How 'self sufficient" is your farm?

See post #13.

We almost always have our own beef, chicken, eggs, dairy products ie: milk, yogurt,cream, butter, sour cream, mozzarella and cream cheese. Have vegetables, strawberries, raspberries,apples, pears, cherries, and the peaches are blooming this year. I can, freeze, and dehydrate whatever we can do. My cow just freshened so we now have dairy again and another beef.

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Trish

Seriously, I am COMPLETELY dressed!

Just keep moving...just keep moving!

We try ti improve on this aspect each year.

We raise all our own eggs and chicken (but we currently use purchased feed, when we'd prefer to grow that too.) We also raise rabbit, turkey, duck, & goat for meat. Goats for milk too.

Almost all of our veggies are grown. DW still insists on using store bought hamburger for many dishes. We also enjoy shrimp & seafood that is not practical on our 3 acres.

Feed is our biggest expense, and our biggest outside input. If it hit the fan tomorrow I'd have to get real imaginative, real quick.

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The government can't give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
--Dr. Adrian Rogers

We can produce all of the necessities of life. I enjoy the luxuries like Chocolate, the Internet, etc that we purchase. But they are not essential. So, we're self-sufficient as I want to be.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
ButcherShop | Sugar Mountain Farm

Check out our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project at:
On-farm Butcher Shop at Sugar Mountain Farm - Pastured Pigs by Walter Jeffries — Kickstarter

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

Keep chickens for meat and eggs. I raise most of their feed but when I run out I'll buy bag stuff. Started rabbits. Grow all my potatoes and other veggies. Hunt deer and turkey, fish bass. I still go to the store for a lot of things, and I buy fertilizer and manure from outside sources. My goal is complete food self sufficiency ( including animal feed ) so give me a few more years to get there.

I also cut all my own heating fuel off the 'stead. Getting there one step at a time.

"Rabbits, chickens, ducks, quail, pigeons, doves,"

Why raise these 6 - don't they all just taste like chicken??? :-)

I really suggest you get a small manual or motorized grinder and make your own ground from store-bought beef. I would never eat store-ground, no idea what junk went in there..

We get nearly all of our veggies from our farm. We have an unreliable (thanks to fickle springs) supply of fruit and berries. All of our chicken comes from here. We also have ducks for eggs and meat. We make maple syrup as well. We raise goats and have used them for milk and meat in the past but I am too busy this year trying to make money from this farm (another complicated self-sufficiency activity) to actually homestead. I seriously doubt I will be canning this year. One woman's labor trying to feed a family of five and provide poultry and veggies for customers....well, somethings gotta give and I don't want it to be my sanity or my back.

Self-sufficiency for this year I am pretty sure will be a D+. Unless we get few customers and have to eat all this food ourselves!

Not at all. Ducks are muscovey, lean meat more like deer than chicken.
Quail have a much better taste than chicken. Young doves and squab will fall off the bone.

Guess if you fix them all the same way with the same spices they would all taste pretty much the same.
I use a different bird for different recipes and prepare them different.

I can free range the rabbits, chickens, and ducks. All will feed in the same place but eat different things. The quail, pigeons, and doves can be raised in the same flight cage but they eat a little different. Pigeons and doves raise all year round. My quail are more seasonal layers.
Ducks and chickens are seasonal setters but rabbits will breed all winter.

I get hungry all year long, not just during the period one type animal raises young. This way I have fresh meat all year long.

We have a big garden and Karla plans to freeze and can a buch of stuff this year. Broilers growing out now, a few layers now and a lot of poullets coming along as well as a bunch of straight run chickens coming this week, Keep the pullets and eat the roosters.

2 hogs fattening right now and will put 2 more in the pen when those are butchered.

We shoot and eat a lot of doves. A few quail now and again. we get a couple of deer and my son keeps a freezer full of ducks in season.

Dairy goats are in the very near future, but it will be a year or better before the milking starts.

We have to buy fruits and beef and the small stuff we cant grow. But we too hope to cut that grocery bill way down .

