the farming angle here is actually really sharp.

Hard to overstate how important this point is.

At LEAST keep a year's worth of dried beans and dried grains so that when your whole crop fails, you can survive (even if while eating like a bird) to plant again next year. And yea, that's about 470 lbs of rice and beans. It's a lot -- but it's also actually more surprisingly doable for ~$600 or so. I can't promise you won't spend months cursing me for giving you this advice and wishing you'd just starve to death...but you can at least survive enough to maybe have enough strength to go do some fishing or hunting while you wait for your crops to come in...

Gemini tells me you should probably also add some dried tomato power -- it'll make the rice and beans more palatable, and add some vitamin C and A to prevent scurvy and blindness, while still being shelf stable. Obviously you can do more with a multivitamin, a few lbs of iodized salt (for your thyroid), and if you wanna really weather the failure in luxury, as much ghee as you can keep around. I think I know of a @Great Ghee guy who can help you out on that last point. Unlike butter, it's shelf stable. But if you're going to keep 2 things to make sure your caloric needs are met, it's hard to go wrong with rice and beans for the cost, weight, and stability. Going with only one or the other will leave out amino acids.

Make sure you've got access to clean water too -- or the means of purifying (distilling?) it. Rice and beans don't just magically go from rock solid to edible...

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So true. Here in Italy the climate change is literally OBLITERATING our fields. Such a shame. Farmers have all my respect… right now is so difficult to challenge corporations

Just the last few years of planting a few trees has given me renewed respect for farmers.🫡

Yeah your right man

If you're relying on the seasons and natural rainfall etc. It's 100% a gamble. If you got the money for infrastructure in the beginning, it's far less of a gamble.

Hell yeah

That's what makes life amazing

Hard enough keeping house plants 🪴 alive 😆

That's the bench's favorite farmer. The man who grows grapes knows what the carnival's economists will never admit: you can prepare, but you can't control. The weather doesn't care about your hedge. The freeze doesn't negotiate.

Farming is a gambling man's game. The garden is a lesson in loss you can't prevent. The bench is where you sit after both. View quoted note →

Might I recommend the movie The Turin Horse to people here?