Present Schemes & Future Dreams

Scrapbook-journal of a flat broke wannabe hobby farmer/business owner with end goals of building a vehicle-accessible, walkable town in the middle of a permaculture-sculpted bit of countryside (probably in Texas, maybe in Ohio or Tennessee)

[raddagher]

Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever

If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.

[jay-wasreblogging]

Why would utility prices go up because of ai?

(I am not defending the usage of generative AI/ChatGPT/Character.ai etc etc i am very much against it - I am just curious as to the correlation between using it and utility price surge please don't come at me this is a genuine question)

[raddagher]

Happy to help.

ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity.

ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home.

The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR

Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027

More AI use = more data centers = power drain on local cities = gas, electricity, and water utility prices rise because all of our resources are being funneled into a machine that makes garbage

[beardedmrbean]

[supreme-leader-stoat]

It's apple sale season so you know what that means

[depsidase]

[thoughtportal]

Grow blueberries in a barrel - via Armstrong Garden Centers

[no-one-offical]

‎

[birdandmoon]

What to do if you find a baby bunny.

Patreon | Mailing list

[greater-than-the-sword]

I was considering trying prunella vulgaris (self-heal) but because it's barely studied its rare to find a supplement and expensive as all hell. I wonder if there are any clinical trials I can get in and how you would get in them.

[fawnanddusk]

Unlikely, as herbal supplements aren't considered medicine by the FDA (which considers them food) and aren't subject to clinical trials. You'll have more luck looking overseas, probably.

More practically (for business, not for the rest of us who could very much benefit from such research) there isn't much money to be made in studying the efficacy of natural supplements. You can't patent them and keep the rest of the entire world from using them, thereby gatekeeping their benefits from the rest of humanity except for those willing to pay the low low price of [insert price here], so why bother figuring out if they work?

This is a large part of why we have so many plants with natural health benefits that have existed since before we started writing stuff down, and yet so little quotable research on the vast majority of them to quantify what they do, why they do it, and which aspects make them more effective (to account for different cultivars and/or hundreds/thousands of years of natural selection since their discovery).

[an-ruraiocht]

actually I think if you tell (non-climate-denying) people who complain about the heat that it's just gonna get worse forever now that you ARE being an arsehole and that's not helpful at all. cos they fucking know. we fucking know. what does that help. if you want to redirect conversations about extreme weather into climate action have you considered something like "god I know right? that's why I'm doing XYZ* to see if I can improve things locally so it doesn't get worse, want to join me?"

*local action, campaigning, planting trees, targeted politician lobbying, whatever: something CONCRETE and achievable with measurable results

otherwise all you're doing is making powerless and despairing people feel more powerless and despairing and that isn't helping shit

[alishatheninth]

follow official sources on the development of renewable energy and the electricity mix for your region. With few exceptions, this is going strongly in the right direction, because renewable energy and batteries have got much cheaper over the past 20 years and are now being built even without government support. Zero-carbon bulk power generation, especially when the sun's out (which is mostly when you need airconditioning), is no longer a problem. If you live in a developed country, it is likely that your country's emissions have peaked and are now falling (source).

let this inform your local politics: turn up to planning meetings for solar, wind or battery plants to be in favour. Embrace YIMBYism on renewables, nuclear, heatpumps, dense housing with public transport access, bike lanes, and electric vehicle charging points. It's far more psychologically healthy and effective to be FOR things than against things (and frankly the history of environmentalism has well-meaning people being against some random things), and we actually can build our way out of climate change. If we continue to build renewable electricity and electrify other energy sectors, the fossil fuel distribution industry will collapse purely on reduced economies of scale, and we can stop using about 40% of maritime tonnage to ship stuff around to burn it.

talk to people about this in a neutral way. So many people do not know about the progress we are making and so they truly believe the only alternative to runaway climate change is drastic degrowth or depopulation. It is not.

try to get a job in this field, if you're good at your job. Doesn't have to be high level! Do admin for a heatpump firm. Be a salesperson for cars who is highly knowledgeable about electric vehicles and helps steer customers towards those models. Being a small cog in a good part of an imperfect machine is the best that most of us can do.

some parts of civilization are very difficult to make zero-carbon, like aviation and some parts of industry and the last 10-20% of electricity in highly seasonal climates. There is a lot of work to be done, so be nice to the people working on far-out or expensive stuff like carbon capture and sequestration, geoengineering, space solar, and weird types of long-duration electricity storage. (Personally I think none of these things will pan out, but it's good that someone is working on them because I may be wrong).

