Food Self-Sufficiency

I raise 50% of all my veg in an in-town garden. I freeze and can for the seasons they don't grow, but here in LA, can usually grow something. I go to a u-pick for berries. ldc

I am by myself and last summer I was working 72 hrs. a week. Had two days off in four months. I only put out radishes, green onions, tomatoes and lettuce. I bought a lot of stuff at the farmers market. There are several homesteaders there and I guess I helped them out.

__________________
Keep your SP101 handy!

Would love a public post on that, I'm interested too!

Hotzcatz,yes you can make your own yeast,but its not as reliable. The easyest and most reliable way to be self suficiant with making bread is once you start making bread is to take a walnut size piece of the dough put it in a jar with a little warm water and a small amount of sugar and let it grow until you make bread again. Then you use that start to start a new bach of dough and keep doing it over and over again. It's sumilar to starting sourdough,but you don't use potaoes or milk as in most sourdough reciepes.

__________________
Now I wake me up to live,I'll give life all I have to give. If today I face a test,I'll cope and pray and do my best. With each breath and step I take,Be with me LORD For heaven's sake. Amen

If you raise your own milk,meat and eggs with inputs you buy does it really help. Feed is sometimes more expensive than people food. If you buy feed why would you think it bad to buy flower?

Home beer brewers do something similar if they want to raise their own yeast rather than buy more everyone time they brew.

Thats the key! In years gone by it was the norm to eat a diet dictated by what you had.

With a bit of luck you could barter for some more.

And then use that tiny bit of money(some folks didnt see money for years) to buy a few luxury items like salt .yeast or spices.

Its our craving for varity that complicates todays homesteading.

I grow hay, but not grain, so I could say I'm self sufficient in cattle but not poultry. If you have to haul feed home for an animal you aren't self sufficient. Same if you buy weaner pigs to grow out. If you can't reproduce them I don't see anyone as being self sufficient.

Like Hotzcatz says, I think a lot of us could be self sufficient if we had to be, we just aren't now because we don't have to be.

Jennifer

__________________
-Northern NYS

I think it would all depend on why you're raising your own food. Seem to be many reasons people do it; cost, environmental impact, quality, enjoyment, etc.

I really don't have any notion of raising all my own food. I like the idea, but in reality, we would be going back to the diet of the early 1700's - which, even then they bought flour and coffee. I think it is just a provident to live in an area where most of what I need can be grown, hoping that I could barter or trade for what I couldn't produce if I didn't have any money. And those things that don't grow near where I live I try to keep 1-2 years worth on hand. I admit that there is some waste with this method - baking powder and yeast being two things I can think of right off hand.

Our goal is simply to grow whatever we can for ourselves. It most likely will never be 'everything'.

A huge percentage of the population is on the government dole one way or another. This factor makes it really difficult to consider food self-sufficiency.

For instance I live in an area where the main industries are timber cutting and coal mining. These industries are waning at this time. Many become qualified for food stamps and have no intention or desire of producing food. Then there are other programs that reward pregnancy, and so on. Now there seem to be lots of food banks too. All this will distort the actual facts.

So it seems to me that 50% or so of the population has 80% or more of their food needs met be the government. This would also include the programs that provide other funds that get misused by the recipients, to provide pizza, beer, smokes and fast food.

So we are really discussing the minority here. People would would rather produce food than get it for free. What a weird bunch we are.

My main reasons for producing food for myself are quality, freshness, and a lighter impact on the environment. These things mean something to me. All that being said, I may be able to produce 50% or more of the food that I need.

We have become accustomed to eating things that are imported and cannot be produced where we live. This type of consumption is habit, and some habits are very difficult to break. So we end up thinking along the lines of what are my needs, as opposed to what are my wants?

It is very difficult to process the information, but if we are working at self-sufficiency we will have some kind of chance of survival if the flow of commercially processed food slows down or stops, any time soon. It very well might do just that.

We're capable of producing 100% of our basics foods, the things we need, including all our vegetables, fruits and meats. Some years we've come close to doing that. This is important to me to be able to do so. We eat fairly seasonally on a lot of things and can a lot. But that is capability, not what we typically do in a year.

We do buy things at the store that we could produce because it is available and I'm focusing on other things. An example of that is milk - we drink a lot of milk, about a gallon a day. We could get buy without it or we could get a cow or goats for it, or milk our pigs as my daughter suggests, but it is easier to buy it from the store so that is how we do it right now. Butter and cheese are other thing in that category.

We also buy things we don't really need but do do greatly enjoy, like chocolate for baking, eating and hot cocoa. Its not something we can readily produce and definitely a luxury item. I love chocolate and would miss it but I don't have to have it.

__________________
SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

One Thanksgiving our whole feast was homegrown...down to producing the hog that gave the lard to make the pie crust from our homegrown wheat for crust and pumpkin/honey for the filling....but still we bought the ginger and cinamon. There is no getting around some things...I'm not gonna give up my coffee until I have to . I grow lots of herbs but I still buy plenty of spices for baking. I could use lard for everything but I like olive oil. I buy yeast for my bread instead of depending on sourdough.

