what if the cost of food goes up 10x?

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:.......They are very proud to have harvested peanuts last year ... for 10 jars of peanutbutter :-o

Perhaps the agricultural university in Wageningen could contract with Joseph Lofthouse to landrace-breed some peanuts for the Netherlands and like situations.  They could provide him with room, boarding fees, research plots and hired staff, free rail and automotive rental vouchers, ...... and a 15 year contract.  :-)  If he get's homesick for the mountains, a few excursions to the Scottish Highlands or Swiss Alps might ease the discomfort.... Ha!   I can't recall what seed source I used to try to grow peanuts outside of Fargo, ND.....it did not go so well and I did not stick with the attempts.

I am reading (again) a book titled Just Enough by Azby Brown which is about the EDO period in Japan.  The EDO period lasted for 350 years and was an incredibly sustainable peaceful time in Japan.  As far as food in the rural areas the kept almost no animals, and they were too far from the coast for fish.  No dairy.  They had some soybeans and wild nuts.  Foods for the most part were boiled, steamed or baked.  Fish oil was a luxury.  

John Weiland wrote:

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:.......They are very proud to have harvested peanuts last year ... for 10 jars of peanutbutter :-o

Perhaps the agricultural university in Wageningen could contract with Joseph Lofthouse to landrace-breed some peanuts for the Netherlands and like situations.  They could provide him with room, boarding fees, research plots and hired staff, free rail and automotive rental vouchers, ...... and a 15 year contract.  :-)  If he get's homesick for the mountains, a few excursions to the Scottish Highlands or Swiss Alps might ease the discomfort.... Ha!   I can't recall what seed source I used to try to grow peanuts outside of Fargo, ND.....it did not go so well and I did not stick with the attempts.

Joseph Lofthouse at Wageningen University? I think he'll be homesick much too soon. And the Alps or Highlands are too far away .... ;-)

And who would tend his own gardens in his extended absence?

Also, I live in the same region:  alkaline soil cold winter dry summer, higher elevation western USA Great Basin desert.  I have also lived in Switzerland (for one school year).  Nothing wrong with European high elevations or Scottish highlands, but they are so different they would be no comfort to me, if I were far away and homesick for the high desert.

But Joseph, if it looks good to you, go for it😊🌞❤️

It was recommended that I post this here also:

This is my take on how to handle what's going on in the world: Simplify Now: A Calmer Way to Handle Chaotic Times

No matter from which angle I look at the problem, I always come to the same conclusion: the house cow. Something small, maybe a Dexter Jersey cross.
Goats are good too, but they seem to be much more difficult to keep. Sheep just don't give that much milk, but they are easy to keep and a little bit difficult to milk.

But the cow is like no other animal; no other animal produces more manure and improves the soil in a more dramatic way. It gives a decent amount of milk so that two families can share one cow.
They eat more than just grass; they eat things like lablab bean, sugarcane, banana leaves, banagrass and more.

I don't have a cow, but the cow is the difference between malnutrition and being good. (You can have that with goats, too, just less docile)

Nicola Bludau wrote:I don't have a cow, but the cow is the difference between malnutrition and being good.

Its true that a couple of cows and a few pigs were traditionally part of a smallholder's food and land system.

The logistics of keeping a cow producing a good volume of high quality milk are not as simple as "turn her out on the grass and milk twice a day." A milking cow needs high protein supplements to her basic fodder diet -- milled grain, chopped swede/rutabaga, perhaps fresh beans. Good shelter is necessary. Access to a bull of the same size (for easy calving) must be arranged. Also, plan for a "dry" (non milking) period when she is heavily in calf (pregnant). Then there's the task of putting up winter fodder (hay, silage). In short, it's a lot more work than meets the eye.

I am quite interested in the idea as good milk is getting more expensive. Goats are popular here, but could I deal with the goatness, I’m not sure…

I've known goats who have milked for seven years straight after being bred just once. I think all the ones I knew were British Saanens, which are known to be excellent milkers. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in the US. But if you could buy one that had kidded that year and was already established in milk in theory you could get several years of milk from her without having to worry about access to a billy goat for quite a while, if ever.

This was what many of the more out-of-the-way smallholders in Wales would do and they would generally fly under the radar and no-one would know about them until the shit hit the fan and they would need an emergency milker whereupon I would get summoned to step in. Generally they would have just one or two females and they would be much loved family members.

