Official Homesteading Thread

My wife and I would like to retire early and try to live as much as possible off our 22 acres. We have a wood lot that provides all of our wood. I harvested a large amount of Hickory nuts this fall. We currently have a small raised bed garden that did provide a decent harvest this year that we want to expand. We have a small apple tree that also produced quite a bit of fruit. We want to plant more fruit trees. We started canning this year and my wife is cleaning off the dehydrator as I write this.


Sooooo, what do you fine people do?

 

Chickens for eggs.

Have apple trees to make cider, pie fillings, and apple sauce for the young'uns. Did about 80 gallons of cider, 20 pie fillings, and 20 gallons of sauce this year. Apple butter too. Dehydrated apples.

Garden. We do a spring/summer/fall crop in our 4,000 sq foot garden and can/freeze/store a lot of the produce. We put up a couple hundred pounds of taters, onions, garlic, and winter squash in the basement so far....more after I dig the sweet taters in a few weeks. We canned a lot of pickles, relish, tomato juice, and salsa (70 pints)...hot sauce in a week or so. Freeze tomatoes, green bean, brocolli, okra, and corn (80 quarts). Did watermelon and cantaloupe too. That's just what we saved. We eat a TON of fresh produce too (too much to list).

I make a little bit of firewood. Make a little hard cider. Plant some fall decorations (gourds, pumpkins, indian corn).

 

We are slowly doing more here. I have gardened on a very small scale for many years and after we moved here a couple years ago I am attempting to grow much more of our own stuff. The gardening has been a mixed bag so far. I am having to completely re educate myself after gardening in far different soils than I have now. I had loamy/clay soil in my garden years back, then small raised beds when we were in the city, now out here it is very sandy. I guess I was spoiled by the very good soils I had before. 3 years ago I broke the ground and planted a few things and had ok results for giving it no attention due to being too busy. It was cool and wet that first year. Last year I planted much more and it started out ok before we went into the extreme heat and drought. I was still very busy and lost all of it due to the drought. This year I was determined to get a better handle on it. Well it has been a heck of a rocky road. Spring was very cool and planting started late. Then we got a freak frost and I lost/damaged much of the starts. It then turned dry again so I drug a hose out to the garden a built a sprinkler (garden is 300' from the house). Well that did not work out good for two reasons. First I killed my tomatoes from the overhead watering as blight set in far worse than I have ever had. Second as it got dryer out I found out just how bad the soil was a I could not get it to hold moisture. So I stepped back and re analysed the situation. Started doing heavy soil amending and installed over 500' of drip irrigation. After a hard fought battle with the open garden section I have decided to try turning it into 10- 3' x 20' raised beds for next year. I have 3 4x4x4 compost piles going for spring and just finishing up a 55 gallon compost tea setup. Now I just need to built the beds after I pull the rest of the crops in a couple weeks and decide if I want to trench water underground from the house out to the garden or just punch a well out there. We did make 45 quarts of pickles and I should have a decent amount of beans and peas for a fall harvest if the weather stays for a couple more weeks. I also got a fair amount of greens, 2 dozen ears of sweet corn, 7 pumpkins, 10# of potatoes, a dozen bell peppers, a couple cantaloupe, a couple honeydew melons, a few watermelons, 5 mammoth sunflowers, and some blueberries/strawberries/raspberries/grapes. The sad part is I probably only got a 20% or less yield overall this year. We are also going to plant some fruit trees next year and will most likely add some chickens also.

 

Garden throughout the year as much as possible. As far as preserving goes, I mainly freeze and I have started dehydrating this year. I don't raise any animals. I do sell product at the regional farmer's markets and various self sustaining/organic farming/buy local events. Socially, I live off grid as much as possible. My dream stead is a tiny solar passive glass house with some sort of mass fireplace.

 

Similar to blwncrewchief, I've had various gardens most of my life.
Up here, the growing season is short, and with the very sandy conditions, I finally built some raised beds. Much easier to amend soil in those, and they also help with frost issues.
I plan to build more and expand.
My wife planted gourds and melons, which kind of took over (which I wasn't entirely pleased about), so those will go somewhere else next year.
First year tomatoes did well, until the dry hit, then it didn't matter how much watering I did, it went right through the sand. The green beans did better.
This year (our first re-attempt at a garden in a few years), green beans did ok, tomatoes did very well.
We've got some sweet potatoes to pull and I have my doubts those did much of anything.
I may try at least one cold frame to get things started early next year.
Like lukem said, do chickens for eggs. If you can deal with it, they're also very good fried, baked, or grilled.
Still waiting for our apple trees to produce, and we (read that as I) cut about 1/3 of our wood from the property.
I don't hunt, but there are deer all over here, and if I chose to, I could harvest during bow season.
Turn off lights you aren't using, use cfls or leds, put things on power strips. This doesn't' require a major effort IMHO, but you'll reap nice rewards.

