that much beans because the rabbits ate them all. So the rabbits ought to do something about the rabbit. Haven't been growing that you would like us to grow. Well, there's lots of things we've tried to grow that you'd like us to do better at. Like what? Eggplant. Eggplant. That's going to be a greenhouse because that likes heat. Okra. Peppers. Yeah. The few vegetables produced that we buy are onions, mushrooms, bell peppers. We really need to figure out how to do bell peppers and mushrooms. Bell peppers are going to be out in the winter. There's just no way we can grow unless I was running the stove in the greenhouse constantly. But during the summer and then we could always... You can dry them. Dry them or you can roast them and preserve them in oil. Yeah. And garlic. And garlic, ok. Did ok on garlic. We're still in our garlic. But wasn't that garlic that Phil originally planted? Yes, but it does grow here though. Ok. And I planted some out already from the glass, aren't you? Another really cool thing about our town is the One Room Schoolhouse. Now it's used as a community center and hopefully we'll have to keep using it as a meeting place as our community comes together here. It's not being used in the 1950s or 60s as a schoolhouse, but who knows that we're going to have to revive that. Here we have a placard from the state talking about the founding of the village. Even though most of our town is surrounded by agricultural fields today, the center of our town is the Commons. And it has an oak grove, but it also has a lot of maples in it. So I imagine we'll be tapping some of these maples in a couple of months. Last year my neighbors gave up market gardening and so they had a big growing space that they had available and they let me use some of it. So let's go check that out. The cool thing is, even though we live in the country, we have a neighborhood. So I'm walking from my neighbor's yard to get to my other neighbor's yard. We all know each other. We all more or less get along. And even though, like I said, we live in the country where we have a lot of space, our actual lot is very suburban. And it's these communities that are going to have to come together, work together, or we're all going to be lost. This is my neighbor's hoop house, which is going to be kind of a lifesaver for this neighborhood. And this, well, this was my deer fence. Obviously it's not keeping the deer out anymore. And here's where I grew a whole bunch of amaranth. Yeah, there's still amaranth seed. I should probably come collect this. And corn, beans, squash, flax, peas, a whole bunch of other stuff last year. Well, I at least tried to, but the deer kept getting to it. So I luckily have this whole space to grow in, and it's going to be great for me. And I don't think that this is too unusual. In towns and cities across America, people are going to take over parks and other public green spaces to grow food because what's the point of all this lawn? Why would you waste gas on lawns, especially now? I think people are going to be turning all that grass over into growing pots just like this one. This book, by the way, has a really cool food garden book that Scott got us from the library when it went down. Aside from all kinds of cool old-timey stuff in it, it has vegetable gardening. It has a garden for a family of six. Well, we are not a family of six. We're not a family of six, but it's all the fruits and vegetables for a family of six. And there we go. Fun fact, in the 30s and 40s, 40% of vegetables were grown at home in the U.S. Victory garden. Yeah. So this is a complete garden for a family of six from Garden Magazine 1905. And this is an acre, but it says, if you have less, then we have about a half acre of growing space or a third of an acre of growing space. One third acre, get rid of the pathways, and then you can plant the same as they would have in a whole acre and a third of an acre. It's just all garden. There's no pathway. Like in this, in the drawing and design, they have like pathways. But yeah. But they go through what you need to grow in all of this for a family of six. We're obviously not a family of six. For a family of six for a year round or just during the growing season? No, for a year round. So what does this suggest for vegetables? It's got lima beans, parsnips, salsify, eggplant, peppers, leeks, potatoes, a lot of potatoes. Cucumbers, corn, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, peas, a lot of what we do. Onions, beets, carrots, bush beans, kohlrabi, peas. You know, we're not just planting for the winter. We also need to eat during the summer. I'm not worried about that. There's always lots to eat during the summer. This time next year. But it always, it seems like everything that you're saying is with an eye of preserving as if we're not going to eat until October. I'm worried about his eating in February. Okay. That's why I'm worried about what's storable. So we're still going to be able to go to the grocery store in July? Uh, we'll see. I don't know. Maybe it'll all be over like you think. Well, but that's what I'm saying. I mean, I don't know what it'll be in July. Because we need to think of things. I know, but we need to also think of things we want to eat in July. Yeah. Like sweet corn. So we don't necessarily have to preserve everything that we grow. Correct. But most of it. Okay. I think we have a lot of planning left to do. But we need to finish the planning soon because we have to do the orders while things are still being shipped. Here we are in the far back side of our property. We have an extra gate. This is where I get a lot of wood chips dumped off. And I don't know if I want to get any more wood chip deliveries before things get really hairy here. So until February, maybe in March, we still might be able to ask Arborists who are still working to drop off wood chips. But, you know, after March, I don't think you're going to be able to get any more wood chips because gas is going to get so expensive it's just going to be prohibited to start putting off non-essential things like having their tree strength and brush bulged. So we're going to get as many wood chips as we can here in the first couple of months. And then we're just going to have to work with what we have available. Luckily for us last year, we inoculated a whole bunch of these logs with mushroom spawn. So hopefully this year, we're going to start getting shiitake mushrooms out of these logs. And I've interspersed the inoculated logs with uninoculated logs. So hopefully the mycelium, the mushroom root system, the fungus itself, will grow through the uninoculated logs. And then next year those will produce when we can put new logs in there and it'll be a self-perpetuating system. I don't know if that's going to work but we'll give it a try. The other problem potentially is that other mycelium has gotten in here, I think. I've seen some mycelium on the outside, some potential competing fungus, which would be a bummer if we don't get that shiitake. But, again, we'd luck out having prepared this ahead of time because it takes about a year. But then it can be a self-perpetuating system. Or at least that's what I've read. We'll see how it works. Thanks for watching this week's episode I'll spare you a lot of our discussion about how much food we need to grow, but check out the website next week and I'll put up a blog post breaking down what plants we plan to grow and how we plan to meet our 2 million calorie goal for next year. Next Friday you'll hear more about how we're planning for this growing season. We'll look at the seeds we have on hand and what we need to order in before shipping isn't available anymore. We'll also talk about the tools, equipment and other supplies we need to get in and the whole planning process we're going through. The difficult thing is that we can't foresee every problem and as we become more isolated things are going to become more interesting. Even with the challenges we're facing I'm looking forward to the spring because I'm itching to go on outside projects. In the meantime I'll start working to transform part of our basement into a food storage area. That will probably start in the next episode. Stay tuned. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. Check out our website, lowtechinstitute.org and again, stay tuned and I hope you're all doing well. Take care.