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We are buying 2 acres..that will be enough for me to have my chickens, dogs, a few goats, and maybe a cow..And a large garden!
Probably not the cow unless you have extremely lush pasture grass, a very small cow, grow your large garden vertically and plan to live in an extremely small house. Normal stocking rates for cow (+calf) is 1:acre.
Yes i do the entire National Forest. My meaning was more related to the size of a garden for nothing more than feeding 3 to 4 people in just veggies. A smaller house a barn, and storing things like fire wood.
My first family and I at that time had 9/10ths acre. it too was bordered by the same forest. The garden there was only half the size of the garden here, but i didn't waste space growing fancy corn, and i could have had about the same size garden if i had wanted too.
I did have only wood heat no other source there, a 16 by 24 foot barn 1 horse, small paddock, no chance to grow hay of course. So far i have never raised chickens myself, but have worked at B&B's where they did so i did like it or not, and could have if i wanted on that 9/10ths. A part of that 9/10ths was really steep down over a banking of more than 90 feet drop to the brook out back, and was of no use at all, other than woodsy privacy.
I had 2 cars and truck to store as well as a canoe rack with a few other boats besides 2 canoes.
If things are done right you can use a 1 acre lot and meet many needs.
Finding places like that isn't easy.... getting your back into a dead end road off a dead end road with your back into a National Forest is hard to do. I wish i could pull that off one more time myself.
I fer sure wasn't raising cattle, or any other live stock than a cat and a dog. The dog was a Great Dane though, and people teased me until i did buy a horse.
The horse didn't need a big paddock or pasture since I rode the horse year round, sometimes riding it to work at the B&B apx 20 miles away, where it could pasture out with the other horses there. That was before i also bought and had to store a horse trailer.. I forgot about that.
That horse could do 100 miles in a day with no problem, and i could leave late and camp early if that was the game. Once i caused a semi panic with that horse, driving a wagon (oops i forgot that too) A Farmington Spring Wagon, up in Bear Notch with the Dane, my Nor'west Gun and in clothing of apx 1805 LOL
Forest Service guy took one look as he drove by on the paved road looking in to the dirt road and slammed his brakes, backed up quick, stopped rubbed his eyes, looked, rubbed his eyes again and then drove to me.
He asked what year it was and i told him 1828! He asked if i knew who the president was and i told him Andy Jackson dead serious.... he was grabbing the radio when I let up and told him his truth.
I can tell you that sometimes a bigger place just means a lot more walking.. The B&B was that way, with 16 saddle horses, 4 draft horses, unless there was 6, 3 snowmachines and grooming equipts, a truck (not mine) a jeep, 2 cars, several cabins, the Inn, the new house under construction (some of mine)
Other domestic live stock, turkey, pigs, chickens, geese, NYC kids Bears, bob cats, fox, Man eatting red squirrels on customers beds with the customers in the beds!
All of which I was in charge and sometimes the tour busses too in winter when the real driver could not get back up the hill!
That doesn't begin to count the pool, the trails bridges on the trails the oil lamps on the trails and or even the ski rental shop and or lessons. At the end of those days i was tired
As John Kohler on YouTube has proven, you can do it on a lot less than an acre if you can grow food in your front yard and don't live in one of those parts of the country where it is "illegal". John has 1/10 of an acre in California and except for his house and part of his driveway, the rest of the property is devoted to growing food many of which are perennials. His garden produces enough to where he was planning on starting a small CSA with six shares.
As John Kohler on YouTube has proven, you can do it on a lot less than an acre if you can grow food in your front yard and don't live in one of those parts of the country where it is "illegal". John has 1/10 of an acre in California and except for his house and part of his driveway, the rest of the property is devoted to growing food many of which are perennials. His garden produces enough to where he was planning on starting a small CSA with six shares.
Unfortunately, that production rate isn't sustainable. Yes, you may be able to plant and grow that much in small a space; but you'd be relying heavily on external inputs... water, fertilizers, soil amendments, etc. The fertility you're extracting has to be replaced, and a heavily planted small lot doesn't have enough space or resources to replenish it naturally at the rate it's being consumed.
Contrary to popular notion, plants (or, more accurately, the soils they grow in) have stocking rates. If you deplete the soil by forcing constant high yields and then must rely on artificial fertility to maintain that production, that is no better than pumping livestock with hormones, unnatural feeds and antibiotics to increase production.
