People usually think that in the absence of farming experience, they will begin to starve as soon as they run out of canned food. This is not exactly so. There are plenty of ways to produce fresh food in times of crisis.
Growing agricultural plants
You may be able to grow your own vegetables and fruits, but not many of us today know how to grow the main crops – wheat, rice, and corn. Cereal crops belong to the genus of herbaceous plants, grow quickly, and provide us with nutritious grain.
Harvesting
We were able to invent technologies that help us digest such food. To get the nutrients we need, we grind the grains into flour, and the flour is cooked into bread by heat treatment. To do this, it will be enough to build the stoves used by our ancestors.
Thus, the millstones of a wind or water mill become a technological substitute for previous ways of harvest processing.
Efficient cultivation of grain crops is the primary problem because the basis of any civilization is precisely the surplus of food. If one person can feed ten others who are not engaged in agricultural work and specialize in other activities, the newly formed society will have more opportunities.
Necessary tools and fertilizers
Soil tillage implements, such as plows and harrows, can be quarried or made from steel using simple forging techniques.
However, the main task that in ancient times medieval farmers failed to solve successfully was to maintain the level of soil fertility for many years. Without modern artificial fertilizers, you will have to replenish the stock of nitrates in the soil by plowing manure into it and alternating legumes – peas, lentils, clover, alfalfa – with cereals.
By dissolving the bones in acid, you can get phosphates, and adding crushed chalk or limestone to the soil will help fight the high acidity of the soil.
Gardening and hunting will also be the main sources of fresh food in a post-apocalyptic society.
Useful resources
Hunting with the bow can be the most widespread if not the only option, to get fresh meat, at least at the initial stages of the crisis.
Also, we recommend paying attention to prepping skill books such as Hunting with the Bow & Arrow by Saxton T. and Getting Started in Survival Prepping: Learn from Ex-Military, Firemen, and Survivalists by Jason Peterson.
Perhaps more than one decade will pass, but out of the hopelessness of the “end of the world”, a new form of civilization may nevertheless arise.
What the new world will look like is anyone’s guess, but with even a little bit of human ingenuity, we have a chance to rebuild, and perhaps even improve, the complex society that exists today.
