The other day while I was shopping for groceries, a much talked about and often recommended book came to mind...
The reason for such an event was my standing in front of the cabbages looking at the $1.19 a pound price. Seriously, $1.19 a pound for cabbage is frelling nuts!
Hence my thoughts of "Sailing the Farm" by Ken Neumeyer...
The problem with "Sailing the Farm" is that the whole idea of growing your own vegetables at a sustainable level onboard a boat is appealing, the reality sadly is it's simply impossible in practice.
Which is not to say I don't think Neumeyer's book does not have some value as his chapters on sprouts, edible seaweed and suchlike are spot on but his stuff on growing food and making water through solar distilling just doesn't work. I suspect the book was more theory than actual practice.
If wishes were fishes...
Which brings me back to those way-too-fucking-expensive-cabbage-prices. Since I can't grow enough vegetables to sustain our needs on the boat, we need to be able to store more when cheap to get us past times when things are expensive.
Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to something that should be part of the need list when you decide to buy or build your boat... Enough pantry space to store food and the tools you need to process it.
At the moment I'm redoing our galley and jumping through all sorts of hoops to try and find some sensible space for a real pressure cooker of the canning sort and a boat-friendly dehydrator that makes sense.
Anyway, something to to keep in mind.
