It's vital that rural people always vote in their LOCAL ELECTIONS. Don't let someone else choose your Sheriff, Prosecutor, Judges, County Supervisors, Town Council Members, Mayor, Planning/Land Use Commission Members, Water Board Members, School Board Members, and other LOCAL OFFICIALS for you.. Collaborate with your family, friends, and neighbors and VOTE AS A BLOCK in order to put good freedom loving American Patriots who share your values into your LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
There was a book written by the US Dept of Agriculture about 100 years ago that lays out how to live on five acres. There have been many books written since but I consider it a definitive way to live. Of course I have to mention that we eat 300% more than most people ate back then. We are a fat society myself included. However I grew up eating one table meal a day. I supplemented my daily meal with snack foods I found foraging around the woods. When I went into the military I gained nearly 20 lbs during boot camp. Anyway, this is a nice well thought out video. Thanks!
@@TUKByV1 A booklet called the Victory Edition 1919 War Gardening and Home Storage of Vegetables and was published by the National War Garden Commission, Washington D.C.
I’ve been watching this channel since 2019. It inspired me to do all we are doing now. We wanted 5 acres but settled on 2 acres in the country nestled very farmland so if feels much bigger. This is plenty of room for our family of 5. We have a kitchen garden/herb garden (192sq ft) a vegetable garden (480sq ft) blueberries, blackberries, elderberry, figs, currants, 2 apple trees, hens (started with 6 which was plenty for our family) raising meat birds, buy our beef locally. Working on adding more fruit, bees and thinking long term possible 2 goats for milk. Plenty of space to add a hoop house and a greenhouse and expand the garden if needed. There is still a designated “backyard” space for hanging out and playing. Just sharing to say that you don’t need gobs of acres. Of course that would be nice but it’s not necessary.
This info was very helpful. City girl here. I have 20 x 20 garden.and 2nd year on chickens. Ive done well with space I have. Im 61.learned to can food at 50. Still learning and and definitely took notes on this thank you !
As a guy who used to raise pigs when I was in high school, you may want to consider putting your sows that are birthing or will be shortly in a crate. One of the biggest challenges is keeping the sow from rolling over on the piglets after they are born. Since your raising kune kunes, and they are typically a large fat pig. Putting the sow in the crate for a period may increase your birth survival rate.
I’m new here and I love the chitchat! I was just telling my husband this morning that you all are so easy to listen to and I learned so much from what I had watched. It feels like we’re sitting across the table from you having a nice conversation. You all are great!
We're far from self sufficient, but we grow and raise a tremendous amount of our own food. We are a family of five living on 1.35 acres. We have 50 chickens for both eggs and meat and a herd of goats for both milk and meat. We live in Florida, so our fruit trees are citrus and banana and avocados, plus lots of pineapples and passion fruit, but we also have figs. Putting in berry bushes and grapevines this year even tho there are tons of wild grapes and blackberries to forage all around us. We have a 75'x50' garden surrounded by a 6' fence (because our chickens free range most of the time), and it's all raised beds. We grow more veggies than we can handle in there! Thankfully, because of our location, we can grow food pretty much all year, so being able to plant smaller amounts of things helps tremendously! For instance, we plant potatoes every month except for July and August when it's just too hot for most things to germinate. We don't need need a huge space for our potato crop that way, and we grow most of them in tubs/ containers anyway because we have a mole/ vole problem. And it's too hot and humid here most of the year to store root crops anyway, especially in a house like ours without air conditioning. Root cellars and basements aren't a thing here either. So it is extremely beneficial for us to grow smaller quantities of things year round. We freeze and can dehydrate, of course, but most of our harvest ends up being used fresh. It's a great way to live! All that to say that it doesn't take nearly as much land as most people think to homestead! Sure, we have to buy our grains and "staples" and most fruits elsewhere, but in a pinch, we could hold out quite a long time sustained on our 1/4 acre per person homestead. We'd love to have more land! But this is what we can afford, and we're not gonna live above our means. Start with what you've got. Maybe it's a balcony garden with culinary herbs growing in containers - it's a great start!
a general consensus from my local ranchers is that for where i live is a cow needs 10 acres of grazable land to get to butcher weight without supplementing feed for it.
We would use 3 beef cows, 4-6 pigs, 200 meat bird plus random sheep , hunting, fishing ect. Pregnant with our 15th child. We have 14 still at home but do bless our grown children with meat for Christmas. We would also need 2 milk cows and oh 50-60 chickens. We did this for a few years then had a child pass away. Now rebuilding back up to this.
I have .68 of a acre my garden is 120’x120’ I trellis up on everything I can and around tomato plants I have 28 and bell peppers I have 18 I grow bush greenbeans I have 70 greenbean bushes I over winter my onions as I live mid texas I have 3 large beds and large bed of broccoli and cauliflower, okra, leeks,brussel sprouts , sweet potatos BUT I can’t grow squash or zuchinni to save my life we have a bad issue with spider mites and bore bugs and even if I spray every week they still win
Our first homestead was only one acre. This included the house and septic system. The front yard was our orchard. In the back we had a 100x100 garden, chicken coop for layers and ducks. And we also raised two fully grass fed lambs and a kunekune pig. You can do so much if you plan it well.
@@BirdieBlrrrd at the time it was just my husband and I with two toddlers so we did very well with this. We’ve since expanded to 10 acres though as the family has grown. But even now we only use about 4 acres total including the house! And we have a flock of dairy sheep 😊
I am so glad that your advertisement popped up on Facebook for me this past week. I took the canning 4 part free class and then invested in the canning course and now I’m binging the podcast…this information is BEYOND valuable and I am really excited about my new homesteading journey.
