Part 3

Subsistence First

13 lessons · about 440 minutes of reading, plus the fieldwork.

  1. 01What a Subsistence System IsA subsistence system grows the household's calories, protein, fat and micronutrients from its own land, with a store for the bad year. A vegetable garden is not one.25 min
  2. 02The Subsistence EquationWork backward from the household's calories, protein and fat to the kilograms and then the square metres. The arithmetic of a subsistence system, with the fat gap that most plans miss.30 min
  3. 03The Ten Thousand Square Foot Food SystemLay out roughly 10,000 square feet as a working household food system, with the blocks, the rotation, the paths, the store and the water, and the honest area per person.40 min
  4. 04The Staple Triad: Grain, Legume, OilGrain for calories, legume for protein, oil for fat. The three crops every subsistence system arrives at, why the three complete each other, and why they get the land.30 min
  5. 05Grains Without GuiltThis course is not anti-grain. A strain of permaculture treats annual grains as the enemy, but a subsistence system that cannot grow its own calories is not a subsistence system.30 min
  6. 06Vegetables and the Hundred Square MetresVegetables feed vitamins and appetite, not calories. Pelman puts them at about 100 square metres per person per year, a small quarter of the farm, irrigated and rotated long.25 min
  7. 07Animals at Household ScalePoultry, goats, pigs and rabbits on a household holding, with real feed and yield numbers, and the test that tells you when an animal is a net loss.30 min
  8. 08Preservation and Storage Without Fossil EnergyThe harvest is a spike and hunger is continuous. Store grain, roots and seed with earth, salt, smoke and dry air, and count what each method costs to run.35 min
  9. 09Tools and the Honest HoursHand tools, draft animals, and the machine each trade a different resource for the same work. Here are the real labour hours for staples, undressed.35 min
  10. 10Calorie and Yield AccountingBushels to pounds to calories to people. The four conversions that turn a harvest into an answer, worked once by hand so you can run it on your own ground.40 min
  11. 11Carrying Capacity and the Fat ProblemA plot can pass calories and protein and fail on fat by a factor of five. Fat is the hardest constraint in the whole system, and here is the number.40 min
  12. 12Resilience, Failure and RedundancyWhat actually breaks on a subsistence farm, and what redundancy costs. Real backups are built before the failure, and they are not free.40 min
  13. 13Sufficiency and the Fair PriceEnough is a fine amount to have. Subsistence first, then a fair price for the surplus, and a plain test for what counts as fair.40 min