Suggestions on making 40 acres self-sufficient

Wow!! 20 to 30 feet? I didn't realize that!! That would add to the cost quite a bit, I would imagine?
nancy

Yes, unfortunately. Grandpa lost all his fish one winter when it got bitterly cold and stayed that way for a couple months and his pond was over 10 feet deep at the time. The big fish just didn't have enough available oxygen to survive. It was pretty sad to see them floating once the pond thawed. The whole thing wouldn't have to be that deep, just a small part. Our pond sloped gradually toward one end then had a steep bank (berm) that blocked the water in. The year after the fish die off Grandpa had someone come out with a backhoe and scoop a bunch of dirt out of the one end. That worked for several more years. Another reason you want to start with a good deep pond is fill. No matter what you will get a gradual fill where soil washes into the pond, branches and leaves fall in the pond, fish die, frogs die,(we've even had the dreaded floating raccoons that probably fell through the ice and drowned, turtles and chimney craws (crawdads that live in waterlogged soils) end up pushing dirt into the pond. So the deeper you start, the longer it will take to fill in.

Study pond succession sometime. It's the process in which a pond fills in and goes through the stages of wetland, field, open woods, and ends up as a forest. It's pretty cool. Only human intervention kept our pond from getting filled in. During the 40+ years I spent in an up-close and personal relationship with that pond I learned a lot about that.
http://web.me.com/heister02/Environm...uccession.html

Of course your rate of succession may vary. Dig a deep pond once and you may never have to dig it out again. Ours had to be dug twice while we lived on the property. It needed to be done again when the property was sold.

What do you mean by self-sufficient?

If your soil is as bad as you say. I would start by finding as much organic matter as possible. My local dump has a pile where lawn clippings and leaves are piled, free for the taking. Find someone with horses and see if you can get pickup loads or manure and bedding. old rotten hay piles, does any one in your area have a lawn service? Check for clippings. Neighbors lawn clippings and leaves. There are multitudes of these things that people want to get rid of, you just need to find the right people and be willing to do the hauling and loading. I would read the thread on composting.
Ps a state you live in would help with more specific ideas.

HI,
I live in NY state, upstate, zone 4. It is cold early and late here!! We had a hard frost already.
By self-sufficient, I mean that we can provide most of our food, and I would love to be able to provide our electric, also. We already provide our heat with a wood-burning stove, but a solar water heater would be great! I am a vegetarian, my husband doesn't eat much meat, so that is not too big of an issue, since I couldn't slaughter my animals. I do have neighbors who hunt, so venison is an option.
I just want to stop being beholden to huge corporations and banks as much as possible. I have a friend who owns her house, and saves up for a car every five years, grows her own food. That sounds like a good life to me.

Danaus,
Thank you so much for all of your great information!! It would have taken me many books to get that much info about ponds!
Nancy

After getting a HUGE wakeup call last year (I lost the job I was SURE I'd retire from with no warning whatsoever), the first thing we thought of was "how do we become self-sufficient". As we discussed it and did a LOT of research, "our" definition of self-sufficiency changed along the way and so did our plans, so we started aggressively working towards being as self-sufficient "as is practical for us" considering our age, health, and available finances.

While we know that we will NOT be able to become "totally" self-sufficient, we decided we surely CAN deeply cut our expenses by:

• Growing our own veggies, some meats, some dairy
• Heating with wood (like you, we have a lot of acreage to clear)
• Using a clothesline instead of a dryer
• Eliminating unnecessary monthly expenses (cable/satellite, my cell phone, etc)
• If the truck moves, it must move for a reason (with gas now >$3 per gallon, each trip has to count!)
• Using generic/cheaper brands when we have to buy (guess what...most were perfectly FINE!)

Fortunately, when we had more money coming in, we didn't accumulate only toys, but also a lot of useful items such as chain saws, hand tools, woodworking tools, metalworking tools, lawn/garden tools/equipment, etc, so we were able to start with more than a teaspoon and a case knife .

Like I said, "we" won't be able to become totally self-sufficient, but we HAVE become WAY less dependent on anyone/thing other than ourselves...and the journey continues.

The very first thing you need to do is plant an orchard. If you spend no other money this year, do that. Fruit and nut trees take 3-7 years to produce on average. fruiting bushes take 1-5 years to produce. So next year, while you are busy building garden beds with all those rocks from your pond, your fruit trees and bushes are busy growing. The longer you wait for those, the longer till you have apples and berries to eat.

Trees run usually about 25$ each. It might be a pricey chunk of money, but its a one time cost and its done. Plan to order 2-3 of each species you want this coming spring and get them in the ground. Ask your neighbors now about fruiting bushes. Lots of people give away raspberries and rhubarb for free if you dig it. In the spring you can get asparagus crowns and strawberries at walmart or your local nursery and they are very inexpensive. Strawberries will produce the year you plant them if you start early.

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Ask your extension office how deep the pond needs to be, and as Danaus wrote, it only needs part of it to be real deep. Ours is 16 feet at the deepest and has worked well. You will get fish because the eggs are carried on duck feet. To get what you want you'll need to stock it.

You're welcome nancylee. Some if the info I had was from the courses I took in college, the rest from spending all those years living with that pond. Very few people get to study a single pond as closely and for as long as what Grandpa and I did with his.

There is a book called "Ten Acres enough" about a family living off of ten acres. There is a tread somewhere on this web site, with a link to a download the book.

I would also suggest reading Forerunners very long and very informative thread "Extreme Composting."

