r/preppers • u/A-Matter-Of-Time • May 16 '26
Advice and Tips Most people think they could feed themselves if they had to. This calculator shows why they’re wrong
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u/silentaba May 16 '26
I could probably sustain myself.
If I had around a decade to prepare, a couple acres of good land, a reliable water source, and a bunch of spare cash.
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u/Miss_L_Worldwide May 16 '26
Don't forget a completely functional body with no injuries or illnesses!
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u/KTeacherWhat May 16 '26
There is neither corn nor fruit trees on this list.
Edit: thinking further, onion is the only thing on this list that is perennial. Anyone doing any sort of prepping, and planning to feed themselves must have some perennial foods. Fruit trees, berries, asparagus, filberts, these are all things I grow perennially so that I have a start on the labor.
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u/TheMrsH1124 May 16 '26
Jerusalem artichoke is perennial and invincible
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u/samsonizzle May 17 '26
Just no. Stop sharing that.
Yes it's a cool plant. But no, it's not a viable food
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u/TheMrsH1124 May 18 '26
Thank you! I was planning to plant it. Guess I will not!
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u/samsonizzle May 18 '26
It's a super cool plant. Have you ever eaten it. Most people can't stomach it, literally. It tastes good but causes extreme (and painful) gas for most people.
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u/MidSinglesInYourArea May 31 '26
That's just because it's high in fiber and Americans are almost universally massively lacking in fiber in their diet.
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u/Hoodsfi68 May 24 '26
Look into pickling it. Fermenting them takes most of the wind out of them, so to speak.
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u/TheMrsH1124 May 24 '26
Oh that's a good call. Except fermentation is the one thing I cannot master. I can make bread and cheese and all kinds of other things but not fermented pickles 🫠
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u/There_Are_No_Gods May 17 '26
It's also very low in human available calories, takes tremendous labor and time to process, and requires a lot of work to avoid severe gastrointestinal distress. I've written this option off as far as a practical solution for prepping towards human food. It's at best a fodder crop in my opinion.
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u/KTeacherWhat May 17 '26
So I didn't know what it was until yesterday, looked it up, and it's a sunflower variety. I know that sunflower seeds can kill other crops. Does Jerusalem artichoke have the same issues?
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u/epicmoe Religiously Rural May 16 '26
arent onions biennial? except i guess walking/egyptian onions.
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u/KTeacherWhat May 16 '26
Yes, technically, but since they reseed themselves they can be treated as perennials.
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u/epicmoe Religiously Rural May 16 '26
well most things reseed themselves.
i have a bed of rocket (arugula) that comes back every year, but its an annual.
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u/professor_jeffjeff May 16 '26
Fruit trees and berries. Those are the backbone of my permaculture food forest. The calculator also (presumably) neglects density as well as aggressive succession planting. Trust me, you can get some pretty massive plant density if you plan things carefully. Things like vertical gardening, hydroponics, aquaponics, etc. can all add up.
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u/overkill May 17 '26
Corn is there, it was under "challenging crops" for me, which is debatable, but it was there.
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May 16 '26
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May 16 '26
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u/helluvastorm May 19 '26
And it requires a lot of fertilizer. Nice to grow under regular circumstances. But in a I have to feed myself situation a lot of things are out the window. Can’t afford the space time and money for them. Glamorous veges and fruits are not on the menu. Winter squashes potatoes beans , things like that are what you need to plan on growing
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u/KTeacherWhat May 19 '26
Corn is a staple food, for a reason. I didn't add fertilizer at all the times I grew corn. I also grow all of those other things.
It's weird that you are acting like corn is this specialty food. It's not glamorous. It's corn. Corn is the second most grown food in the world.
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u/KTeacherWhat May 16 '26
I see what happened. Corn actually can be grown in boreal climates, but the other issue is that I chose boreal because my winter months were closer to the one listed there, rather than continental. I have a shorter summer than you listed for continental, but have successfully grown two different corn cultivars.
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May 16 '26
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u/KTeacherWhat May 16 '26
We don't live in the same kind of climate. The cultivars that are good for me won't be good for you.
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u/hoardac May 16 '26 edited May 17 '26
We can grow corn with time to spare here in zone 4. I start them about 2 weeks before last frost and it has worked great so far. I know how many I want to plant and I start extras so there is no wasted spots in the rows.
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u/Derfel60 May 16 '26
Its a cool calculator but is missing a lot of crops. Theres no tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, garlic, corn, courgette, aubergine etc etc for temperate climate. If it was fully stocked with crops selection it would be an amazing resource.
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May 16 '26
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u/epicmoe Religiously Rural May 16 '26
depending on your climate, wheat, oats, potatoes, corn, rice are really the big ones for calorie density, throw them in and some beans. all of which are fairly easy to grow.
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u/hiaokk May 16 '26
Hi h carbohydrate is important, but so as protein! Is there a way to improve this amazing calculator with calculation of how much of your harvest will contain carbohydrates and protein?
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u/Derfel60 May 16 '26
Fair enough, i just think it would be cool to see other things as well.
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May 16 '26
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u/TheMrsH1124 May 16 '26
Cowpeas would be nice to have added. They grow excellently in southern US with almost no care needed
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u/There_Are_No_Gods May 16 '26
What a fun project. I took a look, and it got me thinking about a few things. That said, overall I think it still needs a ton of work to be very useful.
For example, the partial inclusion of livestock seems unhelpful at the moment. Apparently chickens just steal random food from humans (additional calories needed to feed them) and don't provide any eggs for humans to consume. In practice, chickens can largely just forage if given enough good land to work with, even though in the good times now people often just buy in feed for them.
If you want to include livestock inputs and outputs such as animal feed into this, that's a whole other level of complexity that's not yet remotely addressed in this tool. Livestock generally provide calories for humans, often a lot of them. They also consume massive quantities of food and require huge amounts of land and water, although, there's a long spectrum there from meat rabbits and chickens to beef cattle.
The proportional setup is also a bit backwards to me, where it would likely be more helpful to most people to see a recommendation of the split across their desired crops, or otherwise help them understand that for a given space, potatoes will provide exponentially more calories than leafy greens. The sliders could be set to a reasonable default, and then they could adjust dynamically. The current implication is that it's reasonable to set potatoes to 2% and Kale to 98% of the harvested calories.
It is misleading as a slider of "% calories from swiss chard" would correlate to massive changes in land use, etc. In practice, you simply can't crank up most veggies like that and actually farm enough of that on the land and with the time and resources available to generate the calories implied by the slider.
Overall, it's an interesting endeavor, but for it to be of much use to anyone, I think there's still a massive amount of work that'll need to go into thinking things through more and building out the features and related systems.
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May 16 '26
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u/There_Are_No_Gods May 16 '26
Put another way, I think there's a lot of potential utility here, for giving people much more insight into the tradeoffs between land area required and which crops they focus on. Being able to set a limit, such as "my max plot area", then play around with sliders that are clamped within that limit, could really let people better see which crops actually make sense for them from a calorie perspective, as well as explore how many calories they'd be giving up for some of the more high nutrient or tastier crops as compared to the high caloric density crops.
Supporting a few different approaches could be nice too, where you could alternatively clamp the required calories, then slide the crop percentages around and watch the land use that would require dynamically update.
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u/There_Are_No_Gods May 16 '26
I did later notice the land use column. What I think would make that stand out better, though, is to tie it more directly into the sliders, and to display it as a 2D grid type map. It's one thing to see on a later page 34m2 vs. 893m2, but it's another thing entirely to see a tiny square dwarfed by another block of similar proportions and to see that react while moving the sliders.
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May 16 '26
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u/There_Are_No_Gods May 16 '26
Heh, yeah, as a professional video game tools programmer, I am likely throwing out approaches that may require more work than your use case merits.
If you have access to it, though, something like Claude Code Opus, or even Sonnet maybe, could crank through this type of programming work very quickly. I've been using that to create lots of similar tools lately.
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u/johnnyringo1985 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
There’s some flaws with this methodology.
When my sheep are grazing on Bermuda grass and clover, that is not a zero-sum tradeoff with my caloric needs.
I don’t eat Bermuda grass and clover; I have Bermuda grass and clover pasture; sheep magically turn my Bermuda grass and clover pasture into lamb chops; these lamb chops did not come at the expense of carrots, onions, or anything else I would consume.
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u/MegC18 May 16 '26
As a long time vegetable gardener - not all plants work in all sites, even within a small area. Soil composition and nutrients are very influential, as are microclimates and especially the pests that occur in the area.
I thought I had enough land to grow my yearly potato requirements. The plants grew vigorously in my newly cleared land, and everything seemed fine. Then harvest came along, and I discovered that the grassed area I cleared was infested with wireworms! Every potato (from a large harvest -think thirty plants) was tunnelled with them. I dare say if you were starving, it would be extra protein, but it was repulsive. I grow my potatoes in growsacks now.
Similarly, I tried celeriac and they were completely hollow as slugs love them so much. However, I grow magnificent onions, garlic, all types of beans, artichokes, beets, many kilos of currants and plums, and now hazel and chestnut. And about thirty types of herbs.
I probably couldn’t feed myself. But I would have some decent trade goods. And if I could shoot the pigeons that eat my seedlings, there would be protein.
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u/opendefication May 16 '26
It's been a wake-up call for me keeping produce of some kind rolling out of the garden as small market gardener. One of the keys to making a buck is being consistently, week after week at the market with something. I would say it's a fairly solid comparison to maybe coming close to feeding yourself. It's as much planning and knowing what grows when as it is back breaking labor. I would be interested in dropping my routine into a calculator and see how it fares.
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u/leisurechef May 16 '26
Does the when to sow/harvest take into account northern/southern hemispheres?
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u/lunar_adjacent May 16 '26
First of all this is one of the coolest tools I’ve ever come across and the calendar at the end is chefs kiss
This also encourages my thought process and the plans I have in the future, for example meat rabbits, bee hive, and adopting a rooster (when we get to the point where we’re not following zoning laws anymore).
I am sure in the future people will be able to add their own resources (other things that I grow), and also adding domestic pets to the group would be helpful.
Great work. Thank you for this.
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May 16 '26
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u/Viking0338 May 17 '26
Another thing may be cattle. I realize they may not be as prevalent in the UK for single families, but they’re *slightly* more common in the US if you don’t mind adding them!
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u/backcountry_knitter May 16 '26
In addition to the many crop shortfalls mentioned by others, especially perennial crops, there are no options for nuts. We grow a very wide variety of crops, but we also cultivate nut trees. Our native nut varieties are hickory nuts, black walnuts, butternuts (white walnuts), acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts (though only of hybrid or Chinese origin now). We also have pecans, which are not native here but do ok. These are important calorie dense foods and the ones not suitable for people to eat are good supplemental food for livestock.
I have to echo others that the climate options are very limited, and maybe not the best metric. Nothing on the list really fits my climate well at all.
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u/macnof May 16 '26
Cool!
A bit of feedback:
The typical Kale grown here in Denmark withstands about -20°, so it keeps well in winter. I think it's called curly kale in English.
We have summer leek and winter leek. Summer leek is the leek you have in the calculator, while the winter version is slightly better energy vise, but also slightly tougher. They can handle at least -10°, but -20° is normal with a bit of straw covering.
We also have a winter version of carrots, while they dont handle more than a degree of frost, they'll store perfectly fine if covered in straw. We normally feed the last of last years crop to our livestock when we start harvesting next years crop.
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u/NWYthesearelocalboys May 16 '26
I really like the concept but had to play around with climate zones to get options I grow now and it was still a fraction of what I grow.
Can you put in an option to override climate restrictions? If I'm understanding right the site is factoring in natural wet seasons? Some of us have the ability to produce water without grid power or have other regional anomalies.
I grow rice, tomatoes, squash, pumpkin, bell pepper, grapes, jujubees, and more in Az.
The part of AZ I am in is Arid from about October to June and Sub Tropical from July-September.
We also have an abundance of mesquite beans. And a few fruit trees.
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u/WrathOfGood May 16 '26
It’s an insightful program. Much is missing from my growing conditions in central Texas. I have been eating breakfast every morning for the last two months by picking mulberries and blackberries out of the yard. The mulberries are just about done for the year. Still have blackberries coming though. My grapes will be ripening soon. My blueberries are just now starting to ripen though and my figs will be harvestable in another couple weeks, and will produce WAY more than we can possibly eat daily. So they will go into preserves or into the freezer for later consumption. Next year the mulberry tree will produce such more than I could eat for breakfast, so I will have mulberry preserves next year too.
The sunchokes don’t really require anything but water to produce a lot of crop, and they keep very well in the ground, so I just dig them up with a broadfork as needed throughout the winter.
My citrus trees, kumquats, limes, lemons, satsumas all have their crops ripen in the late fall/early winter through late winter here, so that’s another very enjoyable nutrient source for me.
I get many pounds of all kinds of peppers and eggplant that thrive in our late summer extreme heat. I’ve also got a lot of herbs/spices/aromatics that grow well in my climate, but like you mentioned, not a lot of calories in those spices/herbs, but quite a bit from my tree and berry crops.
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u/fruitloops6565 May 16 '26
Awesome work!! Really interesting.
A few bits of feedback as I went through it.
Animals page, add the +\- signs for mobile. Much easier than click and type and tick.
Show the cal cost per day in the description.
Also there could be an option for animals wild fed. If you have lots of space ect do chickens really have to be 100% grain fed year round? Maybe % of feed from stores?
On crops, could you add available non animal cultivation space? Idk how much land my supposed crops were going to take up.
Also could add to the boxes the calorie per sqm farmed.
And maybe flag on the final page the crop calories produced by month. I might make enough but if the calories are all potatoes I need to store them for 9months somehow.
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u/Forward-Champion-470 May 23 '26
This is such an important topic and it is what I am working on building on my off grid farm in Andalucia. I believe food forests are not utilised anywhere near enough, especially considering the state of the current food supply. If you're interested in seeing what I am working on and how I am growing food self-sufficiency, I just posted a video on YT here talking about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV5tB1TbsBw
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u/BaylisAscaris May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I noticed the calorie counter on your site isn't adjustable. I'm a woman and when my meds run out my BMR is 900 calories/day. Even with heavy activity the number of calories I need tops out at 1500. Crop lists are also very limited and don't include trees.
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May 16 '26
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u/gillbeats May 16 '26
Came to say that possibly the calories when doing physical effort seem a bit skewed towards the extreme all of those categories, but a beautiful and useful effort if tweaked in time, i already shared it
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u/somuchmt May 17 '26
I'm short and old, so my calorie needs range from 1200 if I'm sedentary to 1800 if I'm doing physical labor most of the day. In contrast, my 6' husband and teenage son range from 2500-5000 depending on activity level.
So, thinking seasonally, we have an agricultural business (plant nursery) and huge garden in the northern US and use fewer calories November-January, a bit more February-March, then pretty hard-core April-October.
We have shellfish beds, chickens, big garden, several berry patches, and a small orchard. I'd need to add goats and a few more nut trees, plus add another acre for calorie crops to adequately and reliably grow all of the food we need for the year. I'd probably add sunflowers and pepita pumpkins for the seeds, since those would store well to the next harvest. Most grains fail where I live, but potatoes thrive. I'd probably also do a lot more fishing or try to start a fish pond--all my neighbors who have ponds have stories about how wily otters are, though.
And we would have no time to do anything but raise food. And heaven forbid I sprain my ankle or shoulder or wrists again.
I don't know anyone who is actually producing enough food for a family for a full year in my latitude. The only reason we're "self-sufficient" is because we have a plant nursery on our property that pays for everything we can't produce.
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u/PaulTR88 May 16 '26
Would like to see more variety in the crops, but cool little tool.
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u/nakedonmygoat May 16 '26
People don't often realize what goes into growing and raising food, as well as the many things that can derail your efforts. I don't know about other countries, but your average American does not or cannot grow even enough food for a few decent salads. Their backyard roses and tomatoes do well, so they think they can immediately ramp up to full self-sufficiency if there's a catastrophe tomorrow.
Then there is the historical reality. Historically, humans have never gone it alone for long. They traded with neighbors, even if those "neighbors" were 100 miles away or more. Self-sufficiency will get you through a short term crisis, by which I mean anything up to a few years, but long term survival requires other people. It's not an accident that once humans turned to agriculture and livestock, as opposed to nomadic hunting and gathering, towns and markets sprang up.
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u/infinitum3d May 16 '26
Fully agree with you.
There are a couple weeks in September when I’ve eaten only what comes out of my garden. That’s a couple weeks after six months of growing. That’s a couple weeks out of a fifty two week year.
I have enough canned and freeze dried shelf stable foods for a family of 4 to last 6 months. I can supplement that with foraging, gardening, hunting, trapping, and fishing, but I still pray the grocery stores stay open.
Good luck!
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u/androgenoide May 16 '26
Pretty cool but... I noticed that it asks about livestock but doesn't do any estimates of what is needed to provide for the animals.
Of course, trying to calculate acreage/calories for something like that would be opening a can of worms and I understand why it would be left out so don't take this as a criticism.
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u/marutiyog108 May 17 '26
I like this and I enjoyed filling it out , here is my feedback:
on the sliders for the crops please make it so you can type a percent in. If you have chonky fat fingers like me on a small phone it is hard to dial in a percent .
I think it would be helpful to update the zone to include an option for USDA hardiness zone. Someone in a warmer continental area can grow more and longer than someone in a northern area. The USDA zones account for this
you did not account for fruit/nut trees. (At least not what I recall or maybe it was not my area) Our land has dozens of walnut trees scattered around. Oak trees which drop acorns. We have an abundance of wild raspberry, additionally we planted several hazelnut (filberts) and 2 to 3 of of the the following apples, pears, peaches, cherries and a regional tree called pawpaw.
Wishlist and rambling thoughts add more crops, I don't not see tomatoes and peppers or the ability to add your own crops. We grow a lot of sunflowers mostly for the chickens but we eat them too.
I saw you had sunchokes maybe include more low effort - "plant once and forget crops" like asparagus as well.
For radish, I think there may need to be a discussion? A Dikon is very large compared to a breakfast radish.
Mushroom cultivation - I know people that have incolulated hundreds of logs around their property and get a nice harvest of mushrooms. many can be grown on waste like old straw
Hydroponics and microgreens likely very supplemental but worth considering especially if being used in the winter under artificial light
Greenhouse can extend growing season, not sure if there is a way to account for that.
Overall great work I think this is very eye opening.
Last thought double check the corn calculation. I don't recall what percent I had selected but the number of seeds seemed surprisingly low.
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u/Logbotherer99 May 19 '26
Yeah, they also have absolutely no idea how there is very little food for most of the year without modern storage and preservation.
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u/Incendiaryag May 16 '26
Hobby gardens teach you skills and could be a flavor feel good to subsidize a plain, hard times diet of stored preps (even small amounts of the right fresh fruits or veggies can prevent scurvy). But yes its a lot to harvest, forage, hunt, and fish enouvh calories to stay alive and most are being silly even with a solid home garden to imagine its a major food source.
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u/Infamous_Try3063 May 16 '26
Missing so many climate types too. A large portion of the us is humid continental.
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u/hoardac May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
We could do it in a bind just gotta adjust some plans. We have enough permaculture plants to feed quite a few people and wild animals. I would probably trade some fresh fruit/ freeze dried for oats and eggs. I will say if your not practicing a hobby garden and see what grows well in your area, you should be. I took a while to get good at growing the right things for our land.
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u/aggyaggyaggy May 16 '26
I'm a lurker of this sub at best but I am incredibly impressed with this site.
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u/sassysassysarah May 17 '26
I'd love to see plants like blueberries and strawberries added! And citrus! That'd be important. Also there's currently no fats listed. I'm excited for this tool, I do back of the napkin math of this sort of thing all the time
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u/TheTrevist May 16 '26
It’s not working. Keeps going back to step one. Love the idea though.
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u/johnnyringo1985 May 16 '26
Yeah, the specific number of calories for every climate choice seems like it’s tailored to UK-specific feeding/foraging and UK-specific wool-producing breeds.
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u/Nufonewhodis4 May 16 '26
Nice tool. Definitely a reality check for those who don't already have experience growing lots of food!
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u/Knight_of_r_noo May 16 '26
Not perfect but what is? Thanks for putting this together. Printing a paper copy just in case
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u/Virtual_Ad5748 May 16 '26
Historical average is 2-3 people fed per hectare farmed. Based on primitive farming options. Minimal calorie diversity but ideally wheat. I don’t see how most modern people could successfully farm at that level. Also, about half of all global farmland is only useable with modern fertilizer and farming technologies.
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u/chickpeaze May 17 '26
very cool. It could use banana/plantains and taro for tropical.
Could also use coconuts, avocados, macadamias, cashews and other high calorie trees.
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u/Adorable-Building-83 May 17 '26
Does not work backwards if it's asking me what livestock and plants I'm going to have beforehand...
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u/readyforunsteady May 17 '26
This is a really useful reality check. That gap between “I can grow food” and “I can feed myself from it” is something a lot of folks probably don’t think through.
Would you be open to writing a blog post about your app? I run a site for beginners and like highlighting resources that help people while supporting cool things others have built. Here’s an example of one for an app that helps people track their inventory.
No pressure either way, but feel free to DM me if you’re interested!
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u/sheepslinky May 17 '26
Thanks for including sorghum, sweet potato, and groundnuts / peanuts. Everyone usually forgets the super hot climate stuff. BUT, you need to add okra.
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u/That_Play7634 May 17 '26
Growing quinoa isn't always as straight forward as just planting it. You need the right variety for your area if it even exists. I tried bagged peruvian quinoa seed and got nothing even though I also I live at high altitude. A year later I got 5 lbs of a small seed wild variety completely by accident. It took years of trial and error and breeding for White Mountain Farm to successfully produce commercial quinoa in Colorado.
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u/Reasonable-Ocelot252 May 18 '26
This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time on the internet. Thank you.
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u/Turbulent-Pea-8826 May 19 '26
Most people aren't prepared to be farmers and have no clue. My prepping goal has always been to be able to survive 2 weeks without food, water or power.
If stuff truly goes sideways longterm I don't want to live. I grew up in farm country. We were only tangently into that as we had horses, a goat and a garden. I hated that shit and I only had to deal with farmer -lite stuff. I hate horses, horse shit, goats, hunting and fishing. I like the A/C and computers and electricity. Some of my friends were no shit farmers and fuck that.
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u/LairdPeon May 19 '26
Most people would end up dying after they got the flu/stomach bug during a crucial part of the growing season and losing everything, or not maintaining equipment/irrigation pipes causing catastrophic failure.
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u/zenitram66 May 16 '26
I think some people think the food in their pantries alone can sustain for longer than a few days because no one realizes how malnourished they are. They think "I get by on two Graham crackers and an apple with coffee with 32 oz. of water all the time, I'll be fine." I've actually heard a coworker make this declaration when someone else brought up their food shortage concerns recently.
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u/nakedonmygoat May 16 '26
I see this even with Tuesday scenarios. I once had someone ask me why I'd want to be able to cook after a hurricane, since "Why would I want hot food when it's hot outside?" Aside from parsing the utter ridiculousness of that statement, which could take paragraphs, this guy had four children. I guess his plan was to feed his kids crackers and peanut butter, or maybe lukewarm canned tuna for two weeks until they got power again.
We lost touch, thank goodness, but did get a significant hurricane a few years later. I've sometimes wondered how well his "plan" worked out for him and his family, or whether his wife had more brains than he did and saved the day.
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u/westu_hal May 16 '26
I just did the calculator and while others have pointed out its shortcomings I think it provides a great thought exercise! I don't have enough garden space to even begin to feed our family solely off of crops (in a boreal/arctic climate) but that's where foraging, hunting, and fishing come into play.
Grain and livestock crops are our biggest problem here. I am going to try to grow barley as microgreens for our meat rabbits/ sprouted seeds for chickens this summer and see if I can keep it going through the winter. Microgreens are highly nutritious and more realistic to grow even in the dead of winter, provided we use lights and seed mats for germination, and the animals converting plant matter to meat/eggs is a much better conversion than trying to grow barley purely for grain. There are lots of ways to use and consume grains without purely resorting to bread or porridge!
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u/MurlocAndHandler May 16 '26
This is very cool, but I'll echo others that it would be awesome if you included more seeds like tomatoes and peppers and such. Thanks for sharing!
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u/Jammer521 May 17 '26
I have no illusions that I couldn't feed myself from scratch without my food preps, I would hope that I would learn over time if the event lasted years, while still having food preps to fall back on while learning
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u/Ginsdell May 17 '26
Just started my hobby container garden. We will need to take this way more seriously if it’s gonna feed us tho.
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u/sevenredwrens May 17 '26
This is very cool! Thank you for building it. As others have said, the crops listed aren’t necessarily accurate for the area / location; I live in a boreal zone but successfully grow flint corn, which when dried and nixtamalized provides a lot of protein. Also, many storage crops keep longer than you have listed; for example, I have plenty of winter squash stored that we are still eating now that were harvested in early October (about 32 weeks ago) and they will last us right up until the new winter squash come in this fall. Realistically we switch to eating fresh food from the garden in the summer months and don’t eat a lot of winter squash then, but we could, as it lasts all year. Our russet potatoes are similarly long storage - almost a whole year. And crops like kale, while not shelf stable, are stored frozen here. Even in a no-electricity scenario, it’s cold enough where I live to store frozen food in protected spaces outdoors. But it’s a great tool! I will keep playing with it.
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u/Charliecausintrouble May 17 '26
This was a fun calculator but it limits the animals to 100/per. We mostly free range ours and give garden scraps but a calculator for feeding them would be handy too. I have an idea of what I need for our over 1100+ animals (I stopped counting) at this point but it would still be nice to see how much less we could get away with of we trimmed those babies down. And then could figure how much salt we need to preserve all the meat. (Granted Im a 2 minute walk from the ocean so we could have unlimited salt but it’s a pain in the butt to make with trying to avoid the off putting mineral flavor if you don’t have a steady cooking source).
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u/hairy_ass_eater May 17 '26
I tried it and it looks like I have a 10 weeks surplus with the numbers I used, I better start this homestead
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u/peanutleaks May 17 '26
I’m gluten intolerant I’m fucked
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u/sneakybrat82 May 18 '26
Sourdough breadmaking is a lot easier than it might sound. Ofc you’d have to store the flour. And it depends on how gluten intolerant you are. We have a GF household member but she’s not celiac. So she does okay on sourdough. And if you make it yourself you can ensure that the dough is left in the fridge for the max time to break down as much of the gluten as possible.
Just a thought, I’m sure you’ve prob already considered it.
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u/budget_philosopher_T May 18 '26
Really great tool i enjoyed it! Gives a good overview and some goos pointers (and realisations for the space and effort required)
Would love to know how you compiled the data, if there will be ability to play with the numbers in any version.
Could maybe do with a bit more of an explination on the food animals- so its i need x amount more food planted to raise them- but does it count the calories from those animals/eggs by reducing the total needed to sustain the family?
Would love to see hunting mamals expanded too
Overall 10/10 work on a valuable comunity tool .
