You all have raised such interesting topics I hardly know where to begin.
I'm not sure exactly what was covered in the 1/4 acre rule of thumb. Japanese village farmers were largely self-sufficient on their small holdings but one cannot imagine any single farmer isolated from the others in the village. One household might raise, say, 80% of their own food and 20% in surpluss of something they could produce particularly well. That 20% was traded with other farmers for the 20% they lacked. One farmer might only have an orchard so he would trade it for vegetables with the others. Only one farmer might make miso for the entire village and trade it for other things his family needed. No one was left out in the cold.
Also, the Japanese are great at making every square inch count using methods like stacking vegetables in time and space to assure a plentiful and continuous yield, and returning all of the organic matter back to the soil. The classic book on the topic of traditional Chinese gardening and farming, which is also practiced in Japan, was written in 1911! It is
The Farmers of Forty Centuries by F.H. King (still in print by Rodale Press). This is essentially the method popularized as organic gardening by J.I. Rodale.
You hate the English units of measure!?
Wendell Berry hates metric. He originally wanted to use the English units for TOSR. I told him it would be too weird to have Fukuoka-san using them so we compromised on using metric, as Fukuoka did, with English units in parentheses. Wendell's point is that the English units developed out of human cultural experience and are connected to something real. For example, a furlong (1/8 mile) is about how far a hourse could pull a plow before it had to rest. One furrow long. He sees metric as a scientific measure, so if farmers were forced to change it would be another way in which farmers had to change their traditions for the convenience of the scientists.
Just throwing that out there...
I appreciate the way Jeavons considers where all the organic matter he uses comes from. Many people who simply have compost hauled in from somewhere else do not.
The Fukuoka family has probably been living in the same village for the past 1,200 years or so. The land is passed down through the eldest son. Fukuoka-san is the oldest male among his siblings so even though he became a plant pathologist and went off to the city as a young man he always knew he would end up back at the family farm. His son, Masato also knew that from the beginning of his life. Japanese society is like that. Everyone knows their place and what is expected of them. It grows out of geographic necessity. There are so many people living in a relatively small space they had to work out a way that they could all get along. The individuality we prize so highly in this country would create quite a challenge in those conditions.
I couldn't agree more, Dixana. If people learned how wonderful the taste and nutrition of home preserved food is they might reconsider their objections. I try to get people to at least shop at the farmers market a few times so they can get an idea of what the real flavor of food is. Also, the time spent doing chores like canning, pickling, smoking and so forth is a reward in its own right, especially if you do it with others. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
As for tofu...it's easy to make, but I'll leave the recipe for another time. The very best book on tofu is called, guess what...
The Book of Tofu, by William Shurtleff.
I confess we never ate the ducks I loved them.
I wonder if they've ever tasted home canned green beans.....the stuff you buy is NOT the same.