Veteran Homesteaders: I need your help--before its too late!

Alice In TX/MO · #61 11/01/10, 06:54 PM

Growing your own food is NOT less expensive than buying it if you figure in the time to prepare the soil, plant, weed, harvest, and process.

Mass production by farmers is just like mass production of cars or any other product. They can sell it cheaper because of the volume.

If you grow and process your own, you are paying with your time for quality, not quantity.

**Terri** · #62 11/01/10, 07:13 PM

I sort of homesteaded in my own back yard. At the very beginning of every project there were start up costs. That is just the way it is.

Garden: tools, fertilizer, seeds, plants, hoses.

Bee hives: bees, hives, feeders.

Orchard: trees, fertilizer

Chickens: lumber for a tiny hen house, waterproofer, feed, chickens, dishes to feed and water them in.

Home made greenhouse: building supplies, fertilizer.

Dog to keep the rabbits and deer out of the garden: $110 to shelter, vet visit, vaccinations, dog food.

A tuff-shed (to have it put up was a real splurge!!!!)for seedling starting and to replace the little hen house, which was 13 years old and falling apart. I screened off half for the birds and I start seedlings under the windows.

Maintaining my yard: perhaps $400 per year. It is not expensive once things are up and running.

Blackberries: starts from a friend and fertilizer.

Already here when I moved in: chain link fence to keep the dog from chasing rabbits into the next county. One pear tree. A house and garage.

Notice that every blessed thing has start up costs and labor involved. Once things are going it is much easier: I only spend 5 minutes a day on the chickens (though it is time for me to shovel out the hen house and lay down fresh straw). But, to GET things to that point I had to build a hen house.

To maintain the garden, now that I know what I am doing, takes a few hours a week to weed a bit and to harvest and to plant. It used to take much, much longer. Tillers or weed barrier really cut down on the labor, though the start up costs for THOSE are fairly stiff!

And, I have no meat and dairy animals and no need to cut hay. I DO have, now, a rear-tined tiller and various tools that were bought to make life convenient.

You are concerned that it would be cheaper to buy from the grocery? For fresh vegetables, you might break even the first year and then you would have most of what you needed.

If you can graze your animals that would be a huge savings on feed, but there is fencing to be put up. Dairy animals and chickens and hogs need more than what they can get by grazing: sheep and meat goats can live well on GOOD pasture. If you have to buy all of the feed it MIGHT be cheaper to buy: if you can graze them or raise much of the feed it seems like it would be cheaper.

It takes about 6 pounds of feed to make a pound of hog, and pigs need the same sort of diet we do. Farmers used to feed their hogs corn and leftover milk, as well as damaged fruit and vegetables. A little less than half of the hog will be edible.

Living a vegetarian life, the Nearings DID manage on 4 hours of work a day. The gent I thought of managed on 8 hours of work a day but he ate meat and made cheese and had a family to feed. Both were writers which gave them money for what they could not make or raise.

CaliannG · #63 11/01/10, 07:19 PM

A day at the homestead:

6:30 a.m. Up and at 'em! Brush your teeth and hair, get a cup of coffee. No, not breakfast yet.
7:00 a.m.: Time to take the inside dogs out, and relieve your Livestock Gaurdian Dog. This is the time you check for problems and other stuff, like something getting into a chicken coop, a hole in the fence, that the heater went out in the greenhouse last night and your greens are now frozen solid, etc.
8:00 a.m. Milking time. Takes me an hour to milk, filter, store, etc., milk from three goats.
9:00 a.m. Chicken care. Refilling waterers, feeders, collecting eggs, checking for injuries or problems, blah, blah, blah.
10:00 a.m. Ahhhhh, breakfast!
10:30 a.m. Needed repairs and maintenance. This should carry you through until afternoon.
1:00 p.m. Lunch! Yum! Maybe a SHORT nap.
2:00 p.m. garden watering, weeding, checking seedlings, etc.
4:00 p.m. A little time for me. Not much, but hey! I look at my mail, pay bills, do inside household chores, whatever, during this time. This is NOT nap time. This is time to do a load of laundry, was the morning dishes, etc.
6:00 p.m. Evening feeding time. Check chickens, horse, etc., refill waterers, yadda, yadda.
7:00 p.m. Milking time!
8:00 p.m. Cook and eat dinner.
9:00 p.m. until you can't keep your eyes open... REAL me time!

