More and more I'm starting to think the planet, would be better off if we went back to everybody growing their own food, meat, fruits, vegetables, all of. The amount of damage we've done to the planet growing food, from cutting down the rain forests to make room for Palm trees used to create palm oil, to wild horses being rounded up to make room for cattle. It would also save a lot of waste, if each household were to just produce what they need, rather than the massive amounts of food that are produced now, a lot of which ends up just being thrown away if it doesn't sell.
It's a lot of work, if you don't have other resources to add to it.
I grew up on an acreage, and we had two large gardens and a strawberry bed. These took care of most of our vegetable requirements, and my dad went hunting every fall to get a moose. So that took care of the meat requirements. We couldn't always make it into town for shopping (living out there meant that the county did snowplowing and grading on their schedule, which didn't necessary match up with when it was actually needed, so my dad attached part of a snowplow to the front of his jeep so we could actually make it out to the road when there was a lot of snow).
So I grew up learning about gardening... planting, weeding, dealing with moles and cutworms, and harvesting. Our gardens weren't big enough to be considered a farm, but they did well enough to take care of most of our needs. We didn't need to make so many trips into town, which was good. Back in the '60s/early '70s, winters here were colder and snowier, and this was before malls and big box stores were all over the place.
Sadly that acreage is now under asphalt and cement, and is in a light industrial zone.
We had excellent soil in the garden - brought in specially, since the natural soil there was very sandy. We also had a small wetland area, and a forest where bobcats, coyotes, and deer roamed. There were berry bushes around as well, though I wasn't allowed to go into the woods alone. I always had to be with an adult, and they usually carried a rifle (in case we ran into an aforementioned bobcat or coyote).
A new elementary school is being built in the town where my daughter and granddaughter live. The town put up the new sign for it and the sign contains the misspelled word Friendship. It says "Firendship Elementary School. Well, at least it makes for a good spelling lesson, but you'd think someone would have noticed before they installed it.
It could have been worse. Most people, if they misspell "friend", usually forget the "r." One of my penpals once wrote me, earnestly saying she hoped we could still be fiends.
