Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 3/23/2009 3:29:05 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com writes:


> >>A standard city lot is all that is needed for sustanance "homesteading."  
> I
> > mean, sure, more would be better so that you could grow your own grains 
> > but
> > bottomline, you could get by quite nicely on a city lot.
> 
> >That depends on the city. 

A 'city lot' is a vague measure, true, but in the common parlance it means 
somewhere between a quarter and a sixth of an acre.  It's like the urban 
measure 
of a 'block'.  A block will usually mean a couple hundred feet, but some 
actual blocks, the distance between two streets,  are twenty feet while some 
are 
thousands of feet.

With that proviso, Lynda is quite right.  And it isn't a matter of getting 
every scrap of everything you ever eat from that urban homestead.  Who does 
that 
anyway?  But even 20' x 30' can take the wind out of the sails of food 
expenses.

Take the example of Cuba.  When the Soviet Union's support went away, the 
Cubans began gardening every square inch of urban land including flower pots 
and 
the medians of roads.  The most interesting phenomenon is that much of the 
rural agricultural land was abandoned at the same time.  When it came right 
down 
to having beans in the pot at dinner time, attention and limited fertilizer 
(compost) was deemed better spent on the vegetable plot beside the apartment 
building and the tub on the roof rather than the sugar cane field fifty miles 
away.  "Farms" became two or three acres near the cities.  But most food came 
from personal allotments, gardens (Sp. 'huerto')   See for example:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/04/organics.food

The world is already eating even with its tremendous population.  Intensive, 
hand operated, organic methods produce more, a lot more, food per square foot 
than does agribusiness.  So how is it that if the world turned, as Cuba did 
by 
necessity, to intensive and sustainable organic agriculture that there would 
not be eoungh resources for it?


James