I wish I could shake the fear of pressure canning low acid foods. I feel like unless I have a real life expert looking over my shoulder the first 10 times, I will mess something up and accidentally poison everyone with botulism. I hope I can one day find an older person who has canned for decades to hand hold me for a bit and catch my mistakes i didn’t know I was making until I have actually improved to the level to be trusted on my own.
This was a great conversation but it’s important to note that this amount of acreage requires feed to be brought in and so you aren’t really self sufficient. In a recent conversation in told someone that we would need 100 acres to be self sufficient and they were shocked. I then described that is what it would take to raise the grain and hay needed for our livestock. Also, even though we live in a fertile area I have found we need more acreage for animals than whatever is usually stated in order to rotate pastures and rest land.
I agree with you on growing your own animal feed and bedding needs for year round. The animals feed you and this is the best way to ensure your animals are the best food for you.
Would you mind sharing a short version of your break down on how you got to that number? I would be really curious to see, because I wonder how much of it is what you choose to eat. My family for instance, are only occasional beef eaters (a few times a year) we eat mostly chicken, fish, turkey and bacon and plenty of dairy. A dairy cow hardly needs 100 acres and the rest can easily forage and eat kitchen scraps with a little supplementation. Perhaps your family consumes a very large amount of grain fed beef? As far as grains for bread, you need about 1/4 acre of wheat to make 388 loaves of bread (I figured a little more than one loaf a day for a year to account for cakes and other uses) and there are more space efficient grains like triticale as well. So what am I missing? If you don’t mind sharing, I am in the process of buying land right now and if you can save me a bad purchase by breaking this down for me a bit that would be fantastic!
We keep a dairy cow, her calves are grown out 3 years for one beef a year. We raise 3 pigs a year for us , several lambs, turkeys, chickens and ducks. We need about 30 acres for hay production each year. We need about 20 acres for rotational grazing. We go through about 10 tons of wheat per year and without commercial fertilizers we need 10 acres for this. We do not feed grain to cows, but we do need legumes for them to maintain weight. This is an another 5 acres. We raise corn, mangels, sunflowers and squash in abundance to supplement feed. This is another 3-5 acres. Then we need a few acres for gardens, orchards and berries. We also need a wood lot. We eat 90% of our diet from the farm. These number vary by region so this is very much based on 20 years of experience in our areas.
Exactly. We hatch out our own birds multiple times a year, and cull 3-4 times a year to keep our flock at a stable number. We don't butcher during the summer, but during the cooler months, we butcher every couple months.
Another great video. I enjoy the chit chats. I am sorry about your piglets. My ex and I raised 2 pigs for meat about 36 years ago. I have to say that was the best pork we ever ate. The butcher tried to talk us into raising more and said he would purchase (not bad for 2 people who never raised farm animals before). My ex was military and we got reassigned, so we sold the place. It was only 3 acres but we had our garden, chickens, pigs, a bull which we had butchered, and a pregnant cow that we had to sell. 😢 Right now I have chickens. I have a couple garden areas plus my herbs that I grow in pots. Last year I really gotten into foraging. I am still learning.
Great discussion. I live on a typical lot in my town. I can provide at least one meal per day for two people from eggs, fish, beans, millet, potatoes and other vegetables, in our dry climate. I would encourage anyone to make the effort to produce some of your own food. Even if it’s just a line of pots on a windowsill, you can grow green onions, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and peppers for tacos.
The Keep It All Flowing this week was super helpful! While I dont have livestock yet (I do have small animals to take care of though); it got me super motivated to get the running of my homestead a little bit more organized.
I 100% agree with voting with your money. Support companies that are American made and values the things you value. Thank you for your videos. God bless y'all and keep growing.
Definitely takes more land if you're growing feed for your animals. We have 160 acres . Also were zone 3 alberta Canada so with a shorter growing season it takes more space for gardening even. Difficult to do succession planting. So really know where you live and adapt this information for you. Great video on giving people a starting point.
Love watching you guys! You always share so much information I either have to take notes or watch several times. I love it. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. 😊
Re: Fruit trees. For those who wish more fruit tree varieties, but are limited in space, and time to care fore them, consider obtaining scion-wood of desired varieties, and grafting it to your existing compatible trees, or espaliering trees, if only limited in growing space. There are factors to take into consideration, when taking the grafting option however, such as flowering and fruiting times, and rate of growth, of your existing tree, and your scion-wood. For example, I’ve planted a Gala apple. I’d dearly like a Granny Smith apple, and an Anna apple. All are low chill varieties. I have no room for more fruit trees, or time to care for more. I will be looking for Scion-wood to graft to my Gala apple tree soon. Alternatively, I could replace the Gala tree with a multi- graft tree.
I don't think people should focus on growing the majority of their calories, but growing the majority of the dollar amount of the food. Grow the most expensive stuff!
Love the chit-chat!! And such a helpful informative video! I love when you and your family stand for, and the incredible information you provide for us all. Thank you❤❤
Down here in south Texas, we have 3 growing season, late winter (grow brassicas and meat chickens), summer (grow heat loving drought plants) and late fall/early winter (brassicas and meat birds). All about playing the seasons game!
If you have space, having "extra" fruit or nut trees can be a source of mast. In years past, I knew some guys who hunted wild hogs in citrus orchards. The hogs came every year to eat fallen fruit.
