Ways to be more self sufficient with no land

I wanted to bring up a discussion that might interest people. J Katrak said something in the young people permaculture thread about not being able to afford land and I wanted to speak up about a lot of good things that can be done without requiring any land to be owned or controlled by you.

This isn’t exactly my situation but I do try to get most of my food from foraging, and focus on staple plants like potatoes in my gardening efforts.

First of them is that it is possible to be self sufficient in vegetables by foraging. A patch of nettles is an amazing food source and you will get little competition. I’m not sure but I imagine that you could eat mostly nettles for your vegetables, but fortunately there are so many more than just that. You will not find wild tomatoes unless you live in a (sub)tropical location but tomato can be substituted with temperate fruits if need be. Wild eating requires a different kind of cuisine, one that is suited to the land where you live. It’s possible to see this as an inconvenience, or an opportunity for learning.

Late summer and fall are good times for fruit and mushrooms. Mushrooms are a wonderful source of medicinal, protein-rich vegetable food that grows in uncultivated forest land. Contrary to popular belief there are a host of mushrooms that are easy to identify. I’ll go into boletes, and mention some other easy ones briefly. It is best if you can find someone else to teach you, but books work too. As I say these mushrooms aren’t going to require a microscope or spore printing, however they do require respect and some basic attention to detail.

Boletes are one of the safest groups of mushrooms to forage because you don’t need to identify them to species. They have dry caps, a central stalk arising from the ground, and pores instead of gills. They are soft, not woody. And they are mycorrhizal, so they associate with trees. All poisonous boletes have flesh that stains blue when broken, or orange-to-red pore surfaces. Not all boletes with these characteristics are poisonous.

Once you have made sure the bolete is non-poisonous, taste a nibble and spit it out. Some are unpalatably bitter. Also note that those with a spongy texture are likely bad and eaten up by maggots—break it open to check for holes. The same maggotiness applies to chanterelles, too.

Highly important for self sufficiency are the edible polypores, such as chicken of the woods, lion’s mane, coral tooth, and hen of the woods (or Maitake). They are often large and some can provide a week or more of meals. Hen of the woods and lion’s mane are well studied for their health benefits, but they are delicious too!

More easily identifiable mushrooms include shaggy mane, chanterelles, black trumpets, and oysters. I find that I harvest far more late fall oysters (Sarcomyxa serotina, not a true oyster) than regular or pleurotus oysters. They are delicious, common on maple logs that fall over streams, and are found beginning around the first frost date.

To end the note on mushrooms, a friend of mine has had success spreading a wide variety of mushrooms, including matsutakes, to new locations simply by moving the mushrooms into a suitable habitat, sometimes just by tossing them into the forest while passing by. It takes a while for them to establish but eventually a habitat that was devoid of mushrooms can fill up and become an abundant oasis of fungal life.

There are also ways you can work with farmers and gardeners. Our region has farms that have open days for gleaning from the fields after harvest and you can gain a lot of good food that way! You can also help friends or neighbors with their gardening, some people will like to send you home with lots of food. Community gardens are also an option for cultivation of crops.

In the olden days the landless or land-poor would cultivate “waste lands”, places where they wouldn’t be bothered for cultivating because they were considered worthless for commercial farming operations. In The Unlikely Peace of Cuchumaquic by Martin Prechtel there is a charming story about a crop that people thought was lost forever: the sacred birth and death corn. During the Guatemalan civil war, partisans had gone through Tzutujil country, systematically destroying corn fields, until even the remotest farms’ crops had been completely destroyed. This man had grown his crop of sacred birth-and-death-corn on what was essentially a cliff face! He got up to sow and cultivate by ascending and descending by rope (though, a jokester, he tells a story about having his servant fly him up by helicopter). And though the partisans attempted to burn the field, they could not get up and do so because the terrain was so steep. These old crops, old landraces saved by many hands in one land, could withstand such unlikely conditions, and survive!

It’s possible that guerilla gardening is the modern appellation for this cultivation of the wastes.

Feral apples are another amazing source of food, and any apples, even bitter cider apples, taste good dried. Most apples are also good cooked into a compote or apple porridge. Feral parsnips grow wild in many northern regions as well. I have found that they are good in fall but not in spring, contrary to “what they say”. You can start digging late summer until the ground freezes. Look also to hopniss, wild Jerusalem artichoke, and other tubers.

There are lots of truly wild fruits too—we need to go by their pulses and harvest them where and when they are abundant. I am currently waiting on blackberries. I have been nibbling glossy buckthorn in the meantime, starved for fruit… some notable wild fruits that can be very delicious and abundant are black raspberry, hawthorn, red raspberry, blackberry, wild high and low bush blueberry, huckleberry, mulberry (not in my region but in other places), chokecherry, barberry, autumn olive, elderberry, and plenty of others. Hawthorn can be susceptible to worms, much more so than apples, so cut around the core rather than somehow trying to strain. For many fruits, you also need to find the right patch. Some particular wild blackberries, chokecherries, hawthorns, and autumn olives, to name a few, I would go as far as calling inedible. Not because the species is inedible, but that that particular individual or patch is in bad soil or something, and is simply not good for eating. It is unwise to waste one’s energy on bad fruit.