while personal action is not everything, it is good to align your actions with your values when it is practical to do so. Obviously not everyone can run out today and buy a heatpump, swap an internal combustion car with an electric car or even better a bike, take the 500-euro train instead of the 100-euro flight etc - but there are choices most people make about eating meat and holiday destinations and lifestyle that collectively have a huge impact. And we are a social species, we set our view on what's "normal" from what behaviour we see being modelled, so seeing that our peers are willing to make climate-conscious choices even when it's inconvenient to them is a nudge.

focus on the high-impact things and don't beat yourself up over the environmental impact of your Netflix viewing or Doritos, because it's trivial even in context of your own emissions, and the media is crap at conveying that. The media has a massive status quo / alarmist bias where harmful things we've been doing for decades are fine but anything new is suspect.

[vandaliatraveler]

Discover New River Wilderness, a natural area up for auction bordering the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. Join our efforts

Incredibly important opportunity to protect large tracts of intact wilderness along the boundary of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. The sale offers an opportunity to connect currently disjunct wildlife corridors in a particulary stunning part of the gorge known as Stretcher Neck. Because the tracts fall outside of the federally-mandated park boundary, the National Park Service can't bid on them. Unfortunately I got to this late and there is only one day left to pledge. Several conservation organizations, led by the Arc of Appalachia, are working furiously to gather pledges to protect as many of the tracts as feasible.

[hope-for-the-planet]

Extensive testing validates reuse of 23-year-old second-life polycrystalline solar modules

Researchers in Brazil tested second-life polycrystalline PV modules for two years and found they retained 87–88% of their original power, wi

From the article:

Researchers at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil have conducted a 2-year testing on second-life polycrystalline solar modules deployed at their campus and have found that they can still ensure “stable” behavior, with performance consistent with annual degradation rates of up to 0.44%. “Despite the many aspects making it a difficult sell, circular economy and sustainability issues might work in favor of second-life photovoltaic modules, due to the huge amount of panels that will become available with the exponential growth this technology is undergoing for nearly a decade,” the research's lead author, Ricardo Rüther, told pv magazine. 

This is so cool! They found that solar panels over two decades old still retain 87-88% of their original functionality.

If somebody can figure out how to build a sustainable business around secondhand solar panels we could see the price of solar installations become shockingly cheap. And it would save so many resources to just re-use the existing mostly-functional-but-older solar panels rather than recycling them for parts.

[the-supernatural-atheist]

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

[the-supernatural-atheist]

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

[makaeru]

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

[marzipanandminutiae]

this is exactly why I love talking about historical passive heating and cooling techniques

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then

(also public transit. the history of public transit in the US is infuriating, because we had it! and then we destroyed it!)

[fluentisonus]

I'd love to hear about how vital acorn crops were to swineherding actually

okay I can't say much about it on my own but here's a cool bit from the book The Medieval Pig by Dolly Jorgensen (which has been really interesting so far):

Pigs were present in the woodlands, particularly in autumn, when they could easily take advantage of the high-calorie foods acorns and beechmast. The autumnal bounty of tree fruit products, which is called mast, lasted only a limited time and was inconsistent from year to year. Oak and beech trees are notorious for uneven fruit production, with some lean years and some bumper crops, but even with that variability, most trees produce some crop every year, making it a dependable source of pig fodder. When the acorns really failed over a large area it was a noteworthy tragedy, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1116 notes: ‘this year was so barren of mast that none was heard tell of in all this land nor also in Wales’. The value of trees as pig fodder and shelter providers was recognised by ancient custom and led to their protection. Large productive oak trees were especially valued and conserved. The Laws of Ine, issued in seventh-century Wessex, set the fine for illegally cutting down a tree that could ‘shelter 30 swine’ at twice the amount of a regular tree.

The most often cited medieval documentary evidence for feeding pigs in woodlands is the late eleventh-century Domesday Book. The Domesday survey was created to take stock of all the properties and payments due on landholdings throughout England, which had recently been acquired by William I. In Domesday the normal formula for woodland size is ‘wood for x swine’ (silva ad x porcos) although Shropshire entries are more specific: ‘wood for fattening (incrassandis) x swine’. In 1950 the geographer H. C. Darby compiled the most extensive study of Domesday woodland geography to date and came to the conclusion that ‘wood formed an important item in the economy of the eleventh century because its acorns and beech-mast provided food for swine’. ... Domesday, however, was not the first documentation to specify the connection between pigs and trees. In the Carolingian world the ninth-century estate inventories known as polyptychs measured woodland’s size and value based on its capacity to pasture swine. The monks of Montier-en-Der, for example, had 12 estates in Champagne that could fatten an average of 800 pigs each.

