Homesteading

>>1016157
If you think you can raise all the calories you need to sustain a family on 6 acres you are fooling yourself.

>>1016301
nægrœ my vietnamese neighbors have 5 acres that are full of a thousand+ ducks, goats, chiggins, plus they have tons of veggies and probably about half an acre worth of heated greenhouse where they grow the crazy tropical stuff, and they have acreage to spare that's not being used. granted, they have feed delivered to the creatures and gas & heating oil delivered for the house. if you had to be completely self-sustaining 6acres wouldn't do it, you'd burn all the trees in a few years.

>>1016304
>>1016157
At least I am not dumb enough to think you can sustain that much livestock on a rotational grazing operation of A 1/4 ACRE PER YEAR. Seriously, use your common sense.

>>1016332
It would be 4-6 goats and a 10 chickens being rotated every week not every years. if you have the right cultivar of of grass planted 3 weeks is more than enough time to regrow any grass that was eaten.

>>1016366
You don't re plant grass that often, it re-sprouts on its own.

>>1016304
Yield for an acre of wheat is about 65 bushels.now since I wouldn't be using a modern irrigation system or gmo seed I'm willing to drop the yield down to 50 bushel. 1 bushel of wheat is roughly 43 lbs. of flour. 1 lb.of flour is need for about 1 1/2 pounds of baked bread. Feed corn yield per acre is about 120 bushels of shelled corn. Without gmo seeds of modern irrigation yield should drop to 90 bushels an acre. 1 bushel is 56 lbs. of off the cob corn, as the fruit and nut orchard age yields will improve, for the first 3-5 years little to no fruit. The idea with this is to have trees and bushes that give fruit and nuts throughout the year. So, cherries and persimmons in the spring and early summer blueberries and peaches for the summer and walnuts, chestnuts and apples for the fall. This means little work aside for the occasional fertilizing and checking for pests. Upon further reading 1 acre for firewood wouldn't work, so let's switch that to about 800 square feet of solar panels and two wind turbines in another area of the property. The remaining part of that acre can be used either more paddock for grazing or something that can be sold at the local farmers market. the remaining acre can be used for a herb and vegetable garden. Where I live(south central Wisconsin growing zone 5a ) you can usually plant potatoes, peas, carrots and turnips around April 1st. Then, beans peppers and tomatoes when the first crop is done in early June. Depending on the weather you can usually re plant what you planted in the spring for a fall harvest. For the fall harvest stick with root vegetables like beets, carrots, radishes and turnips and most of the brassica family.

>>1016391
Right, usually It's planted and covered after the last snow expected in the area. Then it's left to grow for a few weeks before animals are allowed to graze on it. the idea of 4 pastures is to let the grass grow a lot before be grazed on again.

>>1016157

What zone are you in? You can always use plants like blackberry along fences or other barriers to not only provide protection but also a great tasting fruit.

Also how big is your family? 6 acres will require A LOT of work to maintain.

>>1016366
Goats don't really like grass all that much. That's the last thing on their menu when they've exhausted their other options. If you goats are eating grass specifically, then you need to up their feed or rotate to a new pasture that has more non-grass plants in it. They are just not like cattle in that regard.

>>1016301
>fucking nay-sayer
JM Fortier has a "10-acre micro-farm in Quebec, Canada. With only 1½ acres cultivated in permanent beds, the farm grosses more than 100 000$ per acre..."

>no wun cud evar sustain on 6 acres
Kys, fucking sperg.

>>1016528
Fortier is also a published author of a small scale organic farming book, not posting on /out/ threads.

Sustain as in raise all the food you need, NOT relying on income from a market.

>>1016541
>implying you couldn't just eat the food and feed it to your livestock

>>1016541
You can do it on less than 6 acre.

>>1016541
He volunteered on an organic farm in the states to learn the craft then spent time learning to make it work in his area. Anyone with the will and drive to do so could likely do it.

>>1016547
That's exactly what I am implying as it is not enough calories to sustain a family without receiving harvest income to buy additional food. Farming for a market is not the same as subsistence farming.

>>1016559
>I'm implying $100k/acre worth of produce isn't enough calories in a year
Ok. You must eat a lot.

>>1016157
Very possible. Set it up intelligently. Think how to make nature work for you. Give it a shot. You either succeed or learn. You got nothing to lose but a few days of work.

>>1016562
Its as if you didn't even read the comment before you replied , I meant living solely off of the food you raise on those acres NOT relying on income from selling produce. Also fat chance you ever earn anything close to $100k/acre even with a lifetime of experience unless you have 5 1/2 of those acres devoted to opium poppies.

>>1016563
>You got nothing to lose but a few days of work.

More like a few years of work plus a starving family. This isn't hobby gardening, homesteading is a full time job.

>>1016575
I'm sorry, where did op say he was quitting his job to do this 100% full time? It's an evolution, a gradual process. Just because you're a low iq quitter with no dream doesn't mean OP is. My family (wife plus 2 kids) eats about 95% from my land (we go out to eat on Saturdays and order pizza on Thursdays) which is about 3.5 acres in North Carolina. A smart person can figure this out. A dumb person won't.

>>1016606
I also work a 60 hour a week job. I only spend maybe 5 hours a week working my land or animals (Outside 2 busy weeks in the spring and 2 busy weeks in the fall)

>>1016575
Why are you so negitive? I guess everyone before cars died from not being able to grow enough food? How did people in the pre-industrial area survive?

>>1016609
>60 hr/week job
>5 hours per week on the farm
>95% of food comes from the land
>wife plus two kids
>still has time to insult anonymous people on the internet for warning them to take homesteading seriously and wait for replies

If people weren't allowed to lie on the internet I might not believe you. I guess all the CSA farmers in my area I help out at just burn all the shiitake logs I inoculated for them because they only work 5 hours per week.

