Great conversation, not sure I have much of value to add as I agree full heartedly!

My 15 acres is not tillable. Which is why it never became houses. It was not cleared an plowed for crops and grass land. Hence it never became a fast buck for a developer.

It is VERY rocky. Putting in fruit trees this spring/summer was more about digging out huge rocks to allow enough space for a fruit tree to get started.

It did mean removing a number of trees, but only a very small portion of the whole lot. While I pine the loss of the huge trees that are actually CO2 accumulators, a diet of acorns is rather limiting.

As a steward of the land , it is time to learn permaculture to replace my monoculture education.

Meat animals can consume food items we humans do not like to eat. My dogs get the banana peels, and apple cores. The ducklings get the house flies we swat; the chickens eat anything and everything ( almost) and travel about the farm cleaning up. They certainly know when the horses get grained and part-take of the grain the horses spill and cannot clean up themselves.

Small farms CAN build systems of less waste than the commercial industrialized production. Is it as efficient?? I guess that depends on what is being counted.

We use hand tools for the most part. Occassionally a chainsaw, and electric tools. But otherwise shovels, wheel barrows and such. GUess that is not efficient but I hope this n=1 is helping to save the Earth.

Who is willing to drive 50% of current weekly miles; who is willing to shut off the AC? Who is willing to rethink slowing the human population growth?

The real push behind Meatless Monday is that there is NOT enough food getting to everyone in this World. This MM is an attempt at moving feed from livestock to humans. THis is a failure in many ways. One is that the grading system of our US foods requires a higher standard for food consumption; much of the grains headed to the dairy cattle, beef -fattening operations and hog farms are NOT human grade.

My point is that livestock can utilize waste, unpaltable foodstuffs, poor quality feed that us humans will never touch.

Watch a free range hen clucking along become the Tasmanian devil to catch a fly! Hilarious. And useful on so many levels. One being, Im not ready to start eating insects yet. I leave that to the chickens and ducks.

PS. I dont eat my dogs....