Maieshe Ljin wrote:I wanted to bring up a discussion that might interest people. J Katrak said something in the young people permaculture thread about not being able to afford land and I wanted to speak up about a lot of good things that can be done without requiring any land to be owned or controlled by you.

First of them is that it is possible to be self sufficient in vegetables by foraging. A patch of nettles is an amazing food source and you will get little competition. I’m not sure but I imagine that you could eat mostly nettles for your vegetables, but fortunately there are so many more than just that. You will not find wild tomatoes unless you live in a (sub)tropical location but tomato can be substituted with temperate fruits if need be. Wild eating requires a different kind of cuisine, one that is suited to the land where you live. It’s possible to see this as an inconvenience, or an opportunity for learning.

Late summer and fall are good times for fruit and mushrooms. Mushrooms are a wonderful source of medicinal, protein-rich vegetable food that grows in uncultivated forest land. Contrary to popular belief there are a host of mushrooms that are easy to identify. I’ll go into boletes, and mention some other easy ones briefly. It is best if you can find someone else to teach you, but books work too. As I say these mushrooms aren’t going to require a microscope or spore printing, however they do require respect and some basic attention to detail.

Boletes are one of the safest groups of mushrooms to forage because you don’t need to identify them to species. They have dry caps, a central stalk arising from the ground, and pores instead of gills. They are soft, not woody. And they are mycorrhizal, so they associate with trees. All poisonous boletes have flesh that stains blue when broken, or orange-to-red pore surfaces. Not all boletes with these characteristics are poisonous.

Once you have made sure the bolete is non-poisonous, taste a nibble and spit it out. Some are unpalatably bitter. Also note that those with a spongy texture are likely bad and eaten up by maggots—break it open to check for holes. The same maggotiness applies to chanterelles, too.

Highly important for self sufficiency are the edible polypores, such as chicken of the woods, lion’s mane, coral tooth, and hen of the woods (or Maitake). They are often large and some can provide a week or more of meals. Hen of the woods and lion’s mane are well studied for their health benefits, but they are delicious too! As I grew up foraging, these mushrooms have always made up most of the late summer through early fall vegetable portion for me.

More easily identifiable mushrooms include shaggy mane, chanterelles, black trumpets, and oysters. I find that I harvest far more late fall oysters (Sarcomyxa serotina, not a true oyster) than regular or pleurotus oysters. They are delicious, common on maple logs that fall over streams, and are found beginning around the first frost date.

To end the note on mushrooms, a friend of mine has had success spreading a wide variety of mushrooms, including matsutakes, to new locations simply by moving the mushrooms into a suitable habitat, sometimes just by tossing them into the forest while passing by. It takes a while for them to establish but eventually a habitat that was devoid of mushrooms can fill up and become an abundant oasis of fungal life.

Great post Maieshe. I feel like my young people post was a not well worded and sounded too "negative". I'm not sure I conveyed what I was thinking and I'm still not sure that I know how.

https://permies.com/t/276624/ways-attract-young-people-permaculture

I think the two posts after mine were right on too. I'm guessing they were from people younger than I.

Foraging. Do that instead of watching adults do sports young people. Sure grow spinach but eat lambsquarters etc. to your hearts delight while you're waiting for it to grow and after it bolts.
Be weary of roadsides and railroad tracks. Lots of tasty things accumulate toxy things.

Mushrooms. Nothing like find a good mushroom. Vitamin D in food northern young people? I think you can just put some store bought ones in the sun and they'll make some too. But I've not done the experiments myself.
There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters. Be weary of roadsides and railroad tracks too. Lots of these tasty things accumulate toxy things as well.


20ish years ago I planted some pear and apple trees. My property seemed like it should be good morel habitat. Lots of dead and dying elms etc. I could never find any. It had been abused farm land for who knows how long before I purchased it. I found morels down the road on some county land and made myself a tasty dinner of morels, ramps, fiddleheads and asparagus. Maybe even trout, not certain. After dinner I took the scraps of the morels and sprinkled some around the bases of the recently planted fruit trees in hopes of propagating them. Then forgot all about it.
Until last year. I went down just to look at beautiful pear trees and whoa! Morels! Yay! More this year but it was a really bad year here.

I guess the sooner that young people figure out what is bs and what is not, the sooner they can make good choices about what to do next.

There's lots of good ideas and proof here.

How to be self sufficient with no land? I think a couple things can go a long way.
Be curious. Learn as many different skills as you can.
When you make money, save as much as you can. Think about how you make money and what it supports. Think about every single purchase you make and what it ultimately supports. Feel good about whatever you spend your time doing.

For anyone genuinely interested in wild harvesting, there are plenty of people who know where you can find it.

They also know under-utilized corners of land where you would be free to plant food and not be bothered.

But you won't find any of it online in that tiny screen! It's found in six degrees of separation, people you know who know people, and the all-important chain of trust.

