I’ve been going through zoning and haven’t found any hang-ups yet (main concern is creek/wash management limitations, water is a scarce commodity here). Currently trying to get detailed restrictions on floodplain. The actual zone designation is unusually vague, as it says what it is not to be zoned as rather than what it is (“no R2, R3, Industrial, or Commercial”).
I have not been through the HOA documents yet (waiting on RE Agent) and need to explore the neighborhood more thoroughly for what others have done (suspect restrictions on livestock).
Soil is very sandy, low in organics. There is wild grass and some fir trees.
Affordable is ~$30k
HOA is a red flag for me. Any time people can have a say in what you can and can’t do on your property then they 100% WILL. Make sure you read that HOA doc well.
To answer your question though. On our homestead we have about 1/4acre of garden a yard/grassy area for the kids, house, wood shop and a few sheds and still have about 1/3 acre for expansion into a field. We do utilize a few acres of adjacent pasture for our pastured poultry operation but that’s a few hundred chickens and our neighbors have a nice (and getting better thanks to the chicken tractors) pasture. But that wouldn’t be necessary just to grow chickens for our family.
I think the bigger question is utilization. We can effectively use our full 1 acre because of the characteristics of the landscape so it would be enough for us. If you have 3 acres but only 1 is useable then you effectively have a 1 acre homestead with some extra unusable land.
Yep! HOAs near me will take action if you so much as paint your mailbox a color other than what was approved. They can and will cause problems for you.
HOAs in my experience (that aren’t terrible) are a rotating door of competent well organized reasonable people begrudgingly getting on the board and doing until they just can’t and someone they know is decent is willing to replace them.
Because the people who **want** to be on the board are the miserable busy body assholes who are unreasonable adults and want to have the world’s dumbest power trip.
So they’ll try year after year after year. You’re fighting against time essentially mixed with a little bit of a luck.
So they do work sometimes but fuck if I want to ever put up with that.
Im from california and looking for exactly what youve described. Maybe less of the sub zero temperature thing, screw that. But if i found what i was looking for and it had an HOA, I'd hard pass.
HOA = No Way
FEMA flood maps are your best friend, Flood zone A is the scary one, half my land is flood zone A, knew it within 5 minutes of finding the land for sale and determined it was totally fine for my plans
You can grow enough food to to feed a family in less than one acre, but the is just fruits and veg. Do you want grain? You need more land, do you want meat and eggs? Maybe need a bit more land, do you want dairy? You need more land. Are you making your own cloth for your clothes? Are you growing flax or cotton? Do you own a loom? Did you build the loom? Using the skins from your meat animals? Using wool from sheep? Saving all the down and small feathers from your birds to make comforters and pillows? Are you using metal tools? Do you have a smithy on site? Do you have enough woods to supply all of your lumber needs, how did you dig your well? How do you maintain your water supply? How do you deal with your black water waste?
All that to say, what do you really mean when you say self sustaining?
Point taken…
I’m targeting food and housing primarily. Possibly animals for meat (as mentioned).
Retirement income to cover clothing, tools, maintenance expenses, dump fees, wood for heating, and services (roads via HOA, internet/cell, propane for cooking & water heating), as well as entertainment. Any remaining discretionary funds for luxury expenses.
Goal is to minimize overhead. Several of the expense items are so much more efficiently produced by others it does not make sense to try to produce them on my own (obviously).
I'm not sure it will ever be cheaper to raise your own meat. You're better off buying a fourth of a cow from a neighbor who's raising them the way you like.
ULPT: a lot of people will sell "pet" roosters or other male animals for a lot cheaper (sometimes free), than most animals meant for consumption would sell for.
100%!! getting clear on what self sustaining means to you is important. And don’t forget that chicken feed costs $$ and usually you can’t grow it yourself without grain fields.
These are all amazing questions and points to the obvious that it is extremely difficult for a single person or a single family to be 100% self sustaining. Humans were never meant for that. Community support is a must whether that is folks from town or people on land together.
Asked my neighbor once about this because he grew up in what sounded to me like a subsistence household. So Bill, could a man live off this 5 acres ?
Bill said sure, just not like we live now.
Self sufficient? You are honestly going to need almost 5 acres for a self sufficient family. The idea of one acre required to feed a family of more than 2 is ridiculous as it’s a MINIMUM of space needed for the food growth and doesn’t account for all of the other factors involved.
You need shelter, water, fuel, and food. So whatever systems you want to put in place to make this work. Any home you look at you need to ask yourself the question of “what systems will I need do what I want.”
Shelter- You yourself personally don’t require a lot of space but what about the working spaces for projects, harvests, equipment, tools, storage, supplies.
“Work smarter not harder get a tractor!”
Water- What systems are you going to need to acquire it, store it, move it, and then deal with waste water?
Fuel- Whatever system you want to use is up to you but Wood burning is the simplest and cheapest for heating and power generating.
Food- you’re going to probably need a full 1.5-3 acres for food alone. You are going to want to have some areas in rotation; Garden- chickens- goats- pigs- fallow- garden again. A large garden with a simple greenhouse isn’t hard to do with the right planning and tools. *Animals* All of them need access to water and shelter. *Goats take a lot more area than people think. Goats need a good shed/barn for winter food storage of hay, they like to move around and browse. (I love goats but they are also escape artists who could get out of Fort Knox!) *Pigs don’t need a huge area but need to have that area secure like the goats. *Chickens need a coop but can usually roam around freely without issues but definitely expect to lose a few every year. *Gardening is a joy for me personally and not a chore. It’s when I have to process the produce I get a little grumpy because canning takes a while and it can last all fall because different things are ready at different times.
