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So happy for you that you have the things that make that easy. Good climate, no pests or deer or rabbits or crows, or robins or other birds, considerate neighbours, access to water for irrigation all year long, and apparently no issues with weeds eh? And lots of access to cheap, safe compost too huh? Oh and the tools (and storage!) to spread compost, aerate soil, weed (wait you dont get weeds!), and manage things like planter beds or poles or netting or trellises or tomatoes cages? And you grow enough that you meaningfully cut down on groceries huh? What a lucky duck.
Certainly some of the things you listed can present challenges, but I really think our society mythologises planting and farming and that was really my point, which I made poorly because I was being too flippant.
We act like producing food is an 80 hour a week job for only the smartest green thumbs when it doesn't even take a fraction of that time and takes an accessible amount of skill.
Provided you're privileged enough to have access to 1/4 - 1/2 acre of sunny land, you could grow a decent portion of your food for under 10 hrs a week. I know people who do.
Certainly expanding to that size takes some time prepping new beds, but maintaining existing beds and growing food in them is really not that much work. I maintain about 1500 sq/ft of food garden right now and outside of 5-15 hours of early spring prep I spend 1-2 hours a week in the garden through most of the actual growing season, and that's probably an over estimation. Each season I expand a manageable amount, and that's really the most time consuming because I am hand terracing a hill, 1 row each year. Certainly there is work, but acting like its super hard is just silly. I spend most of my time doing anything but gardening.
Honestly, maybe you're serious. And maybe you're a nice person and you just don't get how what you're saying comes off. But you just put "hand terracing a hill" in the same paragraph where you then said that acting like gardening is hard is silly.
Maybe for the person who has the knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources to successfully hand terrace a hill it isn't that hard? I'm sure LeBron James doesnt find layups that hard either.
Regardless of how you meant it, the comment comes off with strong Lucille Bluth vibes.
He specifically listed that activity as one of those rare time consuming parts.
Broadly there is a lot the common person assumes absolutely beyond their capability and never tries. People should at least be encouraged that DIY is worth a shot to see if it can work. Big business loves a populace that views doing anything for themselves as a lost cause, good for people to have a least a little familiarity with things to keep that perspective balanced.
I'd probably start smaller, a handful of leafy plants on a patio or something. Very cheap, easy, and low stakes. You won't replace your diet with independent farming, but at least the general concept won't seem impossibly out of reach.
I wasn't claiming hand terracing a hill was easy, the only thing I claimed was easy was growing food. Terracing a hill isn't a requirement for everyone. Shit, its not even for me, its just where I wanted the garden. You know what is hard? My fucking job, that I work at to make money to buy food. I'd much rather keep expanding my garden bit by bit and grow something that is comparatively free, than spend more of my life working for someone else. A fair amount of the crops I'm adding are take care of themselves crops. Raspberries, blueberries, hazelnuts, skirret, chives, rhubarb, Egyptian walking onions, mint, thyme, parsley, etc. all basically take care of themselves once in the ground.
Everything I do to create comparatively easier parallel systems to separate myself out of a broken evil system makes my life much easier. It relieves mental stress and brings me peace. In my opinion people equate doing less in the short term as easy, but life isn't that simple. Gardening is the easiest route in my life. I am very lazy. Its more work and mental load to give my time to someone else in a broken system. Then to also spend my time in a grocery aisle wondering just how poor quality the food I'm eating is. Gardening is a relief to the pressure of a dying society, its the easiest route in a shit world.
While a bad example, because some things were initially potentially difficult for your average person, I just switched everything to Linux, graphene os, and a home server with used parts on hand. It ultimately reduced mental load and made my life easier. Sometimes the easiest route in life is adding a little work on the front end. Using Linux and graphene greatly reduced my mental load. I rarely have to consider what I'm interacting with because I eliminated 80% of the programs that were spying on me and selling my data. I also spend less time trying to fix something Microsoft broke.
My initial point was admittedly clumsy and flippant. But I really think people obfuscate how difficult gardening is. Life is difficult, growing things, is comparatively easy. Plants grow with very little interaction from you. Shit, they grow in the wild without your help. Your input is best spent protecting the plant and letting it do it's thing outside of a drought. To me that's easy, something anyone with access to land and an able body can do. Only 1%-3% of people can do my technical job, but 100% of able bodied people with land can garden.
LOL, you make gardening seem like work when it is more of a lifestyle. I have a dog, gun flash tape and fence for critters, carry a few cans of water when it doesn't rain, and rarely weed much - never till or plow. My main garden equipment is a hoe, a round point shovel and a five-tine fork for spreading mulch the old discarded hay bales make great feertilized as they decompose into the sand. I still buy produce from the store in off-season but sell and give away a lot of produce. You should really read books by Ruth Stout and Masanobu Fukuoka.