grow and harvest 100,000 calories - PEP BB gardening.straw.calories

Here's my submission.  The squash was grown two years ago, the rest was this year.  We did grow squash this year but not as much.  We did grow many more calories that were canned, eaten, sold or contaminated with outside inputs in the form of salsa or pickles.

Carrots - 45 lbs.  Stored in the root cellar in five 5 gallon buckets with damp planer shavings = 8,370 calories
Potatoes - 160 lbs.  Stored in the root cellar in wire baskets after curing in the dark for a couple weeks = 45,714 calories
Sweet potatoes - 35 lbs.  Stored in wire baskets in the basement where it's closer to 60 degrees and dry (they won't keep in the root cellar) after curing in a warmer area for a couple weeks = 13,650 calories
Garlic - 7 lbs. Stored in wire baskets in the basement where it's drier (they won't keep in the root cellar) = 4,704 calories
Lofthouse landrace dry beans - 8 lbs.  Stored in mason jars = 11,428 calories
Sunflower seeds - 8 lbs.  Stored in chicken food sack = 20,000
Beets - 32.5 lbs.  Stored in the root cellar in three 5 gallon buckets with damp planer shavings = 6,337 calories
Apples - 120 lbs.  Stored in the root cellar in many 5 gallon buckets with dry planer shavings = 28,320 calories
Onions - 43 lbs.  Stored in the root cellar in wire baskets = 8,213 calories
Squash (14 acorn, 74 pumpkin, 22 buttercup, 54 butternut) - 400-500 lbs.  Stored loose on wooden shelves in the basement where it's closer to 50 degrees and dry. = 80,000
Raspberries - 11.75 lbs.  Frozen on a cookie sheet and then put in cellophane bags in ziplock bags in the freezer = 2,632 calories
Aronia berries - 8.5 lbs.  Frozen on a cookie sheet and then put in cellophane bags in ziplock bags in the freezer = 1,810 calories
Green peppers - 4.5 lbs.  Frozen on a cookie sheet and then put in cellophane bags in ziplock bags in the freezer = 409 calories
Total of 231,587 calories

Bonus species that I didn't weigh would be frozen zucchini, frozen green beans, cabbage, brussels sprouts and leeks that are still in the garden

Is anyone else going to skip the hugelkulture requirement in the sand badge and continue on with the straw badge requirement to grow, harvest and preserve 100,000 cals? This BB will take all summer and it would help keep me on track if someone else was also working towards this goal. I am amazed at what Mike was able to do.

I hope so.  It did take me more than one year to do the stuff in the photos, but I think I grow more than that per year.  It's just that I didn't have pictures of every zucchini and tomato that I picked.  I'm pretty sure many experienced homesteaders are cranking out this amount of food each year so I hope they post about it.  

And you never know when the opportunity may arise to knock out a hugel (that opportunity happened for me at Wheaton Labs).

Just thought of a loophole you may want to plug--require "at least 3% or __% of the calories from each of the 12 species."  (So you can't  for example grow 99,990 calories of sunchokes and then 1 tomato, 1 garlic,1 mint plant, etc...).  Yes, always thinking of a way to game the system.

Also, urban question here: I have been planting things I find in compost down the block from me when I steal their compost.  If it's already sprouting, I want to give it a chance.  A turnip here, an onion there.  The initial weight is approximately nil.   I think this is good permaculture.  And I would love for it to count toward my badge.  What do you think, is that an "import"?  

I also cut the tops off all our bag of carrots and am going to regrow those.  They would have gone in my compost otherwise.  (Or my mouth--sometimes I must think I'm Ianto Evans.  My partner doesn't.  She never thinks she's Ianto Evans.
And I don't think she thinks I am either, if only because she doesn't know who that is).   So I'm thinking the part of the carrot that grows in the sunlight here is this carrot, whereas the part that's from the store would fit the definition of a "seed" and I would need to deduct that portion of the carrot from my declared income.  To me, it's more about the spirit of things than the letter, but I figure it's worth making the rules clear to people ahead of time.  I'm aware of farmers who do this kind of thing, get the thrown away food from a grocery store for their goats (or even their farmers...).  I also feel that growing starts you bought would be cheating, and growing starts that you salvaged would be cheating as well, though I would still do it (outside the BB) rather than just let them die if I had enough space.  Or give them to someone.  

I guess I want there to be a salvaging badge, is there?

