When I saw The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe in the public library catalog I thought it would be a useful sort of book. The description led me to believe it would talk about how to garden with climate change in mind, how to garden in this still bad economy in order to save money at the grocery store, how to garden if you have an injury or disability, that sort of thing. But it turns out the book is less about gardening and more about survivalism and living off the grid when something bad happens. And within a page of this book, Deppe had me worried about something bad happening. She’s that paranoid. Not that something bad might not happen, I am not that naive. It is good to be prepared for natural disasters, but she goes beyond that to complete economic collapse and zombie apocalypse. Well, maybe not an apocalypse with zombies, but she plans on being able to survive when the world infrastructure collapses and she has nothing else to rely on but herself.
So she recommends growing what she considers to be staples in order to survive. These staples are potatoes, corn (not sweet corn but corn for flour and polenta), beans, squash and eggs. If you don’t have a yard at all or a yard big enough to produce enough of these things to live on, then you can just lease some farmland from a local farmer. Easy for Deppe to say. She lives in temperate Corvalis, Oregon, population 54,462. In Minnesota one of our major industries is agriculture. If I tried to lease an acre from a farmer close to the city s/he would laugh in my face since that land is already being farmed. Should I be able to convince the farmer to lease me the land, it would cost me a lot of money.
However, should I, by some miracle, be able to lease an acre of farmland at a low price and plant myself a field of potatoes, corn, beans and squash, and should the apocalypse arrive, how the heck will I be able to get to my field to harvest my food? There will be no cars. I can ride my bike 20 miles or so to get there but I am not sure how I will be able to haul home a 100 pounds of potatoes, a bushel or two of corn, a bushel or more of beans and 50 pounds of pumpkins in my bicycle basket through roving hordes of starving people. So for me, the message of this book is: you are screwed.
That said, I did learn a few little things about growing beans with corn and the spacing. I also learned the corn should be about four inches tall before I plant the runner beans that will be climbing up the corn stalks. I also thought that runner beans were like green beans, that you eat the pods, but you don’t. Apparently the pods don’t taste very good and you eat the beans after drying them. I learned that “cow peas,” which I have seen in seed catalogs, are also known as black-eyed peas. Black-eyed peas are yummy and now that I know they are the same thing as cow peas I will be ordering some next year.
And did you know you can dry summer squash and use it in winter in soups and stews? Deppe uses a drying frame outdoors for her obviously large survivalist harvesting. She must not have a squirrel problem. If I were to dry squash or any other food outdoors like that it’d be like a neon sign for the squirrels and birds saying “Free Food Here.” If I give squash drying a try, it will be indoors in my food dehydrator.
So if you have an acre or so of land and a survivalist mentality, you will find this book quite useful. If you are an urban dweller with a small community garden space or only a backyard to garden in, then don’t bother with this book unless you want to make yourself paranoid. We city folk would be better off stocking up on bottled water and canned goods and using the garden as a fresh food supplement when the apocalypse arrives. Then if we are not killed for our food by the unprepared, we will eventually be able to take over the yards of our neighbors and have enough acreage to grow food in.
Thanks for the heads up! A book NOT to add to my TBR list.
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Helen, well it all depends on whether you want to survive floods and blizzards and the four horsemen π
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Wow, this book sounds much less useful than I would have expected! Thanks for the great review π
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DoingDewey, Thanks! If you are interested in growing corn to make your own flour then it is an excellent book. Or if you want to raise poultry like ducks. But for the every day gardener, not so very useful.
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I like gardening books and like to grow and harvest and preserve food, but I do it for health (more the activity and the produce) and not for paranoia. It’s one thing to try to make your corner of the world a bit better, but it’s another thing to live frightened. Sounds like this is not the book for me.
Great review, btw.
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Jane, Thanks! I garden for pleasure and health too and to save a little on my grocery bill and paranoia has never entered the picture for me either. It’s funny as she talks about all sorts of disasters she realizes she is sounding a bit extreme and starts to backpedal a bit by saying things like this may never happen but it’s good to be prepared. But then she forgets herself and goes back to disaster doom again. It gets to be rather amusing after awhile.
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Good luck to her! I put more stock in what Kunstler (The Long Emergency) says about how our best insurance against, shall we say, big changes, is a functional interdependent community. It’s all very romantic to imagine we can be little self-sufficient family units in a post-apocalyptic libertarian utopia but that idea falls apart as soon as you need a doctor or a school or a new shovel blade. Humans have never lived that way. Even the pioneers had to trade with the cities to survive. Wasn’t it the farmers who were pulling up stakes and migrating en masse during the Dustbowl? If a person wants security in times of turmoil they’re better off as a doctor, engineer, trader, banker, something portable and lucrative in any society. But I think the best thing is to cultivate a local community that can work together and absorb shocks. I’m afraid we are going to see some (more) shocks in the near future, but hunkering down on the farm with a shotgun is definitely not the way forward IMO.