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" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

Thanks everyone. When we bought the property you could tell that there was once a nice orchard. One apple tree and 2 severely damaged peach trees. We bought another apple and to our surprise the peach trees had blooms and now little baby peaches! The apple has a few, but our new tree didn't have many flowers, so I don't know if it was enough to pollinate the big tree.

All that to say.. we have fruit. Added berries and a few fig trees to the space. We also have chickens for eggs and a big garden. I would like to get a bunch of meat chickens next year. We didn't want to jump into it all at once and get overwhelmed. Hubby has a full-time job teaching/administration work.

It is good to know that it can be done for the most part. My goal is to just buy grains and beans (food wise) but that will be in the far future...

Again, thanks for the look into your homesteads

We produce all of our meat milk and eggs, a lot of veggies, fruits, grains, off of our farm. Our or at least my goal is to raise everything we need off of our farm, it will take a bit longer, but hope to real soon. We also can lots of our own food for future use, meat and veggies and fruits. Also dehydrate a bunch of stuff, like veggies and fruit and plants for tea`s. We also have our own bee`s for the honey. Wife also makes hand and laundry soap, so we do a good job, and hope to do even more, SOON. > Thanks Marc

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Our Diversified Stock Portfolio: cows and calves, alpacas, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, cats ... and a couple of dogs...
http://springvalleyfarm.4mg.com

My farm isn't self-sufficient, at all!

I had high hopes, back in the day......but every morning, I get up and still find a whole farm that needs tending to.

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“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

I feel 'yer pain! I have the same problem at my place.

My place provides apples and pears,black berries,eggs,chicken,honey and all the vegetables and herbs we can store every year.

I don't raise them but the deer that live here pay their grocery tab every fall too. If calves weren't so high this year there would be grass fed beef for the fall too but I haven't found one at an asking price I can stand yet this spring.

Pears, peaches, plums, cherries and 4 different kinds of apples... this should be the first year of real production. The apples include a good storage variety and cider (both regular and hard) apples. I also dry some and make jellies and jams.

Blueberries, blackberries, rasberries, strawberries and 3 different kinds of grapes are used fresh, dried and to make jellies, jams, preserves and wine. I dry some grapes for raisins.

Large vegetable garden including plenty of cool season crops. From which I eat fresh, can, dry, preserve and store in the root cellar. I save seeds from 90% of my plants for the following year. The pigs clean up the garden at the end of the season (other than the area for perenials (asparagus in particular and the vegeggies that over winter).
I also have field crops of mangles, beets, potatoes, corn, wheat, buckwheat, rye and oats, some of which are for me and the rest are for the animals. There is a herb garden with both culinary and medicinal herbs.

A cow provides milk and calve to raise for beef. I make my own butter and cheese. Some extra milk goes to the pigs.

A sow pig is bred twice a year. From the litter I raise three to butcher and sell the rest (except the one that goes to the gentleman that has the boar that breeds my sow). I make my own sausage, salt cure and smoke my own bacon and hams, which hangs in the smokehouse.

I have chickens for eggs and meat. I sell the extra eggs. When any of the hens starting sitting I let them hatch on their own (I have three hens sitting on about a dozens eggs each right now). I also have couple of turkeys (had the tom, just got the 2 hens) that I hope will hatch a couple of holiday dinners each year.

There are a couple of geese and ducks on the pond which I am currently expanding and deepening to stock fish.

I hunt squirrel, deer, and turkey. I tapped some maple trees this years and got three gallons of maple syrup and several pounds of maple sugar. I also forage for mushrooms (especially morels) and ramps.

I generally buy only coffee, tea, sugar, salt and pepper.

That's about it food wise... I'm currently working on my blog which will describe my overall lifestlye (electric, water, etc.).

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

Our farm pays all our bills. It totaly supports us. The only crop for several years now has been corn. We do have a good sized garden. Our only livestock is a black rooster named Ethyle and a pussy cat named Fred. I thought she was a Tom cat when she was dumped out here. I cash rent the ground.

We raise goats for milk and meat, chickens and rabbits and also hunt and fish. We also have a large garden and a few fruit trees. So with all of that our grocery bill is pretty much staple goods and a few things that we don't or can't grow, like oranges and bananas. I buy berries from other farmers in the area.

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