That food looks delicious, Mike!

Good catch Joshua!  We thought of that for some other badges but this one snuck thru.  I'll change it to fix that loophole.

I think that Paul wouldn't go for the compost sprouts or the regrown grocery food.  Since he's not good with seed potatoes I think those would count as imports.  In an urban PEX though, that could be a neat part of gardening or foraging.  No salvaging badge but foraging is probably the closest...

So... does the seed potato rule mean you can buy seed potatoes, grow potatoes from them, save some to plant, and then in year 2 you're ok?

Or is it meant as 'no potatoes unless you start by importing true potato seeds'?

I just clarified the BB a bit.  The answer to your first question is yes.  

If you import potato seeds (not little tubers), those would count as seeds so you could grow them out and count them for this BB in the first growing season.

Did my edit to the top post clear it up a bit?

dawn west wrote:Is anyone else going to skip the hugelkulture requirement in the sand badge and continue on with the straw badge requirement to grow, harvest and preserve 100,000 cals? This BB will take all summer and it would help keep me on track if someone else was also working towards this goal. I am amazed at what Mike was able to do.

I'm working on this. While we did build a hugel in 2020 (40ft long, 4ft wide and 3ft high) we are never going to build one 7ft high, even if part of it is buried :)

I just added up calories for 2020 in hindsight that I can prove, and it was just over 21,000. 2021 should be higher, I have our own seed spuds and true potato seed to start with, and will keep better records of the rest of the harvest.

Mike, amazing squash harvest!

Kevin

Pro tip - I did the sand, straw and wood hugels at Wheaton Labs using their excavator.  Much easier

WHAT A GARDEN THIS YEAR!! its my first time growing so much. But I produced:
Banana squash amd pumpkins,
Potatoes,
Spaghetti squash,
Acorn amd other winter squashes,
Tomatoes,
Sunchokes,
Onions,
Lettuces,
Corn,
Beans of many kinds,
Summer squashes,
Apples,
Chokecherries,
Peas,
Herbs,
And carrots

I'll include my calorie sheet as well as pictures that are necessary. Some pictures are of the finished food product, because I didn't snap one before we prepared or ate them!

Have to say, all in all, its been a joy!

Hey Mike , how is maple syrup season? Well, the potatoes have been half harvested and stored. The sprinkler box they are in is 2x3x3, sorry you can't see them in the pic, but I'll bet it's 50-75 pounds of potatoes.

Let's try this a different way. The other half of my potatoes are still under soil. I grew them in tires. I upturned the front stack and found 11 lbs. Worth of spuds. That's 3,800 calories. You can see in the pic that there are 7 more tire stacks, and if they are all pretty close to 11 pounds, that would be a total of 26,000 calories, and it's only half of what I grew.

Here are what's left of my sunchokes, 27 lbs. That's 8,900 calories. Thats more calories than I estimated the other way.

Here are a few things I did with my tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos. Salsa, freeze dried, etc.

Does that help?

Syrup season is slow in coming.  Maybe in another 5 months it will finally get rolling :)   I don't do fall tapping...

Your latest post is helping.  Look at how I formatted mine way up above.  I listed each crop, the poundage how many calories that represented and a pic of each bounty.  If you could do that for all yours, you're good to go.

I'd say that you have shown enough produce for the sunchokes, potatoes, apples, squash and cherry tomatoes.  You've done the math for us for the taters and sunchokes.  Just need to do the rest for us...

Hey Mike, thanks for giving me time to work on this. Here is a picture of a list I made of number crunching for you. And a few pictures for chokecherries and apples, since those are also high-calorie crops for me. What else can I get for ya?

This one took a lot of going through old photos, while I grow in excess of a million calories a year easily I don't appear to take many photos of them, take summer squash I know I grew over 50kg of them this year (I keep good records for the business) but I can only find photos of about 7kg which isn't enough to hit the 2k calorie limit.
I grew in excess of 200kg of strawberries this year, but I only included two "pickings" as I am sure they came from runners I have myself taken and planted and not bought plants.
I've included 14 different varieties so if there is a query about one or 2 the others can take up the slack.