Even so, bet we produce or buy locally 80-85% of our needs and are wants could be eliminated if necessary. Have had years when we lived on just what we could produce and,personally, I opt for having choices. Knowledge is probably more important that the percent of food you personally grow. We raised every kind of farm animal, tried most veggies, grown field crops, still have honey bees and any activity could easily be ramped up. Some things are just plain too expensive. Yes,we'd like a dairy cow...have the acreage but really, only DH drinks milk and we really can't use up the production of a cow or even a goat with the kids all grown. So we concentate our efforts in other areas like the bees and the garden and barter for milk. DEE

When you decide to be a pioneer on pig milking, take a video of it for the rest of us to see...I know there are lots of people on here who would love to see that

__________________
Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

Thought I would chime in on this discussion from my side of the fence -
on average each day we are able to provide about 25% of our needs by a combination of efforts; bartering, gardening, foraging, and gleaning.

Last canning season I spent a total of $119.93 to produce 221 mason jars of food. That total includes vegtable seeds, plants, & fruit trees bought as well as spices, sugar, vinegar, and produce bought @ farmer's markets.
Canning lids - $20.16.
Cost of jars not included as the cost was absorbed over the past 5 years also a large number were gifted to me. Same for equipment.
Didn't account for water.
Fuel was free as I canned on a wood burner out on my patio with free firewood.
Cost of labor wasn't factored into it simply because who would pay a nurse to can a quart of tomatoes?
Retail value worked out to be just over a buck a jar. More if I had priced out the jars as organic (2/3 canned was organic).
Needless to say my goal is to double the amount of canned produce along with what we dehydrate, freeze, and cold store.
The few rabbit fryers that we produced were bought & paid for in the cost of feed. So far I have only been able to put up a small amount of bun feed a.k.a. snacks such as gleaned carrots dehydrated.
Bartering brought us over 100 lbs. of locally grown wheat berries, a 10 pound onion sack of English walnuts, bushel of pears, 5 large boxes of dry milk, and most recently organic citrus. Also accounted for some of the produce that was canned.

For me personally I feel that what limits me is not the lack of land but the lack of time/effort. Stocking a pantry by alternative homesteading methods is a 24/7/365 task.

~~ pelenaka ~~
http://thirtyfivebyninety.blogspot.c...ty-factor.html

I planted 300 tomato plans two years ago and man they grow a lot better down here than they do in the northeast. I canned so many tomatos that I am quite happy to just go to the store and buy sauce now. I know I can grow and can them if I need to....but until the store stops selling tomato sauce, I will get it there at 1.50 a jar.

__________________
Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

in my area, buying 5+/- acres was about $10,000 per acre (haven't checked in the last year or so). The folks at the farmers market say that getting ag exemption requires animals, and just veggies won't work. With property taxes, and medical insurance or emergency medical care, and transportation, the notion that food self-sufficiency makes you self-sufficient overall is a mirage. A 50k mortgage hanging over my head doesn't contribute much to my self-sufficiency.$50k of capital can feed me for quite some time. In other areas where the land prices and taxes are lower, you'd of course get a different answer. And things change over time too, and the knowledge and capability can be very worthwhile in scarcity situations.

I'd guess for most people the highest payback activities are a large garden for veggies and spices, and chickens if you're zoned for it. Larger animal (goats, cows) work if you eat lots of meat, and love the life so much that you don't count your labor hours as labor but as leisure.

--sgl

Next years goal. (*Many of these I do already)

Raise and can as much garden vegetables as possible.*
Pick as many wild berries and can.
Forage for nuts and shrooms while game hunting.
Catch as many fish as I can.*
Try to catch a deer or two along with lots of small game.*
Buy a half beef and a pig with tax refund.*

__________________
r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

I do understand.

The picture that you paint is very grim.

May I suggest if bare land is $10k/acre, that is not rural land. From what I have seen, when population density is below 10 people per square mile than land prices drop a great deal.

I bought riverfront forest for $900/acre.

My SIL bought forest land for $300/acre across the road from me.

Our taxes run about $1.05 / acre.

100 acres would cost you around $30,000 plus $200 for the lawyer to transfer the deed and insurance. $105 / year property taxes and the picture is totally different.

We do get 'winter', but then again we have forest, so laying up 3 cords of wood each year is not a terribly big chore.



"if you're zoned for it."

I see.

Again not an issue in a rural area.

I read an old book written by someone who was trying to be self-sufficient. He said t would take 8 hours a day to eat the way most modern people eat.

He ALSO said that it would be a lot less if people cooperated. For instance, if you raise a pig you need shelter for the pig, possibly a pen, etc. And, that must be made by you.

But, if you had TWO pigs, you would still only need one shelter and one pen. So, you COULD raise two pigs instead, and swap pork for your neighbors butter and cheese. That means you do not have to put in the hours to make your own cheese. Etc.