Not worth the effort / cost?

A lot depends on how you factor things. Time is money, how much is your time worth?

A lot of gardening is pleasure. Hard to put a dollar figure on that. Enjoying growing your own tomatoes, that's nice and worth a bit of money to many folk.

Quality is also a variable that is hard to financially quantify. I think my fresh eggs taste better than the store bought eggs. Enough to justify the monthly cost of feed? Yes. Enough to justify the cost of a coop? Mmmm, I rationalize it.

No offense taken. It's all opinion. I just don't do things in a cost effective way. We have moved 4 times since I started trying to be more self-reliant. Building fences, raised beds, buildings....it's expensive.

Berries are essential. NOTHING is easier to grow than raspberries.

I love peas. But...for the space they require and the time involved, it isn't worth it to me. I grow a few...but rely on the Farmer's Market to provide my yearly needs. I do all this animal/gardening stuff by myself so I have to really watch my time/effort ratios. Last year, the tomatoes ripened faster than I could can them.

I don't like spaghetti - or the sauce, unless used on pizza. So SS isn't an issue for me. Yuck! I make tomato sauce and will spice it up for spaghetti. Then I can use it for several things. But I don't make as much as we use. Again- time to cook it down. I MIGHT get a 2nd crock pot this year to help things along. I am storing stuff for 20 people so the number of jars can be staggering.

And yes.....what is worth it to me, might not be worth the effort to you. Though I would LOVE to grow my own bananas - it isn't going to happen in Michigan without a LOT of expense.

That is the same place I am coming from. I'm not calculating the cost of this to the penny and don't add in my labor and land cost, I'm sure many will say a person should, but if the people who grow their own food did add those costs we all go back to doing are normal day job and buy our food at Wally World.

I guess the part of the this question that is more important to me is, will growing / raising item "X" take so much of my time and effort away from all the other things I need to be doing that it cuts into my survival? I know I worded that on the extreme side of things, but it's like what Whisperwindkat said. You only have so many minutes in the day and if growing / raising one thing take away from the other things then you're better off skipping that and doing the five other things. Or if you only have so much room on your land, then something is going to have to be left out.

So far it doesn't sound like there's a lot of items that are any more time consuming then any other item. Not so much that it's not worth growing it if I could.

So maybe if I worded it this way...

If you only had a small area or less time in your schedule, what items would have priority, what would you grow or raise first?

What goes on or off my list varies with time. As I get older and stiffer, and jobs take longer, I have decided to forego sweet corn. As Callieslamb found out, here in this part of Michigan a person can get everything fresh from the farm or farmstand(you just have to know where to go) for almost anything you can grow yourself. It isn't always organic, I admit, but at my age of survival (hell, my generation made it through WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, AND the Cold War), so.......

I love growing sweet corn, but those pesky critters......deer, rabbits, ground hogs, and racoons.....

This year, the wet weather has forced me to forego a lot of things in the garden.

And, my proximity to uppity neighbors makes me forego animals, except fish....

geo

Most of what I put effort into starts with the climate. We have a short growing season, so I mostly stick to things that can do their thing in 90 days or less. I tried for years to get a good corn crop and gave up on that. Never did get a good crop and it took up room that I could use for other things.

Another thought: Raising cattle keeps my property zoned for agriculture. This makes our property taxes much lower. I have to buy hay, but it's still cheaper than the difference in taxes. My county is fussy about it, horses won't get me ag zoning, they're considered pets. Pigs and poultry are considered commercial. Goats and sheep will work, but I prefer cattle. They provide our milk and beef, and some income, too.

OldVet kind of nailed it for me. 2 Farms down they sell a dozen free range eggs for $1.00 and the farm on the other side will give us eggs free as I am mowing their driveway entrance (long rugged driveway and I mow where it meets the county highway). Yet we are getting chickens for eggs and meat because we enjoy it and its insurance that we know how to raise our own chickens...just in case. We also grow a variety of vegetables and herbs including corn, beets, peas, beans, okra, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, watermellons, cantelope, blackeyed peas, sunflowers..etc, etc. I can buy most of this at the farmres market or local farms for cheaper than the labor and equipment cost (particularly if you add in the cost of the tractor and implements) than we spend on growing our own but the satisfaction and enjoyment of growing your own cant be beat for us. This fall we plant the orchard and vinyard and next year we expand into growing Sorghum and wheat and we will be adding weaner hogs and a couple of Dexter cattle. Food is cheap in the Ozarks but we enjoy what we are doing, we are working our tails off and getting very fit, and we will never starve because we have the knowledge to fend for ourselves. Just grow what you like to eat and what grows well in your area to start and experiment from there.

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As a type 2 diabetic, there reallyare vegetables that have no net calories: lettuce, celery, and bell peppers are on the list. We are allowed as much of those foods as we wish.

Apples are NOT on the list: an apple has one carb exchange and 100 calories. They are good food but we cannot eat as many of them as we wish.

I use to have all kinds of Animals,Poultry and a Big Garden.Did away with the animals and Poultry because around here Wild Game and Fish is plentiful.Went to smaller Beds on Garden because I can get fresh Cheaper here.

