pstarr » Thu Nov 22, 2007 10:16 pm wrote:so post peak you live in this permaculture hippie intentional community. All natural foods, hemp fibers, french intensive gardening, recycle poop and orchard trees.
You plant 1 acre of corn by hand. Each seed poked into the ground to a depth of 2 inches. You use a pencil to poke the hole and you take a corn seed out of your hemp bag. Every 4 inches on rows 3 feet apart you plant a seed.
Reach in to the bag,
grab corn seed,
poke a hole,
plant seed,
cover hole,
move to next hole.
Start again.
about 4 seconds per seed.
1 acres = 210 feet * 210 feet
So each row is 210 feet long which means that there are (210 feet*12 inches / 3 inches) 840 corn seed holes per row.
Now there are 70 corn rows * 840 corn seed holes == 58, 800 corn seed holes to poke with a pencil
58,800 corn seeds * 4 sec==65.4 hours to plant the seeds.
Then comes cultivation to kill weeds. You and nature have thinned to one plant on 8 inches but the plants are surrounded
. You hoe each corn row with a spade or hand hoing tool. Dig around the plant carefully! 10 seconds per plant
29,400 corn plants * 10 sec==82 hours to cultivate the little plants
Do it again because those weeds are nasty
Second hoing (and I know what you are thinking, and I do not mean a party in the corn patch
)
29,400 corn plants * 10 sec==82 hours to cultivate the little plants again.
So the plants grow big and strong but you have to get rid of the corn borers. You mix up a batch of bt spray and walk the corn garden and spray each ear. That takes about 1 second per.
29,400 corn plants * 1 sec==8 hours to spray the big plants
spray em again
29,400 corn plants * 1 sec==8 hours to spray the big plants
Now the corn fields is all ready for picking and fermenting into alcohol. Let harvest. yippie!
Each plant has 4 ears and it takes about 2 seconds to rip an ear off.
29,400 corn plants * 4 *2 sec== 65 hours to pick the corn ears
So after 310 hours (almost 8 weeks) of gardening you are ready to make the joy juice. Get the prius out of the corn crib and let's ride! Wait. We haven't fermented the stuff yet. Damn
1 acre of land yields about 7,110 pounds (3,225 kg) of corn, which can be processed into 328 gallons (1240.61 liters) of ethanol. But first we have to grind, cook and ferment the stuff. That should take the rest of the summer, most of the fall and part of the winter.
We now have 20 fillups after working for most of a year. We can drive all spring on that. But wait. The roads are gone because there are no road crews. And there are no convenience stores to drive to.
Now on the other hand, if we had just allowed the acre to grow up in grass, the horse would have taken care of its own needs. and we could put carriage behind it and go to the hoedown. edit: oh damn I forgot about fertilizer. That would take 29,400 urinations or fish head insertions (at around 10 sec per plant). Another 82 hours. get a horse. okay?