About the “goatness” of goat milk.

I came to goat milk late in my life. At the time I was making almond milk from unpasteurized almonds. I was used to the almond milk and I liked it. I had been drinking an unsweetened organic soy milk and I had liked that. Before menopause I had only had cows milk.  And I had a strong prejudice against goat milk.

Anyway, the soy milk corporation changed their recipe and the new flavor was offensive and had various additives!

I was on to almond milk, and stayed with that even while I had raw goats milk to make cheese.  As part of a very successful soil carbon project I acquired goats and began milking.

One morning, I had not soaked almonds overnight, and I knew I could just put them straight into the Vitamix with water and have milk. That morning, that just seemed like too much work to me, and I thought “how ridiculous! I have fresh goats milk in the refrigerator. Why don’t I try it?”

At the time I was drinking tea as my morning beverage, sweetened with honey. I really enjoyed my morning drink and wanted it “just right”. My first taste, I thought yes I can tell that it’s not cows milk. By the time I had finished my first mug, I had gone from. Yes it’s not cows milk, to it’s not offensive to “this is GOOD!”.

The flavor of goat milk is partly genetic and partly individual and partly what was the goat eating.

One day, my goats got into a patch of daylilies and eight a large amount. When I milked, the milk reeked of onion. (Daylilies are in the onion family.) The flavor did include onion. I made the most fabulous chevre.  My shareholders used to ask when I was going to make it again, and I had to tell them that was entirely up to the Goats.

Some breeds of dairy goats have a distinctive goatey flavor. Some people want that flavor, especially in the cheese.

My point is that the flavor of goats milk has many variables. One I did not mention above is how quickly the milk is cooled and how old it is. If you have the sweet milk lines of goats and they are eating Alfalfa or other mild feed, there is nothing off about the flavor.

I have had two week old goats milk that was quickly chilled and stored. It tasted fine in my morning drink.

Some breeds create a lot of butterfat!

You don’t have to milk twice a day, once will do.

Sunlight to plant forage to goat milk is a pretty short sequence, making it pretty efficient.

And often times grazing and browsing land would not lend itself to farming or vegetable production.

You do need a good fence, and there’s a saying:  “you can’t fence a hungry goat”.

Beware though: goats are like dogs in the variety of temperaments.  And they are intelligent and independent thinkers.  There are some individual goats I found I could not live with!  Despite beauty, productivity and any number of desirable traits.

This is the kind of thread I adore and would normally be all over it if it had started a few months sooner,

However, the price of our regular groceries have nearly doubled since Christmas (5ish months) and the only way I know for certain works for surviving this crisis, is to not buy food.

So I've been planting potatoes, freezing rhubarb, trading nettle greens for fish, battling a family of wild rabbits to stop them eating my beans but they are too cute to kill (2 inch baby bunnies!).  Trying to decide if it's worth catching them and start growing rabbit meat again.  Oh, and free seed potatoes,  so where can I dig up some lawn?  And I really should get the incubator going as the demand for eggs is going up so fast!  

And do I like rhubarb chutney?  

And I should probably bake some workmans cake for the freezer so I don't have to bake in the summer heat.

Oh wow, I forgot we planted rhubarb there.  Bumper crop.  Okay, the freezer is nearly full, what other recipes can use rhubarb by the kilo rather than the cup?

And I found a special price on European canned chickpeas but I need to sort through the pantry first to see if we have any foods about to expire to eat up first.  With the price of transport going up, cheap chickpeas aren't something to scoff at.

I had better plant more chard and kale as they make excellent backup food.


So I really haven't had time to worry that our grocery bill has doubled in less than 6 months, and will increase quickly.  There is so much I can take into my own hands.  But it takes time.  I often think worrying is easier as it no longer feels like the solution is in my hands.  It makes the problem external.  When really, I suspect if we had stronger local economy where grower and eater are more closely linked, this problem wouldn't be nearly as big.  But first, rhubarb.

I think it's not yet that bad. I buy a large part of my food at an organic farm, and the other part at an organic supermarket. When I buy the same things as always, the price is about the same as it was last year. But maybe the price of non-organic products, at 'normal' supermarkets has gone up?
Anyway I am glad the season to harvest from my garden has started. In winter there are two 'greens', for one of those the season now has ended, the other one is a 'year round' vegetable in my climate (it's chard/leaf beet). Now other 'greens' have started, one of them being the flower buds of the kales (and the small kale leaves are delicious too). And there is rhubarb, of course!

r ransom wrote:what other recipes can use rhubarb by the kilo rather than the cup?.

