What does food production in a dysfunctional country look like?

We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Link (I skipped ahead to cut out 3 minutes of bread-making)

For instance, Lebanon has been a dysfunctional country for the last 30 years. The 2020s have not treated it well. An enormous explosion leveling much of the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020 kicked off the decade. Covid happened. The government gridlocked. The currency crashed. Fuel became unavailable.

Currently, the southern part of the country is getting pounded by the Israeli. No judgment. Just one more thing to make life of the little people harder.

People adapted. There are lessons that can be learned, pain that we can avoid if we are smart.

The link shown above is to a video of an extended family collecting and preserving food during the summer and early autumn. If time is tight, then scroll ahead to the 7:24 mark and watch five seconds.

I learn something new in most of these kinds of videos. In this one, the men are using poles to knock the ripe walnuts off the tree. I imagine this frustrates the squirrels and more walnuts end up in the store room.

I also see things that make me shudder. For instance, they are filling glass jars with hot, rendered tallow over the open container of tallow. If the jar breaks, then the tallow in the pot is contaminated with shards of broken glass.

Between this video and two other "Lebanon village life", I identified the following locally grown foods:

• Tomatillo (!)
• Figs (lots of figs)*
• Apples
• Jujubees (a guess based on shape and size)
• Grapes
• Citrus (lower elevations)
  
• Walnuts
• Wheat (shown as flour)
• Pine nuts (cones for sale at a market)
• Olives (lower elevations)
• Peaches and Nectarines
• Cucumbers
• Tomatoes
• Eggs
• Mint (?)
• Broccoli (chopped, salad with yogurt for dressing)

I get the sense that most village people don't try to grow EVERYTHING they can grow but focus on a portfolio of heavy-lifters that produce abundantly in their location and tag all of the nutritional bases. For example, even if it were possible to grow oil-palm, coconuts, avocado, olives, hazelnuts, walnuts and pecans at the same location it only makes sense to specialize in the one that grows/produces best and maybe have a few plants of a back-up species.

Lots of cats. Very, very few dogs. Chickens are fed kitchen waste as one last chance to glean a few more grams of protein and a few more calories out of food that would otherwise end up on the compost pile. 

---Added later---

Hose included for size reference

 

We picked our first Illinois Everbearing Mulberries yesterday. Quicksilver approved. I dug some new-potatoes today for one of Mrs ERJ's friends who is on a restricted diet. I wish she liked nettles, rabbit and raccoon meat. I could supply her with a LOT of that.

Canadian Thistle, Chicory and St John's Wort starting to bloom. 950 GDD b50.

*Figs: one of the remarkable things about figs is that once they start producing in the season they produce a steady supply of fruit until frost shuts them down. That means you can have fruit with every meal for 4-to-6 months without having to store it. When you have a super-abundance, it dries well in climates that are not humid. Figs are not a viable option in much of the US due to short summers, cold winters or excessive humidity. But they are rock-stars where they can be grown.