...

the woodlands that the pigs fed in would have been highly managed spaces (Figure 6). Trees could be pollarded (the practice of cutting off the branches of a mature tree above the grazing height of animals and utilising the regrowth for a variety of purposes). Oaks growing in open wood pasture, rather than in dense forests, produce more acorns per tree, and the open areas also encourage grass growth, so it would have made sense to keep grazing areas open to allow pigs more food sources to forage. Oaks tend not to produce a significant number of acorns until about the age of 20 so, while it was not necessary to cultivate young trees, care would have been taken to keep old trees alive if a medieval herder wanted food for his pigs.

...

Feeding pigs in woodlands came at a cost, literally. The fee for grazing pigs was known as pannage (in medieval Latin pasnagio) or glandage, which conferred the right to feed pigs in an area in exchange for a number of fattened pigs or an equivalent amount of cash. Use of a woodland for pannage or driving pigs through it is one of the most frequently recorded rights in woodland, including the administrative areas called forest in medieval documents. Pigs may have been driven considerable distances to seasonal pastures.

also re: those last points, here's a bit from a masters dissertation I've been reading ("Power Relations In The Royal Forests of England" by Andrew Pattinson) abt how seriously potential abuse of all this might be taken:

Illicit sales (or gifting) of wood was a crime the foresters were often accused of in the records. In Peter [de Neville, a corrupt forester]'s case however the scope of the illegal felling was fairly exceptional: Over the course of a dozen years, some 7,000 oaks were allegedly cut and sold to wood sellers, lime burners and charcoal burners, amounting to an estimated 7,000 shillings in grift – monies which rightly belonged to the king. ... The inquisition mentions de Neville pocketing monies for agistment, that is, the right (for a small fee) to fatten one’s pigs on the acorns of the forest during the autumn, a critically important privilege amongst forest dwellers. In Peter’s case, he is accused not only of stealing the fees but also of agisting more animals than the forest could handle and (illegally) agisting his own pigs, nearly 300 per year, totaling some 940 shillings of damage.

also some images of pigs & swineherds in the forest (you can see the acorns & even see the swineherds knocking them off trees for the pigs):

*worth noting though that this is rural swineherding in places where there are woods, other places might do it differently

[the-habitat-ring]

Even today there’s the famous Iberico pork from Europe that’s traditionally fattened on acorns

Sometimes I think about the thousands upon thousands of pounds of acorns that are collected and thrown away in parks in my state alone and get very sad

[tomorrowsgardennc]

Tomatoes become latest symbol of America’s affordability squeeze

Tomatoes, ubiquitous in everything from fast-food burgers to haute cuisine, are taking on a new role beyond the plate: A nagging reminder of

[gallusrostromegalus]

Gallus, why is everything brassica? I'm upset? How am I supposed to get a crop rotation going, in consideration of soil, climate and what this family actually eats, when everything, I can think of, is brassica? What were our ancestors thinking?

"Why are all crops Brassica?" is like asking "Why are all dogs wolves?": Because we found ONE very genetically manipulable species and pushed it into as many fun and exciting shapes as possible.

HOWEVER, Like how we also have Cats, Chickens, Horses, goats and Pigeons, we also have:

Nightshdes: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and every kind of pepper except black pepper. Like Brassicas, they need a lot of calcium, so you shouldn't put them in the same bed, and supplemmenting both beds with finely crushed eggshells will help.

Cucurbits: Summer and Winter Squashes, melons, cucumbers, Chayote, Pumpkins. Not as demanding about the calcium, do need the kind of sun that will literally Sunburn brassicas and nightshades to death.

Alliums: Garlic, Leek, Onion, Scallion. What are you doing if you don't have these???

Special shouthout here to CEREALS like Corn, Sogrhum, Wheat, oats and Barely, which *can* be grown in a backyard garden if you are insane.

BEANS: Look. There is some bean somewhere your family will like. Black beans, pinto beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, and PEANUTS. There's also Carrots and parsnips, but they have weird sandy soil requirements so they require a similar level of dedication and research as cereals do.

