Max

As far as supporting yourself on a small amount of land. Apparently many can support or at least augment their life with a small amount of land. In Cuba supposedly the people use a lot of small gardening for food growth. It’s not ideal, because it’s always good to have backups.

Also many who try to do a hobby farm fail, because they fail to work hard enough or don’t know what to do at what point of the season. So they bit off more than they can chew. If your looking to be off grid, that is off the artificial grid, without many fertilizers and soil amendments, then you are looking at a very difficult task. If your hoping to be sufficient and rely on just what you grow and are afraid of others, then you definately would need redundancy and some kind of emergency backup. Some things like a flood could wipe out your ability to farm or garden for years. So you still need a social network with others or a government that will help or something in the event you run into trouble.

Self sufficiency requires a lot of work and a lot of money if your trying to maintain all the old technology.

To me redundancy is a big thing, that is having duplicates of what you’d need or backup plans for failure scenarios. Obviously more skills and even outside jobs or ability to store and trade what is needed for future problems is a key. Also being in an urban area could mean gangs trying to take your food by stealth or with force. So there’s not blanket solution. We can only live as peacefully as we can with all men.

I would also be concerned about living in a nieghborhood where all the other neighbors have the same sized property. In which case, neighbors with bad luck, or just not willing to participate in agraculture, may choose to liberate your crops for there own consumption.

Unless you are able to afford to buy sufficient land, or can find a lot that is adjacent to a large undeveloped land that you could take advantage of, I wouldn’t not try to homestead on a small lot consisting of a few acres. You best option, would be to relocate to a urban region where you can take advantage of mass transit, and gov’t services. In the event of a major crisis, The gov’t is far more likely to provide services in urban regions than in rural or suburban locations.

Now, your age thing-yes, makes a lot of difference. I started at 47, and am now 53. I am tired more these days doing the same amount of work, even though I am in good health and like to do physical work. I have no one else to help, so I bust my hump all the time. But do I need large amount of land ? A nice blue sky dream, but not practical. No spouse or kids to help. The dogs just think I am crazy and offer no help at all……

I am in the Sunshine coast hinterland, and making new contacts is always welcome. Even if you are outside of visiting distance we can always share seeds and experiences by post. My email is void_genesis at hotmail if you want to get in touch.

Shane

This post was great Sharon, just what we have been talking about the last few days.
We have 3 & 1/2 acres, degraded soil but it comes good with work, hot sun.

We are 45 and 60, and putting much work into infrastructure while we have health, strength and money. Hey there’s a few of us around.

That was a brilliant article that really brought it all together.

We are on two relatively fertile acres for a immediate family of three, with a potential family of ten, plus potential refugees should they ever make it that far out. We are very glad we didnt buy any more than that after seeing neighbors try to do the same on 30 acres and ending up with a raging mess when the subtropical growth got away from them in a wet season (plus the spectre of a lingering mortgage). I am talking with a lot of neighbors about helping them use their huge spaces collectively, so you quickly realise that you don’t need to own the deed to a bit of land to grow food on it. A community street food/nut tree planting project is in the planning stages as well.

One thing I have conciously done is put a large area (about a quarter acre) under ornamental gardens with heavy mulching brought in. In the short term it is low maintainence (no watering, just occasional light weeding) and it may provide a small income if I can get a small mail order nursery or stand at the local markets organised once the stocks have filled out. The strategic purpose of this garden is that it is ready to go if we ever need to rapidly increase our food production. Soil is partly improved and there is no sod to break up, just some wimpy flowers to rip out, and a wheelbarrow full of sweet potato runners and six months later- hey presto- a glut of sustaining carbohydrates on hand.

Apart from this there is around 400 sq m (~4000 sq ft?) of a vegetable garden divided into summer and winter sides. It is relatively unintensive with wide spacing and long rotations, and around five months per year under green manure (which does fantastic things to the soil at least in our climate- manures just burn away in the heat). The chickens in their pen in this garden may be a liability in the long run as they need a concentrated grain diet to be worth while, though we are trialling grain crops to feed them.

Beyond that it a larger acre with half of it planted to an orchard, with the rows in between turned over to robust root and seed crops. I would encourage people with a bit of time and space to start experimenting to see which staple crops grow well in your area without irrigation and fuss. You needn’t be self sufficient on them today- they are a strategic resource to scale up as things progress. Roots are great but generally need wetter conditions. In our variable Australian climate we have to have back up crops on standby for the dry years, and dry-storable crops to get us through prolonged dry spells. The muscovy ducks in this area (sharing the other half acre with a mouldy old pet horse that I hope dies soon) have been the best livestock by far because of their capacity to forage for a lot of their own food. They are very hardy and easy to handle, and lay enough eggs and produce enough meat to make them very worthwhile. Good to see you counterbalance the enthusiasm for getting lots of animals in your recent post in this one. It is very easy for people to get in over their head, driven by the cute factor and visions of gentle and contented flocks. They can very easily turn into ravenous, expensive, diseased or time sucking flocks if you over-extend yourself.

One thing I am conciously seeking out are living larder crops. We are lucky in the subtropics to have a range of perennial root crops that can be planted for other purposes as an emergency food source. Arrowroot and Cassava are good examples and are quick growing, long lasting, trouble free (if not utterly delicious, though I am making an effort to learn how to cook with them before I have to). The other thing I would encourage people to consider is the balance of fruit and nut trees. A small number of fruit trees will inundate you with perishable crops that demand instant attention to pick and preserve. Nut trees on the other hand give a crop that can just be roughly dried down and then stored for later use. Most regions have a tough nut tree variety or two, so if you have a lot of land to plant out go for seed raised nuts to keep your costs and labor down (even consider growing them direct in their final position to cut down on the amount of labour per tree if the space is large).

We are lucky we need very little heat for warmth in this climate (could get by with none at all and not grumble too much) so we dont really need our own wood lots. There are plenty of stands of Eucalypts close by and we already gather a useful amount of wood from these. Pretty soon a solar cooker might be a good idea (though making a biogas fermenter might be a better choice? Or even a more efficient controlled burning stove?).

Good quality hand tools are definitely a great investment at the moment, not least because they make tackling long periods of garden labour infinitely easier. The payback on your physical health is very fast if you consider the damage you can do through overexertion. Hoes are definitely at the top of the list- good quality sharp ones, that you regularly resharpen by hand as needed, with long handles to prevent stooping. A good fork for aerating soil, strong with a long handle, is also essential (Im getting a broadfork soon- will let you know what I think). A small hand sickle is also on my top tools list- the kama sold by green harvest in Australia is the easiest to use for small slashing jobs (but if you do this all day a machete or scythe may be better depending on the plants being hacked down). Spades are not that useful I reckon- they take too much of a toll on the body. You can do the same jobs with a fork (aeration) and a hoe (hilling up) with much less effort. Unless you need to fill a wheel barrow etc try and work without them.

Shane in Australia