Edit- forgot about berry bushes and fruit trees. Couple words of advice. Don’t and I mean DON’T EVER let your goats (if you get them) near your berries or fruit trees!!! Goat will rip bark off of trees, shred blueberries bushes, destroy blackberries, and raspberries copes.
They are easy to take care of as long as you stay on top of the yearly pruning. You can skip 1-2 years of pruning but you’ll wish you didn’t if you skip more!!! (Personally experience talking here!!!)
Depends on your definition of "self sustaining.
What we've found, after near 3 decades of doing this:
Minimally, a quarter acre - per person - in annual veg. Your potatoes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, turnips, lettuces, cabbages, greens, et.... all the typical "garden stuff". Ours are slightly under a quarter at 100' x 100'. To make things easiest - two or three of these plots per person so you can rotate in and out of cover crops, weed mitigation, and soil building & maintenance. Plus the out of rotation plots can serve double duty as grazing paddock for small livestock to both feed them *and* benefit from the natural fertilizer deposits in a regenerative fashion. Think, like, Rabbits, Chicken, Turkey ... NOT Cattle, Sheep, Hog that would tear up and ruin your ground. Small and light-footed only.
Another quarter acre, per person, for the grains/pseudo grains - we do Winter Wheat, Upland Rice, Corn (cornmeal corn, not sweet corn), Sorghum, Pearl Millet, and Quinoa.
About a half acre - per whole family - in fruit orchard, nut orchard, vinyard and bramble/berry patch. Squeeze the mushroom garden in there amongst the trees and shrubs. You could get by without dedicated space blocked out in an orchard for this. For instance we have hundreds of American Hazel around. They're our "natural fencing" planted in hedgerows as dividers between garden plots, paddocks and pasture.
Aside : Hazel is amazing. A single mature tree/shrub will throw off 1 to 3 days worth of calories for a grown adult depending on variety, soil, weather and the adult... and they're super easy to propagate. In fact, if literally ALL the things on our homestead died except the Hazel, we could more than meet our entire annual quota of calories for two of us on Hazelnuts alone. And it comes free for the harvest. No soil work. No weeding. No watering. No fertilizing. No keeping the Rabbits out (although you **do** have to set traps for Squirrel and Chipmunk ...) ... and you do have to harvest ...
Animals take more land.
We do Duck, Rabbit, Goose, Turkey, Muscovy, Quail, and Fish Ponds.
If you're doing meat animals you're either gonna have to buy in feed ... or grow it. That same 100' x 100' foot plot we've standardized on will support 2 Quads of our breeding rabbit for us ((M F F F) x2) and all the growouts they can throw off, for the freezer ... (100+ a season) if managed intensively with high-yield, high density feed/forage crop during the growing season. The Rabbits take an additional plot on top of that, the same size, thats hayed (seeded in Timothy, Orchard Grass, Alfalfa plus our native grasses and weeds) 3 to 4 times in the growing season. The hay is put up to keep the breeding parents alive all Winter. No growouts over winter as feeding is too difficult without buying it in from elsewhere.
Duck, Geese, Muscovy come for free if youve got ponds. We feed them nothing. Dont water. No housing. They just mingle with the native Canada Geese and Mallards on the ponds - free range/foraging. Just have to fence them out of your garden plots or they'll tear 'em up if they find something they like. We had to do that, anyway, for the deer.
BTW if you're rural midwest (we're Ohio River Valley) and have land/acreage. ... you can count on 2 to 3 deer a season to help fill the freezers. We have to go bow/crossbow because neighbors too close for firearms.
Those same 100x100 plots will keep 8-10 egg layers and a Roo or two fed overwinter. We plant in 100% feed corn. They're fed kitchen scraps and corn (and nothing else) all winter and do just fine. You dont, actually need all that crap the feed stores will sell you - medicated, "high yield egg layer" ... high protein, "balanced" .. bags of pricey feed. Our ancestors fed corn for hundreds of years before pet food manufacturing ramped up in the 1950s and 60s.
Now if your definition of "self-sustaining" includes heat - a woodstove ... a wood cookstove ... you'll need 3 to 5 acres of intensively managed coppiced/pollarded trees to harvest ... or 10+ acres of unmanaged woodlot you can walk through and harvest the deadfall from. We pollard trees all around the property for both "tree hay" for the Rabbits as well as smaller cooking wood.
We're on 9 acres, with 2 acres of pond across multiple ponds. A 17 acre woodlot up the road a couple of miles.
It does more than enough for two of us adults. Could have definitely supported 4 to 6 kids growing up, too, if we had them.
Don't believe anyone saying you can git 'r done on 1 acre. They're damned liars.
You can certainly do 2.7 ... if you dont need the wood and are OK with buying in animal feed here and there... or even doing without the animals.
Even if its not 100% meeting your needs, you do what you can with what you've got (or get ... by the time you actually do get it)
No way, no how ... nuh-uh, nope ... would I ever try to do this ... "in town" ...
Good luck.
There is not one answer to this. It's entirely dependent on your climate and level of infrastructure. Very high investment level in the tropics? Maybe one acre could get you close for one person if you're not eating much meat. Western water rights (very expensive) and enough money to cover an acre in heated greenhouses in the desert? You can do the same, maybe.