I find raising anything is feast or famine.Chickens lay sporatic,if you raise them for meat and feed them you break even.Rabbits are fine and they reproduce well like Rabbits.But might have problems getting rid of excess.Pigs are good if you find couple Sholts to fatten up to butcher at couple hundred pounds.Goats are good but you can sell them for more than you could get out of the meat.They give the right amount of milk,just hard to seperate the cream.Cattle take too much.

Garden stuff I love to raise it all.Corn seems to be big problem with Coons and Squirrels getting it.All other stuff seems to do good.

big rockpile

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I grow a lot of things in a fairly small space. I live in a city and don't want to "use up" all of my space. I used to grow potatoes, but found that they took up too much room in the garden and we really don't eat them that often. Now, the only potatoes that we grow are the "specialty" blue varieties that are so expensive in the store and whatever volunteers sprout up in the compost pile or in the garden bed. We tend to plant the things that basically can take care of themselves and that we use a lot of. For us, that means beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, raspberries, mulberries, strawberries, asparagus, collards, chinese cabbage, various types of lettuce, carrots, arugula and spinach. We also plant a few things for our animals. We have amaranth, sunflowers,broom corn, turnips and beets. If we had unlimited space, I would probably focus on putting in some corn and maybe some other grain that the animals can eat.

We like to try new things so as we discover new foods, we will try to grow those on a small scale, as well.

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"Basic items" for us is what we eat/use the most of for health sake.

In my family, this means:

1. meat -- we chose to raise a small herd of dairy goats & a few chickens.
2. vegetables -- (what can be frozen easily) we chose okra, beans & peas this year.
3. fruit -- (zone 7) we chose wild native plums, asian pears, sweet cherries & grapes.
4. nuts -- (zone 7) we chose english walnuts, pecans & almonds

Knowing what one wants and can raise in our zone was only half the battle. Discovering how to feed and protect it as it matures was the major focus.

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Although your question did not take time and storage into the equasion, that also has to be considered.

Raise cattle? You need at least one freezer for the meat from one cow alone. I planted so many tomato plants last year, dried and froze sauce, that I only planted about 10 plants this year, for me and to share.

Are you going to have the time, with two little children, to plant, water & weed a large garden then be able to harvest, can or dry it all plus work at an outside job if needed?

One of the most frequent answers to many "where to start" questions here is "start small, start simple" learn & and expand as you grow. Begin with foods that grow in your area, with your growing season, foods that you and your children like to eat. Move on from there.

You can manipulate the garden to extend the growing season: have a green house, start plants by seeds, hoop houses. There's multiple things you can do.

And sometimes, you plant something just because you like to eat it - no matter the time & effort involved.

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What an interesting thread with lots of thoughts. I do grow a garden, fruit trees, grapes, and berries. Remember that worry about contaminated lettuce, then it was spinach---no worries, I had plenty right here. In addition to fresh food, I consider it therapy (relaxing) and good exercise (my dad always said jogging and exercise was a waste of good energy, better used hoeing the garden or pulling weeds). I tried raising animals, but got too attached to them and they became pets, only ones I had luck with were chickens for eggs---and no killing when they get old. (sigh)

A garden is worthwhile.

You need to somewhat match your crops to the climate & soil you have. But if you like celery & peas, thy are well worth growing. If you don't like tomatoes, it's not worth growing...

I think a garden with stuff you like to eat is well worth the effort. I'm not sure how to 'judge' the values & costs. If you like gardening, then it is worthwhile. If you hate weeding, don't want to tend to a garden, and only want the results with no effort along the way - then your results probably won't justify the small investment of time you put into it.

If you love gardening, then it doesn't really matter what you put into it, you will get more out of it than you put into it.

Livestock is a different thing tho.

You can easily buy milk, meat, cheeze, etc cheaper from the store than you can raise it for on a small scale.

So, enter into livestock slowly & wisely.

One can use waste land you happen to own to graze critters pretty cheaply, but there is very much investment in property taxes, fence supplies, water, and shelter before you get any return from the livestock.

That does not mean raising livestock is not worthwhile.

But the livestock is a responsibility, and requires a real dedication. If you get bored with them, you can't just let the weeds grow over like you can with a garden. You need to tend to livestock every day, and every day there is some cost. If one dies, you have a major loss in resources.

So, to your question: Plants are a good investment. The more effort you invest in them, the more return you will get.

Animals are a long-term, expensive, time consuming investment. Don't eneter into them lightly. Be sure you are on a good footing & like the direction you are going before getting into livestock.

Back to gardens - maybe you can buy peas cheaper than you can grow a row of them.

But,t he peas are legumes, and add nitrogen to the soil. If you have a garden, N is a good thing to add, maybe the peas pay more in fertilizer than they do in produce.

Things like that enter into the dollar & sense question.

Me, I grow 5-20 acres of oats a year, & I plant field peas along with them. Why? I don't want to harvest the peas. They just offer N to the oats about the time the oats is heading, & seem to boost my oats yield. I spend $180 for 3 bags of field pea seed, and seem to get $350 more oats. (I'm more farmer-scale, not homesteading-scale for my own use, but the idea should apply to either...)