radiofish · #64 11/01/10, 08:41 PM

A corn stove with a theromstat? That seems to be a new one for me, but then I heat with firewood. It is actual work to cut, haul, split, stack in woodshed, carry to the house, and then finally burning your fuel - to keep warm in the winter.

With 30 to 40 people getting away to live in a 'commune' situtation (communists), it could lead to anarchy, or worse. Who gets to use the equipment, when everyone needs it at that same time? Your mentioning of the small area for a garden per person, is way undersized. What if you find that worms, grubs, other harmful insects have gotten to your veggies, before you have? No estimates for pesticides, or for even a total crop failure in a year. Now multiply that amount for 30 to 40 persons, and it becomes a substantial sum of money!

The estimates of how easy it is to drop a seed in the ground, and come back later to harvest corn - has me shaking my head.
It does take actual work to prep the gardening area (including fencing), then planting, weeding, watering, feeding, staking/ trellis the plants, keeping the varmits out, and the other multitude of chores associated with having a garden or fruit trees. Let alone preserving the harvest, for the coming months. Till next years garden is ready.

Add livestock, and then there are the Vet bills (even with sheep), added feed during winter. Who is gonna clean up the future fertilizer after the animals have been there, if they are kept in a barn, stall, or outbuilding?

Who will be in charge of maintaining the roads, buildings, and the other needed infrastructure needed to care for all of those folks. I can't see 30 to 40 people huddled in tents, and having to walk long distances to get to where they are going.

If you folks are gonna go out and do this, you may want to see what "Life On The Farm" is really like. No matter what you raise for food or income animal or vegetable wise, there is lots of work associated with it.

Plus your clothing cost estimates, are way off!!! You will find yourself needing durable clothing that will stand up to you rolling in the mud during a pouring rainstorm/ thunderstorm, to crawling through the dense brush while looking for your animals. Not to mention what barbed wire will do to your clothing. Carhart gear is not cheap!

Solar and wind power is expensive to start up, for an energy source. Do you or your friends have any electrical background? If not, them be prepared for sticker shock when an electrican has to come and 'fix' your previous repairs. The same for mechanical skills - mechanics charge about $60.00 dollars per hour or more around here to turn a wrench. Plumbers get even more per hour, for that indoor running water, or even with an outdoor well and pump being maintained.

Well lots of luck, and I hope that you packed a parachute just in case you have to bail out..

am1too · #65 11/01/10, 10:41 PM

Some of you folks are sure funny. One of the things is location. For sure there are thing you need that are different in each locale. I started on nothing, with nothing. Got agood deal on a small place. I started cutting tree sprouts with a bow saw and mowed upt to 5acres with a 22 inch lawn mower. My neighbor who has live rual all his life wants my place. I have grass and all he has is weeds. I chuckle all the time. The fence line shows a dividing line with enough difference you can compare it to daylight and night. Oh my native natural grass was nose high compared to his waist high weeds. The grass stops at the property line. It isn't that hard to put in a fence, or put up a small tin building to get out of the weather. Sure it will take more than an afternoon. I did 100% of the work by my lonesome. I have farmers that buy all their food at the store. They have no garden. There are folks who move out of the city and move back mainly because they try to live like city folks. They keep a 5 acre mowed lawn and put the grassout for the garbage man. I am going what? They are going to eat out and drag cooked meals back to the house, have their place lite up like Las Vegas. I like the stars. All these idiots really do is drive upmy property tax casuse they pay 5 times what I did for the same amount of dirt and don't have nearly as much usable dirt.

Alice In TX/MO · #66 11/02/10, 06:56 AM

EXCELLENT POST am1too. It's the mindset.

I fear that a group of city folks with no experience may think they can move to the country and live like your neighbor while reaping a harvest. Nope.

Tracy Rimmer · #67 11/02/10, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lexluther

A lot of people mentioned food storage (canning and such). While I thought of it, I didn't think it would take that much time.

I can or freeze, or preserve in some way, 90% of the food that our family of four eats for the year. That translates into 3 freezers (2 X 14 cubic feet and 1 X 27 cubic feet), probably 100 X 1 gallon jars of dehydrated food, and approximately 1000 jars of bottled fruit, veg, etc. I start in July, and I process food pretty much every day for at least two and a half months -- depending on the year, I'm sometimes working well into October. I do at least two dehydrators full (I have a large Excalibur), two or three canners full (7 quarts each) and a LOT of frozen stuff each day -- on average.

That translates into real time of getting up at 5:30 or so in the morning, and working many days through until dinner time, stop to cook and eat dinner, then do cleanup or harvesting for the next day's first loads. My DH insists that I stop actual CANNING after dinner, he likes to spend some time with me, too

All of that is with two teenagers helping with the harvesting part. They bring me boxes of stuff from the garden as I process it, on the days when they're not working for a neighbor doing the same.

Then, livestock needs to be processed. This year, we are doing two pigs and two goats, and culling the rabbit herd. In addition to the chickens (which are already in the freezer), and the side of beef that I'm sharing with a neighbor, this will make up the majority of our diet this year. I'm looking at four days of work for the butchering and processing of the meat. Hams and such will, of course, take longer, but they're waiting time, not working time. If we get a deer or two, I'll add that on.

I would suggest that you look into dehydrating food, depending on where you are. It's an easy and cheap storage option, and saves a great deal of space.

If you're planning on fruit trees or a proper orchard, remember that standard trees don't bear much, if any, for several years, and dwarf trees, while bearing earlier, don't bear as much in the long run. I have put both in my orchard in hopes of having some fruit sooner, but the larger harvests in a few years.

You don't just push a seed in the ground and wait. Weeding, watering, tilling.... all have to be done if you want the harvest you've worked for. Planting is hard work, and if you want the full potential harvest, you should be in your garden every day. Someone once said that the best fertilizer for a garden was the footprints of the farmer, and I truly believe that.

Our gardens are 60 feet X 70 feet and 60 feet X 30 feet. That's 6000 square feet of garden. That feeds four of us well, with extras for livestock (pigs love greens), and some to barter or sell at market. I do wide row gardening so that I can get a tiller in between, which halves my work, at least.

This is HARD WORK, which takes time, but it's the kind of hard work where you see the direct benefit to you. You care for the garden, you eat the vegetables. You care for the animals, you eat the most fabulous pork and beef and rabbit and chevon all winter. You clean out pens, and put the aged pile on your garden in the fall, and in spring you till the soil which is black and loamy, and full of organic material, ready to nurture the seeds. It's a wonderful cycle, which we benefit from every step of.

I will say one thing more. If you are planning on doing this with a group of people, expect problems and plan for them now. Have agreements properly written and legally witnessed. You may say, "nothing will happen, we're FRIENDS!" or, "People ought to be able to work out their differences, we'll be able to"... until conflict happens. The community sharing of equipment, etc., is a great idea, until you realize that all forty people will need the same equipment at the same time, and it takes longer than an hour or two to do what needs to be done with it. Independence is a wonderful thing -- and it takes some money to accomplish. If you're going to do this, protect yourself legally, or do it alone.

ErinP · #68 11/02/10, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tracy Rimmer

Have agreements properly written and legally witnessed. You may say, "nothing will happen, we're FRIENDS!" or, "People ought to be able to work out their differences, we'll be able to"... until conflict happens.