And that's just vegetables! You also have "fruits" which for purposes of this post are "assorted sweet-tasting plant parts", including but not limited to:

Strawberries, blueberries, Raspberries, apples, pears, peaches, plums, currants, cranberries, and cherries all of which I've grown in my yard before.

You've also go HERBS, which are generally not related, but you can interweave them between larger crop plants to keep your biodiversity up and help prevent disease outbreaks by acting as physical barries between plants: Rosemary, Thyme, Dill, Sage, Parsley, BASIL, Savory, lemongrass, and Mint if you're nasty.

I have to believe there's a few things in each of these categories your family will eat. Look up the nutritional needs of each and you can probably swing a crop rotation schedule from there.

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[handforthstudy]

Unfortunately, I don’t have citations, but I have heard about the same phenomenon through Nat Geo Live presentations in the Amazon and Serengeti. Most individuals who are poachers or use slash-and-burn farming are doing this out of survival, not ignorance or greed. They have families to feed and children who will starve if they don’t find food or money. As OP said, fixing the human suffering fixes the conservation issue and is a win-win, while preaching conservation to starving people does nothing.

But on top of that, you know who the most ardent conservationists are once security has been achieved? The people who had once been forced to poach or slash-and-burn to survive. You know who’s great at tracking down gorilla poachers? Ex-poachers. Who’s good at understanding and advocating for people forced to do these things to survive? Ex-poachers. Who can convince others to take a chance on finding a better way to survive? Same answer.

It is win-win-win. As ecologists, conservationists, and environmentalists we must get out of our ivory towers of knowledge, stop carrying them into the field, and remember humans are part of the ecosystem too. And that sustainable change will never happen if human needs aren’t addressed.

[buttons-beads-lace]

I also love this story about the arapaima in Brazil. They increased the population of this endangered giant fish literally a hundred times over- from 3,000 to 300,000- by ending the total ban on arapaima fishing and instead creating legal fishing organizations. The fishing organization members get trained on how do population counts and determine how many fish they can take while still leaving enough for the population to grow.

The former illegal fishers are now sought-after experts, because they know how to spot the arapaima and tell juveniles apart from adults. They get to keep practicing the fishing skills that were passed down to them. The actual process of fishing is easier because they can work together and don't have to sneak around. The profits are higher because they can sell the fish openly to restaurants and to the public. The fishing organization members make sure that other people in their communities don't fish illegally. And the numbers of arapaima keep going up and up, so there's plenty to go around even as more people join the fishing organizations.

If you click all the way through to the report from the conservation org that started the fishing organizations project, there are quotes from fishing organization members:

"We built a second house and I'm putting my oldest two kids through college on the money we get from fishing."

"Nowadays you have young people walking around with pockets full of cash saying "I got 6,000 from fishing this year!" It used to be you wouldn't even get 50 reais of pocket money."

"At the first harvest after we started the fishing organization, I saw full-grown arapaima for the first time, really big ones like they're supposed to be. Before, I had only heard about how big they could get. That's when I knew that our work was paying off and we could keep moving forward."

[creature-adjacent]

Carnivorous plants doin this is so funny to me

They don't wanna eat their pollinators :(

[miss-americanbi]

hey if it’s your first time being food insecure because of snap benefit cuts, hi! this ain’t my first rodeo and i’ve got tips.

1. dried beans and rice are infinitely cheaper than the canned/microwave stuff. just wash, soak (in the case of beans!), cook, and you’re done!

2. on that note, beans and rice, when eaten together, make a complete protein that is easily digestible by your body. if it comes down to it, you can live off that alone for a good long while.

3. when shopping, prioritize ingredients over premade meals. a frozen pizza is just one pizza, but flour, tomato sauce, and cheese can make many pizzas.

4. dry pantry goods will get infested if you’re not careful. adding a dried bay leaf to dried beans, rice, flour, etc. works wonders for keeping out weevils and other nasty stuff. adding a few drops of peppermint oil to a spray bottle filled with water will keep mice away if you spray it on your baseboards, too.

5. canned veggies is veggies. canned fruit is fruit. you ain’t too good for it, so get those micronutrients if you can.

6. potatoes are super nutritionally dense and a good source of fiber. use them to stretch meals. just don’t store them next to onions because they’ll sprout way faster.

