Good Neil young, he can sing it alright.
I tried the "land" thing on 5 acres, I never got around to the growing food stage but one day I realized I was making enough in a couple of weeks to feed myself for a year and more so I lost interest. Like you pops a lot of us jumped the gun, the collapse is long in coming and no doubt there will be plenty of heads up, even a week would be enough for me to super-stockpile, fuel and food.
Even granting a large collapse I calculated that the government wouldn't let 99% of the population starve overnight, they will prioritize farming over a lot of other pointless expenditures and I decided that living in a farming community and making contacts, friends, was a better idea than spending my old age plowing a field and chasing after chickens. Not many people have the farming bone in themselves, I certainly don't. But the old survivalist sites banged on and on saying that it was the way to go, the natural end-point of a preppers evolution. They were wrong, still are IMO. I buy eggs from a lady out of town on 15 acres. They have a pretty straightened life out there because they are the small farm types. The husband works a day job of course, eggs don't pay electricity bills or put gasoline in the car, and every other week they are in the supermarket to stock up on what they can't grow or breed. It's a hard life and most of it a waste of time in my opinion. But having said that they will do better than many in a collapse providing it doesn't get too brutal. I don't write off the small farm apocalypse solution but it's not all a bed of roses.
Many things can go wrong farming. A couple of years ago there was a 5 day deluge here and farms had food rotting in the ground. Just the other week a freak hailstorm trashed a large growing region nearby, it destroyed the crops and a lot of huge shadehouses too.
8 days ago — Freak hailstorm delivers $50 million blow to already struggling Lockyer Valley farming region
"I have never seen hail that looks like snow like you would swear that you were driving through Thredbo or Perisher."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023- ... /103097496Whatsis face on the other thread thinks that in a collapse scenario there will be no excess food, like the farmers and their close friends around me can eat 20 steers a year and 20 acres of corn? Those farmers will sell or trade whatever they can, especially to a guy with cash and thousands of silver coins to buy it with. The idea that only people with home farms will survive is ludicrous to me. Like millions are going to sit outside their fences and starve while they eat like kings?
That sort of thinking came from another age when no one was really starving anyway, it's Great depression thinking with a MadMax ending. It's Hollywood thinking, it's
Oblivion with Tom Cruse living in his secret lush valley. It's the
The Postman, it's
Z for Zachariah with Margot Robbie and her dog surviving the nuclear holocaust in her own idyllic little valley. In reality in a dark future people will probably do what they have always done. Band together into compact villages for protection.
There is little protection when you live beside a rural road and your neighbors are a half a mile away. But then survivalists come in with delusions of Camp Gloria, ramparts and fields of fire, 24/7 armed squats on the lookout. Good luck with that when a group of desperadoes can simply ram-raid your gate and drive through your front door. Just like they do now when they rob liquor stores. One motorcycle shop down here got raided with a front end loader! Try to stop that if it had a metal plate over the screen. Too many delusions pops and not enough clear thinking. Too many people following each other in a herd. Do you know what the survivalists types think of Gold? You can't eat it they say pops, and they have missed out on 20 years of tax-free gains with that thinking. I ignored their collective stupidity and started buying in at au$550/oz. It's over $3000/oz here now. Tax free "collectors coins" that I can and have once sold back for cash. Just a little to test the waters. You always have to test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJBBSlFuMeU