I had to get a waterfilter after my sense of smell came back worh a vengence almost a year after I got the 'vid. Our public water suddenly smelled sonterrible like chlorine and rotten st rhe same time. Now all we drink is water filtered through a Berkey filter and it tastes wonderful! And the added bonus is the survival aspect as it is supposed to be able to filter out a ton of stuff
GMO corn is one of two biggest crops in my area and thatās most likely the main food source for the deer.
I use a Berkey almost exclusively. I was told many times that thereās no way I could be smelling the chemicals in the water, the amounts were too low. Yes, I can smell them.
When I first got the Berkey I invited a friend over and she brought her four year old daughter. The little girl asked for a drink. I gave her some water from the Berkey.
She tasted it, her eyes got big and she downed the whole glass, then asked for more. She drank three of those glasses before she was satisfied.
Our bodies know what they need, but if youāve never been exposed to anything other than chemical laden water, you only know that you donāt like drinking it. It doesnāt taste good.
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Ahw how nice! At least that little girl will know that there is better water out there! I also taste the plastic in those disposable water bottles everyone seems to love so much.
And i think itās disturbing just how sure people are of what others should not be able to smell/do/hear/feel. Just because they canāt themselves. Sigh. (Same when you go to the doc and tell them about some symptom or other they donāt acknowledge to be related. Not on the official list, you canāt be feeling that)
But yes, we love our Berkey filter 
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I live in the middle of a pretty big city, and Iām right across the street from a river. It has its own source and is not connected to the Colorado River. Thatās about as good as you can possibly get in a desert.
For regular drinking water, I buy reverse osmosis filtered water at the grocery store. I prefer to drink very clean water as often as possible.
Laurenās right. Humans can absolutely taste the difference in water quality. Iāve lived in many different cities around the world, and let me tell you, I can tell whether water is clean.
Iāve actually seen some biologists starting to theorize that water might be a basic taste we have (just like sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami). I thought, āGee, yāthink?ā That has always seemed obvious to me.
I feel about the same as what you said about the compost pile! I knit but mostly not for others, people just donāt appreciate what goes into making something by hand unless they themselves craft items by hand. I will gladly make gifts for friends that are weavers, knitters, quilters, painters, seamstresses etc as they appreciate and understand. Knitters call someone deserving of their craft āknitworthyā. As sad as ot is, might have to use the same approach with gardening and growing things 
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These are open questions:
Did people live where you live 500 years ago? If so, what plants did they eat?
What native edible plants are you growing?
There are very few native edibles that I have experienced myself. There has to be significant loss of knowledge transfer from the natives who used to live here. How in the world did they manage to find enough food? Itās crazy they managed to do so without means of irrigation.
I have provided here a list of native edibles of my state. Maybe one day I will be able to identify most of these and find seeds in the woods to bring back and share with the community. I am in the beginning stages of thinking in these terms.
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Iām planning to sprinkle hoary cress and purslane seeds all over my yard and at the edges of my garden. Theyāre weeds that grow wild here, and they taste good, and I want something to outcompete the bindweed.
Iām actually tempted to sprinkle purslane seeds into the middle of my garden beds too, even though I pulled out the purslane volunteers as a weed in 2021 and 2022. Theyāre a succulent groundcover, which strikes me as a pretty reasonable living mulch in between things like beans. And another plant family in the same garden bed is a good thing.
I like the taste of purslane enough that Iām starting to think I should start treating it like a full-on crop, and not just a weed. They really make for a convenient garden snack.
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If you see flowers on purslane theyāve likely already dropped seed. Your seed bank is there.
Another part of my resiliency plan is to have a common sense understanding that no one is looking out for me except me.
Another piece of philosophy I subscribe to is the understanding that the information online is not free to spread based of merit. There is good information being suppressed by those who are powerful enough to suppress it and who have a motive.
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I also love Carol Deppeās book, but my context is different.
I canāt have livestock for various reasons (mostly that all the land I grow on is rented). Like a number of other commenters here, I seem to do best when I consume at least some meat and dairy. I also have access to around a tenth of an acre in which to grow, unless I get into some pretty serious guerilla gardening.
But gradually over the last few years, I have been changing my growing and foraging patterns to include more of what I would otherwise buy, and my householdās eating patterns to include more of what I grow and forage. Our grocery bills have been getting lower, rather than higher, which is astounding given what is happening to food prices.
Foods we no longer purchase because we grow or forage enough for our needs include:
- strawberries
- raspberries
- plums
- winter squash
- green/French beans
- runner beans
- broad beans
- leafy greens (lettuce, chard, spinach, mustardā¦we are not big kale/cabbage people)
- fresh tomatoes
- beetroot
- most fresh herbs
- garlic
- Jerusalem artichokes
- oca
- popcorn
- dried mushrooms
- quinces
- sweetcorn (we were never big eaters of this though)
- rhubarb
We eat a lot more squash and beans than we used to. This yearās winter squash harvest is something like 40 fruits, only about a third of which are little one-serving acorn squashes, so weāll be eating squash once or twice weekly for the foreseeable future. I eat more strawberries now than I ever did when I bought them; we harvested over 5kg of them this June.
Foods of which we have substantially reduced our purchases because we grow or forage considerable quantities include:
- potatoes
- root vegetables
- peas (fresh and dried)
- apples
- pears
- dried herbs
- fresh mushrooms
- hazelnuts
- dried beans
- leeks
- tinned tomatoes
- grapes
- melons, some years
And then there are foods we only really eat because we grow or forage them:
- mulberries
- blueberries
- honeyberries
- gooseberries
- asparagus
- various mushrooms
- damsons
- sloes
- haws
- medlars
- figs
- salsify/scorzonera
- lovage
- various wild alliums
- blackberries
- chickweed
- plantain buds
- chestnuts
- walnuts (one member of our household is allergic, though, so these arenāt a huge part of our diet)
- elderflowers
- elderberries
- horseradish
- nasturtium leaves
- various mints
- various herbs
- various edible flowers
My current strategy is to focus on gradually increasing production of the things on the middle list: the ones where weāre harvesting a fair amount, but not enough to keep us from buying some from the shops during the hungry gap. Shop bought potatoes taste of dust and resigned despair so that is one priority area, and I adore peas and would like to grow more, but for most of these the issue isnāt so much managing to grow enough as managing to store it all sensibly. Three adults living and working in 720 square feet means I simply donāt have access to a lot of suitable storage space for either produce or jars.
I would also like to expand the diversity of the food I grow: we donāt currently grow any of our own lentils, for example, and I havenāt really made inroads into either peppers or aubergines.
Alongside this I want to become self-sufficient in seeds for every annual I grow. This is easier for some foods than others, but I think landrace gardening will form a big part of it.
I am also interested in playing around with citrus, bananas, and avocados. But I live at 51.5Ā°N and last winter we had -10Ā°C temperatures at the allotment, so there are some pretty hard constraints there in terms of both day length and temperature.
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I live in zone 7b, which means my temperatures never (or very, very, very rarely) dip below 5 degrees F. If your lowest temperatures are -10 degrees C, thatās 14 degrees F, which means you live in zone 8b.
You can totally grow bananas in that zone! Just choose cold-hardy cultivars. Dwarf Namwah and Dwarf Orinoco are hardy to my zone, which is colder than yours. You could easily grow those, as well as Thousand Fingers, Ae Ae, Grand Nain, and Ice Cream (a.k.a. Blue Java), which are hardy to your zone. All are seedless and tasty. If you want to grow bananas, have at it! 
Youāve got lots of options!
If youāre willing to eat seeded bananas, look into Musa balbisiana. Itās one of the two species that was bred to make the hybrid we get in grocery stores (the other is Musa acuminata). Itās not as sweet, but itās significantly more cold hardy, and itās still said to be very tasty. Theyād be a very promising seeded species for you to play around with, especially if you want to breed them.
You may want to look into kumquats, which are the most cold-hardy edible citrus I know of. Theyāre hardy to 18 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really close to your zone. If you planted them against a warm south-facing wall that gets full sun, they would probably do fine with no additional help.
I donāt know anything about avocados because I donāt like them. (Grin.) But anything thatās almost-but-not-quite hardy to your zone can probably be grown in your zone with a little protection. I highly recommend reading David the Goodās book Push the Zone for ideas. Itās chock full of really good stuff.