Huw Richards has got a brand new book out about this. He did an experiment last year on how much veg he could grow in a small space in the U.K. The book title is something about Self-Sufficiency published by Dorling Kindersley. He has a YT channel all about it
He has a perfect environment. Love him as well. We live in Texas on seven acres. We are a microclimate. Imagine 108° to 115° everyday during the summer with your low being 99° at night. Water is at a premium and you are watering your garden everyday just to cool the soil. Then add in animals. Just keeping the chickens cool. The goats trying to find shade. It’s a tough life. I sometimes wonder how anyone survived here 150 years ago. It’s a wonder place to live as far as still having freedom. It’s just tough farming. I grew up in Kentucky. We were military and this is just the place we landed. I’m happy to call myself a Texan.
Just started, so I don't know what you will cover, but as a vegan I did this math once, you can grow a years worth of calories, rice, sweet potatoes, and beans, on a 1/4 acre of perfect land, perfect season, perfect harvest. That of course is not possible like that, but it is nice to have that as a starting point. More recently I have been looking into apple, hazel nuts and perennialized sweet potatoes (pushing it in my zone but eager to try) I am disabled and am thinking perennials might be a better fit with my abilities. looking forward to hearing your chat!
Thank you for all your content!! Could you please do a video of what all is needed for someone getting started with chickens? What do we all need to know about them? Breeds, food, etc? Do we have to have a roaster? Thanks for any help
I have mobile pens. They are not real big because they are mobile but I don’t have too many per bird per pen. They live long, don’t fight because they are scratching fresh ground daily and people adore my eggs. Of course they have food and water hanging. Food inside the house, water hanging underneath with nipple waters because that doesn’t spill or get knocked out or dirty. Easy to teach them how to use it. Always done within minutes literally even as chicks. Once one gets it, the others watch.
I understand American products costing more, but $89 for a single bath towel is simple too much for any ordinary person to afford. I could literally weave or knit my own bath towel from organic cotton for less, even including paying myself a working class wage. Their prices need to come down somewhere or people simply can’t afford it. It’s not a matter of how much they value it, it’s how much actual literal dollars they have in their bank account to pay for it. Most people don’t have $89 dollars to spare when they can barely afford food.
We have a 1 acre pasture on our property and were thinking of having a milk cow and maybe 1 beef cow, but want them to have enough room. Thinking of getting mini cows, what do you know about that?
Thank you for answering some of those questions re size of the property. I also thought 5 acres would be sufficient for a small/verge size family. One day, I will have it.
As reference for other scenarios - Being in an area of Idaho that gets an average of 9” of water mostly in the form of snowpack per year- 1 cow per 5-10 acres is suggested and will need to still supplement feed end of summer through the winter… And did i understand correctly; 2 semi dwarf apple 🍎 trees per family? Oh boy 😮 I have 10 semi dwarf apple trees ordered for me and my husband and maybe some apple butter gifts for some of our adult kids families (2 of the 10 are crabapple)
People think I’m a little crazy when I say I want to buy a quarter section, which is about 160 acres, but I don’t intend to farm or use it all… It’s just there as a resource to gather wood and building materials from, but as you say, you can do it with 5 acres and ideally that much would be already cleared on that land but if I needed to it could carved out. The forested area would be ideal for pigs, goats lambs, etc. as long as it could be fenced in and they could keep it cleared to a point.
Do you guys happen to know the numbers on a mini milk cow? I was planning to get a mini jersey. Our new home has 10 acres over 90% pasture, but we will have to come in and learn about soil quality and put up fencing etc on the new property and I would like to get a cow sometime in the first year. How much hay do you have to buy in for a standard cow for 6 months during the non grazing season? How big are the sections for rotational grazing during the growing season and how often do you move them? If we wanted to harvest our own winter hay, how much land would we need for that? Thanks for any answers you can give on these questions. 😊
As for buying cloth and clothes, part of the problem is also that everyone wants fast fashion, and fast fashion creates a lot of trash, because they don’t last very long. I buy expensive clothes, but some stables are 20 years old and I still wear them. Over time we actually spend less on clothes by buying good local quality. I buy most of what i don’t sew myself on Etsy. As for the amount of land. We live on 1/2 acres which includes our house. Right now we do buy meat and some stables like rice because we don’t produce enough calories for 5 people (all adults), but we are slowly getting there. We produced 1/2 million calories last year and we will get past 1 million this year. Once all perennials are producing we should reach our goal of 5 million calories. We raise rabbits and poultry, since we don’t have room for larger animals. We produce all of our eggs, now that you showed me how to water glass eggs. I will say though, that we are down south, so we grow food on year round. This means that we can grow a lot more food on a smaller area. As for fruit trees, I have picked trees that ripen at different times of the year, so we have fresh fruit all year round. Right now we are eating oranges, mandarins, passion fruit and Natal plums. We have 2 orange trees that ripens 3 months apart, we grow peaches, plums, apples and more. this also helps with food preservation since I don’t get all of the fruit in at the same time.
Really depends on WHAT you’re wanting to raise a grow to feed your family. A garden- yes, you can grow a lot on a little acreage. But to raise different types of meat, and have them graze to save on feed costs etc, more acreage is necessary.
Yup you had Covid It affected me the same way we like to say “ it kicks your butt” keeps you in bed when you do get to get up and go you have foggy memories hard to recall and the Flemish is thick and seems to last a long time longer than we would like. The strains are weaker now than when we first started. I only got it once the second time they dropped the masks requirement in out hospitals that’s when I got it . We lived through it and it made us stronger:-) Thank you for you honesty glad your better.