>>1016622
Um.... people died all the time back then because they weren't able to grow enough food. Why do you think people worshiped the rains and the Sun?

>>1016633
1. I am not a farmer. This is not a "farming" for survival situation. It's not industrial level. It's very intimate and a destress mechanism for me on the weekends I have off.
2. How the hell can you not grow enough food of you are planting or raising just what you eat and enjoy eating? An acre is huge if cultivated with proper planning up front. 1 acre is slightly bigger than a football field.
3. Talking shit to strangers or trying to inspire someone who was in my shoes 6 years ago. It's been a hard process but worth every step to get to were we are right now. Or ignore what I say and just rot away living in a cubicle jus to go home and spend 5-8 hours every evening doing nothing productive with nothing to show for it. This is my passion.
Sort your self out.

>>1016648
It worked out for most people or we wouldn't be here would we? Obviously someone was able to plant or raise enough food for every person who lived up to this point. Famine happens and so does other disaster. So we shouldn't ever attempt to grow our own food? Go be a rejection somewhere else.

>>1016648
Thank god for the development of agricultural sciences and understanding of natural phenomenon

File: CHGqt_uWgAIuolT.jpg (61KB, 600x398px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 600x398px

>>1016157
Do it and report back, OP.

>>1016649
Okay fine I'll bite, whats the breakdown of your 3.5 acres so that you raise enough food to sustain 95% of what it takes to feed 4 mouths? I'm genuinely curious. I live in the UP of Michigan so maybe your growing season allows you to do that. Btw I'm a professional forester so I won't rot in a cubicle and am quite aware of how much land is in an acre.

>>1016654
Not what i was implying at all but thanks for putting words in my mouth. I just wanted to point out there is risk involved if you are not being subsidized and that homesteading is hard work.

>>1016658
Great. I live in North Carolina (zone 7). We have about 35 fruit trees (plum, cherry, peach, pomegranate, and apple) within 1 acre and some nut trees on the back edge (I was worried about the ground toxins getting the other trees from the walnuts and pecans)
We have little over 3/4 an acre with raised beds for veggies that we rotate every year. This took the most effort and money over 3 years to set up and get good soil and compost set up to sustain it.
I have over half an acre of what I call staples - sweet and regular potatoes. With some grains for the animals. (Wheat was too much effort for us, so we switched to mainly tubers)
We have 12 barred rock chickens for eggs that we set up in a mobile chicken tractor and move it every 2 days. We also have 3 rabbit tractors with about 50 rabbits total between births and butcherings, rotating 2 times a week. I have a pond I share with two neighbors we get fish out of, but most of the time its just for catch and release to not deplete the pond (stocking was just under a grand) we usually buy a calf in the spring to slaughter in the winter.

>>1016157
I can recommend sweet potatoes as a staple.
Best crop in terms of nutritional value for growing time, so you can plant and harvest a few crops each year. Its pretty hardy and can handle a variety of conditions but around 70 to 75 degrees will give better results.

>>1016660
Of course is hard work. Every good thing is hard work if is worth it. I just don't want to discourage someone from going beyond simply fantasy. The guy is pretty specific with numbers and acres, let's let him try. Something like 80% of farmers have other jobs ( like myself) because although they may be able to feed themselves they can't make a living doing it.

>tfw my granny sold my granddad's farm 10 years ago along with all the land

>>1016697

My grandfather did that too. He had about 50 acres about 20 minutes South of Fort Worth, Texas.

It was a fantastic setup. He had fruit and pecan trees, a big ass garden, a stocked pond that was fed by a spring, so it never went dry. He even had about a dozen cows he keeps as a kind of hobby.

His main house sat on this hill that overlooked the bulk of his land. When he got older he decided he wanted to have plenty of money to travel the world so he sold it. He didn't even give my dad or uncle the chance to buy it from him.

Such a pity.

>>1016697
>>1016780

Just curious... What generation were your grandparents from? WW2 or baby boomers?

>>1017488
WW2. Granny's still alive, granddad died before I was born. She sold it maybe 10 years ago.

>>1016416
>apples for the fall. This means little work aside for the occasional fertilizing and checking for pests.

Apple trees are a fuckton of work. I also think you're aiming too high with too little. Your estimates for non-gmo, and I assume non pesticide/herbicide usage in output of wheat seems way too high

>>1016416

dude. just stop. first thing those yields are for massive farms with modern equipment and the ability to cover poor yields in certain areas (due to microclimate, disease or whatever) with better yields in other areas. you won't get 50 bushels on a single acre. also, the land is either fucking amazing (montana, washington state) or on center pivot irrigation (nebraska, kansas). Either way you're looking at millions (yes, millions) in equipment and capital to set up a row crop operation. "But anon i'll just have my neighbor do it!" a) he's going to do his own shit first, so you'll plant late and harvest late b) he won't do it at all because its too much work and he has shit to do on his own farm c) little guys don't do row crops because the money isn't there without massive scale

saying shit like "fruit trees means little work" shows how ill prepared you are. vegetable operations are the easiest and even they require 12 hour days for 9 months out of the year. fruit trees are absurdly high maintenance with pruning and disease control

people don't farm anymore because the lifestyle sucks and its hard to do.

>>1017512
>Apple trees are a fuckton of work
Nope

>>1017512
I mean maybe for a weekend in spring for planting grafts and a weekend in fall for pruning and cider production if you are into that but I don't think its super demanding.

>>1017819
My great-uncle grew apples, it's a lot of constant work