How much food do you need ?

[tsdave]

I have read a couple topics on how much garden space is required to provide adequate nutrition for a person. But what im wondering, if I have a source of meat, be it squirrel, rabbit, chicken, goat or beef, and can provide a half pound of meat per day, how does that affect the garden needs ?

So if i have a half pound of meat a day, how much and what kind of vegetables do i need to supplement that ? I can guess, but i would like some other peoples guesses or esitmates also. I will count eggs as meat.


The hard part would probably be either canning the goods or selecting ones that are storable dry.

Anyone want to take a crack at a detailed evaluation ?

[Freeholder]

I have goats, chickens, ducks (laying), and geese, and plan to add meat rabbits and honey bees. The goats provide all the milk we can use, most of the year, and the birds provide all the eggs we can use, again most of the year. Between all of them, they should be able to provide pretty much all the meat we need. The garden will only need to provide potatoes, flour corn, maybe some oats if we can eat them (my daughter and I have celiac disease, and oats are iffy), and our fruits and veggies. However, it also needs to be able to supply as much of the animal feed as possible. So what you take out, in terms of food for yourselves that won't be needed when you have a meat supply, will probably have to be put back in to produce food for the animals.

Kathleen

[electronrider]

This question isnt near as simple as it sounds. You need to come up with a bunch of guesstimates, that apparently nobody has. Things such as:

Food concumption per person, food consuption per animal, yield per unit of land of said vagetables and fruits, production of animals for food, consumption of breeder stock, etc etc etc. I would love to find a good article ont his, as I too am having a hard time trying to crunch out all those numbers.

[susieM]

Instead of supplementing the vegetables, turn it around, and supplement the meat. More vegetables are important for your body's health, than more meat. And you'll have a better variety or recipes for meat, that way, too.

[claytonpiano]

We try to keep a garden going year round that is 80 by 70. That feeds the two of us and our birds sometimes. We plan to add two more chicken areas full of chicken forage seed that we bought from Peaceful Valley and clover. During this past winter we had to buy feed. We plan to buy corn locally from someone who doesn't coat it in poison and supplement with that. I'm hoping the money that I make from egg sales will purchase the corn. When you have animals you are trying to feed, it just takes LOTS more garden space. The rabbits are another story. I've been buying pellets for them because we only have a few that we keep for the fertilizer. I sell some occasionally.

[tsdave]

Heres why im asking about supplementing meat. Meat has alot more calories than vegetables. Meat can be hunted, fished, or farmed, meaning that I dont necessairly have to raise it, although I would plan to raise either chickens or rabbits. I prefer chicken but with the flu and all ....

Chickens can forage most of the year for bugs and bits, thus they can mostly feed themselves. Rabbits can eat mostly hay and grass, but i have less experience with them.

There are all sorts of lakes and streams, and if worse came to worse, the mighty mississippi is also nearby.

So i am thinking meat would actually be easier to raise or hunt or fish, and would be more reliable since it is less weather dependant, and cant be decimated over night by storms, deer, or vermin.

My guestimate would be:

1/10 acre wheat
1/10 acre corn
1/10 acre potatos
100 onions
10 peppers
40 ft greenbeans
and a variety of others like cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, okra etc

That should leave room for a less than perfect harvest, or a few guests from time to time etc. A sample meal:

Breakfast : 1Egg , slice bread or biscuit and hash browns
Lunch: Bacon sandwich or fish sandwich or chicken sandwich or jerky etc
Supper: Soup with meat or meat and potatos or Perhaps BBQ chicken with french fries.

The best think about meat is if you were fishing, hunting you could eat good while you could, and if you couldnt catch anything then you could eat a chicken, or just scrap by on vegetables a day or two.

[susieM]

There is a group that suspects that this birdflu might be found in river fish, too.

[Freeholder]

I think you are right about meat being easier to raise, etc. Normally, even in severe weather conditions, at least some grass will be able to grow, no matter what else doesn't make it. We can't eat grass, but animals can.

