Complete food ego - enough is the homesteading dream .
in general , we ’ve been satisfied with bring forth enough light-green vegetables for the table with a few months of good roots .
We ’ve also sporadically raised Gallus gallus for nub , usually in batches of 25 .
We ’ve also raised some herbaceous plant to spice up thing up , along with chicken and ducks for egg production .
We ’ve celebrate milk goats .
But we found them to be too much trouble , so we switched to Milk River cows .
We raise rabbits for a year or so , but found the management to be too much work .
We had about 25 cages of rabbits at one gunpoint . They just were n’t for us , though – or the Florida clime .
And this year , we eventually raised a duad of grunter anddiscovered them to be very generative .
pig bed are going to be part of our homestead from now on . Last week we purchase six more .
But can we raise all our own food?
Yet raisingallour meat and produce and roots ? Would that be potential ?
It ’s embark on tolookpossible . We now own over ten Akka , and deal to produce over 2500 pound of produce , over 3,000 testicle , hundreds of gallons of Milk River , and about 500lbs of meat this year . And that ’s just the first year we ’ve last on this land .
We also bring out all that on about seven acres of space , not on the complete space we own . And most of the infinite we used was moo-cow grass , not even gamey - production blank . The penitentiary where we kept our two pigs was just 512 ft2 , and our garden was 5265 ft2 . Our chickens be in about 750 ft2 .
One of the big issues with raising animals is keep them fed . Currently , we do n’t have to buy provender for the crybaby or the pigs because we made a flock with a local restaurant to haul out a trashcan of fleck daily . Those chip include vegetable shedding , cooked essence , prawn shells , eggshells , noodles and more . It ’s a rather balanced dieting for omnivores like chickens and pigs !
If we could n’t get that kind of sight , however , we would have to add a luck more gardening space in club to keep the animal fed .
If we wanted to just eat a vegetarian dieting , it would n’t be too arduous to make a cluster more manioca and yam beds , and increase our production of Irish potato , sweet white potato and other occupy crops . However , a vegetarian diet is less than ideal , so rather , we could develop some of those harvest and use them to prey animals – then eat the fauna and/or their eggs / milk . We contrive to add more Jerusalem artichokes to the homestead this yr as those are especially good for pig provender .
That ’s the current goal as a backup man to purchase feed and collecting eating house wastefulness – maturate more calorie - dense vegetables we can then convert into core .
Reaching complete and utter self - adequacy is unlikely , since we ’ll still be buy some java , flour , some spices , Bourbon dynasty , etc . ; yet we ’re surely getting closemouthed .
If we wanted to be purists , we could last pretty well on yams and pork barrel . We had mashed yams and a smoked pork joint last nighttime for Christmas dinner .
Rachel meld in a few small purple yam with one large white one , hence the lilac-colored philander yams ! Both varieties were cultivars ofDioscorea alata .
The cows give us Milk River , Malva sylvestris , yoghourt and butter , which they make from grass .
That ’s homemade cheese with freshly sunbaked bread .
We grease one’s palms our wheat and grind it , however , so that is n’t coming from our farm .
We do n’t have to buy preparation oil colour since we cause Imperial gallon of lard from our copper .
What else could be done?
We could also :
seek to be whole free of the foodstuff and provender store is n’t easy , but we are emphatically get closer . Some items , like salinity , are simply inconceivable to replace on our homestead .
However , if the grocery stores closed tomorrow , we would n’t be thirsty for a prospicient time . We would just miss some thing . We have over 100lbs of yams and 200lbs of pumpkins on the porch , with over 400lbs of pork in the freezer – and in a few calendar month , leaping will be here and we could quickly lend a lot more to our food supply as the weather warm up and gardening gets last again .
We have been really blessed to have land of our own again . The horticulture and homesteading lessons we ’ve learned over the yr have helped us utilize it well , even in the first year of ownership .
Even if we do n’t ever make it to full self - sufficiency on food , we certainly use up a in effect diet .
Rachel send this picture of a home - raise egg a few minute ago :
take care at how orange that egg egg yolk is ! That ’s some serious nutrition .
Our meal often lie of whatever is in time of year .
I ’m curing some bacon in the electric refrigerator this week , so we wo n’t even have to buy that anymore .
And we corrode homemade springy - ferment pickles and sauerkraut all the sentence .
So how do you Reach Food Self-Sufficiency?
Food self - sufficiency is a goal you could reach for one solar day at a time .
First , get a line to grow some vegetables . Get one garden develop well .
Then implant some fruit and nut trees .
Then , add a few chicken and determine how to bring up them .
Then set big garden and learn how to dehydrate , can and pickle .
Then you may move on to a couple of pigs or sheep or goats or even cows .
record a mess , make long - terminus end , get your hands foul and do n’t give up .
And do n’t just buy a lot of fauna and then drop money bribe them provender . Build as you’re able to , and develop as you’re able to , keeping in head that you wantassets , notliabilities .
A moo-cow that corrode hay all wintertime and produces nothing is aliability .
A cow that produces more note value in milk than she consumes in feed is anasset .
cop in a pen that you feed in from the feed store and never meatman are an expensive hobby .
Pigs that are rear on “ waste ” and then butchered at a good size are an plus .
Sometimes we have to buy things , and that ’s fine – but over time , we can move closer and closer to closing the grummet on our homestead and farm great food without spending too much to grow or raise it .
And commend , you do n’t have to start with a crowing working homestead .
Just set in a little garden and growing some organic love apple and Cucumis sativus is a great start . Keep on going from there and you ’ll be astonied at what you accomplish !
Our fruit trees are n’t even produce yet . Just wait until they kick in …
you’re able to sure get unaired via concerted effort over time , even on a little homestead . Within a hebdomad I ’ll post our final intellectual nourishment yield numbers for the yr in the annual “ year in review ” post . Keep watching for that .
And if you want to reach food ego - sufficiency , stop dreaming and begin doing . One piece at a time .
Finally … Merry Feast of St. Stephen , first martyr for Christ .