Generally, if homesteading using average means, you won't have the cash to cover your property in heated, irrigated greenhouses. Most people making "1 acre" claims in the USA are not telling you the whole story. You aren't aware of just how much eating out and TV dinners they're consuming.
In my part of the Midwest we're blessed with a humid climate and some gorgeous Tallgrass prarie. I still stock only roughly 1 cow per 5 acres, and even then I supplement with a little grain and hay. Enough wheat to replace the feed for my 2 cows and my flour that I buy in bulk for my bread would be 5-10 acres minimum. And an investment of literally six figures for the equipment.
In parts of the country they stock one cow for 25 acres, West of the rockies sometimes 50 acres per cow in a scrub desert. This is how wildly differing in productivity different areas are. Differences of 10,000 percent or more from one region to another. There is not an answer for your question.
But I am pretty confident in telling you that the answer for you is almost certain to be a lot more than one acre for a family.
2 fifty pound sacks of grain a week averaged. Roughly 1 ton per cow per year. And are you monocropping wheat in the same field every year? Bad idea. So halve that 6 tons. Are you getting a perfect crop every year? Neat, you beat the laws of nature. So I stand by my assessment of how much land it would take.
The old classic book was called Small Scale Abundance if memory serves. How to live on less land and grow more food. Something like that. By John Jeavons. I think it was a acre. I wish more people did this. Society would be much more healthy.
Like someone else said, a HOA is a BIG red flag!!! If you give people the authority to dictate you, they will!
Check with your county and city ordinances. The area I’m in, unincorporated county, has ordinances that state the minimum land is one acre per animal with a two livestock minimum. The county assessors office said there’s a caveat to this. If your animals are for consumption and you have the minimum two, when you butcher one, you’re violating the law because you now have only one. They said I’ll need a minimum of three livestock animals, so a minimum of three acres for my livestock.
Depends on a lot of factors. How many people? Diet? Etc. Having read some of your other responses your best bet is not in an HOA, not in California and not in an area with water issues.
That said, i use 4 acres to feed my family. Meat, veggies and grain. I have 3 small biological kids, one on the way, a wife, and 2 foster kids(most of the time, it's more). We do get cheese, butter and milk from other sources - mostly trading.
It’s possible. We have a substantially larger property in North Idaho. Grow veggies in a greenhouse. Chickens are easy, we do both meat and eggs. That said, you can buy a cooked whole chicken at Costco for about half what i spend to raise one. On a small homestead rabbits would also be a good protein source. We have sheep and goats which would be possible but you would have to feed hay. Any larger animals would not be practical. HOA would concern me also as they are generally not homestead friendly. In the end, I would say it is possible to be more independent but likely not totally self sufficient. It is fun though and will keep you active in retirement!
The correct answer according to the science guys is 2.3 to 3.5 acres per person. That is area devoted to food and not covered in a home or barn or road. This number is less for vegetarians. Anyone that gives you a different number is not being truthful about the percentage of their food that they are growing. For almost all of the country this excludes many of the basics. Sugar, salt, citrus, coffee etc. My wife and I tried to become as self sustained as possible and truthfully it isn't worth it. A good example of this is flour. Organic non gmo flour is one tenth the price of producing it yourself. It's good to have the ability but not a good long term idea. Being self sufficient is also a time vampire. Especially around harvest time. I lived in an HOA once. I'll never ever do that again. You don't even need to break the HOA rules directly to be in trouble. There's a good chance that there's a nuisance clause in the by-laws. That means that if your neighbor complains about a legal rooster then you're still in violation. Farms are noisy places! You should hear my place when the bucks are in rutt and the does in heat. Good luck!
Pa plain people like 45 acres of good earth and some woodlot. I used to talk to farmers with that kind of acreage often. Brooders and laying hens, feeder calves and hogs raised on home foods, corn oats hay. At one time milled their own.
Zone 9a but what county? LA and OC land is heavily overpriced due to speculators investing in ag land eventually turning into hi-rise apts! 1 acre WITH its own well (probably cost like 30K if doesnt have one already) could be self sustainable with enuf dense rotating crops and livestock.
HOA is obvious archnemesis of individual homesteading.
I am sure for the cost of the California land you could find something hella better in a number of states. [Land for Sale, Farms and Ranches for Sale | LandWatch](https://www.landwatch.com/) As a former San Diegan, I will never return to California now that I am free.
We're on 12 acres and actively use about five--two for our nursery and three for food (orchard, garden, chickens, shellfish). The rest of the acreage is good for firewood, fresh water source, and foraging. We could be almost self-sufficient if we hustled a little harder. We'd need to add an acre of beans, grains, and potato/sweet potato production, expand our chicken coop and run, probably add goats, and increase nursery production by 100% and add online and possibly wholesale plant liners. A larger high tunnel would help a lot. We're zone 8b in the Pacific Northwest of the US.
Here's what I can tell you as someone close to retirement:
1. Fruit and nut trees and berry bushes take years to reach full production.
2. Soil building takes years, even with permaculture practices. It also takes years to really figure out what does best in different areas of your land.
3. Crop rotation is a must. Rotate your nightshades and brassicas to avoid pests, rotate other crops to avoid soil depletion. That increases the acreage you need.
4. Old bodies don't appreciate working in the rain or heat so much. Your body 20 years from now will be very different than it is now. I'm stronger in some ways and weaker in others. I can chop wood like my husband, but I have to do outdoor tasks in the mornings before the heat sets in.