Sorry I didn't give your post a better answer last night, but it was late and I was too tired to think straight.

What you need to do is find some information (for your area, preferably) on estimated yields of different veggies, fruits, etc. Then you need to sit down and figure out what your family likes to eat, and make some estimates of how much of each item you'd eat in a week, and in a year. Then you can combine the information and figure out how much of everything you need to plant -- and increase it, so you have extra in case of any losses to weather, insects, varmints, etc.

But, as I said last night, include some animal feed in your garden. Sunflower seeds, pea vines, corn stalks all count, but depending on what you are raising you may want some alfalfa, oats, and so on.

Kathleen

[Freeholder]

Originally Posted by susieM

There is a group that suspects that this birdflu might be found in river fish, too.

I hadn't heard that -- do you have more information?

Kathleen

[susieM]

Originally Posted by BlueJuniperFarm

I hadn't heard that -- do you have more information?

Kathleen

Check the CurEvents board. It seems to be a hotly-debated subject.

[rwzzz]

Some thoughts:

From this site: http://freemanstable.blogspot.com/20...e_archive.html
(January 11 post)
-An active person will need at least 1600 calories a day
-Dried beans and dried corn both have a calorie content of about 100 calories per ounce
-allow half a pound of beans and half a pound of corn per person per day

Average Garden yeilds from somewhere (can't remember where)
-Beans, bush One 10-foot row yields 8 pounds; yellow varieties tend to yield less.
-Corn Approximately 30-36 ears per 10-foot row
-Potatoes Five pounds of seed potatoes yield 125 pounds of potatoes.
-Cabbage One to three pounds per plant
-Tomatoes Yields vary tremendously, but on average, 6-8 pounds per plant
-Peas, shell One 10-foot row yields 10 pounds.
-Onions One pound of sets produces 30-40 pounds of onions.

Back to the beans & corn, figure 200lbs of each for each person.
corn yeild 150 bushels acre ( 56lbs bushel), or 8,400 lbs acre. So you would need .024 acre or 1,046 sq feet for corn.
Beans need 160 row feet.

I would also plant the potatoes, and cabbage which store easily. The tomatoes would need to be canned. This is all theory as if I had to live off my garden I'd starve.
take care
BobZ

[mpillow]

I'd add tomatoes to your list....we put up about 100Q for spaghetti and chili made with ground deer burger...Most any meat can be masked in chili or spaghetti and tough meat is tenderized by the tomato acid.

Goats are quite versatile....with two you can easily have milk and meat (calf or pig on extra milk). Broilers are another meat source for us but for how long I can only guess Dual purpose chickens well-hidden?

Beans, broccoli, carrots and (potatoes/purchased cheap maine) are other things that we grow alot of....
Peas and lima beans are also quite nutritious...dry or frzn. Apples are plentiful as well as berries (on paper company land and abandoned farms)

Fish has mercury...among other nasties these days....

Not sure there is any "easy" solution due to regulation, pollutants and strange weather patterns
It costs $33 to shoot a wild turkey in Maine

[Freeholder]

Originally Posted by mpillow

Goats are quite versatile....with two you can easily have milk and meat (calf or pig on extra milk).

It costs $33 to shoot a wild turkey in Maine

Goats ARE quite versatile -- dual purpose goats can actually produce quite a bit of meat, while still supplying enough milk for drinking, making cheese, and so on. A part-meat breed doe (such as a Kinder, or a part Boer doe out of good dairy stock), will have fast-growing kids and can have quite a few of them. Kinders are particularly known for practically having litters -- one of my does had quads this year, which is quite common in that breed.

Goats are versatile in another way. Large-breed goats make good pack animals (not Nubians, though, as most people who've tried using them for pack goats have found that they like to lay down on the job), able to carry up to a third of their adult weight all day long once they've been conditioned for it. When you have a goat who weighs two hundred and fifty pounds or more, they can make quite a contribution to the trip. And, except for some mineral, wethers don't need feed carried for them. (If you took a milking doe along, you'd want to carry some grain for her.) There are quite a few advantages to using goats for pack animals, but one is that your presence in a group of goats is less alarming to game animals than the presence of a human alone, and it's possible to get closer before shooting. Some packers think this is an unfair advantage, but if I go out hunting, it's for meat, not sport, and I don't consider the goats an unfair advantage, as long as you only take what you are legally allowed.

