Living Off the Land? Poll
 

To what degree are you and your family self supportive by what you produce from your land, both in terms of your self employment and that you supply for your needs.

Living Off the Land?

100% of my income comes from my farm. I has for 18 years. No off farm work for me. Getting a job off farm would drastically lower my income.

I try to grow as many vegetables to last through much of the winter as I can. Buy a side of beef every once in a while and raise a pig or two once in a while if I find some very, very, cheap to buy. I usually put at least 2 deer in the freezer and try to load up on fish when they are spawning in the spring. Gather some wild edibles such as a variety of mushrooms and berries, also wild onions and a few nuts. Try to cut my own wood or buy it in the summer time at auctions when it sells real cheap.

Other then that I or we have to work some to pay for the utilities, vehicles, and so my wife can kind of keep up with the jones's.

I really think that if I lived by myself, I could live totally off the land. I wouldn't have cell phones, home phone, freezer, automatic dishwasher, very little electricity, very few appliances. Probably wouldn't even have this Pecuter I'm typing on, as this is one of those wife necessities.

I would do more but I am impatient and busy and ignorant and I am already overloaded.
I get cranky if I have too much to do. But every year I do do more.
I will be doing a lot of earth moving this summer, though.

i think my 50% vote is really only 25%...but i am optimistic for a better year.

We've only been here three years so it grows some more every year. Hubby currently works away from the farm, but retires in a year. We raise produce and the garden gets larger each year. We also harvest some stuff that grows wild on our property (like elderberries and kudzu) and we had a deer processed for meat this year. We also have chickens and a duck for eggs.

I didn't vote, because none of the choices fit us.

I voted half and half but in truth we can only grow a supliment crop on our little lot. We're not country but a km down the road there is a large corn farm <shrug>.

Living in the 'burbs but trying to grow everything I can on my little lot. Hunt and fish for meat. Didn't vote 'cause none of them fit me.

galump

In another year or 2, I hope to be recategorized to about half and half and later to almost fully sustained from the properrty here.

I voted for what our future plans are... heh. Voted 50/50 though it won't really be a proportion like that. It might even end up being mostly living off the land.

We'll be having a good sized garden and growing most, if not all, of our produce. We will raise rabbits for meat and furs. We will have chickens for eggs. We will have a hog, possibly a steer. Don't plan on having our own milking cow but there's neighbors in the area of the land that we could trade milk for other things, I imagine. Our land also has deer, grouse and wild turkeys galore.

Dh will probably work off-farm and me on-farm. But if things go well, we will have our own company that supports the farm/us completely. That might mean small-scale farming, I have a few ideas of things I want to see about, and it might also mean a completely different company. But I've always been an entrepreneur and I think it would be the best way to go about it. I'm going to be field testing a new product this year and if it sells like I think it will, then we will be doing that for a living.

ANd if that works out, then mostly we'll be able to live off the land. I've also thought about planting walnut trees for lumber, depending on if my dad decides to get a sawmill or not. That's a long-term cash solution. Other high dollar cash crops.

Eventaully I hope to be able to disconnect from the grid and have a fully powdered homestead. We'll see lol

Like some others, we're not quite at 50%, but working on it. Have turkeys and chicken for meat and eggs, hope to add ducks this year, plus we have a pond full of fish. We raise about 50-60% of our veggies and have a large and growing orchard. Grew flour corn last year, so have started to rely on our own grain as well. Plus lots and lots of dry beans, which are easy and cheap to grow if you don't mind shelling! Hoping to add chestnut trees this year and probably grapes too. Bit by bit...

I work mostly on farm, part time in the winter off farm. Market garden and csa in the summer. Working towards all year. We hunt & fish. Hubby works 6 months off farm. We can and freeze most of what we eat. Raise chickens for meat and eggs. Buy beef and milk locally. Learning to make cheese, kefir, butter. Heat with wood, from our land. As stated earlier bit by bit, little by little. Lisa

I had those future plans over 20 yrs. ago. I did achieve living completely off of my land in the fact that I had my business in a building on my land and everything paid for so all food and all the money was made right here on my land. Unfortunately it was a living in the moment deal with no future and too many liabilities. That's when I closed the business and went to work for a company doing something easier on my body and giving me much more cash flow, benefits, and savings.
I still live in the country, we grow a large garden, we keep some animals and my shop is still there with all of my equipment. I have no illusion of living 100% off my land until I can retire and then I will have income to support the lifestyle.

I say 50-50, my chickens are laying, I have meat birds getting bigger and five pigs to do in the spring, have our gardens laid out, and getting goats for cheese and milk in the spring, soooo, after only 6 months on the homestead, by spring/summer it should be 50-50.

I checked the 50/50. DH works full time and I stay home and raise our food and our children. We grow about 75% of our fruits and veggies and 100% of our meat (Beef, Pork, Chicken, Turkey, Rabbit). We also grow alot to supplement feeding the meat while it's on the hoof. We forage for mushrooms and things like wild strawberry leaves for tea. We catch fish (panfish, trout and salmon) or trade for it. We are also big hunters here, the venison in the freezer was my daughters first deer. This years plan is to sell some of the extra produce we grow and we are going to try our hand at raising some trout, just enough for our family. I'll probably never acheive 100% on our produce because of the wheat aspect but we are growing our own flour corn this year. All in all I am content at my level of self sufficiency, although I do want to get back into milking some goats or a cow. We currently have a beef cow that we keep bred to provide our beef but I told my DH just the other night that with the price of corn going up I would rather feed a cow that I can milk so we may sell the angus and pick up a dairy cow.
Tami ~ Heritage Corner Poultry

I'm about midway between options 2 and 3. I'll likely always have to work in town, but with every passing year we produce more of our own food. Just got the gate installed on the garden fence this morning! Get your climbing gear out, rabbits!

.....Alan.

Digging a grave for that DH of yours???


;)

Same here, I checked 50/50 but it is less then that, we are working towards that though.

I voted 50/50 but it's really less than that.

We both work full time jobs off the farm.
We raise as much of our own veggies as we can and we raise chickens and eggs.

BUT we buy feed, wheat, oats, dairy products, sugar, coffee... we even buy canned goods to supplement our home grown produce.

We've only been here 1.5 years and each season it improves just a bit. We have a long way to go though!

Like a lot of folks I voted 50/50 but we are probably a bit more than that.
I only work on the farm working the boarding stable, gardens and whatever else needs doing around here, my DH works on the farm but an outside job as well.

As far as food goes, all our fruits and veges are grown, picked, and canned or frozen here. The only exception to that is if we can get a really good deal on something we do not grow and then I can or freeze that too.

We raise our own poultry, turkeys, ducks, pork. We have goats for dairy products, soap, and meat. I would love to raise a beef cow but DH does not want to deal with it(???) We also eat our own eggs, make our own soap, and our own cleaners etc.

We buy flours, sugar, and baking or cooking products from a mennonite bulk store not far from us. All in all I would say we are doing better than I expected us to do. But, of course I would like to do more.

It's sort of hard to put a number on, so I voted that we just live out in the country. In the summer, we probably produce about 60% of our food, but in the winter we purchase a lot more and about the only thing off our land is what I froze and our eggs. We raise our own chickens for meat and eggs, and eat more venison than beef or pork, so we're probably somewhere between the 50% and living out in the country. Then there is all the non food stuff that we purchase also.
Dawn