Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food
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Note – Today’s show was originally supposed to air on Wednesday last week. Due to an error it is airing today, so the episode numbers and dates in the audio won’t match. Today’s show though is now officially Episode 699. We will do a listener calls show tomorrow and a feedback show on Wednesday to make up for last weeks missed shows.
Today Marjory Wildcraft of Back Yard Food Production joins us to discuss taking control of your own food supply with home growing, small livestock and community building.
Not long ago humans fed themselves, provided for their on needs and were largely self sufficient. They knew how to feed themselves, how to take care of animals, what to plant and what to do when something went wrong. Marjory’s DVD, “Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm” is your guide to recapturing that lost knowledge.
Marjory is a nationally recognized expert in organic backyard food production. She is the creator of a widely acclaimed video tutorial titled Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm. Marjory teaches people with no gardening or agricultural experience, how to successfully grow healthy, vibrant, life-giving nutritious food.
Her DVD is endorsed and carried by such notables as The Permaculture Activist, Acre’s USA, John Jeavons and Ecology Action’s premier seed and tool company Bountiful Gardens, SurvivalBlog.com and The Weston-Price Nutrition Foundation.
She has been featured as a guest on a diversity of national radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM, “The Power Hour” with Joyce Riley, and the Patrick Timpone show.
Join us today as we discuss…
- Getting started from zero with food production
- Growing herbs
- Composting
- Rabbits vs chicken for meat production
- The “secret to a green thumb”
- Guns and gardening
- How hard times are on the way but you don’t have to participate
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- Backyard Food Production TSP Special Deal
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In A. D. 305, Diocletian stepped down as emperor and promoted his Caesar, Constantius Chlorus to Augustus in his place. The well-known story is told of this once powerful and ruthless emperor, now an old man, peacefully growing cabbages at his villa in the town of Split in what was recently the country of Yugoslavia. Diocletian compelled Maximianus to do the same, though Maximianus very much wanted to remain senior Augustus.
http://www.jaysromanhistory.com/romeweb/empcont/e176.htm
@Shorty, so it is sort of true, he compelled the existing Caesar but was not turning down the job of returning to rule. Thanks for filling me in on that.
My wife and I honeymooned in Croatia. We stayed at an Agrotourism (a Bed &Breakfast Inn on a farm), not to far from Split. (Diocletian’s palace forms the walls of structures in the modern city.) That experience really inspired me to raise my own food! The eggs that we had at the Agrotourism were absolutely amazing! These 100% free range/free forage eggs were even better than the eggs that were covered with shaved truffles! Everywhere we went, the food was absolutely fresh, delicious and bursting with flavor.
Feeding dead birds to dogs- Is that a good idea? I’m afraid that my dog will develop a taste for the flock instead of viewing them as part of the pack. I have been taking animals that died to the landfill, lest I attract predators or have my German Shepherd develop bad habits.
What Marjorie said about the cost of maintaining a flock of chickens large enough for meat was a revelation! In fact, just today, my wife picked up some feed and then proceeded to give me a hard time about how much we were spending on inputs for how little we received in outputs.
I must say, however, our chickens are the best we have ever tasted! We are raising Dorkings, the favorite of Queen Victoria and Julius Caesar. It is a flavorful, fine grained, delicate, yet rich meat. It is both juicy and fatty.
Should I downsize? I started raising chickens just last year when I was unemployed. This year, I purchased an incubator and so far produced 18 Dorking hatchlings. I also purchased 12 Muscovy hatchlings, and 2 young Guineas. I have 14 mature chickens. All on 1.8 acres. Unfortunately, I lost an adult Guinea last week to a fox. Lyme disease is endemic in this area, so I need them to eat ticks. We have eaten only 4 of the Dorkings and that was during the Winter. I’m a foodie; I get carried away with the epicurean aspects of raising food, but am maybe not so efficient. I was looking into pigs to make one of Paul Wheaton’s $4000 hams.
About the download functionality- how do you do conveniently download web pages? I have to save them, which is kludgy and full of errors. I am especially interested in saving the YouTube/Vimeo downloads.
Will this episode be uploaded to itunes?
@Tom it is there right now.