 

We had three 4x12 raised beds this year, plan on having five next year. Had a pretty good crop of tomatoes, squash, and green beans this year. We've had enough peppers, but I wanted to be able to put up a lot more. We started canning this year and put up a bunch of corn, spiced apple rings, apple sauce, spaghetti sauce, and some salsa and chipotle peppers. The garden and canning equipment haven't really put us much ahead this year, but should pay for themselves by the end of next year.

We planted two peach trees and two plum trees this year and already have a 10 year old mulberry. We have had raspberries for about ten years as well, and added blackberries, currants and gooseberries this year. Also added crown to our asparagus bed, will probably add even more next year. Oh, and I transplanted and divided our rhubarb to try and increase it's production.

We spent a couple hours picking up hickory nuts yesterday, we forage for mushrooms in the spring, and hunt ditch asparagus as well. Oh, and we burning a little wood.

 

Best I do is harvest a deer most every year, grow a couple of tomato plants and am back to burning wood.....

 

In the past four or five years the amount of people interested in living either off the grid, or reducing their dependence on others has increased dramatically. Every little thing you do gets you closer to that reality.

We planted Apple, Cherry and Paw Paw. Added lots of berry bushes and changed a lot of lights to CFL and LED. Had the organic garden, but that didn't go well by the second year, and we gave it up. We can't get enough sun to make it work the way it should. Now, there is wood stacked there. We went to burning wood from heating oil and burning pellets. The wood stove has had the greatest ROI in savings, and being somewhat carbon neutral. I am not a super environmentalist, but I understand and can see the need. I did hunt, but haven't in many years. The arthritis makes me more dependent on conveniences, and on the help of others. We can be self reliant as long as we are in good health. That's something younger people have to understand. Cutting and splitting is great until you can't lift the ax or maul.

I got too old when I really started to consider living off the grid. Plus, my wife isn't too keen on the idea. Retiring, and not having to worry about bills is nice, but the cost of supplying the labor yourself is still there.

 

Agreed Al, the older I get, the more I want to do less.
My hands ache for at least a couple days every time I move firewood, but ya' gotta' do what ya' gotta' do.
The ROI in monetary terms for a wind turbine, or solar, make it impractical.........unless I become independently wealthy in the next couple minutes.
Lots of changes in perspective as I get older.
I've heard of Paw Paw (as in paw paw patch), but WTH is it?

 

It's similar to a banana or plantain. My parents tried growing some with no luck.

 

Here it is, Dave. It is the only tropical fruit that grows in North America. I've yet to see it bloom.
http://www.livescience.com/34669-what-is-a-paw-paw.html

 

We normally have a garden but not this year due to the wife being pregnant. We grow our own beef and I had a deal with a friend for a half of a pig but thats over. My wife hates birds so chickens are out but her family always has extra eggs so we get some for most of the year. We dairy so fresh milk is always available....back before I was married we'd make out own butter to. And there's always deer and turkey season to help fill the freezer.

 

There's a few paw paws on my place I never seem to catch them with any fruit.

 

They are weird in that they need to be pollinated by flies rather than bees. The blooms stink like rotting meat. You can pollinate them yourself, but I've heard leaving some meat to rot at the base of the tree will at track more flies. It is a primitive plant, to say the least.

 

How did that happen?

 

I have a paw paw with fruit this year. Not sure what to do with it.

My BIL has a dairy and we get fresh milk quite a bit. Butter and fresh mozz are awesome.

We usually do two batches of Cornish cross per year. I have 25 or so in the freezer right now along with a hog and what's left of last years deer.

 

I think mine gets pregnant folding my laundry...says the guy with 5 kids.

 

I am told folding lingerie can be very dangerous.

 

Good thing I stopped wearing it.

 

Eat it!! The inside is like custard in texture. There are only about five seeds. Let us know how you like it.