Alternative Food Sources

There are more ways to get food than simple gardening. Let’s look at some other ways.

Honey– bee keeping is relatively straight forward, rewarding, and recent studies show that it just may be the backyard keepers that save our pollinators from Colony Collapse Disorder. It can be done in the country or the city….like the guy who does it on grand scale on the rooftops of New York City. While it is a bit of work, you end up with all that wonderful, valuable honey. Oh yeah, and bee’s wax!

Mushrooms– either take a foraging class or start with a kit, learn as you go. Eventually, your skills will allow you to try special spore plugs in fresh hardwood logs for quite a gourmet harvest. I will be starting with the kit, myself sometime in the spring.

Fish– if you never fished, it is probably a good time to learn. Anyone can do it. Get a license, grab a pole and a friend with experience…or worst case scenario…a fishing book. Fresh fish that you caught yourself just tastes so much better than from the store. Is it the freshness, the fact that it is low cost, or the sheer pride you feel?

Maple syrup and maple sugar– Super easy. Inexpensive start-up. We spent $7 to yield our year’s worth of syrup. $7 that we don’t have to spend again, ’cause now, we’ve got the taps and tubes.

In the Spring when the days are above freezing and the nights below, it is time to tap a maple tree, boil down your sap and enjoy your own maple syrup. This is a nice project for kids. It is surprisingly easy and rewarding. It makes a good science fair project, too. Just one or two trees are a simple start.

Click here, if you want to try a tree or two or twenty.

Where else can you get food? Could you trade a farmer some work?