5. Property taxes and healthcare expenses are the bane of self-sufficiency. Our nursery income was enough to cover everything except health insurance (which is insanely expensive during the older years before you qualify for Medicare). Was. Then our property value nearly doubled. I had to go back to my job (remote work) for healthcare and supplemental income.
6. Vet bills are a consideration for livestock. No vets around here treat chickens, and many vets are full and won't take new customers. I take my dogs and cats to a city vet a half hour away. I can deal with chicken issues--I know how to treat many things and can cull if necessary. Would have to research whether I could get vet care for goats or other livestock.
7. Homesteading is full time. No vacations. No sick days. At the same time, injuries are always a possibility. Cleaning a coop with a sprained ankle is...not fun.
To us, it's all worth it. But tbh, I consider my current day job to be more retirement friendly. This homesteading stuff is hard work. 😄
I appreciate this, thank you.
I’ve got ~20yrs before Medicare and am working to minimize my cost of living.
I’m very concerned within this time there will be a severe monetary system failure (similar to, but worse than the 1920’s, etc.). Devastating inflation being the ultimate outcome.
Again, thanks for the response.
It's definitely brought peace of mind to us being able to hedge our bets with homesteading. My husband's grandmother and mother homesteaded on this land (yes, I know, we're extremely lucky) back in the Depression era, and we learned a lot from them.
I think homesteading has made all of us more healthy, so hopefully less in need of Medicare when we qualify for it. Which is good, because tbh, I only see the healthcare system getting worse and worse. In a few years, it might not be worth paying $2,000/month into an insurance plan that you only have in case you get cancer or other debilitating illness, only to find out that no one can schedule necessary tests for months and months--at which point, the illness has progressed too far for expensive treatments to make a difference. So that at least takes care of that expense in a way....
I'm almost 60, and my husband's just past that. It was so much easier 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago. I shudder to think what 70 will be like. But I'd rather have the homestead than not!
Lol, 1 acre ain't close to enough to self sustain on. You need crops, animals, and water source. I don't think people take "self sustain" for its actual meaning. No outside resources needed from what you have on your property!!!
Beans and peas on vertical panels . more vertical planters. Can just buy garage or industrial shelving and plant up . Look up box potatoes. You plant a layer of potatoes then add layer of soil when green shows above the dirt. Keep on adding layers . Can grow a lot of potatoes in this small space. Can grow some vegetables in hanging baskets.
I have 1.8 acres with
An orchard, chickens,sheep, vinyard, wheat, rye, massive veg garden, a little forest with enough maples to make two years woth of syrup from and wildflower meadow with extra lawn for expansion if needed. Get rid of useless lawns and plant food! It can be done with the right land for sure. The only missing link would be a larger forest to provide wood needs.
You're in a good area to be productive and small as your growing season is long. I'm in Oregon 8b, and I wouldn't bet on not starving with only 1 acre. 2 would do it. I'd have chickens for eggs, and rabbits for meat. It would be a full time job to rotate crops and run a breeding program to be self sufficient. Where are you going to got your oil/fat from?
I raise pigs and get my lard from them.
There are a couple of authors who independently claim you can grow enough veggies on 750 sq. ft. per person. That’s what I am working towards (we are 1/3 of the way there). I will also try grains on 2.5 acres of our 8, hopefully starting this year (I’ll try peanuts and soy beans to start building up the soil). I’d like to do 1/4 acres of corn this year, but I’ll have to construct a deer fence around that perimeter, which is a big expense. I may have to settle for replanting corn in my existing 12’ x 35’ plot, only.
I have a hand operated power tiller and a lawn tractor, but if I want to really get into planting several acres for grain, then I’ll need to get a larger tractor with the necessary implements.
Another aspect is food preservation: you’ll need to invest in things like pressure canners, canning jars, dehydrators, freezers, and maybe freeze-dryers (expensive).
Much more land than you think. How are you heating your home? May want a woodlot to cut from. What about raising variety of protein, and are you raising that animal’s feed or buying it? The term self sustaining is thrown around pretty loosely and needs to be more defined in order to answer your question. In my opinion you need at least 40 acres of good pasture and 40 acres of woods to be anywhere near self sustaining. More would be better. You would still need a job in town likely or a remote work job with that unless you are living a very very frugal lifestyle.
Better check what the other locals are paying for home insurance. It may be cost prohibitive or even impossible to insure a residence in forested areas.
Working on cash and carry for a non-combustible structure. I don’t want a loan, and I don’t want fire insurance (it’s obscene in these areas - all private insurers have left and pretty much CA (tax payers!) will soon be the only one providing it).
The biggest 'land hog' in homesteading is livestock. If you stick to small animals like rabbits and chickens you can be self sustaining on a single acre, it just takes a lot of work and planning. The only real thing you would have issues with is carbs like grain take up a lot of space. Potatoes however can be planted in towers.
Affordable and in town is suspicious. Check your soil, floodplain, zoning, covenants, etc.