I donāt know how much bananas will like heavy, waterlogged clay over the winter, or the strong winds that the allotment is prone to. But Iāll keep an eye out for them, at least. Iāve never seen a banana plant with a varietal name for sale in person, but then I havenāt been looking out for them particularly, either.
Kumquats want more shelter, at the allotment at least, than Iām willing to give them.
I imagine they would be highly unenthusiastic about heavy, waterlogged clay over winter. (Laugh.) Maybe put them in a raised bed filled with compost and mulch? Iāve heard about banana plants thriving when planted on top of a big pile of autumn leaves!
Strong winds would be tricky, too. Bananas have really shallow roots. Iām pretty sure Iāve heard theyāre very susceptible to lodging in strong winds. If those happen a lot, Iād definitely put them against a wall. Preferably a south-facing wall, for obvious zone-pushing reasons.
Iāve never seen a banana plant for sale in person, either, which is why I keep buying mine online.
One of the things we are probably not allowed to do at the allotment is install fruit wallsā¦ I mean, Iād love to, but itās seriously non-trivial. The closest I can probably get is growing things up the back of the compost heaps, but that space is already reserved for various heavy-feeding annuals.
Like I said ā Iād rather grow more of the things on the middle list before playing around with zone-pushing stuff.
Makes sense.
Well, when (or if) you do ever feel like trying bananas, hereās one that may be worth looking into! I just found out about it today.
Dwarf Brazilian:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Dwarf_Brazilian
āDoesnāt need as much water as some of the Hawaiian variates. Good heat tolerance. Grows well in arid climates and higher elevations. Has been known to tolerate winds in excess of 45mph. Grows well even with severely shredded leaves.ā
It looks like one I should grow, for sure!
Sounds like a potentially good option, for sure!
Well, after a month and a half of experimenting, the results are in:
Yep. When I donāt eat cheese, I donāt need nearly as much beef. And while my taste buds miss cheese, my body doesnāt seem to. I can eat about a quarter pound of beef a day, instead of an entire pound, and be fine. Sometimes I can even substitute something else thatās high in iron, like peanuts (which I can grow, which is important!) and be okay.
This is both good and bad news, because I really like cheese.
However, Iāve discovered two things that help with that a whole lot.
The first is that butter contains no calcium. I need to replace the fat in my diet lost by removing cheese, and butterās basically the same fat, so Iām eating a lot more butter now.
The second is nutritional yeast. I decided I try eating it for the first time, because Iāve read that it tastes a lot like cheese, and is popular with vegans as a substitute for cheese. I decided to give it a try, and . . . my body basically said, āYES! Give me more of that!ā
It doesnāt exactly taste like cheese, but it works in a similar way. It has an intense umami flavor, just like meat and cheese do. Maybe it tastes like cheese powder mixed with a bit of mushroom? In any case, I find it very tasty on things Iāve previously usually eaten with cheese, tasty in a similar way, so I donāt miss cheese nearly as much as I expected to. The fact that itās really high in all B vitamins is another huge plus.
So ā yep. When I eat far less cheese, I need far less meat, and can handle getting more of my nutrition from plants. In a way itās a bummer, but itās mostly a relief, because I feel like that takes me a huge step closer to being more food secure long-term.
This experiment has also resulted in a fairly strong conclusion that is another disappointment but also relief. I donāt need a laying flock! Eggs contain a lot of calcium too, and they tend to inhibit iron absorption just like cheese does. So I should probably be eating eggs very sparingly, just like cheese. So I shouldnāt be planning on putting forth a lot of effort to start a laying flock.
Instead, I think I should start focusing very seriously on trying to get a peanut landrace going. I love peanuts, everybody in my family loves peanuts, and theyāre a good source of oil as well as protein. Theyāre very high in iron, as well. I think it would be a good idea to start working towards making them a long-term staple crop in my growing space.
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One thing that works well for me with foods that Iām trying to eat less of (but donāt need to cut out completely) is to eat them only at weekends or even only on one weekend day. I would struggle to give up cheese entirely, I think, but I could absolutely do without it during the week and then have cheese and crackers for supper on Sunday (after a proper lunch).
Nutritional yeast and butter on popcorn is an excellent snack in my world.
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