Gathering enough food to live off the land for a year

[Woody girl]

I eat abs everything

Even fray bentos pies?
Either covid has destroyed your taste buds....or you have not got any anyway!
Mind you, if push comes to shove, you can do a bear grills and eat a rotten sheep's head and drink your own urine. Me, i'll stick to plain boiled nettles thanks!

 

[Kav]

Unless you’re on a nuclear attack submarine or Antarctic researcher during the winter few people pile up food and say ‘ I’m good for a year.’ Fewer people have such a
Meager diet.
The Chumash in my area are always shown eating acorns as their primary food. The primary food item was MEAT balanced primarily by four mast crops. I might mention boiled yucca stalks and the new flower petals in salads,
Mushrooms, a small white onion, rabbits and squirrels, geese and ducks, shellfish and swordfish traded with the coastal communities. I could go on for pages.
But our textbooks have them eating acorns 24/7

 

[slowworm]

Exactly I love limpits aswell I eat them raw

Same here, the ones I've eaten raw weren't overly chewy either. I don't eat many as I worry about the quality of the water even though they are grazers.

As for acorns, our woods are overflowing with them this year so if I could find a way of processing them I could see how I could collect enough food for a year. However, last year there were none. Similar thing for mackerel at my local fishing spot, one year they're jumping into you bag, the next year not many about.

 

[Tengu]

I think Mesolithic man had a very varied diet.

 

[Broch]

Yep, life expectancy for mankind went down when farming started in the late Neolithic/early bronze age and the diet became more limited

 

[Toddy]

It's the teeth that rotted. They didn't have fluoride toothpaste

Seriously, the damage to the teeth on first farmers is really, really noticeable.

It's all very well saying that they had grain thus flour, but that grain needs ground, and even nowadays we're still using stones in many mills.

 

[Suffolkrafter]

I was looking at calorie intake recently for an upcoming trip. Following on from Broch's earlier post, a hard day's walk with a heavy pack could equate to 4-5000 calories. That's a lot of food when you plan it out for a day. The hunter gatherer lifestyle must have also been fairly energy intensive I'd have thought. It always amazes me that people ever managed to gather and hunt enough food to stay alive.

 

[1 pot hunter]

How many recipes have you got for mackerel?

I’m not obsessed with variety or comforts food is food

 

[1 pot hunter]

I was looking at calorie intake recently for an upcoming trip. Following on from Broch's earlier post, a hard day's walk with a heavy pack could equate to 4-5000 calories. That's a lot of food when you plan it out for a day. The hunter gatherer lifestyle must have also been fairly energy intensive I'd have thought. It always amazes me that people ever managed to gather and hunt enough food to stay alive.

It was mostly done in advance then there was sedentary Hunter gathers off the pacific coast look up fish penny traps and wheels they had more food than they could even handleLook up sedentary Hunter gathers its interesting

 

[1 pot hunter]

I was looking at calorie intake recently for an upcoming trip. Following on from Broch's earlier post, a hard day's walk with a heavy pack could equate to 4-5000 calories. That's a lot of food when you plan it out for a day. The hunter gatherer lifestyle must have also been fairly energy intensive I'd have thought. It always amazes me that people ever managed to gather and hunt enough food to stay alive.

I don’t intend to do any hard walking I want gather everything in advance as a experiment

 

[slowworm]

I don't get tired of fresh mackerel simply grilled or dry fried, tend to serve with a dribbling Labrador.

 

[1 pot hunter]

Even fray bentos pies?
Either covid has destroyed your taste buds....or you have not got any anyway!
Mind you, if push comes to shove, you can do a bear grills and eat a rotten sheep's head and drink your own urine. Me, i'll stick to plain boiled nettles thanks!

Fray bentos is junk/garbage a rotten sheep’s head is more nutritious than nettles fats/more biovaluable proteins,nettles passed thru flame much nicer than boiled .As for drinking urine I’d never do that bear grylls is a reality tv star lol

 

[1 pot hunter]

Same here, the ones I've eaten raw weren't overly chewy either. I don't eat many as I worry about the quality of the water even though they are grazers.

As for acorns, our woods are overflowing with them this year so if I could find a way of processing them I could see how I could collect enough food for a year. However, last year there were none. Similar thing for mackerel at my local fishing spot, one year they're jumping into you bag, the next year not many about.

That is very true

 

[1 pot hunter]

I don't get tired of fresh mackerel simply grilled or dry fried, tend to serve with a dribbling Labrador.

Me neither but some people carnt survive without recipes sauces sugars or junk it seems

 

[1 pot hunter]

Unless you’re on a nuclear attack submarine or Antarctic researcher during the winter few people pile up food and say ‘ I’m good for a year.’ Fewer people have such a
Meager diet.
The Chumash in my area are always shown eating acorns as their primary food. The primary food item was MEAT balanced primarily by four mast crops. I might mention boiled yucca stalks and the new flower petals in salads,
Mushrooms, a small white onion, rabbits and squirrels, geese and ducks, shellfish and swordfish traded with the coastal communities. I could go on for pages.
But our textbooks have them eating acorns 24/7

Are the Chumash from California ? I’m sure Iv read about them in my book collection

 

[1 pot hunter]

Unless you’re on a nuclear attack submarine or Antarctic researcher during the winter few people pile up food and say ‘ I’m good for a year.’ Fewer people have such a
Meager diet.
The Chumash in my area are always shown eating acorns as their primary food. The primary food item was MEAT balanced primarily by four mast crops. I might mention boiled yucca stalks and the new flower petals in salads,
Mushrooms, a small white onion, rabbits and squirrels, geese and ducks, shellfish and swordfish traded with the coastal communities. I could go on for pages.
But our textbooks have them eating acorns 24/7

Interesting do the boiled yucca stalks contain starch ?

 

[SaraR]

why specifically chestnut flour?

 

[1 pot hunter]

why specifically chestnut flour?

Because it’s wild n contains copious amounts of starch more than wheat.

 

[SaraR]

Because it’s wild n contains copious amounts of starch more than wheat.

Right, I see. I don’t really think of sweet chestnuts as ”wild” trees, as they were only found in a few parks where I grew up.

 

[Toddy]

Ikea are selling Yucca as houseplants just now; well the Glasgow store was a fortnight ago.

Think about relevant climate when you consider some foods, and for sea or shore foraging, there are a heck of a lot of days, especially in Winter, when that is just a total no-go.

Things that could be done in the past, just can't now. River fish traps for instance, but then they used to say that folks could walk dry shod over a river across the backs of salmon because they were so plentiful.
Try that on the Thames now......

It's interesting to suss out what we can find and eat though