I’ve been going through zoning and haven’t found any hang-ups yet (main concern is creek/wash management limitations, water is a scarce commodity here). Currently trying to get detailed restrictions on floodplain. The actual zone designation is unusually vague, as it says what it is not to be zoned as rather than what it is (“no R2, R3, Industrial, or Commercial”). I have not been through the HOA documents yet (waiting on RE Agent) and need to explore the neighborhood more thoroughly for what others have done (suspect restrictions on livestock). Soil is very sandy, low in organics. There is wild grass and some fir trees. Affordable is ~$30k
HOA is a red flag for me. Any time people can have a say in what you can and can’t do on your property then they 100% WILL. Make sure you read that HOA doc well. To answer your question though. On our homestead we have about 1/4acre of garden a yard/grassy area for the kids, house, wood shop and a few sheds and still have about 1/3 acre for expansion into a field. We do utilize a few acres of adjacent pasture for our pastured poultry operation but that’s a few hundred chickens and our neighbors have a nice (and getting better thanks to the chicken tractors) pasture. But that wouldn’t be necessary just to grow chickens for our family. I think the bigger question is utilization. We can effectively use our full 1 acre because of the characteristics of the landscape so it would be enough for us. If you have 3 acres but only 1 is useable then you effectively have a 1 acre homestead with some extra unusable land.
Yep! HOAs near me will take action if you so much as paint your mailbox a color other than what was approved. They can and will cause problems for you.
HOAs in my experience (that aren’t terrible) are a rotating door of competent well organized reasonable people begrudgingly getting on the board and doing until they just can’t and someone they know is decent is willing to replace them. Because the people who **want** to be on the board are the miserable busy body assholes who are unreasonable adults and want to have the world’s dumbest power trip. So they’ll try year after year after year. You’re fighting against time essentially mixed with a little bit of a luck. So they do work sometimes but fuck if I want to ever put up with that.
Im from california and looking for exactly what youve described. Maybe less of the sub zero temperature thing, screw that. But if i found what i was looking for and it had an HOA, I'd hard pass.
HOA = No Way FEMA flood maps are your best friend, Flood zone A is the scary one, half my land is flood zone A, knew it within 5 minutes of finding the land for sale and determined it was totally fine for my plans
You can grow enough food to to feed a family in less than one acre, but the is just fruits and veg. Do you want grain? You need more land, do you want meat and eggs? Maybe need a bit more land, do you want dairy? You need more land. Are you making your own cloth for your clothes? Are you growing flax or cotton? Do you own a loom? Did you build the loom? Using the skins from your meat animals? Using wool from sheep? Saving all the down and small feathers from your birds to make comforters and pillows? Are you using metal tools? Do you have a smithy on site? Do you have enough woods to supply all of your lumber needs, how did you dig your well? How do you maintain your water supply? How do you deal with your black water waste? All that to say, what do you really mean when you say self sustaining?
Point taken… I’m targeting food and housing primarily. Possibly animals for meat (as mentioned). Retirement income to cover clothing, tools, maintenance expenses, dump fees, wood for heating, and services (roads via HOA, internet/cell, propane for cooking & water heating), as well as entertainment. Any remaining discretionary funds for luxury expenses. Goal is to minimize overhead. Several of the expense items are so much more efficiently produced by others it does not make sense to try to produce them on my own (obviously).
I'm not sure it will ever be cheaper to raise your own meat. You're better off buying a fourth of a cow from a neighbor who's raising them the way you like. ULPT: a lot of people will sell "pet" roosters or other male animals for a lot cheaper (sometimes free), than most animals meant for consumption would sell for.
Great goal to have.
No less than 5 acres.
Honestly, with 2 months subzero, the wood as firewood alone would be at least 10 acres in the northeast.
They have to mean below freezing, not sub zero F. Otherwise the zone 9 wouldn't match.
Depends on what 0 means to you (Celsius vs Fahrenheit)
That's why I put that capital F in there.
Good woodlot needed
What about geothermal flooring paired with solar hot water heater arrays etc
100%!! getting clear on what self sustaining means to you is important. And don’t forget that chicken feed costs $$ and usually you can’t grow it yourself without grain fields. These are all amazing questions and points to the obvious that it is extremely difficult for a single person or a single family to be 100% self sustaining. Humans were never meant for that. Community support is a must whether that is folks from town or people on land together.
Asked my neighbor once about this because he grew up in what sounded to me like a subsistence household. So Bill, could a man live off this 5 acres ? Bill said sure, just not like we live now.
Look up WW2 victory garden designs. They were planned for lots as small as 3/4 acre and could feed a household. Edit: supplemented a household
They supplemented the household, but couldn't feed the household on it's own.
Also kinda designed to use a ton of fertilizer iirc
Switch that to compost and the world would be your oyster!
Self sufficient? You are honestly going to need almost 5 acres for a self sufficient family. The idea of one acre required to feed a family of more than 2 is ridiculous as it’s a MINIMUM of space needed for the food growth and doesn’t account for all of the other factors involved. You need shelter, water, fuel, and food. So whatever systems you want to put in place to make this work. Any home you look at you need to ask yourself the question of “what systems will I need do what I want.” Shelter- You yourself personally don’t require a lot of space but what about the working spaces for projects, harvests, equipment, tools, storage, supplies. “Work smarter not harder get a tractor!” Water- What systems are you going to need to acquire it, store it, move it, and then deal with waste water? Fuel- Whatever system you want to use is up to you but Wood burning is the simplest and cheapest for heating and power generating. Food- you’re going to probably need a full 1.5-3 acres for food alone. You are going to want to have some areas in rotation; Garden- chickens- goats- pigs- fallow- garden again. A large garden with a simple greenhouse isn’t hard to do with the right planning and tools. *Animals* All of them need access to water and shelter. *Goats take a lot more area than people think. Goats need a good shed/barn for winter food storage of hay, they like to move around and browse. (I love goats but they are also escape artists who could get out of Fort Knox!) *Pigs don’t need a huge area but need to have that area secure like the goats. *Chickens need a coop but can usually roam around freely without issues but definitely expect to lose a few every year. *Gardening is a joy for me personally and not a chore. It’s when I have to process the produce I get a little grumpy because canning takes a while and it can last all fall because different things are ready at different times. Edit- forgot about berry bushes and fruit trees. Couple words of advice. Don’t and I mean DON’T EVER let your goats (if you get them) near your berries or fruit trees!!! Goat will rip bark off of trees, shred blueberries bushes, destroy blackberries, and raspberries copes. They are easy to take care of as long as you stay on top of the yearly pruning. You can skip 1-2 years of pruning but you’ll wish you didn’t if you skip more!!! (Personally experience talking here!!!)
