I'm not a doomer. I want to say that upfront. There is another peak-oil board that is quite well topped up on doomers though, which I stopped visiting last year due to a certain amount of hate-based political ideas I found quite distasteful. Before I left it for good however, I would read comments from people who decided they were "set" because they lived on five acres out of town. It got me thinking of all the McMansions sprouting up on five acre plots in farmland nearby. It seemed that there was little thought about what goes into subsistence or farming without gas powered tools, and I thought I'd try my hand at it as an experiment. I failed miserably and had to cheat at every step.

My plot was 90x30 ft. I was able to do about 30x30 feet without powertools (although I did have a guy with a tractor till up the whole area first -- so I started out cheating). I got through about 30x30 feet of the garden before it became clear that because of an old elbow injury, I wasn't going to be able to do it with a shovel and hoe. I broke down and bought a tiller. Of course, it bears mentioning that even metal hand tools represent a cheat, not to mention electrically pumped water.

It was still a major undertaking. I did enjoy a large amount of fresh vegetables. I weighed my produce and kept track of my expenditures and even with buying a rototiller, I broke even on produce -- made a profit if I depreciated the tiller over several years. That is, until it came to storage. I lost much of my profits to mold over the winter. It turns out that preservation of even hardy winter squash is extremely difficult. Also, choosing the right things to grow and in what proportions is an issue as well. Eating a pound/day of snow peas may be healthy, but after a week or so it becomes unbearable, even if they are worth $6/pound. A lot of my garden profit was "lost" by giving away food, though this type of loss didn't bother me. For purposes of the experiment however, it represents a failure.

As the food started piling up in summer and fall, I cheated again and bought a largish food dehydrator. While effective at what I did dry, I would need to expand it to twenty trays and buy several more equally large setups to put up a significant amount of food. Plus, it uses electricity and for some things, would have to run 24 hours or more (I live in a humid area).

I made some pickles. Cheating again to buy jars and lids, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices. I have no idea how to make my own vinegar. Even in our fat day and age, the stores ran out of jars. In a doomer scenario, I wouldn't have been able to get any at all. Cheating again, I cooked the food on my electric stove. I'm currently planning on getting a pressure cooker so I can do low acid foods -- another cheat.

This year I wanted to be a bit more self-sufficient (aside from using power tools). However, I started my tomatoes too early and it looks like I'll have to buy starts again. Of course I bought all the seeds I'm using, though I do I have some parsnips and kale in the garden that I'm letting go to seed to try my hand at seed saving.

My experiment has made me conclude that many people have no idea how complicated gardening is and that in any doomer scenario, I'm a goner. We tend to think of farmers as uneducated hicks, that all you have to do is throw out some seeds and you'll eat hearty all year. It is actually a powerful test of one's intellectual and physical prowess. Then of course, there is a large amount luck involved for the inexperienced and still a bit of luck for those with decades to draw upon. For example, last year was very cool here -- most of my tomatoes never ripened, and although the green tomato apple relish is excellent, I would have liked to have had more red tomatoes.

Anyway, I totally failed at every level at no-oil gardening. I did however lose about 2" of belly and the food was delightful. This year, I'm doing it for the flavor, not the experiment.