I know you enjoy Japanese flavors, I have heard of people using rhubarb as an umeboshi substitute.  https://www.chopstickchronicles.com/umeboshi-rhubarb/

Our grocery prices are pretty stable, but our businesses (me and husband) have been very slow this month. It's halfway in and work is stopped. I'm trying to spend my time on garden/farm tasks (the work I put in now will only pay off in a few months, when hopefully work will have picked up), in terms of mental health. I recently drew my pantry down to close to zero and then restocked about a month ago, so we are basically just going to hunker for a while. I'm considering how I can expand my garden within the small space I have (containers along the edges where there are walls is my best idea so far). I'm also trying to pay more attention to what produce gives the most bang for the space-- collards are the champs for year-round nutrition.

Tereza Okava wrote:

r ransom wrote:what other recipes can use rhubarb by the kilo rather than the cup?.

I know you enjoy Japanese flavors, I have heard of people using rhubarb as an umeboshi substitute.  https://www.chopstickchronicles.com/umeboshi-rhubarb/

Amazing idea!  Umeboshi is one of my favourite foods.
Thank you.

And for the Good News!

Pemaculture article in a Canadian National Magazine called MacLean's. This may well show up for many behind a pay wall, but here's a link: https://macleans.ca/society/the-canadians-growing-their-own-groceries/?
May 13, 2026

The author's original work career was a High School teacher. Then "in 2011, [he] signed up for a two-week permaculture course during the summer break."

He goes on to mention Victory Gardens and the rate of inflation of food in Canada.

Kenton Zerbin, "I show them how, with more strategic placement, they can hugely reduce their workloads while increasing their yields. We also cover techniques like square-foot gardening (planting in raised, gridded squares instead of rows), herb spirals (herbs planted at different elevations) and hügelkultur beds, where plants grow on mounds made of rotting wood and other organic matter."

He brings in small space growers with talks about vertical gardening and home sprouting. Also, "I personally have access to a seemingly endless supply of Saskatoon berries, sea buckthorn berries, currants, apples, plums and pears thanks to the dozens of community fruit-tree plots I’ve put together."  If you don't have a lot of land, look for under-utilized land and see if you can get permission to make it beautifully productive.

This suggests that the message is getting out there. Now if only someone can write a letter to the editor mentioning permies.com?

r ransom wrote:Oh wow, I forgot we planted rhubarb there.  Bumper crop.  Okay, the freezer is nearly full, what other recipes can use rhubarb by the kilo rather than the cup?

Rhubarb wine?

Can rhubarb be dehydrated?

I am repairing my green house.

I have begun weeding for a small scale market farmer.

It isn’t a formal arrangement, but I will probably get imperfect tomatoes and small garlic.

An idea for people who have a growing season shortened on the spring end by  infrequent freeing nights.

Plant in a wagon, and pull the plants into sheltered space when temperatures are going down.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Can rhubarb be dehydrated?
.

At Wheaton labs they dehydrate rhubarb, it's mentioned in the threads of some of the 'boots' here on Permies. First they mix the pieces of rhubarb with 'simple syrup' and then they put them in the solar dehydrator. Then they use them as candy!

I make most of my rhubarb (indeed, kilos!) into jam/sauce. I cook the pieces of rhubarb (with a little bit of water) and when they are all mushy I mix in sugar (to taste). Stirr on low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Then put in re-used glass jam jars with metal lids (first cleaned with boiling hot water). If you're in the USA you'll probably want to sterilise them using pressure canning or hot-water canning. I don't, I just put them in the fridge and don't keep them longer than a few months (using my jam daily in muesli and yoghurt for breakfast).

“….I don't have a cow, but the cow is the difference between malnutrition and being good. Its true that a couple of cows and a few pigs were traditionally part of a smallholder's food and land system.
The logistics of keeping a cow producing a good volume of high quality milk are not as simple as "turn her out on the grass and milk twice a day." A milking cow needs high protein supplements to her basic fodder diet --etc.”