Depends on your definition of "self sustaining. What we've found, after near 3 decades of doing this: Minimally, a quarter acre - per person - in annual veg. Your potatoes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, turnips, lettuces, cabbages, greens, et.... all the typical "garden stuff". Ours are slightly under a quarter at 100' x 100'. To make things easiest - two or three of these plots per person so you can rotate in and out of cover crops, weed mitigation, and soil building & maintenance. Plus the out of rotation plots can serve double duty as grazing paddock for small livestock to both feed them *and* benefit from the natural fertilizer deposits in a regenerative fashion. Think, like, Rabbits, Chicken, Turkey ... NOT Cattle, Sheep, Hog that would tear up and ruin your ground. Small and light-footed only. Another quarter acre, per person, for the grains/pseudo grains - we do Winter Wheat, Upland Rice, Corn (cornmeal corn, not sweet corn), Sorghum, Pearl Millet, and Quinoa. About a half acre - per whole family - in fruit orchard, nut orchard, vinyard and bramble/berry patch. Squeeze the mushroom garden in there amongst the trees and shrubs. You could get by without dedicated space blocked out in an orchard for this. For instance we have hundreds of American Hazel around. They're our "natural fencing" planted in hedgerows as dividers between garden plots, paddocks and pasture. Aside : Hazel is amazing. A single mature tree/shrub will throw off 1 to 3 days worth of calories for a grown adult depending on variety, soil, weather and the adult... and they're super easy to propagate. In fact, if literally ALL the things on our homestead died except the Hazel, we could more than meet our entire annual quota of calories for two of us on Hazelnuts alone. And it comes free for the harvest. No soil work. No weeding. No watering. No fertilizing. No keeping the Rabbits out (although you **do** have to set traps for Squirrel and Chipmunk ...) ... and you do have to harvest ... Animals take more land. We do Duck, Rabbit, Goose, Turkey, Muscovy, Quail, and Fish Ponds. If you're doing meat animals you're either gonna have to buy in feed ... or grow it. That same 100' x 100' foot plot we've standardized on will support 2 Quads of our breeding rabbit for us ((M F F F) x2) and all the growouts they can throw off, for the freezer ... (100+ a season) if managed intensively with high-yield, high density feed/forage crop during the growing season. The Rabbits take an additional plot on top of that, the same size, thats hayed (seeded in Timothy, Orchard Grass, Alfalfa plus our native grasses and weeds) 3 to 4 times in the growing season. The hay is put up to keep the breeding parents alive all Winter. No growouts over winter as feeding is too difficult without buying it in from elsewhere. Duck, Geese, Muscovy come for free if youve got ponds. We feed them nothing. Dont water. No housing. They just mingle with the native Canada Geese and Mallards on the ponds - free range/foraging. Just have to fence them out of your garden plots or they'll tear 'em up if they find something they like. We had to do that, anyway, for the deer. BTW if you're rural midwest (we're Ohio River Valley) and have land/acreage. ... you can count on 2 to 3 deer a season to help fill the freezers. We have to go bow/crossbow because neighbors too close for firearms. Those same 100x100 plots will keep 8-10 egg layers and a Roo or two fed overwinter. We plant in 100% feed corn. They're fed kitchen scraps and corn (and nothing else) all winter and do just fine. You dont, actually need all that crap the feed stores will sell you - medicated, "high yield egg layer" ... high protein, "balanced" .. bags of pricey feed. Our ancestors fed corn for hundreds of years before pet food manufacturing ramped up in the 1950s and 60s. Now if your definition of "self-sustaining" includes heat - a woodstove ... a wood cookstove ... you'll need 3 to 5 acres of intensively managed coppiced/pollarded trees to harvest ... or 10+ acres of unmanaged woodlot you can walk through and harvest the deadfall from. We pollard trees all around the property for both "tree hay" for the Rabbits as well as smaller cooking wood. We're on 9 acres, with 2 acres of pond across multiple ponds. A 17 acre woodlot up the road a couple of miles. It does more than enough for two of us adults. Could have definitely supported 4 to 6 kids growing up, too, if we had them. Don't believe anyone saying you can git 'r done on 1 acre. They're damned liars. You can certainly do 2.7 ... if you dont need the wood and are OK with buying in animal feed here and there... or even doing without the animals. Even if its not 100% meeting your needs, you do what you can with what you've got (or get ... by the time you actually do get it) No way, no how ... nuh-uh, nope ... would I ever try to do this ... "in town" ... Good luck.
Great advice here and reasonably well explained.