The BEST and most practical survival gardening book is Grow or Die by David the Good. Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon has some good stuff, but he relies on so many outside inputs. It’s not affordable or true survival gardening.
Very good video that brakes things down is very important. I would go more land and not farm it or lease it out is a good option if needed unless you make a side business out of it is not bad
What kind of nut trees are you growing? We have considered starting some but in zone 5 (Bitterroot Valley) there don’t seem to be any we would want to put the effort into.
Herbal is much better than regular antibiotics. My body rejects most meds. My doctor says I am metabolically challenged. The garlic honey method is wonderful for colds and flus
Thank you so much for the video - very helpful!! Question : If I Freeze -dry raw milk have I killed off the good pro-biotics? Is Freezing the only way to maintain them? Thanks!!
It would have been helpful if you elaborated on how the piglets died, or why. That would have been a good lesson for everyone to understand why, and perhaps learn from it. I am very curious, what happened?
It’s been a tough flu season this year. My 5 y/o was sick a few weeks ago and she was sick for almost two weeks, not eating and really high fevers. We have been trading sickness in the house for a month a half now. 😩
@@Mrsmetamorphosis2012 I don’t know if my comment got deleted. But no we have not taken the v@x. Unfortunately my kids are in daycare and school so they do bring a lot of stuff home.
It sounds about right to me. I mostly do raised bed gardening. The composted chicken poop and pine shavings from the coop makes a great soil amendment. (The chickens eat a lot of garden and kitchen waste, so that helps to reduce feed costs.) So I can plant things closer together. Plants still need air flow and light, but they don’t need as much space as the seed packets recommend if the soil is very rich. I live in a high desert, and the native soil is very poor. To be honest, I struggled with growing a traditional garden in the ground for years before switching to raised bed gardening. Mixing sand with huge amounts of compost and other organic matter (leaves, grass clippings, etc.) gave me good results. I am a crippled old lady, so I have to hire a man to do the heavy lifting. Once that was done, it has been easy to maintain, and the yields are much better.
Using conventional row gardening in KY, I couldn't raise enough green beans for one person per year in a 10'x10' area. I would starve to death on that plot. I really think its their terminology that's the problem. 100x100 seems reasonable to me for one person per YEAR!! That's 10,000 square feet, or roughly 1/4 acre
I used to love listening to your videos. It seems like you have more commercial time than your time speaking now. It is very frustrating and i have stopped actively looking for your videos because of the high volume of commercials. Its sad to see yet another good resource being taken over with mainstream advertising.
It's vital that rural people always vote in their LOCAL ELECTIONS. Don't let someone else choose your Sheriff, Prosecutor, Judges, County Supervisors, Town Council Members, Mayor, Planning/Land Use Commission Members, Water Board Members, School Board Members, and other LOCAL OFFICIALS for you..
Collaborate with your family, friends, and neighbors and VOTE AS A BLOCK in order to put good freedom loving American Patriots who share your values into your LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
There was a book written by the US Dept of Agriculture about 100 years ago that lays out how to live on five acres. There have been many books written since but I consider it a definitive way to live. Of course I have to mention that we eat 300% more than most people ate back then. We are a fat society myself included. However I grew up eating one table meal a day. I supplemented my daily meal with snack foods I found foraging around the woods. When I went into the military I gained nearly 20 lbs during boot camp. Anyway, this is a nice well thought out video. Thanks!
Do you happen to recall the title of the book?
Thanks for Serving God, Country and Families of America!
@theunknownknowsBYvoivod youtube won't let me post links but if you Google "USDA how to live on 5 acres" a few things come up. Hope this helps 🥔🥕🍅🫑🐔🥚
@@TUKByV1 A booklet called the Victory Edition 1919 War Gardening and Home Storage of Vegetables and was published by the National War Garden Commission, Washington D.C.
@@regencylass1183 Many thanks.
I’ve been watching this channel since 2019. It inspired me to do all we are doing now. We wanted 5 acres but settled on 2 acres in the country nestled very farmland so if feels much bigger. This is plenty of room for our family of 5. We have a kitchen garden/herb garden (192sq ft) a vegetable garden (480sq ft) blueberries, blackberries, elderberry, figs, currants, 2 apple trees, hens (started with 6 which was plenty for our family) raising meat birds, buy our beef locally.
Working on adding more fruit, bees and thinking long term possible 2 goats for milk. Plenty of space to add a hoop house and a greenhouse and expand the garden if needed. There is still a designated “backyard” space for hanging out and playing.
Just sharing to say that you don’t need gobs of acres. Of course that would be nice but it’s not necessary.
This info was very helpful. City girl here. I have 20 x 20 garden.and 2nd year on chickens. Ive done well with space I have. Im 61.learned to can food at 50. Still learning and and definitely took notes on this thank you !
As a guy who used to raise pigs when I was in high school, you may want to consider putting your sows that are birthing or will be shortly in a crate. One of the biggest challenges is keeping the sow from rolling over on the piglets after they are born. Since your raising kune kunes, and they are typically a large fat pig. Putting the sow in the crate for a period may increase your birth survival rate.
I’m new here and I love the chitchat! I was just telling my husband this morning that you all are so easy to listen to and I learned so much from what I had watched. It feels like we’re sitting across the table from you having a nice conversation. You all are great!