As for the turkeys, it probably costs almost that much to raise your own -- but homegrown turkeys are a lot bigger than wild ones!

Kathleen

[tsdave]

I definitly meant to include tomatoes, probably 10 plants.
Also i meant my list as per person.I have the most experience with chickens, thats why i perfer them (and tasty). But i do raise other animals.

GARDEN size 16x32
9 tomato plants
3 bell pepper plants
1 hot pepper plant
3 16 foot rows of sweet corn
3 16 foot rows of onions (red,yellow,white)
1 16 foot row of green beans
2 16 foot rows of potatos (only 8 plants per row)
and have roughtly 2 rows left to plant in something else(havent decided).

LIVESTOCK:
2 bred sows
1 steer
20 hens

[tsdave]

Maybe ill try to figure out the calories tonight.

[Freeholder]

Don't forget you need more than just calories! Vitamins and minerals are at least as important as sheer numbers of calories -- though if you make meat a substantial portion of your diet, you should be all right nutritionally.

Kathleen

[mpillow]

From 36 tomato plants (Brandywine) we put up 119Q last Fall. Keep in mind this is Maine but our season was long ( very late frost Oct instead of Spt.) We also eat tomatoes breakfast (on toast) lunch (sandwich) and dinner when ripe

I'm planting spaghetti squash as well as buttercup and pie pumpkins....my kids love squash what we dont eat the goats will and the seeds can be roasted for a good protein snack....the 3 sisters grow well together...corn, beans and squash!

My kids also like pickled beets...when the jar is empty I add hard boiled eggs to juice and set in fridge for 2 weeks....YUMMY!

Canned tomatoes will last a long time 3-5 yrs done properly...so will pickles etc. we are finding out that we need to almost double what we need now that 2 of 3 kids are pre-teen The boy eats more than Daddy!

You can never grow too much!!!! You never know what the economy or the weather will bring!

[tsdave]

Nutritional value is a bit beyond my knowlege and patience ;-)
I would guess that with a combination of meat, and several vegetables,
It should be a sufficient diet, probably much better than the average american diet :-)

Its supposed to be rainy here , my ill pull out the calculator and punch in some numbers.

Last time i broke out my calculator here i calculated :

"Acres of Land in the United States:
2,263,228,304.64 total acres 7.54 acres per person
430,013,377.76 arable acres 1.43 acres per person
565,807,076.00 pasture acres 1.88 acres per person
678,968,491.20 wooded acres 2.26 acres per person
588,439,359.04 other acres 1.96 acres per person

Now if you consider land divided per 'family farm' opposed per person.
Let presume a family will have 2 adults, 3 children, and 1 elderly relative. For a total of 6.

Then each family farm would have:
45.24 acres total
8.58 acres of plowable land
11.28 acres of pasture
13.56 acres of woods/forest
11.76 acres of presumabley sand/rock/misc."

[mpillow]

The easiest way to ensure you are getting vitamins/minerals is a muti-vit after a meal (your body will absorb more after you eat). 2-3 times a week...not everyday if you are having some veggies w/ meat.

[Freeholder]

Originally Posted by tsdave

Now if you consider land divided per 'family farm' opposed per person.
Let presume a family will have 2 adults, 3 children, and 1 elderly relative. For a total of 6.

Then each family farm would have:
45.24 acres total
8.58 acres of plowable land
11.28 acres of pasture
13.56 acres of woods/forest
11.76 acres of presumabley sand/rock/misc."

That sounds like a reasonable amount. What about some surface water in your calculation? A pond, or stream, or something? Perhaps each family farm could have an acre or two of pond! Too bad it can't actually be divided up this way, LOL!

Kathleen