When you mentioned boggy ground, my first thought was to capitalize on that by clearing out that area and putting in cranberries.

two questions come to mind how minimal are your needs and define how self sufficiant you want to be.
imo 40 acres can support the NEEDS , not wants, of 3 or 4 people. this means eating in season exclusively or preserved harvest. driving only electric or converted to bio or veggie oil, prefered,. and decreasing your needs especially in fuel(verhickle heat and power generation) needs. along with taking in waste oil and bio for the soil health you should be able to do it but your life wont be the same

"How much land does one need to be able to grow a lot of food for 4 people in zone 4? "

Depends on the land! With good loamy soil, 4 people could eat all year...even in a zone 4 on less than 4 acres. I am a zone 5 and I grew all I need ( for 1 ) this year on about 3/4 of an acre. I grew beans, corn, lots of potatoes, some herbs and some Pak choi ( chinese cabbage that is harvest ready in 30 days ). It all depends on your soil and the varieties you choose.

I don't like hearing that you have rocky soil and alot of pine trees. Pine trees usually have acidic soil ( the pine needles are used to acidify the soil for many applications ). And rocky soil can make it difficult to get any kind of tilth.

You might consider raised beds, a good sized raised bed operation can produce all the food you guys would need. One thing I don't like about raised beds is the enormous effort that goes into building and filling them.

"How practical is it to set up solar panels and how expensive is it if you can do a lot of the work yourself??"

Solar panels and a complete system can be very expensive. You should also check your local tax laws because often the town will consider solar panels an 'improvement' and raise your taxes, thus negating any long term financial benefit.

Not sure about the goats or digging the pond, good luck.

Rocks are not nesseccarily a bad thing. Rocks will gather and hold heat, releasing it gradually after the sun goes down. Huge cairns of rocks can be used to harvest water from the air. You just need to get your rocks where they will do the most good.

Lots of good information has already been given you. One thing jumped out at me. You built your small pond to bring in wildlife to watch. This can make a definate problem for you with fruit tress,bushes and gardens...even with raising live stock like chickens. The wildlife will not just wander in for a drink but will sample everything on their way and it will be even worse if you decide to feed them as well as water them. 25 dollar fruit trees get expensive if you are constantly replacing them because they have been eaten.

Upstate NY means what??? bear,bobcat,deer,moose,raccoons,possum, porkies..etc????
It means fencing and vigilance if you want to keep your stock,fruit trees/bushes and garden produce. Just one good deer/raccoon or bear party in a veggie garden and you have lost your crop for the year and possibily no season left to start over.

Please understand I am not trying to be negative or harsh with you; I am just telling you all the mistakes I have personally made in my 25 years living on my land. I started out by planting my fruit trees in a frost pocket; went from that to a nice small pond that is spring fed and only dry one year in the 25. The pond brought in the deer and raccoons and the herons that spear fished out all my fish(leaving dead ones floating with the beak stab wounds)... We won't even touch on the groundhogs..just understand that for every level of endeavor you strive to reach with your food self supply there is an animal or insect that will want to eat it before you do.

Start by giving a lot of hard thought to what you NEED and what you physically can DO.

Then go long and short. Long in planting(and protecting) trees/bushes that take time to mature. Short in getting in things that will produce short term; annual veggies,strawberries,cane fruits. Look into season extension with cold frames and low tunnels(good places to use rocks!).

Do not allow yourselves to be overwhelmed by trying/expecting too much as you start.
Also do not allow yourselves to not try at all because there is soooo much to do; it is a wonderful journey! That first green bean, ripe strawberry or warm just laid egg....seedlings pushing thru the soil... baby chicks and goat kids! Standing years down the road and looking around and seeing all you have done(and that yet to be done), it can be a wonderful life! Good Luck!

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" As needs-MUST!!"--- in other words..a gal does what a gal has too!

Besides reading up on them, I'd recommend checking with local extension service. They will be a source of excellent information and probably can connect you with a local orchard club / society.

The one here holds pruning and grafting workshops and makes available a choice of rootstock and scion at the proper time. Rootstock is ~$3 each and scions are free. There were over 300 varieties of apples alone at the last meetup.

http://www.homeorchardsociety.org/

Good morning,
Thank you, all, for your very helpful ideas and suggestions. I really appreciate it!!!
Nancy

First off forget being totally self sufficient because until you can grow your own toilet paper and pay your property taxes with a hog on the hoof , it's just a fantasy just like it was 85 years ago.

Next start gardening close to the house and work your way towards the woods as you feel you can handle the expansions. If you feel you over expanded, draw back towards the house as required and figure out how best to inject whatever cash or credit is required.

Farming always requires a degree of flexibility and occasional outside cash investments even with just 40 acres.

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Jays right. Farm as close to the house as possible. Forget about a lawn for now. Lawns are for people who have the time, and are old enough to enjoy them. You arent that old, and you dont have the time, nor the acreage. If your giving up garden space that is smooth and relatively rock free for a lawn. Your doing it wrong. Once youve pushed the garden out far enough that it fits and feels and feeds right, then you can take it further and start grtowing a lawn if you want, tho, with such a big garden, I dont see how youd yet have time to enjoy it.

Keep in mind that most plants that bear food need full sunlight for a major part of the day. A 1/4 acre open parcel in pine woods doesn't provide enough full sun for much of anything, especially apple trees.

And that pond you want to bring in wildlife...all those cute furry critters will appreciate that you provided a place to drink right next to your garden, chicken coop, and orchard.