When things get tougher, it might be a better example to look at hunter-gatherers or small hobby farms.
Something more manageable.  
The bigger the animals, & the more out-of-sync w/nature (I.e., CAFO habits) humans use their animals, the more costly (in energy, feed, transportation, etc.) animals get.
I’d think, it’s likely prudent to stop thinking about large livestock (even mini-cows), maybe stop thinking you gotta have dairy at all, really.  
It does not make sense to keep larger livestock, especially when systems as we know them are crumbling or being disassembled by the minit.  
Cattle require acreage—even minis.  
Enuf are needed, to be able to rotate active milk producers, so you avoid CAFO habits of animals husbandry.  
Those cannot help folks living in suburbia or cities, either….& most folks live with constraints on yard space, & often, HOA rules.
The bottom line might be:  
  Fats & proteins are the more costly calories to get, & harder to grow from plant sources.

How else to get those?
Quinoa is a complete protein, & grows pretty easily in yards.
Lots of seeds on them, means easier to grow enuf in a yard.
Lentils take up little space, & can augment quinoa.
Amaranth is a close 2nd to quinoa.  

Go for small critters, maybe like Muscovy ducks.  
Not rabbits—too much input for too little output—unless you grow worms for protein.
Muscovies, tho, are “quackless” (so, they are quiet); kinda meaty, & produce low-moderate number of eggs.
For a family of 3 or 4, only need about 3 females for eggs & a male for fertilizing next generations.
They can work in a modest yard, & be hidden from prying eyes, if you arrange your yard right.
Keep one wing feathers clipped, so they don’t fly away.
We’ve had over 30 ducks running around 1/3 acre—too many—but easily could keep 7 ducks healthy in that space.
Muscovy ducks can help family-level sustenance, without clueing neighbors of your small flock; provides great eggs & cheap entertainment, bug & slug abatement, & meat & fats for the hungry tummies.  
No other poultry I’ve found so far, can do all that.

Landscape with food/medicine plants instead of lawns.  
Key is to make the front yard look deliberately tidy enuf to look like landscaping, not rambling food tangles—not all food plants can go in a front yard.

& most folks will need some stealth features to get by.  
Stealth rocket stove for heat, stealth poultry, stealth water, stealth food sources, stealth simple geothermal coolig…get it?
Loose lips sink ships.

If you have space, what about growing tilapia or trout in one or more of the recycled Tote IBC containers?  
The fishy water feeds raised bed gardens, or hydroponics.  
The fish don’t need to be visible. Only you know they are in the tanks.
A circular economy of greens, proteins, fats, in about 10’x20’ canopy space, can feed a family most of the kinds of calories they need.

Those containers can also store runoff rain, tho these days, cisterns really should be underground, out of sight or awareness.  When municipal water systems crash, you all gotta have water!  
Water has gotten more costly too. Just like power & fuels.
If you have a water source at your home, THAT is a key to being able to shelter in your home.
Bigger (underground) cisterns WIN for survival!  
If you cannot dig, have a “temporary” shelter (non-taxable)(so far), that can shelter your water tank farmette.  
The IBC totes come in a few sizes.  
They can be used for many things. The lowest cost units have not had the juice residues washed out of them.  
Totes can be a water tank farm, fish tanks, raised beds, water haulers in a truck bed, & more.  I used one to make a small septic system for a yurt, & a friend used one like that for his RV, complete with a leach field, decades ago.
There was a story about a couple who stacked & locked walls of totes together, to build a shelter; they used insulation on the outside of those walls, framed in eep windowsills w/recycled windows on the outside, & framed a roof over.  Built up earthen floor.

You might should learn about edible & medicinal plants.  
What there is near you, how to forage for them best, how to use them best.  
Foraged food is free, & full of life-force to help keep you healthier.  
Some of it can taste bitter; that takes re-educating your tastebuds.  Kids too.
Prepare for predators that love your food garden even more than you—large birds, all kinds of 4-leggeds, & the 2-legged opportunists, will all come looking for whatever is not nailed down, & more.
Design your place to thwart those; small gardens cannot grow enuf to feed the critters that come to pilfer, & your household.  