7. coupon clip like a crazy person, and get ready to use the math skills you swore to leave behind in high school. saving pennies starts with getting the most for your dollar. if all cabbages are $1.00, get the biggest cabbage you can find. if tomato sauce is cheaper by the ounce in a quart jar compared to a pint jar, get the quart if you can. be smart with how you spend.

8. lentils are a great way to stretch any kind of ground meat. they’re really cheap and if you’re like me and can’t cut meat out of your diet completely for health reasons, they help it last a lot longer.

9. portion control is so key. if a meal is meant to make four servings, make it last four servings. it’s better to be a little hungry four days in a row than stuffed for two and starving for two. weigh it out if you have to.

10. never say no to free food. whether it’s potlucks, community events, religious gatherings, or student food pantries, a free meal is one less you have to cook for yourself. pro tip: hit up wednesday night suppers at churches, shabbat dinners at synagogues, and sikh gurdwaras pretty much any time for a free (if not really cheap) meal. you might have to endure some proselytizing, but as long as you’re respectful and mind your business, you’re golden.

[sheepmonstrosity]

Hope you don’t mind me adding some extra tips of my own op!

11. Bullion cubes tend to be real cheap and making things into a soup is a great way to make small portions feel bigger. A serving of beans and rice doesn’t feel like much but when you add a bullion cube and some hot water now suddenly that’s soup and you’ve got a big bowl full + extra flavor

12. If you’re diabetic or insulin resistant and suddenly faced with eating lots of carbs because they’re what’s cheap and available pre cook your food then chill it!! Starches in most everything from potatoes to rice to bread will change form when cooked and then cooled. They start converting to resistant starch and our body basically processes them like fiber instead of like carbs, so you can lower the glycemic index of your rice by quite a bit if you cook it then freeze it overnight before thawing and eating. Is it perfect? No but it helps!

13. Frozen fruit and vegetables can also be a great and less expensive way to get your fruit and veg. Canned is often cheaper but do the price-per-ounce math and check! Grocery stores near me still occasionally do 10 for 10 sales on bags of frozen veg! And if you can get some on sales like that they become a great way to bulk out other foods. Mac n cheese? Add some frozen veg. Hamburger helper? Frozen veg. Top ramen? Frozen veg.

14. Reiterating the never turn down free food if it’s something you can eat. Hit up food pantries, check if Facebook has a buy nothing group for your area, people will give away food for absolutely free! Groups like this are also super useful even if you don’t find food, look for things like toiletries on offer, if you can get your body wash for free that’s a couple bucks you can devote to food.

[defilerwyrm]

If you've got a contact who's active military, see if they'll shop for you at the PX/BX. Sure, the food's exceptionally generic, but it's cheap.

[nobodybetterhavethisoneoriswear]

Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and similar stores are excellent sources of seasonings, herbs, spices, simple canned vegetables and fruits, some frozen foods, and occasionally meats and dairy (at a few of the larger stores).

Also if you live in rural farming areas, see if they'll allow you to glean in the fields after the harvest (especially right now with it being sweet potato season). Often there are still a decent amount of good vegetables left behind on account of smaller size and "imperfections".

[blessedbrick]

Useful for most people at one time or another

For a lot of people rn it's the one time

[deadinsalem]

Additionally, some things like garlic, onions, potatoes, beans, herbs, beets, and radishes are stupidly easy to just shove in the ground and forget about depending on where you live and how much rain you get. Often times, you can just grow them in pots. You don’t even need to know anything about gardening. Also, and I can’t believe more people don’t consider this, the U.S. (and basically any other country) has a fuckton of invasive plants that were brought here because they grow insanely well and can produce a lot of food (watercress, purslane, kudzu, sunchokes) that aren’t really eaten due to their presence as “weeds” (even though they’re functionally no different than eating lettuce or artichokes - if not better for freshness) and plenty of other plants that weren’t brought here as food but are still perfectly edible (tumble mustard, common mallow, pepperweed) and insanely abundant (and very fresh + usually free of chemicals and microplastics as opposed to the produce you buy in the store, which have a contamination rate of 100% in many cases) and for most of them, the most preparation you need is to walk out your front door, pull them out of the ground, wash them, and eat (and I can not stress enough how much better they will taste than your normal, soggy, wilted, earth-damaging produce because of how truly fresh they are!!!). Not only will you be eating fresh, nutritious, comparatively tastier, and healthier food, you’ll also be actively contributing to help solve a problem that most people don’t even think about.