Garden stuff = pretty good homesteader investment, actual plants don't matter so much, as it's more of a system of what your spot is good at producing & what you like to grow/ consume.

Critter = more of a risk, lot more expenses, lot more responsibilities, a very different payoff.

--->Paul

With milk and meat though you are far better off producing your own. If you only turn it into hamburger you might save at the store but doubt it. Anything higher quality and your saving. Also with meat the taste quality is a lot better and you know what is in it. Same with milk and taste wise home milked milk and store milk don't even compare.

I noticed you had a ? beside Garlic in your OPost - garlic is increcibly easy to grow (at least up here). Very little fuss, just weed the patch a couple times and that is it. And garlic is very good for your health.

Last year I grew beans to dry (navy) and I wouldn't do it again. I can buy them at the store for $1.50 a bag....I found them a lot of work to thresh and sort...just not worth the time.

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i would love to raise farm animals but my husband says no, so i don't..but i live in a large amish community and have them available clean and hormone/chemical free, so i don't really have to and would prefer to help out those nearby that are doing so.

last time i bought eggs, my amish guy said, "thank you for buying eggs from my daughters"..made me feel good

I would take beans off the list too. We grew butter beans last year and it was a lot of work to shell them and you can buy frozen so cheaply. Most dried beans are pretty cheap too.

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DH and I only have a very small place (just over 3 acres of usable land) so I have to be fairly careful. There are just the two of us, though we often have one or other of the grand daughters visiting for a week or so at a time. I want to say upfront that I do not think that raising our meat or growing our produce gives me any real net dollar savings, but we do have the safety of knowing that our food is not contaminated, and the flavor of home grown food is just not attainable by commercial growers. Someone also made the point that knowing how to produce your food is a distinct advantage should the worst happen.

I have three dairy does and a buck - the milk I get is used for drinking, making cheese, butter (not always successfully) kefir, yogurt, cream and ice cream (you really need a cream separator for goat cream) I generally sell any doelings unless I am keeping one as a replacement. Bucklings will either be wethered and grown out for the freezer or sold as bottle babies (easier to sell and no extra $$s in him) Any excess milk is fed to other animals.

I generally buy and raise two hogs per year for the freezer. They are bought in the spring and butchered in the fall when food becomes harder to come by. They are economical to feed as long as you are not wanting to get them to top weight as fast as possible. They get garden trimmings and prunings, kitchen trimmings, excess dairy or eggs, they are free ranged so get to forage. I do feed a small amount of commercial hog feed each day as well.

I have three Katahdin ewes and a ram. These sheep produce twin lambs in spring, that are grown out till fall, when they are butchered. I sometimes sell ewelings, sometimes not. I almost never sell the wethers they are for *MY* freezer. They are hair sheep so I don't have to pay to have them sheared. They do very well on just pasture, so are probably the most economical of the animals, other than chickens.

I have a few chickens for eggs and meat. I hatch a few eggs per year for replacement hens and we eat any roosters. These are all heavy breeds, they free range and the only feed I put into them is a tiny amount of grain per day in order to get them to come into the coop.

I have a 24' x 10' hoophouse that extends my seasons and also enables me to grow salad greens and keep winter vegetables throughout the winter.

We just started our orchard this year. We have dwarf or semi dwarf trees because of space considerations: apples, a peach, a plum, a fig, a pear grafted with three varieties so as to be self fertile. We have cherry, raspberry and blackberry bushes and one lonely grapevine. I also started a dozen strawberries and a couple of rhubarb plants this year.

The vegetables I grow are (as most here recommended) those that do well in my climate. I am in zone 6-7 (depending on which map you consult) and the hoop house gives me a zone or zone and a half advantage. I currently have planted: tomatoes (lots of different varieties, for fresh eating, drying and canning); cucumber; eggplants; okra; beans - bush, pole and runner; peppers - several varieties; several different summer squashes, with winter squash seeds just sown; onions; garlic (volunteers that I missed last year); lettuce mix; radishes; beets; melons and one watermelon of a variety that makes very small fruit and short vines.

All this took quite a lot of planning, and there isn't a square inch of space to spare... We have not bought any meat for about three years now, and I am hoping that within the next couple of years we will not need to buy fruit or produce.

Now comes the disclaimer: we are relatively debt free. We have no mortgage on the land or home, our old van is dilapidated but paid for, our property taxes are enviously low, we have a couple of credit cards but we really don't use them other than enough to keep them going. I spend a lot of time caring for the animals and the garden. I do not know that you would find it easy to spend the amount of time I do as well as look after your children and earn enough to cover the expenses you are likely to face starting up a homestead - I am pretty sure you would need an outside job, unless you have skills that you can utilize to bring in a liveable income while working at home.

Mary

Wolf Mom,

Do you know something I don't know? :smiley-laughing013:

No, I'm a 41 year old, single male, no kids, of the human kind.

Thank you for the thought on the freezers, I kind of thought about that with wanting to use solar energy. Big power consumers.

So sorry - I must have gotten you confused with someone else.

Working in the garden in the Arizona heat done did me in...

I must say I enjoy your posts and analytical way of going about looking at your future.

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