I think joining an ecovillage/commune would be the best option. This way you can farm without buying land. In my experience Foraging in many places can be quite good, but most land is private, so you often have to ask permission to forage which can be problematic. Of course knowing hunting would help a lot too, but still. I think it’s better to focus on “community sufficiency” anyway since humans aren’t really designed to be self-sufficient.

I read of a fellow some years ago who "cultivated" a group of seniors who had back yards. In return for simple jobs like replacing burned out ceiling light bulbs, and cleaning the fixtures, he was allowed to plant in their back yards.

A friend with a warmer and sunnier and deer-free yard let me grow in an 4' x 10' raised bed this year. I bought 8 tomato plants, a friend gave me 2 rescue squash plants, and I started 8 bean seeds I had saved.

The tomatoes went in a bit late, so we're racing the approach of bad weather, but if even half the tomatoes ripen, I will have enough to can sauce as well as more fresh eating than I can manage (too many and I risk hives, so I use caution).

I expect to have to share the squash. One kabocha for the land-owner, one for the lady who gave me the plant and one for me. Two pie pumpkins for me for sure, one for the land-owner and one for the plant lady, but there's at least 1 more coming, so I may get a third.

The beans are *just* starting to form baby beans. I should at least get enough for fresh eating.

If I can design it quickly and easily enough, I might be able to make a bamboo frame that I can throw a white tarp over which could significantly help the tomatoes. It will cost me some fasteners and a tarp, but they would be salvageable after the fact.

I admit, I am not short of land, but my land has a lot of shade, cools off quickly at night due to on-shore breezes, and has enormous deer pressure. Eventually, I will build a garden that traps the daytime heat, and is *very* thoroughly fenced, but in the short term, I am very thankful that I'm blessed with kind friends. Not quite the way Daphne Rose said it, but yes, cultivating friends and community is very important!

So yes, learning to forage wild areas around you can be an excellent source of nutritious food and I recommend we all practice that to some degree, but there are ways to gain access to land through community building, and for people with few wild areas nearby, I encourage that effort as well.

In an urban Global North setting, there is likely to be a huge quantity of food waste from supermarkets.  

Whether you can access it or not is another matter, but this is how freegans operate to get as much food for free as the can without land.

In the UK, supermarkets have finally need doing more to reduce food waste since the start of COVID-19 through schemes such as FareShare. This sells surplus food at a very low price to community kitchens.

Jay,

I will build a garden that traps the daytime heat, and is *very* thoroughly fenced, but in the short term, I am very thankful that I'm blessed with kind friends.

How do you plan to do this?

John C Daley wrote:

Jay, I will build a garden that traps the daytime heat, and is *very* thoroughly fenced, but in the short term, I am very thankful that I'm blessed with kind friends.

How do you plan to do this?

We have a field area with a south facing slope. It currently has large rocks and invasive Himalayan Blackberry covering parts of it, and a damaged Big Leaf Maple threatening it. Big Leaf Maples often grow with multiple stems, and this is the case, and 2 of the stems have large dead areas of trunk. So step one is that the next time we put in a form to the district requesting that we can remove trees, that one, and another mostly hollow one need to go.

We have some extra dirt in another area which will make a crescent shaped hugel to the north, redirecting cold air from the area above. The rocks will make terraces to flatten the slope a little, while absorbing day-time heat to release at night. If needed I will plant perennial plants to slow the wind from the east.

Then the whole area will be double fenced with a "duck run" between the rest of the field and the inner fence. Deer normally won't jump a double fence.

Is it worth the cost in time and material? Probably not... but I *really* like good food, and it's the only way I'm going to get it! More and more people in our area are doing similar. We've got forest that isn't fenced that the deer can eat from. The rest of the field has fence they can jump and they can eat that grass if they fight the geese for it (actually, I've never seen the deer interact with the geese - I think they negotiated a peace settlement.) The deer regularly harvest our windfall apples. I figure I deserve one space that is guaranteed deer proof, regardless of the cost of the fencing!

You should check out my forum, “What do you forage for” I am an avid forager and don’t mean to diminish it, I just think other things are important too.

Daphne Rose wrote:I think joining an ecovillage/commune would be the best option. This way you can farm without buying land. In my experience Foraging in many places can be quite good, but most land is private, so you often have to ask permission to forage which can be problematic. Of course knowing hunting would help a lot too, but still. I think it’s better to focus on “community sufficiency” anyway since humans aren’t really designed to be self-sufficient.

This makes sense. This gets a bit better the more intact the thread of natural community is, too. There was one field that I visited for a number of years and foraged nettles, ground cherry, cattails and so on, and it is one of my favorite places but it was always a little circumspect and wary (it wasn’t posted but there were trails through it) and then this year found out in a conversation that it belongs to someone I knew who lived up the hill and is also a forager and has always been friendly to me. So now I feel safer going there. There is a lot in the space between intentional community and modern isolationism and a lot of places where the thread of community still exists and is still seemingly viable, though thin and worn out.

It is a difficult question though and I don’t know the answer. Does community need some kind of dramatic renewing and reworking or is the old sufficient but undernourished?