Cucumbers        39          2668
Potatoes            41.8       14630
Beans/peas       17             2340
Maize                 5            2100
Apples               15           2940
Beetroot            11          2150
Onions               111        20240
Winter squash   436        87120
Tomatoes           59         4779
Currants             12        3080
Parsnips             22        7500
Cabbage             22        2500
Elderberries       7          2336
Strawberries      26       3900
Total calorie count 150157

The black buckets are 12L the large aluminum pans are 12L the large stainless pan is 10L the potato bags hold 22lb when full. All weights on the scales are in kg/g (those on the list above are in pounds) there may be some rounding errors in the figures above.
There are extra beans hiding in the corner of "cabbage potatoes cucumbers"

OOps sorry those were meant to be included.

A clarification on the rule

- no inputs from more than 500 feet away (tomato starts from the big box store aren't allowed) except for seeds

How is this being interpreted for perennials? Looking at Mike's first approved submission, I'm assuming the apples, raspberries, and Aronia berries were probably bought as plants (super cool if started from seed).

Also does garlic follow the seed potato rule?

Jim Spaulding wrote:A clarification on the rule

- no inputs from more than 500 feet away (tomato starts from the big box store aren't allowed) except for seeds

How is this being interpreted for perennials? Looking at Mike's first approved submission, I'm assuming the apples, raspberries, and Aronia berries were probably bought as plants (super cool if started from seed).

Also does garlic follow the seed potato rule?

I think garlic is like the seed potatoes.

Perennials must already be there, or started from seed, or imported from less than 500 feet away.

Can calories be tracked and calculated by volume vs. weight, or is it only weight that's allowed?

For example;  if I grew and stored  5 gallons of pumpkin = 80 cups x 30 calories is 2400 calories.  would be easier to document total vs. weighing and photographing individual pumpkis before I can or eat them?

I'd say to do whichever is easier and makes sense.  Please note that for my submission near the top, I just listed the amount of each and then a photo showing that it looked like I did what I said.  I didn't weigh each bucket of apples.  I also grew/harvested double what was needed so it made it easier for them to feel good certifying.  It does look like the BB requirements have been updated since I made my post though...  Document as much as you want, more is always better :)

Excellent, thank you!

Question 2 concerning the input distance.

I have two gardens on different properties.   If I move things BETWEEN my two gardens, but NOT from outside sources,  will it violate the input distance or can I still consider this "from within my garden"?    IE;  rabbit manure,  comfrey tea, chop and drop material,  grass clippings....    The answer to this will play heavily into my growing plans for next year (high yeild plants all in one garden vs. split between the two).  

Hmm, I think moving between distant gardens wouldn't pass muster.  Then it's not much different from importing comfrey from other places too.

Thanks Mike.   I found myself arguing both sides of that question equally and figured I'd better ask definitively lol.  

 - perennials, biennials and annuals are fine but foraging is not

I wonder about the definition of foraging. I have been picking up food from my yard that is usually considered "weeds," such as goutweed and stinging nettles. Is that considered foraging or harvesting, and does it count?

Also, I was just wondering what people were using to weigh their food. I don't have a large food scale.

Thanks in advance!

I think that sounds closer to foraging than to "Grow and harvest..."

Mike Haasl wrote:I think that sounds closer to foraging than to "Grow and harvest..."

Thanks so much for the clarification, Mike. Just wondering about the measuring. Is it okay to estimate or do we have to actually weigh every single thing we harvest? I may have to invest in a bigger scale because right now, I just have a small kitchen scale. Thanks in advance.

I think you're best off by harvesting/processing large batches at a time or it will be a really arduous BB to get.  You can do it by volume if it makes sense (gallons of popcorn?).  But it might be worth picking up a scale.  I got a 22 lb scale really cheap at a thrift shop...

I grew crops in past years but didn't realize that I had to weigh them.  I also didn't take volume measurements.   Is there any way that I can get some credit toward the gardening BB?  Growing these was a lot of work, and I would hate for it to go to waste.  I might be able to do some research and approximate the weight of the produce, but it wouldn't be an exact measurement.

Can I get credit for any of this at all?  I realize that I can't get credit for things that I didn't take pictures of, but what about things like the squash?

I think you can get credit for the squash if you propose a conservative weight for that harvest and just go with it.

Question:

Do different varieties of squash and tomatoes count as different species for the sake of this BB?

 - grow, harvest and use 12 or more species (except in cases where species are quite different as in the brassica family) totaling 100,000 calories  

I think if you grow cucurbita mixta and cucurbita moschata and cucurbita pepo could count separately but tomatoes are the same family.