Frugal and Energy Efficient Living

She discusses her family's experiment with the locavore lifestyle for a year - they live on a farm in southwestern Virginia. She details the gardening / crops (and how much land to feed a family of four for a year - if I remember correctly, she says it's about an acre), sourcing local grains for their bread, etc. Everything they eat they must source within 100 miles of their home - and buying bananas at the local store doesn't count. If the fruits and vegetables aren't local and in-season, they aren't part of the meal plan. They end up raising chickens and turkeys for meat; they kill them themselves so as to ensure humane slaughter. At the end of the year she runs the numbers and finds she's fed her family for less than $0.50 per person per meal throughout the year. So, $2/meal for a family of four, about $6 per day... give or take a little bit. This of course doesn't factor in the fact that her husband inherited the farm they live on, so that cost is moot. Plus, it's a huge amount of time-consuming work that probably only someone self-employed could manage ... and you have to have the infrastructure to do canning, store food for winter, extra freezers, etc. But it certainly is frugal, and eliminated one family's participation in the very expensive and environmentally catastrophic transportation network required to get food into local grocery stores.

I'm a vegetarian and avoid most dairy anyway because of lactose intolerance. I loathe and abhor sport hunting, but I do understand hunting for sustenance, if it is done humanely - a very quick death for the deer or whatever it is you're hunting. No fucking around. Kill it quickly, or else you're a jerk. And I do realize that because humans have been so stupid as to wipe out many natural predators - big cats, wolves, etc. - that deer do need to be culled for the health of the ecosystem.

I also think Americans (well, many people in developed countries) eat way too much meat - it sure as hell isn't necessary every meal or even every day. There's so much gluttony in the way we eat. I really have no idea how long one deer would last you.

So anyway. Kind of a rambling response to your post. Will be interested to read other responses.