Two Brothers Grow, Hunt and Forage for All Their Own Food for a Year

Reader Contribution by Garth And Edmund Brown
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My name is Garth Brown, and since the first of this year, my brother Edmund and I have been living entirely on food we’ve grown, hunted, or foraged, and we intend to keep it up for all of 2015. Well, we’re also allowed to barter and receive gifts in limited circumstances, but so far, this has netted us one gallon of milk and a container of yogurt, so we’re on our own for the most part. We both have wives who are very supportive, and they, too, eat largely food we’ve grown, but they just didn’t feel called to give up coffee.

We share a farm about twenty minutes from Cooperstown in central New York, so we have plenty of land and livestock, and we have a large vegetable garden. This past fall we followed the plans from MOTHER EARTH NEWS to make a root cellar out of a precast, concrete septic tank to store our harvest. We had been using the basement of the old farmhouse, but it would inevitably get too cold or two warm, and we could never keep the vegetables damp enough. We hunt deer and turkey, as well as the occasional rabbit and squirrel, and we have ramps, wild apples, dandelions, and all the other forageable foods common to the Northeast.

Reasons for Pledging to Eat Locally

The first question people usually ask when they hear what I’m doing is why I would choose to subject myself to such a program. It’s surprisingly difficult to answer. I’ve been more self-sufficient every year since buying the farm, and in many ways it’s natural to take this to its logical conclusion. It just feels like something I want to do.

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