An Experiment in Subsistence Farming, Brooklyn Style
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.16.07
In this week's New York Magazine, Manny Howard chronicles his experiment to live off his land as his sole source of food for a month—in a 20x40-foot backyard in suburban Brooklyn—much to the wild-eyed glee of his two young children, the increasing consternation and frustration of the first-time farmer, and the chagrin of his wife, who grows increasingly concerned that her husband is turning into Richard Dreyfuss from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But just as Howard manages to wrest some semblance of sanity in his urban homestead, he miscalculates the due date of his pregnant doe and hastily puts together a nesting box a few sizes too small. The bloody result: The mother rabbit panics and begins devouring her offspring, moments before Howard's wife and 5-year-old daughter drop by the rabbit pen for a visit.
Then the tornado hits.
(Key to the farm layout below the fold.) ::New York Magazine
A Four vegetable planters: cucumbers, cantaloupes, peppers, and heirloom tomatoes.
B The garage, a.k.a. “the Barn”: tool storage, rabbit feed, chicken feed, six rabbit hutches, a slaughter station, a refrigerator, and four egg-laying coops.
C The field, in four beds: 1 Tomatoes, beets, celery, yellow squash, purple eggplant, and a fig tree. 2 Collard greens, cucumbers, and callaloo. 3 Cabbage, Japanese eggplant, white eggplant, rhubarb, leeks, garlic, onions, fennel, rosemary, thyme, and mint. 4 Corn, broad beans, basil, bok choy, and parsley.
D The duck run: a duck coop, a duck pond, and two wayward rabbit hutches.
E The chicken run: a high-rise high-capacity chicken coop and a livestock holding pen (on the porch).
F The potato crop: a raised bed technically known as a “drill.”
(Photo: Clockwise from right, courtesy of Manny Howard; Amy Eckert [2]. Illustration by Jason Lee)
Sounds amazing! But I dont think I could do the slaughtering.
I dont know how to overcome that either...
It would have been far easier and made more sense to grow a select few crops well and trade/barter with neighbors and farmers markets for what you can't grow.
Some crops command far higher prices and demand and farmers markets, and growing one "cash crop" could have served him well.
Trying to raise livestock single handed is a major effort if it goes beyond chickens for eggs and goats for milk. Any more and it's a full time job!
Well Bobby Jones you must not know much about magazines as New York Magazine is a highly regarded and prize awarded weekly magazine. It's sad that instead of actually commenting on the article you just compare it to the National Enquirer.
ugh. i understand what the guy was trying to do, but could he make the local food movement look any more untenable?
i mean, ask any gardener worth their salt and they'll tell you trying to go from dead soil to a large thriving polycultural garden in one season is damn hard, especially if you're not a gardener.
this guy wanted to prove that someone with no gardening experience at all could live off the land for a few months. predictably, he failed miserably, because to live off the land you have to actually know what you're doing.
I had major issues with this article. His treatment of animals is abhorrent, and the writer discusses it so matter-of-factly that it sounds perfectly acceptable. The guy had tiny ducklings running around and his kid stepped on one...rabbits died of heatstroke, etc, etc. These, along with the other examples after examples of how he had no clue what he was doing made the whole article, and the writer's tone, hard for me to swallow. This man's crusade was not heroic or environmentally interested; it was a ridiculous exercise in serving his ego from the get-go, and the fact that NY Magazine waxes poetic about his trials and tribulations makes me fear that others will try to follow his ill-informed footsteps. The ending lesson in mindfullness did little to wrap up the article on a positive note.
Obviously it couldn't work if he needed "…rabbit feed, chicken feed…" as this would be grown and processed elsewhere. Not sustainable, not living off your own land.
In one season would be difficult, but you'd get much closer sticking to vegan crops (grains, beans, veggies, fruits) and using bio-intensive farming methods.