Interesting, it is not showing up in my iTunes download, nor in the iTunes store when I pull up the list of TSP episodes. Hopefully it will show up later today.
It doesn’t come up for me either. I’ll keep trying, though.
It is there, try a refresh.
Delete the last few shows from your podcast list, (you can back up the actual mp3 files first if necessary)… Then right-click on the podcast and select “show available episodes” and the ones you deleted will show back up with a “GET” button next to them.
That’s what I did to clear out the list and refresh it.
So Glad you had Marjory on the show. She is how I found out about the TSP. Wish I had got her DVD before the price went up so jumped on it with the discount.
@Adam B. – Thanks, that fixed it.
I wonder if Marjorie (if she’s reading the comments) could characterize about how much time she spends/wk maintaining the rabbit operation. I’m considering a rabbitry of about the same size and would be interested to know what to expect in terms of time spent.
Great show and thanks for it.
Thanks to Adam B! That cleared it up for me as well. Another great episode!
Thanks for having Marjory on the show again, Jack. She is my favorite guest (well, actually, she is tied with Paul Wheaton) that you bring onto the show. Indeed, it was Marjory that really was the tipping point for us starting a garden in our household. Jack, you were the gateway drug, but Marjory really got us hooked. 🙂
One quick aside – the eradication of the food pyramid as the visual construct of nutritional requirements was a necessary evil. With a plate as the visual representation, children now have a better shot at understanding proper serving sizes. Of course we would like this education to take place in the home, but that is not always happening, so the plate as a visual aide is a good step in the right direction.
My girlfriend is a dietitian and she has some sad stories of going into schools and quizzing kids on what the proper serving sizes are for certain food groups. When she finally arrives at knowledge transmission part of her demo, and uses the plate-visual to assist, it really “clicks” with children.
As for it costing $9m to get from the pyramid to the plate. Yeah, that is beyond absurd. Jack, can you cite your source on that figure? My girlfriend constantly harps about how the American Dietetic Association (ADA) completely sucks, and so if the $9m figure is true, I want to throw some gasoline on the fire by dropping the $9m cost of the plate diagram.
Great to get another Marjory show! It’s like having Scott & Helen Nearing back, minus the wonky, communistic dogma.
Speaking to the library of documents… i printed all of them out and now have them in a stack… it was over 500 pages of stuff! worth it to have in hard copy
Jack, this was an excellent episode! I just wanted to say thank you for bringing Marjory on.
On the rural council pushed through quietly, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/2011ruralcouncil_eo_rel.pdf I agree it is disturbing, I have a hard time believing it is for the good of the rural communities, especially with the 1st couple members listed are the heads of the department of treasury and department of defense headed by the secretary of agriculture. Also included are the heads of homeland security and the EPA. Considering that the government has been known to send undercover agents to catch teenage girls selling raw milk, fining rabbit breeders, ‘remember that the USDA owns the “organic” name’ and you can’t use that name in farmer’s markets unless you fill out all kinds of paperwork, including a map to your farm and agreeing to inspections, (ask the rabbit breeders how well that worked out). yet beef taco meat only has to be 70% beef.
Hey, ya know them dumb hicks clinging to their guns and religion need some schooling on how to behave and live like educated folks.
/s
I love when you have Marjorie on! She always has something useful to add to the community. We have discussed raising rabbits for meat, actually read a few articles in one of the last issues of Countryside. I just wonder if I would be able to kill the little guys, I’m kind of a softie for cute little faces! 🙂
I’ll have to get her DVD set and see how she does it, maybe that will help!
I’m as cheap as they come, but the backyard food production video was one I bought. And I bought it after I came across a free copy. It was too good to not contribute to. Part of me wonders if the DVD wouldn’t actually pull more money if it was free with a donation option.
As for the clown that said he will get all the food he needs with his gun… I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop somebody raiding my front yard, and I’d think twice before using violence to stop somebody from raiding my back yard, but come with a gun in good times or bad and the only decision I’ll be making is if I will use the body for compost or not. It is sad that so many people actually think that is an option, but the only thing they are likely to get that way is a good solid dose of vitamin Pb with a side of Cu.