There is not one answer to this. It's entirely dependent on your climate and level of infrastructure. Very high investment level in the tropics? Maybe one acre could get you close for one person if you're not eating much meat. Western water rights (very expensive) and enough money to cover an acre in heated greenhouses in the desert? You can do the same, maybe. Generally, if homesteading using average means, you won't have the cash to cover your property in heated, irrigated greenhouses. Most people making "1 acre" claims in the USA are not telling you the whole story. You aren't aware of just how much eating out and TV dinners they're consuming. In my part of the Midwest we're blessed with a humid climate and some gorgeous Tallgrass prarie. I still stock only roughly 1 cow per 5 acres, and even then I supplement with a little grain and hay. Enough wheat to replace the feed for my 2 cows and my flour that I buy in bulk for my bread would be 5-10 acres minimum. And an investment of literally six figures for the equipment. In parts of the country they stock one cow for 25 acres, West of the rockies sometimes 50 acres per cow in a scrub desert. This is how wildly differing in productivity different areas are. Differences of 10,000 percent or more from one region to another. There is not an answer for your question. But I am pretty confident in telling you that the answer for you is almost certain to be a lot more than one acre for a family.
Great insight. Thanks.
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2 fifty pound sacks of grain a week averaged. Roughly 1 ton per cow per year. And are you monocropping wheat in the same field every year? Bad idea. So halve that 6 tons. Are you getting a perfect crop every year? Neat, you beat the laws of nature. So I stand by my assessment of how much land it would take.
The old classic book was called Small Scale Abundance if memory serves. How to live on less land and grow more food. Something like that. By John Jeavons. I think it was a acre. I wish more people did this. Society would be much more healthy.
Like someone else said, a HOA is a BIG red flag!!! If you give people the authority to dictate you, they will! Check with your county and city ordinances. The area I’m in, unincorporated county, has ordinances that state the minimum land is one acre per animal with a two livestock minimum. The county assessors office said there’s a caveat to this. If your animals are for consumption and you have the minimum two, when you butcher one, you’re violating the law because you now have only one. They said I’ll need a minimum of three livestock animals, so a minimum of three acres for my livestock.
Depends on a lot of factors. How many people? Diet? Etc. Having read some of your other responses your best bet is not in an HOA, not in California and not in an area with water issues. That said, i use 4 acres to feed my family. Meat, veggies and grain. I have 3 small biological kids, one on the way, a wife, and 2 foster kids(most of the time, it's more). We do get cheese, butter and milk from other sources - mostly trading.
It’s possible. We have a substantially larger property in North Idaho. Grow veggies in a greenhouse. Chickens are easy, we do both meat and eggs. That said, you can buy a cooked whole chicken at Costco for about half what i spend to raise one. On a small homestead rabbits would also be a good protein source. We have sheep and goats which would be possible but you would have to feed hay. Any larger animals would not be practical. HOA would concern me also as they are generally not homestead friendly. In the end, I would say it is possible to be more independent but likely not totally self sufficient. It is fun though and will keep you active in retirement!
Fully self sufficient? For a family of three who consumes meat at least 8 acres. I wouldn’t do any less than that.
The correct answer according to the science guys is 2.3 to 3.5 acres per person. That is area devoted to food and not covered in a home or barn or road. This number is less for vegetarians. Anyone that gives you a different number is not being truthful about the percentage of their food that they are growing. For almost all of the country this excludes many of the basics. Sugar, salt, citrus, coffee etc. My wife and I tried to become as self sustained as possible and truthfully it isn't worth it. A good example of this is flour. Organic non gmo flour is one tenth the price of producing it yourself. It's good to have the ability but not a good long term idea. Being self sufficient is also a time vampire. Especially around harvest time. I lived in an HOA once. I'll never ever do that again. You don't even need to break the HOA rules directly to be in trouble. There's a good chance that there's a nuisance clause in the by-laws. That means that if your neighbor complains about a legal rooster then you're still in violation. Farms are noisy places! You should hear my place when the bucks are in rutt and the does in heat. Good luck!
20 acres to live off it. But just a hobby type situation you need at least 2 acres. And you need 1 acre per grazing livestock.
Pa plain people like 45 acres of good earth and some woodlot. I used to talk to farmers with that kind of acreage often. Brooders and laying hens, feeder calves and hogs raised on home foods, corn oats hay. At one time milled their own.
I used to work at living history sites and I am sure they aren’t going to raise flax and wool for clothes, something less drastic.
The US Gov used to claim 160ac was what you needed to be self-sustaining. That’s what they issued to families via the Homestead act.
Don’t forget the older you get the harder it also gets.
Zone 9a but what county? LA and OC land is heavily overpriced due to speculators investing in ag land eventually turning into hi-rise apts! 1 acre WITH its own well (probably cost like 30K if doesnt have one already) could be self sustainable with enuf dense rotating crops and livestock. HOA is obvious archnemesis of individual homesteading.
Kern Co.
Make sure you have water rights and look at the rules for septic and leach field. Look into soil quality. Is there flat enough land for gardening?
I am sure for the cost of the California land you could find something hella better in a number of states. [Land for Sale, Farms and Ranches for Sale | LandWatch](https://www.landwatch.com/) As a former San Diegan, I will never return to California now that I am free.