Storing healthy fats & grains long-term, requires denaturing the fats in the to avoid fast rancidification.
Hippies who stored away buckets of grains 50 or 60 yrs ago, most often ended up composting the stuff, cuz it went rancid by around year 7.  Eating rancid food, causes dire sickness.  
You need ways to get mostly fresh foods.
You need ways to use a solar food dehydrator, to long-store foods from garden—drying preserves most nutrients, & far more dry matter can stuff a canning jar than wet-canned.  Plus, wet-canning requires lotsa fuel, water, & heavy duty shelves in much bigger space.   I’ve grated zucchini, dried trays of that, & almost 3 trays of dried zucchini fit in one quart canning jar—using a vacuum sealer on the jar lid, helps preserve it longer.  That zucchini was still safely edible, tho tasted slightly different, 8 years later.

If you store 5 years of foods, it must be foods you regularly eat, so it all gets rotated to avoid spoilage losses.
That includes sprouting seeds.  
One can heal dire ills using an Optimum Health Institute regimen. 6 months of sprouting seeds for complete dietary sustenance, an be stored in a large briefcase!   They are close to offerings an online course or home course.

Look at ..your.. circumstances.  
What do you already have to work with?  
What can you do without, to your benefit?  
What rules constrain or limit you where you live?  Do you know how to do “work-arounds” that get you what you need, quietly, while still appearing to bide by rules/constraints?
Have you already been making changes to your lifestyles, to be comfy living with the changes folks talk about, that you aspire to?

Food for thot

Chi I def agree with the muscovies, no one will know about them. The bad thing about the cow (cut and carry system) is that everyone will know about it, and then they dob you in with the council. Goats are better in this regard, they are less noisy. Milking animals have a huge advantage, which is a continuous supply of fat and milk every single day. They are a lot of work, especially in cut and carry systems (and you have to walk them too), but the reasons why humans did it for such a long time is exactly that.  
I don't agree with the rabbit: even in suburbia and in many cities, you'll get enough greens to feed a rabbit. It is the source of protein in tough times. Quinoa has very little protein compared to rabbit meat and can be harvested once a year. If you need to use your square meters wisely, the rabbit wins big time, also because this is a cut-and- carry system. I know that many people here lean towards plant-based foods, but onc the trucks stop rolling this is a very luxury option, just run the figures.

Ok, can someone please help me out here, what is a cut and carry system!?🤔

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing one cuts the fodder for the animals from elsewhere and carries it to them.

I’ve found that even a tiny setup can take the edge off rising costs. I grow greens in old buckets on a balcony and swap extras with neighbors, which turns into its own little safety net. If space is tight, sprouting beans or lentils on a windowsill gives quick, cheap calories. It’s not a magic fix, but it adds up faster than I expected and feels a lot less stressful.

In the Tropics we have weeds galore, as they grow all year long. Then slugs and snails, monkeys and pradial larceny to deal with, along with all the other pests and blights.
Imported products are essentially subsidized by the fixed exchange rate so it’s hard to compete in the market.
Moringa grows well but no one seems to want it. Aloe too..
Any geographic appropriate suggestions welcomed.

Welcome to permies Andy!
It sounds like you think the price of food near you won't go up x10. I'm thinking this is an extreme view at the moment, but am still expecting more price increases in Europe.
If you're trying to sell food, then your objectives will be different to someone just trying to eat well on less (or the same) money. Maybe start a new thread in tropical climate forum (or other regional if more appropriate). There may be some useful suggestions for you in farm income forum too.

Andy Bean wrote:Any geographic appropriate suggestions welcomed.

In some places most food is imported and that presents unique challenges.
But if the price of shipping goes up, things get complicated.
One tropical crop I never heard of before moving here is pigeon pea (gandules). It grows in the worst places, needs nothing, takes abuse, and can be eaten green (like peas) or as a dried bean that stores well. I have found very few pests seem to look at it. Grazing animals like to eat the leaves and once it gets established it grows into hedge/windbreak kind of things you can prune and it keeps on kicking. I always keep a few in the yard, literally they grow in the gravel on the edge of the yard.
This blog has some great info about growing it. https://www.ruralsprout.com/pigeon-peas/
I never cared about growing beans or peas before, but now I always have some going- winter and summer versions. If I have to I can plant more. Between the beans and some nutritious leafies (no lettuce, we grow collards and local collard-type brassicas) and sweet potatoes, we can have some subsistence food in the yard all the time.

This weekend shared some pears, apples, basil & tomatoes and got a surprise pint of pesto sauce back. I call that a major win. Last weekend gave couple gallons of salsa to neighbor on hard times. sunchokes are lining the edge of the forest on the east side of my back corn field, wonder how far they'll go? Birds got the rest of the elderberries before i got a 5 gallon pail filled, they seemed happy. It's not a great year for apples for me but enough to fill cellar for now. The grapes were not worth the effort to clean the wine press. I'm wondering how everyone else is doing with food supply?