We're far from self sufficient, but we grow and raise a tremendous amount of our own food. We are a family of five living on 1.35 acres. We have 50 chickens for both eggs and meat and a herd of goats for both milk and meat. We live in Florida, so our fruit trees are citrus and banana and avocados, plus lots of pineapples and passion fruit, but we also have figs. Putting in berry bushes and grapevines this year even tho there are tons of wild grapes and blackberries to forage all around us. We have a 75'x50' garden surrounded by a 6' fence (because our chickens free range most of the time), and it's all raised beds. We grow more veggies than we can handle in there! Thankfully, because of our location, we can grow food pretty much all year, so being able to plant smaller amounts of things helps tremendously! For instance, we plant potatoes every month except for July and August when it's just too hot for most things to germinate. We don't need need a huge space for our potato crop that way, and we grow most of them in tubs/ containers anyway because we have a mole/ vole problem. And it's too hot and humid here most of the year to store root crops anyway, especially in a house like ours without air conditioning. Root cellars and basements aren't a thing here either. So it is extremely beneficial for us to grow smaller quantities of things year round. We freeze and can dehydrate, of course, but most of our harvest ends up being used fresh. It's a great way to live!
All that to say that it doesn't take nearly as much land as most people think to homestead! Sure, we have to buy our grains and "staples" and most fruits elsewhere, but in a pinch, we could hold out quite a long time sustained on our 1/4 acre per person homestead. We'd love to have more land! But this is what we can afford, and we're not gonna live above our means. Start with what you've got. Maybe it's a balcony garden with culinary herbs growing in containers - it's a great start!
Wow this sounds great
I would never skip the chit-chat! It's such a great way of getting to know you and it feels like having a cup of coffee with friends.
a general consensus from my local ranchers is that for where i live is a cow needs 10 acres of grazable land to get to butcher weight without supplementing feed for it.
We would use 3 beef cows, 4-6 pigs, 200 meat bird plus random sheep , hunting, fishing ect. Pregnant with our 15th child. We have 14 still at home but do bless our grown children with meat for Christmas. We would also need 2 milk cows and oh 50-60 chickens. We did this for a few years then had a child pass away. Now rebuilding back up to this.
Wow, under 5 acres (more like 4 active acres) to feed ~15 people. so that's about 4 people per acre. Great info.
I have .68 of a acre my garden is 120’x120’ I trellis up on everything I can and around tomato plants I have 28 and bell peppers I have 18 I grow bush greenbeans I have 70 greenbean bushes I over winter my onions as I live mid texas I have 3 large beds and large bed of broccoli and cauliflower, okra, leeks,brussel sprouts , sweet potatos BUT I can’t grow squash or zuchinni to save my life we have a bad issue with spider mites and bore bugs and even if I spray every week they still win
Our first homestead was only one acre. This included the house and septic system. The front yard was our orchard. In the back we had a 100x100 garden, chicken coop for layers and ducks. And we also raised two fully grass fed lambs and a kunekune pig. You can do so much if you plan it well.
Did this sustain you? Could it have in hindsight?
@@BirdieBlrrrd at the time it was just my husband and I with two toddlers so we did very well with this. We’ve since expanded to 10 acres though as the family has grown. But even now we only use about 4 acres total including the house! And we have a flock of dairy sheep 😊
I am so glad that your advertisement popped up on Facebook for me this past week. I took the canning 4 part free class and then invested in the canning course and now I’m binging the podcast…this information is BEYOND valuable and I am really excited about my new homesteading journey.
Wonderful!
I wish I could shake the fear of pressure canning low acid foods. I feel like unless I have a real life expert looking over my shoulder the first 10 times, I will mess something up and accidentally poison everyone with botulism. I hope I can one day find an older person who has canned for decades to hand hold me for a bit and catch my mistakes i didn’t know I was making until I have actually improved to the level to be trusted on my own.
This was a great conversation but it’s important to note that this amount of acreage requires feed to be brought in and so you aren’t really self sufficient. In a recent conversation in told someone that we would need 100 acres to be self sufficient and they were shocked. I then described that is what it would take to raise the grain and hay needed for our livestock. Also, even though we live in a fertile area I have found we need more acreage for animals than whatever is usually stated in order to rotate pastures and rest land.
I agree with you on growing your own animal feed and bedding needs for year round. The animals feed you and this is the best way to ensure your animals are the best food for you.
Livestock like sheep and cattle do not need grain chickens and hogs will need some grain especially in the winter
Would you mind sharing a short version of your break down on how you got to that number? I would be really curious to see, because I wonder how much of it is what you choose to eat. My family for instance, are only occasional beef eaters (a few times a year) we eat mostly chicken, fish, turkey and bacon and plenty of dairy. A dairy cow hardly needs 100 acres and the rest can easily forage and eat kitchen scraps with a little supplementation. Perhaps your family consumes a very large amount of grain fed beef? As far as grains for bread, you need about 1/4 acre of wheat to make 388 loaves of bread (I figured a little more than one loaf a day for a year to account for cakes and other uses) and there are more space efficient grains like triticale as well. So what am I missing?
If you don’t mind sharing, I am in the process of buying land right now and if you can save me a bad purchase by breaking this down for me a bit that would be fantastic!
We keep a dairy cow, her calves are grown out 3 years for one beef a year. We raise 3 pigs a year for us , several lambs, turkeys, chickens and ducks. We need about 30 acres for hay production each year. We need about 20 acres for rotational grazing. We go through about 10 tons of wheat per year and without commercial fertilizers we need 10 acres for this. We do not feed grain to cows, but we do need legumes for them to maintain weight. This is an another 5 acres. We raise corn, mangels, sunflowers and squash in abundance to supplement feed. This is another 3-5 acres. Then we need a few acres for gardens, orchards and berries. We also need a wood lot. We eat 90% of our diet from the farm. These number vary by region so this is very much based on 20 years of experience in our areas.