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u/YonKro22 May 18 '26
When I was a kid we had a 3 acre garden run by mainly house kids or Uncle plowed it up once and my mom had grown up on a farm and knew how to do it all we had way way more vegetable and start them renew what to do with we had to sell them or got to sell them and sure we bought stuff at the grocery store but we had tons and tons of vegetables no irrigation no fertilizer no help except family. It was a lot of work and we did not do it again but anybody should be able to do it especially if they have a water source
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u/Sharp_Ad_9431 May 18 '26
A basic garden to feed an average family takes about an acre per person. Assuming one knows how to grow the food and has soil ready for it. You can shrink the space requirements by using more intensive methods but most people can't just start an intensive garden. A food forest can do that but it takes almost a decade to develop a solid food forest in most areas.
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u/eczblack May 29 '26
I watched a YouTube video on this very thing and they said that while they were an experienced gardener and could hit calorie count, their crops did not hit some macros like a few vitamins and fat intake to sustain long term. In a prepping scenario where you are having to grow food, odds are you are gonna come up short somewhere, even if you master the garden every year.
Very cool tool OP!
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u/Femveratu May 16 '26
My goal is to have 2-3 years of base calories (for four) covered by my food storage, essentially to provide time for a proper transition to growing, hunting, fishing, trapping or otherwise obtaining the calories we need in a longer term SHTF type event.
IMHO Experience, sheer acreage, crop volumes and crop varieties would be absolutely key to try and replace those calories.
Bonus would be for anyone w live stock that can survive and thrive on grazing alone w the land to support it.
Your post is a very sobering reminder of how hard it is and (potentially expensive) to replace the base calories our current system provides (relatively) cheaply.
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u/Secret_Enthusiasm_21 May 16 '26
I think in the space that you would have to put all the tools and stuff you need for your garden, you can easily store decades worth of beans and rice. And a box with vitamins and stuff.
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May 16 '26
I know with 1000% percent certainty that my family could not feed themselves - thus my worries 😵💫
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u/eatingacookie May 17 '26
Several of the tables while walking through the tool are not scrollable on mobile (they get cut off horizontally), be sure to optimize for mobile if you can!
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u/sneakybrat82 May 18 '26
This is a really cool tool. I’ll have to look at it on a computer though, it’s really not mobile friendly.
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u/BaylisAscaris May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
One of the best prepping strategies is starting with a hobby garden. You learn so much, even on a small scale. When I first started I was very ambitious and made a lot of mistakes. Now that I'm more experienced I can make every seed count and also save seeds. For anyone looking to get into it, do some research on permaculture. You don't need to do a lot of work if you let nature help you. The cool thing about permaculture gardens is they generally don't need watering and fertilizer once established, so if there's a situation where supplies/water aren't possible, you're fine. Also it's easy to ramp up production quickly by putting more effort into it. If you have limited time, plant fruit and nut trees. They produce a lot over the years. Pick native species for less upkeep.
You can also make better use of limited space by planting densely instead of mulching. As an example, last year I grew over 100 pounds of food on 8 cubic feet. Since we got seeds for free or from saving them, and didn't need to buy supplies, we ended up spending around $4 total on that spot, and saved a lot of money on groceries. On top of that, we shared with the whole neighborhood, so they started bringing us gifts like food and plants. Plus we got them excited about gardening, so now most of the neighborhood is planting crops this year, and we're being more social.
Get around twice as much seeds as you estimate you will use each year. Only ever plant half your remaining seeds at a time (unless there is a very serious risk of starvation). That way if something goes wrong with your crops, you have backup seed to try again. Great places to get seed: ethnic markets, grocery stores with bulk bins, seed libraries (check your local libraries), local seed swaps. Also learn how to save your own seeds. If you dry, seal in ziplock style containers, and put into your freezer, seeds will last indefinitely. Bonus, after taking them out of the freezer they think they've been through winter and it's spring, so your germination rates are higher. I also recommend starting with discount heirloom seeds that are expired from your local garden stores. A good percent of expired seeds will still germinate, and those will be more likely to produce seeds that are more shelf-stable.