The casual dinner party will make a huge social comeback.

I will consider the hassle of picking off potato beetles, worth the trouble to grow potatoes again.

It may actually get my husband to finish fencing in the yard and the green house thermal banking  project.

It may result in drastic measures to deal with our groundhog problem.

I expect to spend a lot more  time teaching people how to grow food.

My husband would likely add a menagerie of animals to the property after he finishes the fencing projects.  

We may start bee keeping again.

Kate Muller wrote:The casual dinner party will make a huge social comeback.

LOL! Oh, that's brilliant. Nicely done!

Nicola Bludau wrote: the house cow. Something small, maybe a Dexter Jersey cross.
Goats are good too, but they seem to be much more difficult to keep. Sheep just don't give that much milk, but they are easy to keep and a little bit difficult to milk.

But the cow is like no other animal; no other animal produces more manure and improves the soil in a more dramatic way.

              I fell down laughing because I have a house cow… she’s a Jersey/Dexter small frame.  Roves all over the property getting into mischief.  She lives part time in the front yard.  She’s naturally funny, aggravating, cute, all at the same time.  Practical? Depends upon food sources, and fencing techniques as cows eat a lot, and seek other cows at their own peril.  So 1 is not really that practical in my experience.  Might be true if you could get the house bovine to a large sheep size?  Cheers.  

My family went back to trying to get more ready for crises thirty years ago. We took a significant step a dozen years ago, taking on a large plot on the local municipal allotment garden site. There's not so much land available in our suburban community.

Two years ago, we started a community allotment garden project alongside our own plot.

Pros include putting our theoretical knowledge picked up from our much more organised grandparents & parents, into practical test & development.  We quickly created a household soft fruit supply (vital micronutrients plus the joy of the flavours) sufficient for the whole year.

Cons include the allotment site being convinced they have to be gated & secluded to avoid overwhelming vandalism & theft.

However, at the moment, by far the biggest supply of calories to us, and the wider community, comes from the support of local shopkeepers.  We have a synergy: they give us their greengrocery & baked goods which are past their best for sale.  We get to pick these over, and give most of the edible bakery, vegetables & fruit to our local Black-run Mutual Aid (the only still running since COVID-19 efforts faded away) who make meals for anyone who wants them.

We as a household get to keep a lot of the fruit, including stuff that we couldn't grow here like mangoes, because we have the time & know-how to pick it over & pare it. We also get given items the community kitchen have been given to excess of their needs, like peanut butter. I love to make peanut vegetable stew thicken with peanut butter, very filling.

The rest of the "scrapped off" greengrocery goes into our community allotment compost heap, and no longer landfill.  We get some relative clean fallen leaves & woodchip from local municipal & commercial landscape gardeners to balance the heap.

But for comparison, one large loaf of bread (800g) is enough calories (c. 1800), protein (c. 65 g) & fibre (c. 20 - 50g) to provide a baseline of food for an adult for a day if they can afford, salvage, grow or forage a bit of greens, beans or fruit too.  Most weeks, we get at least half a dozen (sometimes, a whole two dozen tray) of loaves from shopkeepers.  (They are often white or 50:50 not wholegrain Chorleywood bread, but many people around here like those a lot more than we do.)

For myself, I prefer to grow & harvest my wholegrain sourdough starter on my kitchen worktop.  I've not yet grown my own wheat, but I'm going to try amaranth next year. My other bulk calorie crop successes are sunchokes, potatoes & yacón.

Someone upthread asked "why sunchokes"?  I guess it depends on your variety & growing conditions: they seem to like warm & wet weather.  They have a delicate "artichoke" flavour to me, and I prefer them roasted, although mashed or in soup cooked with a delicately flavoured acide like apple cider vinegar is nice too.

I would say the most realistic current urban food strategy is community mutual aid, with communal buying, working with local shops, and communal cooking.

Two rules of consuming sunchokes:

   - start small and build your biome

   - harvest after one or two hard frosts

We have not had a hard frost yet, but we started harvesting anyway.  So we are testing the second rule.


