I know a family from LA , parents are both nurses with two children. They come here to see the farm , to see it and know it is real ,that it is possible. They would like out . They were here yesterday and we filled their icebox . Pork , eggs, cabbage and a tour. We all wore masks but masks for children are comically ineffective. The kids ate oversized carrots but again masks and food and children.
The hospital is scary, we joked that they thought me getting in with the pigs was dangerous; before.
We all know they have the dangerous job . So far they and the hospital staff they work with have stayed healthy.
The solar, the electric wheelhoe, wheat or why I would plant wheat, an acre by hand ? For me the rational is clear . That primitivism , or something close , offers an alternative . That yes the farm is pastoral and pretty, but more than that it is something that might actually be a viable escape . I want it to be real, to pay for itself , and spend time trying to put the pieces together.
It would be a story in a book , a picture, a pretty place, but I want it to work. To make food calories from the sun. The hard way , without engines. It is easy to grow so many crops far in excess of personal needs. Putting that production into dried stores is at least a way to quantify the calories produced. So I can say an average residential solar array and electric assist farm tools and an acre of land can produce X amount of calories. That however is more or less a hobby afforded by pigs and an outside income.
So we can go days without needing a car. I pull a wagon with buckets of grain for the pigs more miles than I drive most weeks. The water and the farm run 100% solar month after month. The powerwalls make solar 24hr electric viable. We still go to the store but the pandemic helps me to focus on getting by with as few trips as possible. A hobby farm and
a place of some comfort for a man walking the floors of a Covid ward in LA.