I agree completely.
Even FAMILIES should do this!

bee · #69 11/02/10, 10:38 AM

Well Lex, welcome. I think your first step in getting imput on this board is a good one. If the realities expressed here do not deter you, then you have "the right stuff" for the job. And it is a job, one that "in the day" was life and death.

I must admit that my first thought was "troll". I am still not sure why a group of you want to "flee" the city at this time? What is the primary driving force for NOW?? Having that answer to balance with your expectations may be the equation to your future success.
You have been given a lot of good advice. I have been on my land for over 20 years. Many false starts with livestock..goats,horses and rabbits(lets not forget the geese and guinias). Lost a lot of fruit plantings( both trees and bushes) to deer. Lost my future money maker ginsang to lack of needed growing conditions. Deal every year with frosts and freezes; this year added a drought. Insects and plant disease can wipe out a year's efforts. Diversify..if one crop fails you have the potential of others to fall back on. The area you choose will have a State Dept of Agriculture that can tell you what grows well in your area...commercially.
Finally, I would not move back to town. Nothing beats the hen's "I just laid an egg" cackle unless it is walking out to my garden,picking fresh corn and rushing it to the pot of boiling water! Looking at the jars of my canning lined on the shelf or the ready to burn wood stacked in the shed gives that "I am ready for winter" feeling. It is not an easy (nor cheap start up) life but I love it! IMO, your biggest challenge will be blending 30+ expectations,plans and needs.....Good Luck!

Lexluther · #70 11/02/10, 01:45 PM

Thanks, Bee,

Hmm, why now? Well out here in the urban world there is definitely the feeling that things are going to hell in a hand basket. This recession has been brutal and I don't see things getting much better any time soon. I think the liberal's chickens have come home to roost (let's see how many farm analogies I can throw in), and its going to get ugly when Santa Claus stops landing on the roof. Throw in a little apocalypse porn and it gets even more exciting.

But I think at heart, I'm 48 and know how the world works in the city. People come and go and you loose so many good friends that I would just assume keep together. Most of these people don't have real careers (either because they just got out of college, were at home most of their lives raising kids, too insane to hold a regular job or just couldn't find their way in this urban world or just don't like the ones they have).

I know how horrible it is fresh out of college, at the bottom of the pecking order (and for good reason), with 10-20 years as office fodder in a job you will probably hate even after you start making a half-way decent living. Before I started renovating I would live for Friday night, be hung over all day Saturday, do my chores on Sunday and start all over again come Monday. My life was watching my bank account grow so one day I could get the hell out.

So the basic plan as it stands is the older folks with money buy the land and materials and the youngers build the homes and infrastructure (including 500 square feet of greenhouse for each, supplemented by some outdoor acreage for the warmer months) and will probably be living in mobile homes until its done. Those who think they want to tend animals will, those who don't won't. I'm not planning any gimmies after that. Its pretty much sink or swim once things get set up.

So basically the older people get a sense of community as they retire and get older and the young people get to opt out of the hell that surely awaits them and maybe even have something to show for it afterward. (Like a paid off house, some land and at least a foundation for being able to support themselves without a 9-to-5 job.) I'm planning on opening a cabinet shop and hopefully employing some of them that need work and maybe even a foundry for making kitchen hardware, etc. Others have their own ideas. Many just plan to live off their retirement checks. While I can't guarantee that the farming will work for all of us, I can guarantee that this town will be beautiful: picture an Irish village with small stone homes and slate roofs. And yes, I've done the numbers on what stone work will take. If its in an area overlooking the sea or near a ski resort or something, we may even make money renting out houses.