This, is one sunchoke





I have been eating heaps and heaps and heaps of sunchokes.  Every day.  Way too early in the season.   Maybe 20% of the food i eat every day is sunchokes.  And I have had some days where it is over 50%.  Zero farts.  

Many people here are eating lots of sunchokes.  Some have zero farts.  Some have farts, but they are contemplating putting the blame on something else.  I am now to the point of thinking that if they ramp up sunchokes, it might actually be a sort of anti-fart thing.  

with lots and lots of further testing ...   I wonder if we will get to the point of saying that anybody bringing up the fart factor is simply a person that ate too many sunchokes on their first try.  Understandable because once you have a taste and realize that they are far tastier than any potato, you can easily over eat.



My plan is to experiment on myself this winter.  Making sunchokes my primary staple.




Also ...   the giant sunchoke above ...   keep in mind that this was harvested from a hugelkultur built on solid rock.  We are focusing our gardening efforts on building soil rather than attempting to grow food in a way that depletes the soil.  The idea is that by building the soil, then our gardens will pump out far more food with little to zero effort.  

A rich soil with a rich polyculture solves a list of issues.

paul wheaton wrote:
with lots and lots of further testing ...   I wonder if we will get to the point of saying that anybody bringing up the fart factor is simply a person that ate too many sunchokes on their first try.  Understandable because once you have a taste and realize that they are far tastier than any potato, you can easily over eat.

If you're running experiments... how about when new people arrive who likely have had their gut biome tuned to eating typical Western food, you have some add home made gut support like Kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut  etc while ramping up their sunchoke dietary content, and others try ramping it up without the extra gut biome support? Enquiring minds are very curious.

Alas, I can't run this test easily myself. We still haven't had our first frost, and in my ecosystem, sunchokes seem to rot in our wet winters. They seem to do OK in my friend's backyard, although are limited by deer pressure, so if I can get a  really tall hugel built in one area of my land where the run off is better, I will give them a go again. The deer will likely be happy to see them again...

I shall be experimenting on myself with sunchokes this winter too.

Short version: inulin is one of the fructans components of food.  We only digest ~< 15% of fructans directly ourselves, the rest if we're lucky gets gracefully fermented in our large intestines. But around 25% of people with IBS have fructans sensitivity, which means, painful & distressing symptoms.  Since a dangerous infection & antibiotics in Aug 2025 includes me.

The good news is, with the help of excellent Registered Dietitians I seem to be successfully rebuilding my gut microbiome to gracefully digest fructans again.  Eating a lot less wheat (rich in fructans), unless it's 24hr home sourdough fermented, has been a big help.

So, I need to find out how well I can digest sunchokes & their insulin now. We've not yet had any frosts, but I have two nice stands of sunchokes ready for when we get some big ones (likely, Dec/Jan).

I think I will start with sunchoke soup, as I can incorporate lots of culinary acid to break down most of the inulin.  My goal is to work up to roast sunchokes.  I also have yacón tubers to try!

Jay Angler wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:
with lots and lots of further testing ...   I wonder if we will get to the point of saying that anybody bringing up the fart factor is simply a person that ate too many sunchokes on their first try.  Understandable because once you have a taste and realize that they are far tastier than any potato, you can easily over eat.

If you're running experiments... how about when new people arrive who likely have had their gut biome tuned to eating typical Western food, you have some add home made gut support like Kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut  etc while ramping up their sunchoke dietary content, and others try ramping it up without the extra gut biome support? Enquiring minds are very curious.

......

Well... shoot!  Now I have to add a sunroot dig to the list of weekend tasks... :-)    I had a batch of chokes a few weeks back, now already eaten.  And now we've had two good hard frosts.  This will be the perfect time for some harvesting to add to the test.  I like the idea of how sunchokes may need some prior consumption in order to 'reboot' the gut microbiome.  Although the following is not an experiement I would recommend solely for this sunchoke gas issue, it would be interesting to see if they are gassy just after having been on an antibiotic (oral) schedule for some ailment.  That would have cleaned out much of the microbiome so would starting from a 'clean slate'.  One could see if the gas returned in the wake of this and if a decline in gas re-emerged over time.  Minimally, it will be interesting to see if there is a flavor/sweetness difference between the earlier harvest and the post-frost tubers.

r ransom wrote:

And I should probably bake some workmans cake for the freezer so I don't have to bake in the summer heat.

I would love to know more about workmans cake.