Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[Montegriffo]

There are courses on training truffle hounds. From 89 bucks...

https://truffledogcompany.com/product/i ... ing/[quote]
This class will introduce you and your dog to the exciting activity of truffle hunting. Truffle hunting can boost confidence, develop problem solving skills, and provide controlled exercise and mental stimulation for your canine. Truffle dog training is also a great way to build focus and to improve your human-canine relationship. It is especially fun and rewarding for dogs and handlers recovering from injury or with limited mobility as well as shy and sensitive dogs to build confidence. Whether you are just looking for a new game to play with your dog or your goal is to locate native truffles in the wild or on your orchard, this class will show you how to get started.[/quote]

[Fife]

I knew an old guy outside Memphis 25 years ago or so who had two Lagottos for duck hunting in the Mississippi Delta. They were also great retrievers on the dove field. Those were absolutely the best dogs I have ever been around.

[Montegriffo]

Making ground with farmed truffles now. 40lb - 50lb an acre at $600 - $1200 a pound.
Less work harvesting plus you get a nut harvest as a bonus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/busi ... uffle.html

I remember reading something a while back about a few people who made a try at truffles up in the Smokies; something about trying to look for something similar to French/German vineyard environments. What I recall is that the damn things are very very hard to cultivate and just about any bump in the biological road will kill the fungus.

What kind of dogs are used to sniff out truffles? It would probably be more fun training the dogs than hoping to make a living on underground shrooms.

Seems that Tennessee was the hub of farmed truffles once

Tom Michaels, owner of Tennessee Truffle, began producing Périgord truffles commercially in 2007.[21] At its peak in the 2008-2009 season, his farm produced about 200 pounds of truffles, but Eastern filbert blight almost entirely wiped out his hazel trees by 2013 and production dropped tenfold, essentially driving him out of business.[22] Eastern filbert blight similarly destroyed the orchards of other once promising commercial farmers such as Tom Leonard, also in East Tennessee, and Garland Truffles in North Carolina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Cultivation

[Fife]

I think that's the area I remember reading about. It was definitely in east Tenn, in the Smokies or the foothills. Farming is a risky business; an unpredictable bug or blight can wipe you out in a heartbeat.

[Montegriffo]

The late 19th century was the height of truffle farming. Large crops in France but they declined greatly after WWI when 20% of agricultural workers died in the trenches. Skills were lost and plantations fell wild.
French production is on the rise again, 80% of their 400 million Euros trade in truffles are farmed now.
Prices have soared in the last 100 years and demand outstrips supply by 10 to 1.
Californian vineyard regions are the current future of truffle farming in the US.

[Speaker to Animals]

Ginseng would be better than truffles around here. If you have a lot of wooded land, anyway.

Right now, I am most interested, however, in what I could grow efficiently on less than two acres, especially using greenhouses.

[heydaralon]

Ginseng would be better than truffles around here. If you have a lot of wooded land, anyway.

Right now, I am most interested, however, in what I could grow efficiently on less than two acres, especially using greenhouses.

Dude, plant sweet potatoes. No greenhouse needed. They are easy to grow, do not require excessive fertilizer, are not labor intensive, and are among the most nutrient and calorie rich crops. NASA is actually looking at the idea of growing Sweet potatoes in a Greenhouse on Mars if we ever colonize it for the reasons I listed.

[Speaker to Animals]

To call the North Carolina sweet potato market saturated would require a bit more than the old English understatement.

[heydaralon]

To call the North Carolina sweet potato market saturated would require a bit more than the old English understatement.

Are you trying to start a business or are you just trying to become self sufficient? If your goal is merely survival, I think sweet potatoes are your best bet. I don't know how the business side of farming works (or most of the labor side beyond the gardening I have done) so yeah they might not be a viable cash crop.

[Speaker to Animals]

To call the North Carolina sweet potato market saturated would require a bit more than the old English understatement.

Are you trying to start a business or are you just trying to become self sufficient? If your goal is merely survival, I think sweet potatoes are your best bet. I don't know how the business side of farming works (or most of the labor side beyond the gardening I have done) so yeah they might not be a viable cash crop.

Business. Probably ornamentals at first. But possibly organic food I can sell at a market later on.


Sweet potatoes are not really a cash crop, but North Carolina sweet potatoes are considered by most to be the best sweet potatoes out there. So vast amounts of farmland have been set aside for just that. No way to compete with something like that. It would be like trying to sell oranges grown on a few acres of land in Central Florida. Sweet potatoes are to North Carolina what oranges are to Florida.