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.