Subject: Re: Economics of Organic Gardening

From: [email-masked] (Don Bowen)
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 1995 07:03:20 -0800

>Then we did the sums: $3000 after tax a year, $5000 pre tax a year, 
>the equivalent of about $80,000 capital invested at current interest
>rates. 
>
>If you paid someone to give you a "turn key" garden, it would cost 
>about $8000. If you did it yourself, and looked for bargain plants,
>did your own propogating etc, you could probably build this garden 
>for less than $1000, for the expensive fruit and nut trees.
>
>Where is the best place to invest your money?? Does the investment 
>industry tell us this??

        Careful bulk purchases and doing what you can yourself is one of the
best investments you can make.  For every $10 saved at 15% tax bracket, you
really save $11.76.  In the 30% you save $14.29.  Where else do you get a
%15-%30 return on every transaction

  Donald E. Bowen           [email-masked]
  Valley Center CA.         [email-masked]

  Software Engineer, woodworker, historian, beekeeper, farmboy
  model railroader, 1936 Farmall 12, 1966 Corvair CORSA 140 convertible
  1 wife, 3 kids, 2 acres, 2 cats, 2 dogs, ? projects,  no TV, 24 hours

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From: [email-masked] (Don Bowen)
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 1995 14:04:13 -0800

>>   Oh yes, our wheat grinder is a stone mill which grinds a
>>   loafs worth of flour in about 20 seconds.  It is called
>>   Mill & Mix.  We wrote to them in 1987 and they were still
>>   in business then.  If anyone finds one of these mills used
>>   it is a real bargain.
>> 
>> Jeff (vote with your lifestyle)
>> 
>  Jeff, Can you pleas pass on a address or number to Mill&Mix.  this sounds
like
>  what I need.  Also what of organic sources of grains ?  Have you ever grown 
>  your own grains?  I heard it was not a problem that these grains can grow
>  in even not so rich earth as well.

        Yes, please post the address.  As for growing your own grain, an
important component of improving soil is cover crops.  Grain is an excelent
cover crop as it provides a lot of organic material while providing a food
crop. Jeavons suggests that you should have 2/3 of your garden space in
grain.  When my early crop bed is harvested I hope to try some grain growing
though harvesting will be a problem.  For a first attempt I may just do it
for the cover crop.

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From: [email-masked] (Don Bowen)
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 1995 14:45:01 -0800

>
>I can't believe you let a machine make your bread.  What about the
>therapeutic value of pounding the daylights out of a hunk of dough?
>I have a KitchenAid that we use to mix the dough only until it is
>manageable by hand, but even that's optional.

        My wife likes to make bread when someone or something in her life is
giving her fits.  She can take a lot out on that poor pile of dough.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 14:05:37 -0600 (CST)

> There are a few other advantages to bread machines.  For the cooking
> impaired (me) it is a gift from heaven.  It is easy, fast, and the
> clean up is minimal.  You can use the timer to bake bread so it is
> ready first thing in the morning.  Now waking up to the smell of
> baking bread should be enough to convert all you hard core hand-kneaders.

We have 7 acres of hard red winter wheat in the field right now.
We hope to use a grain grinder attached to a Kithen Aide mixer to make our
flour and then use a bread machine to make the bread.  I know this involves
the use of too many machines but I still rely on the income from my job
in town and I don't have as much time as I need to do my homesteading.
Until my work pressures decrease, I use time saving machines when I can.