I LOVE THE CHIT CHAT!!!
You also don’t have to raise all the meat birds at once. Break it up into early summer and late fall harvest. Space saver.
That’s what we do 50 in spring and 50 late fall…summers get really hot around here.
Exactly. We hatch out our own birds multiple times a year, and cull 3-4 times a year to keep our flock at a stable number. We don't butcher during the summer, but during the cooler months, we butcher every couple months.
Another great video. I enjoy the chit chats. I am sorry about your piglets. My ex and I raised 2 pigs for meat about 36 years ago. I have to say that was the best pork we ever ate. The butcher tried to talk us into raising more and said he would purchase (not bad for 2 people who never raised farm animals before). My ex was military and we got reassigned, so we sold the place. It was only 3 acres but we had our garden, chickens, pigs, a bull which we had butchered, and a pregnant cow that we had to sell. 😢
Right now I have chickens. I have a couple garden areas plus my herbs that I grow in pots. Last year I really gotten into foraging. I am still learning.
Great discussion. I live on a typical lot in my town. I can provide at least one meal per day for two people from eggs, fish, beans, millet, potatoes and other vegetables, in our dry climate. I would encourage anyone to make the effort to produce some of your own food. Even if it’s just a line of pots on a windowsill, you can grow green onions, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and peppers for tacos.
The Keep It All Flowing this week was super helpful! While I dont have livestock yet (I do have small animals to take care of though); it got me super motivated to get the running of my homestead a little bit more organized.
I 100% agree with voting with your money. Support companies that are American made and values the things you value. Thank you for your videos. God bless y'all and keep growing.
Definitely takes more land if you're growing feed for your animals. We have 160 acres . Also were zone 3 alberta Canada so with a shorter growing season it takes more space for gardening even. Difficult to do succession planting. So really know where you live and adapt this information for you. Great video on giving people a starting point.
Love watching you guys! You always share so much information I either have to take notes or watch several times. I love it. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. 😊
Re: Fruit trees. For those who wish more fruit tree varieties, but are limited in space, and time to care fore them, consider obtaining scion-wood of desired varieties, and grafting it to your existing compatible trees, or espaliering trees, if only limited in growing space. There are factors to take into consideration, when taking the grafting option however, such as flowering and fruiting times, and rate of growth, of your existing tree, and your scion-wood. For example, I’ve planted a Gala apple. I’d dearly like a Granny Smith apple, and an Anna apple. All are low chill varieties. I have no room for more fruit trees, or time to care for more. I will be looking for Scion-wood to graft to my Gala apple tree soon. Alternatively, I could replace the Gala tree with a multi- graft tree.
I don't think people should focus on growing the majority of their calories, but growing the majority of the dollar amount of the food. Grow the most expensive stuff!
Thank you for explaining what a food forest is - not just trees. 😊
Love the chit-chat!! And such a helpful informative video! I love when you and your family stand for, and the incredible information you provide for us all. Thank you❤❤
I always make efforts to buy MADE IN USA and have done so my whole life.
Down here in south Texas, we have 3 growing season, late winter (grow brassicas and meat chickens), summer (grow heat loving drought plants) and late fall/early winter (brassicas and meat birds). All about playing the seasons game!
If you have space, having "extra" fruit or nut trees can be a source of mast. In years past, I knew some guys who hunted wild hogs in citrus orchards. The hogs came every year to eat fallen fruit.
Huw Richards has got a brand new book out about this. He did an experiment last year on how much veg he could grow in a small space in the U.K. The book title is something about Self-Sufficiency published by Dorling Kindersley. He has a YT channel all about it
Love that guy! He has a different perspective coming from the Old World which is super helpful
He has a perfect environment. Love him as well. We live in Texas on seven acres. We are a microclimate. Imagine 108° to 115° everyday during the summer with your low being 99° at night. Water is at a premium and you are watering your garden everyday just to cool the soil. Then add in animals. Just keeping the chickens cool. The goats trying to find shade. It’s a tough life. I sometimes wonder how anyone survived here 150 years ago. It’s a wonder place to live as far as still having freedom. It’s just tough farming. I grew up in Kentucky. We were military and this is just the place we landed. I’m happy to call myself a Texan.
Puget Sound area of the Pacific Northwest can follow Great Britain’s gardening
The book is called The Self-sufficiency Garden and it's available for pre-order in the US. I can't wait for my copy to arrive.
The chitchat is awesome
Just started, so I don't know what you will cover, but as a vegan I did this math once, you can grow a years worth of calories, rice, sweet potatoes, and beans, on a 1/4 acre of perfect land, perfect season, perfect harvest. That of course is not possible like that, but it is nice to have that as a starting point. More recently I have been looking into apple, hazel nuts and perennialized sweet potatoes (pushing it in my zone but eager to try) I am disabled and am thinking perennials might be a better fit with my abilities. looking forward to hearing your chat!
I have been following you for years now and love the chitchat segment!
Thank you for another great podcast.
Thank you for all your content!! Could you please do a video of what all is needed for someone getting started with chickens? What do we all need to know about them? Breeds, food, etc? Do we have to have a roaster? Thanks for any help
More on that here: homesteadingfamily.com/raising-backyard-egg-laying-chickens/
Thank you for sharing American Blossom. I’ve been looking to replace all of our old towels. Great timing!