I'm hoping that working mostly in greenhouses will limit some of the more devastating factors to farming (frost, no rain, wild animals, etc.) and allow for perhaps a more comfortable work environment. But I can certainly see that raising animals will probably not be for everyone.

farmerjoh · #71 11/02/10, 08:32 PM

I think minimum 12,000$ a year income would help buffer any pitfalls

roachhill · #72 11/02/10, 11:29 PM

You might want to read The Winter Harvest. It's a good book about raising your veggies in a combination of unheated green houses, cold frames and row covers. If you start using heated green houses the fuel price is very high. This book gives an overview of what you can expect to grow without spending alot on heating fuel.

hotzcatz · #73 11/03/10, 12:09 AM

With any "intentional community" the difficulty is getting all the folks to get along with each other. How about everyone buying their own plot of land next to each other so they are near enough to each other to help each other out yet each person is responsible for their own land. If one of them wants to sell and leave, no problem.

We are sort of doing that with a group of folks over here on the Big Island. We help each other as we can. Our basic problem is we are too scattered to be able to help each other as much as we'd like. Perhaps you could find an area over on the Hilo side of the Island of Hawaii and see if everyone could buy a lot in the same area. We have a lot of "sub-divisions" which are basically agriculturally zoned raw land with rock/gravel roads and not much in the way of utilities. There are quite a few intentional communities and communes over around near Pahoa, too.

Hawaii has some interesting problems with growing and producing food, however, since you are all city folks, it's not like there'd be a whole buncha stuff you'd have to unlearn.

If you Google "sensible simplicity forum" or "Jay Fitzgerald Hawaii" you should find the group. Or use this link: http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/

Some of the folks in the group are runaways from (in their estimation) probable upcoming zombie incursions in L.A. so they'd entirely understand your viewpoint, I'd think.

Mel- · #74 11/03/10, 01:00 AM

I think a croft community engineered to fit into americas tax system, etc. would work.

I have done a little research into this (for entertainment value only) and in a few of the crofts I looked into this is how they worked (these were crofts in the highlands of Scotland):

each individual crofter (i.e. homesteader) owned 5-10 acres plus house/outbuildings (owned is the word I will use though that's not true in traditional crofts. they are tenants of the land but own the buildings). The croft community then owned as a group additional community acres.

one in particular I looked at as an example had 30 crofters plus around 300 community acres. so each crofter/homesteader had the use of 1/30 of the 300 acres plus their own croft of usually 10 acres and buildings.

if you wanted to sell your own personal croft, the new buyer had to be voted on and approved by the croft community. if they were voted down, they could not buy your property. they had to prove they had experience in gardening and livestocking raising/farming. they had to prove they would be an asset to the community as well as fit in with their idea of what their community was (ideology to a certain extent).

I didn't look into it in any depth so don't know how they deal with issues as how to deal with taxes, repairs, roads, how to devy up that 1/30 of 300 acres, etc.

crofting legislation was passed in 1886 but was practiced apparently for as much as 100 years before that. there are over 20,000 croft communities today. so this is proven to have worked FOR SOME and some where

but whether or not it could be made to work today, in the USA, who knows. the point is only that it's been working for some communities for at least 124 years so this is not a new, untried idea.

based on watching my grandparents and their relatives live like this in middle tennessee (I'm talking dozens of people/family I knew over the decades, not one or two):

it's hard work. you work from daylight until sundown when you raise all of your own food, chop all of your wood. even for my grandparents who were born in 1904, somebody always had to have at least a part time job off the farm for money for seed, machinery, repairs, taxes. the only time they had two nickels to rub together was after they started drawing social security. it wasn't enough to support them by any means, they still worked as hard as ever until they dropped in their 70s and 80s but it wasn't quite so desperate money wise.

most of the rest of their generation skedaddled to the cities as soon as they could (starting in the great depression). it takes a certain kind of person to live that life. the way it takes a certain kind of person to live the city life and enjoy it. (there seems to be more that like the city than the other).

good luck. I think it can be done and there are communities you might be able to consult with who will help you in terms of legalities (Scottish Crofters Union, Assynt Crofter Trust, looking for crofts on the internet).