I'm all for growing a garden and doing all you can with a small urban lot; but you'll do yourself and your soil a HUGE favor and aim for less production and healthier soil. Partial food self-sufficiency is still waaaaay better than none!
You should check any pre-WWI (pre-industrial farming) agricultural yield records for your area to get a good idea how many lbs or bushels of different plants can be expected without large diesel tractors, intense irrigation and fossil-fuel inputs (synthetic fertilizers, and *-cides). If you're lucky, your local cooperative extension/farm agent might have these records assuming no fires, floods or misplacement. The USDA has a lot of this information available at a national level, broken down by state, but pre-war data is often incomplete.
Then check the nutritional information for the crops that grow best in your area. This will help you determine the calories per acre you can produce. In many cases, you will find that potatoes produce higher yields and more calories per acre than any other starch/carb (i.e. grain)... sometimes triple! On average, potatoes yield 17m calories/acre, corn 12m, and wheat 6m (assuming all are irrigated). Not saying to give up your grains and rely soley on potatoes (remember the Irish Potato Famine?!), but you may be able to reduce the amount of land required to support your family by planting out some of the wheat and corn space to potatoes instead. Potatoes require a little more effort to store (dehydrating and/or canning) for longer than the average 3-6 months in a root cellar
Also, the serious flaw/error, I note in that otherwise good infographic is the assumption that you need corn and wheat to grow livestock. You DON'T need grains to feed livestock... grains just make them grow/milk/lay FASTER. Most of the "evil livestock" land-use numbers make the same assumption... feeding grain to animals instead of people... but grain is not their natural diet. An acre of shrubby uncultivated pasture and supplemental garden/orchard scraps & weeds with a few supplemental grains (if you have spare) would be plenty to raise the animals on the graphic (in a temperate climate).
The infographic also doesn't mention that some of the crops can share space with the livestock. This, I think is worth consideration, especially with the orchard, where it could be beneficial to both the trees, and the livestock.
You can definitely run the pigs and chickens in the orchards, and the chickens through the taller plants once established. Goats can be problematic in orchards/berry patches because they like to eat them, so you'd have to watch. For the actual garden, geese and ducks are less likely to damage the veggies, but chickens would work if you kept an eye on them and diidn't mind a few peck marks. And there's no reason you couldn't have rabbit hutches or a dovecote anywhere there is room for them. But all of the critters would make short work of fall clean up and spring prep!
Well if money were no object, I would buy one of the two ranches we used to work on that have both sold within the last six months.
One was 27,000 acres for $12million, the other was 12,000 acres for $10million.
I think I'd go with the larger. Not because it's bigger, but because it's much prettier, nestled along the Niobrara River valley and the central Nebraska Sandhills...
start out looking for 40 acres end up with 260 acres. goats and chickens are fine in the wood but can not grow vegetables with out sun light. try to clear cut about an acre for garden for five years now still have stumps to deal with. it is nice to have 200 plus buffer from the neighbor.
I see no reason to buy anything. You get all the rights of an owner if you file a $135 a year "mining claim" (20 acres) anywhere on the 1 million square miles of BLm, bureau of land management land. Google for it. 1 square mile is 640 acres, and that's not nearly big enough to keep neighbors from bitching about shooting noise, or provide for safe impact distances for high v rifles. It's just not practical to buy enough land, unless you are a billionaire.
I see no reason to buy anything. You get all the rights of an owner if you file a $135 a year "mining claim" (20 acres) anywhere on the 1 million square miles of BLm, bureau of land management land. Google for it. 1 square mile is 640 acres, and that's not nearly big enough to keep neighbors from bitching about shooting noise, or provide for safe impact distances for high v rifles. It's just not practical to buy enough land, unless you are a billionaire.
Unfortunately, you cannot build any "permanent" structures on a BLM mining claim. I've looked into it. You can, however, in my state (Utah) on state land mining claims. It is an option, I suppose. But you are at the whim of the government. Look at the way a certain administration has butchered the coal mining industry. All it would take is someone in power deciding all those little 20 acre mining claims to be a "nuisance" to public lands, or that they are endangering the blue-striped, gray-bearded, hyper-cycloid-backed rattlesnake...
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