Glad it was helpful!
This is really one of your most useful videos yet! I don’t have a homestead but this helps me in thinking of my needs vs wants
I have mobile pens. They are not real big because they are mobile but I don’t have too many per bird per pen. They live long, don’t fight because they are scratching fresh ground daily and people adore my eggs. Of course they have food and water hanging. Food inside the house, water hanging underneath with nipple waters because that doesn’t spill or get knocked out or dirty. Easy to teach them how to use it. Always done within minutes literally even as chicks. Once one gets it, the others watch.
If you know what you're doing, 700 SF per person is enough to significantly reduce your dependency on the grocery store veggies.
I understand American products costing more, but $89 for a single bath towel is simple too much for any ordinary person to afford. I could literally weave or knit my own bath towel from organic cotton for less, even including paying myself a working class wage. Their prices need to come down somewhere or people simply can’t afford it. It’s not a matter of how much they value it, it’s how much actual literal dollars they have in their bank account to pay for it. Most people don’t have $89 dollars to spare when they can barely afford food.
Exactly. That is nearly a week of groceries for us.
100% accurate.
Rabbits are also a great way to use a small amount of room to raise your own meat!
Oh wow! I got interested in gardening and homesteading after listening to Shaun and Beth Doughertys interview on NewPolity.
An old book I recommend is "10 Acres Enough. I personally recommend atleast 10, but it's only me & the veggie growing I do for weekly elder boxes.
We have a 1 acre pasture on our property and were thinking of having a milk cow and maybe 1 beef cow, but want them to have enough room. Thinking of getting mini cows, what do you know about that?
Thank you, Jesus, on buying American made products ! I love watching your videos when I can. You're doing what I have always dreamed of doing!
Thank you for answering some of those questions re size of the property. I also thought 5 acres would be sufficient for a small/verge size family. One day, I will have it.
I would be very glad just to cover my vegetable and meat requirements myself.
It’s just me and and my husband on 3/4 acres in the city
As reference for other scenarios - Being in an area of Idaho that gets an average of 9” of water mostly in the form of snowpack per year- 1 cow per 5-10 acres is suggested and will need to still supplement feed end of summer through the winter…
And did i understand correctly; 2 semi dwarf apple 🍎 trees per family?
Oh boy 😮 I have 10 semi dwarf apple trees ordered for me and my husband and maybe some apple butter gifts for some of our adult kids families (2 of the 10 are crabapple)
People think I’m a little crazy when I say I want to buy a quarter section, which is about 160 acres, but I don’t intend to farm or use it all… It’s just there as a resource to gather wood and building materials from, but as you say, you can do it with 5 acres and ideally that much would be already cleared on that land but if I needed to it could carved out. The forested area would be ideal for pigs, goats lambs, etc. as long as it could be fenced in and they could keep it cleared to a point.
if you over plant fruit trees where you cant use all the fruits you could supplement the feed for pigs with the excess. pigs will eat anything.
Good information. I'm always reading about this.
I want to grow multiple years worth because of the attack on the food supply.
Do you guys happen to know the numbers on a mini milk cow? I was planning to get a mini jersey. Our new home has 10 acres over 90% pasture, but we will have to come in and learn about soil quality and put up fencing etc on the new property and I would like to get a cow sometime in the first year. How much hay do you have to buy in for a standard cow for 6 months during the non grazing season? How big are the sections for rotational grazing during the growing season and how often do you move them? If we wanted to harvest our own winter hay, how much land would we need for that?
Thanks for any answers you can give on these questions. 😊
As for buying cloth and clothes, part of the problem is also that everyone wants fast fashion, and fast fashion creates a lot of trash, because they don’t last very long. I buy expensive clothes, but some stables are 20 years old and I still wear them. Over time we actually spend less on clothes by buying good local quality. I buy most of what i don’t sew myself on Etsy.
As for the amount of land. We live on 1/2 acres which includes our house. Right now we do buy meat and some stables like rice because we don’t produce enough calories for 5 people (all adults), but we are slowly getting there. We produced 1/2 million calories last year and we will get past 1 million this year. Once all perennials are producing we should reach our goal of 5 million calories. We raise rabbits and poultry, since we don’t have room for larger animals. We produce all of our eggs, now that you showed me how to water glass eggs.
I will say though, that we are down south, so we grow food on year round. This means that we can grow a lot more food on a smaller area. As for fruit trees, I have picked trees that ripen at different times of the year, so we have fresh fruit all year round. Right now we are eating oranges, mandarins, passion fruit and Natal plums. We have 2 orange trees that ripens 3 months apart, we grow peaches, plums, apples and more. this also helps with food preservation since I don’t get all of the fruit in at the same time.
Hazel nuts produce pretty quickly.
Really depends on WHAT you’re wanting to raise a grow to feed your family. A garden- yes, you can grow a lot on a little acreage. But to raise different types of meat, and have them graze to save on feed costs etc, more acreage is necessary.
Love the chit chat.
Loved this conversation. I always learn so much from you. ❤🙏Val C
Yup you had Covid
It affected me the same way we like to say “ it kicks your butt” keeps you in bed when you do get to get up and go you have foggy memories hard to recall and the Flemish is thick and seems to last a long time longer than we would like.
The strains are weaker now than when we first started.
I only got it once the second time they dropped the masks requirement in out hospitals that’s when I got it .
We lived through it and it made us stronger:-)
Thank you for you honesty glad your better.
