The other night I was admiring an abundance of fresh produce in our kitchen. Apples from our orchard, persimmons, pumpkin, spaghetti squash, potatoes, preserved crab apples… I felt so abundant with this amazing, organic food to nourish ourselves and our family with. I also felt very proud of our efforts in creating an abundant food production system on our 20 acres.
The physical abundance of food inspired me to enlist Angus’s help and we made a calculation of the financial value of the food we have produced at The Oasis in the last year. I valued approximate quantities produced at conventional retail prices, noting that this still failed to account for the value of eating fresh, biodynamic, chemical free produce full of vitality as compared to the lifeless produce sold in supermarkets. My list went like this:
10kg potatoes $30
30kgs garlic $900
Pumpkins $50
Spaghetti Squash $50
Apples/Pears/Nashi fruit $500
Grapes $75
30kg tomatoes $150
Miscellaneous (greens, carrots, shallots, herbs etc) $500
6 lambs retail value of lamb $2400
2 weaners retail value of beef $6000
Total: $10,655
Wow, amazing when you tally it up. Over $500 per acre of food. We also produce chicken and duck eggs but we didn’t add their value to our total as we buy food for the poultry which offsets the value of the food produced. We would easily have over 100 dozen eggs per year, if we value these at $5 per dozen that is another $500. We also harvest naturally growing greens such as dandelion, purslane, plantain and fat hen and flowers to add to salads. Not bad for a bunch of plants many see as no more than weeds!
The physical abundance of food inspired me to enlist Angus’s help and we made a calculation of the financial value of the food we have produced at The Oasis in the last year. I valued approximate quantities produced at conventional retail prices, noting that this still failed to account for the value of eating fresh, biodynamic, chemical free produce full of vitality as compared to the lifeless produce sold in supermarkets. My list went like this:
10kg potatoes $30
30kgs garlic $900
Pumpkins $50
Spaghetti Squash $50
Apples/Pears/Nashi fruit $500
Grapes $75
30kg tomatoes $150
Miscellaneous (greens, carrots, shallots, herbs etc) $500
6 lambs retail value of lamb $2400
2 weaners retail value of beef $6000
Total: $10,655
Wow, amazing when you tally it up. Over $500 per acre of food. We also produce chicken and duck eggs but we didn’t add their value to our total as we buy food for the poultry which offsets the value of the food produced. We would easily have over 100 dozen eggs per year, if we value these at $5 per dozen that is another $500. We also harvest naturally growing greens such as dandelion, purslane, plantain and fat hen and flowers to add to salads. Not bad for a bunch of plants many see as no more than weeds!
“Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realise we cannot eat money” (Indian Proverb).
A year ago I also wrote this blog post on The Rural Woman site around the same theme of creating wealth by growing our own food. Check it out here and while you are there take a look at some of the other fantastic articles they have on their site.
http://therw.biz/literally-growing-wealth-health-and-abundance-in-the-backyard/
http://therw.biz/literally-growing-wealth-health-and-abundance-in-the-backyard/