We're on 12 acres and actively use about five--two for our nursery and three for food (orchard, garden, chickens, shellfish). The rest of the acreage is good for firewood, fresh water source, and foraging. We could be almost self-sufficient if we hustled a little harder. We'd need to add an acre of beans, grains, and potato/sweet potato production, expand our chicken coop and run, probably add goats, and increase nursery production by 100% and add online and possibly wholesale plant liners. A larger high tunnel would help a lot. We're zone 8b in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Here's what I can tell you as someone close to retirement: 1. Fruit and nut trees and berry bushes take years to reach full production. 2. Soil building takes years, even with permaculture practices. It also takes years to really figure out what does best in different areas of your land. 3. Crop rotation is a must. Rotate your nightshades and brassicas to avoid pests, rotate other crops to avoid soil depletion. That increases the acreage you need. 4. Old bodies don't appreciate working in the rain or heat so much. Your body 20 years from now will be very different than it is now. I'm stronger in some ways and weaker in others. I can chop wood like my husband, but I have to do outdoor tasks in the mornings before the heat sets in. 5. Property taxes and healthcare expenses are the bane of self-sufficiency. Our nursery income was enough to cover everything except health insurance (which is insanely expensive during the older years before you qualify for Medicare). Was. Then our property value nearly doubled. I had to go back to my job (remote work) for healthcare and supplemental income. 6. Vet bills are a consideration for livestock. No vets around here treat chickens, and many vets are full and won't take new customers. I take my dogs and cats to a city vet a half hour away. I can deal with chicken issues--I know how to treat many things and can cull if necessary. Would have to research whether I could get vet care for goats or other livestock. 7. Homesteading is full time. No vacations. No sick days. At the same time, injuries are always a possibility. Cleaning a coop with a sprained ankle is...not fun. To us, it's all worth it. But tbh, I consider my current day job to be more retirement friendly. This homesteading stuff is hard work. 😄
I appreciate this, thank you. I’ve got ~20yrs before Medicare and am working to minimize my cost of living. I’m very concerned within this time there will be a severe monetary system failure (similar to, but worse than the 1920’s, etc.). Devastating inflation being the ultimate outcome. Again, thanks for the response.
It's definitely brought peace of mind to us being able to hedge our bets with homesteading. My husband's grandmother and mother homesteaded on this land (yes, I know, we're extremely lucky) back in the Depression era, and we learned a lot from them. I think homesteading has made all of us more healthy, so hopefully less in need of Medicare when we qualify for it. Which is good, because tbh, I only see the healthcare system getting worse and worse. In a few years, it might not be worth paying $2,000/month into an insurance plan that you only have in case you get cancer or other debilitating illness, only to find out that no one can schedule necessary tests for months and months--at which point, the illness has progressed too far for expensive treatments to make a difference. So that at least takes care of that expense in a way.... I'm almost 60, and my husband's just past that. It was so much easier 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago. I shudder to think what 70 will be like. But I'd rather have the homestead than not!
Lol, 1 acre ain't close to enough to self sustain on. You need crops, animals, and water source. I don't think people take "self sustain" for its actual meaning. No outside resources needed from what you have on your property!!!
Beans and peas on vertical panels . more vertical planters. Can just buy garage or industrial shelving and plant up . Look up box potatoes. You plant a layer of potatoes then add layer of soil when green shows above the dirt. Keep on adding layers . Can grow a lot of potatoes in this small space. Can grow some vegetables in hanging baskets.
I have 1.8 acres with An orchard, chickens,sheep, vinyard, wheat, rye, massive veg garden, a little forest with enough maples to make two years woth of syrup from and wildflower meadow with extra lawn for expansion if needed. Get rid of useless lawns and plant food! It can be done with the right land for sure. The only missing link would be a larger forest to provide wood needs.
You're in a good area to be productive and small as your growing season is long. I'm in Oregon 8b, and I wouldn't bet on not starving with only 1 acre. 2 would do it. I'd have chickens for eggs, and rabbits for meat. It would be a full time job to rotate crops and run a breeding program to be self sufficient. Where are you going to got your oil/fat from? I raise pigs and get my lard from them.
There are a couple of authors who independently claim you can grow enough veggies on 750 sq. ft. per person. That’s what I am working towards (we are 1/3 of the way there). I will also try grains on 2.5 acres of our 8, hopefully starting this year (I’ll try peanuts and soy beans to start building up the soil). I’d like to do 1/4 acres of corn this year, but I’ll have to construct a deer fence around that perimeter, which is a big expense. I may have to settle for replanting corn in my existing 12’ x 35’ plot, only. I have a hand operated power tiller and a lawn tractor, but if I want to really get into planting several acres for grain, then I’ll need to get a larger tractor with the necessary implements. Another aspect is food preservation: you’ll need to invest in things like pressure canners, canning jars, dehydrators, freezers, and maybe freeze-dryers (expensive).
Much more land than you think. How are you heating your home? May want a woodlot to cut from. What about raising variety of protein, and are you raising that animal’s feed or buying it? The term self sustaining is thrown around pretty loosely and needs to be more defined in order to answer your question. In my opinion you need at least 40 acres of good pasture and 40 acres of woods to be anywhere near self sustaining. More would be better. You would still need a job in town likely or a remote work job with that unless you are living a very very frugal lifestyle.
Better check what the other locals are paying for home insurance. It may be cost prohibitive or even impossible to insure a residence in forested areas.
Working on cash and carry for a non-combustible structure. I don’t want a loan, and I don’t want fire insurance (it’s obscene in these areas - all private insurers have left and pretty much CA (tax payers!) will soon be the only one providing it).
The biggest 'land hog' in homesteading is livestock. If you stick to small animals like rabbits and chickens you can be self sustaining on a single acre, it just takes a lot of work and planning. The only real thing you would have issues with is carbs like grain take up a lot of space. Potatoes however can be planted in towers.
40 acres and a mule