Please check into Large Black Heritage pigs. They are great bacon/lard pigs; wonderful temperaments and Excellent Mothers!!
We started last year with mulefoots and they are awesome so far!
If you watch Clarkson Farm’s, Jeremy Clarkson came up with a brilliant idea for keeping the sow from laying on her piglets. Maybe check it out.
We are trying to have piglets, it didn't work last year so we are trying again this year. It has been snowing here all day today.
My potatoes first sprout was on 3/25. A little early i know but it was a damaged potato we were gonna trash so i gave it a shot.
Great video!
Timely subject! Great analytics, hate to think AI.
Love you guys!
The BEST and most practical survival gardening book is Grow or Die by David the Good. Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon has some good stuff, but he relies on so many outside inputs. It’s not affordable or true survival gardening.
This was a great video very informative.
Glad it was helpful!
I need recommendation for kitchen towels!
Very good video that brakes things down is very important. I would go more land and not farm it or lease it out is a good option if needed unless you make a side business out of it is not bad
What kind of nut trees are you growing? We have considered starting some but in zone 5 (Bitterroot Valley) there don’t seem to be any we would want to put the effort into.
Herbal is much better than regular antibiotics. My body rejects most meds. My doctor says I am metabolically challenged. The garlic honey method is wonderful for colds and flus
Thank you so much for the video - very helpful!! Question : If I Freeze -dry raw milk have I killed off the good pro-biotics? Is Freezing the only way to maintain them? Thanks!!
Oh my. The towels are $90 each. No matter how much I'd love to support them, there is no possible way I could afford them.
It would have been helpful if you elaborated on how the piglets died, or why. That would have been a good lesson for everyone to understand why, and perhaps learn from it. I am very curious, what happened?
A better top is how much TIME do you need to grow food for a year. Time = Money one way or the other.
WoW! We are a family of 2 adults, 2 teens, and 4 kids under 7, so i guess with these number we could make it with my garden of 1400 sqare feet?
Herbal antibiotics = playing Chess
Pharmacy antibiotics = fliping a coin
Covid is no fun, hope you are feeling better now
I had influenza B a month ago and it was the sickest iv been in 15 years. Really bad brain fog as well thought it mush me cov but I was wrong .
It’s been a tough flu season this year. My 5 y/o was sick a few weeks ago and she was sick for almost two weeks, not eating and really high fevers. We have been trading sickness in the house for a month a half now. 😩
Did you all take the covid vax?
@@Mrsmetamorphosis2012 Nope, we never will. And no more vaccines of any kind for us.
@@Mrsmetamorphosis2012 I don’t know if my comment got deleted. But no we have not taken the v@x. Unfortunately my kids are in daycare and school so they do bring a lot of stuff home.
Depending on your rainfall. I live in Arizona, no more explanation necessary. 😂
We need more chickens 🤣🙌🏾🙌🏾. We are currently family of 8, and we only have 4 chickens.
$15 towels are cheap??? I have never paid that much for a towel!!!!
It’s all about all American made..
Ymmv. In my area, towels run @$5-7 at thrift stores.
I can't pay that for a towel
🤦♀️
The same people buying cheap Walmart towels and then complaining there are no American jobs ....
Is the American Blossom organic? Cotton defoliating poison is terrible.
There is an absolutely insane amount of ads in this video. It's so distracting from a great talk.
Depends on how many people you're feeding
No grain? What about chicken feed?
Baby pigs are a challenge in cold weather.need to Breed so they will be born when warm.
Try colloidal silver
Check mineral deficiency.
Really? 100 square feet is only 10 feet x 10 feet per person. That don't seem realistic to me.
It sounds about right to me. I mostly do raised bed gardening. The composted chicken poop and pine shavings from the coop makes a great soil amendment. (The chickens eat a lot of garden and kitchen waste, so that helps to reduce feed costs.) So I can plant things closer together. Plants still need air flow and light, but they don’t need as much space as the seed packets recommend if the soil is very rich. I live in a high desert, and the native soil is very poor. To be honest, I struggled with growing a traditional garden in the ground for years before switching to raised bed gardening. Mixing sand with huge amounts of compost and other organic matter (leaves, grass clippings, etc.) gave me good results. I am a crippled old lady, so I have to hire a man to do the heavy lifting. Once that was done, it has been easy to maintain, and the yields are much better.
Using conventional row gardening in KY, I couldn't raise enough green beans for one person per year in a 10'x10' area. I would starve to death on that plot. I really think its their terminology that's the problem. 100x100 seems reasonable to me for one person per YEAR!! That's 10,000 square feet, or roughly 1/4 acre
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Hey homestead family. The government is going after farms , and since your on a farm, you'd better be with eyed wide opened!
I used to love listening to your videos. It seems like you have more commercial time than your time speaking now. It is very frustrating and i have stopped actively looking for your videos because of the high volume of commercials. Its sad to see yet another good resource being taken over with mainstream advertising.
Knock on wood,I never had Covid or my Husband. We are Just careful.
Don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but have you seen a lot of chemtrails in your area
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Im in the CoeurdAlene area and yes!!!😮
Carolyn: A huge sign of Nutrient Deficiency
oh - another vid that's seriously mislabeled as clickbait but really only addresses tomatoes and zucchini
yawn
You would get more people here if you invited them to share a beer instead of coffee.
LOL. This chat came online where I live at approximately 5 am. Coffee time for me. 😊
Serious discussion requires Serious libations
@@jb8915 I'm guessing that you haven't tried Devil Mountain's Black Label... it's a most serious coffee! 💥