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Sylvia, she does talk a bit about trade and how you can trade your corn flour for services or some of your neighbor’s apples and how she expects in a total collapse people will be able to trade locally for what they need and suggests you source your supplies now and start establishing those relationships. But with wild climate change weather even planting diverse varieties of potatoes and corn and beans, in a drought or flood, everyone in the area is going to suffer. Being able to grow your own food is an important skill but unless you can also store a lot extra to make it through a year or two of drought it’s good to also have back up skills that will allow you to go mobile.
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Love it, I love this review:)
Some years ago when I was hunting around online for what to do when threatened by bushfire (which is a real and present danger in Australia and not just out in the bush but also on the urban fringe where the houses meet the bush) I stumbled across some American survivalist sites. Talk about paranoia, these people will die of hyper-tension long before any nuclear holocaust.
But they are also ignorant, because if they had even elementary knowledge of the consequences of fooling around with nuclear weapons, they would know that the chances of anybody surviving are minimal and that the life any survivors would be brutal and short because of radiation sickness.
We would all be better off putting our time and energy into peace initiatives, not naively, but because it’s in our own best interests.
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I don’t really want to survive in a world taken over by the survivalist mentality!
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Ian, I am inclined to agree with you on that!
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Lisa, thanks! Those American survivalists are hard core and probably have bunkers/fallout shelters stocked with enough food to live at least a year, probably more before they have to emerge. The book’s author isn’t quite that extreme though she does recommend and explain how to use your own urine to fertilize your crops! I agree with you, we are much better off putting our energies into peace initiatives and social and economic justice than filling our basements with potatoes and beans.
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I love gardening! In the past, it has always been about the beauty of a garden, but this year, my husband and I are working on a vegetable garden this year.
I find all the permaculture and edible forest gardening information fascinating reading, and we have been planting fruit trees and berries as well. The truth is that the reading and planning,are fun activities for me, but the “doing” is a joy. I may complain about my back after shoveling, but it is the activity that I love. We do have a family place in the country, but should the apocalypse come, we wouldn’t be able to get there, so we are enjoying the process and hoping for some delicious product.
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Jenclair, we had a small veggie garden for years and then got too busy to keep up with it. Last year we dug a small one and were reminded how much fun it is to grow your own food so we are expanding it this year. I hope your veggie garden is a big success! I find the permaculture gardening fascinating too and we hope to incorporate some of it into our own. I love the planning part too and setting it all into motion. May you have a wonderful gardening season!
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I hate to disagree with someone who clearly has far more gardening experience than I do but I have been eating runner beans – all of the runner beans – my entire life. They are delicious. The poor lady clearly doesn’t know what she’s missing.
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Alex, so your comment sent me searching the internet! Turns out you can eat the whole bean, pod and all, or you can use them as dry beans. I’m not sure how many I’ll be planting or how productive a runner bean vine is in my yard, but I will see if I can manage to try them both ways and report back π
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Well, a guess there really is a book out there for every situation and taste! So I guess this would not be for someone who can barely manage a container garden….?
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Danielle, indeed there is! She is very detailed in her instructions so she could help you on your way, though some of her advice is really, um, homestead back-to-the-land and totally unnecessary and impractical in a fully functioning urban setting. Like, I am sure your neighbors would not appreciate you obtaining nitrogen for you garden by urinating in it!
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My friend from the bookstore is an inveterate bottler and storer of foods she grows and makes, so we have decided to rush round her house in the event of an apocalypse. I don’t think my two tiny raised beds are going to provide enough to keep us going!
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Litlove, ha! I think your plan is totally solid! π
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I don’t know … why did you have to go and spoil a good story with a few practicalities!
Seriously, I like to keep away from doomsday people. Maybe they’ll have the last laugh but what a miserable life so many of them must have fearing apocalypse preparing for it etc. I like hope rather than despair to be my guiding principle (within reason of course!)
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whisperinggums, heh. I stay away from doomsday people too. It’s good to be prepared should a tornado blow through town, but always being worried the world was going to end? I don’t need that kind of stress and anxiety. You’re right, it must be a miserable life, but I am sure they don’t see it that way.
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You’re probably right – whatever floats your boat eh?
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