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#233616 - 10/13/11 06:54 AM Living off how much land?
dweste Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 02/16/08
Posts: 2463
Loc: Central California
If your long-term survival plan is to live off the land, how much land do you think you will need?

What is your plan if you and yours threaten to exceed the land's carrying capacity?

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#233640 - 10/13/11 02:35 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
dweste Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 02/16/08
Posts: 2463
Loc: Central California
Either; both.

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#233644 - 10/13/11 02:53 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
Jeanette_Isabelle Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 11/13/06
Posts: 2980
Loc: Nacogdoches, Texas
Farming is not a good option for us. Living in the city, we have a small yard.

One of our neighbors, however, does have grape vines.

Jeanette Isabelle
_________________________
I'm not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago, but I admire the sadism. -- Wednesday Adams, Wednesday

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#233647 - 10/13/11 04:07 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
NuggetHoarder Offline
Member

Registered: 07/01/11
Posts: 145
Loc: Appalachians
There is a very popular book called Five Acres and Independence that lays out how to do it on 5 acres. It's a bit dated though.

So, 5 acres is a good start. If you are going to burn wood, you need to build a coppicing woodlot and you'll probably need another 5 acres minimum to do that depending on latitude and other factors.

You might want to study up on permaculture. Under the permaculture concept you could easily have a self sustaining farm producing food and fuel for a family on 10 acres.

Beyond that, you might want a security buffer that keeps your buildings hidden from the main road. That would depend on the area, terrain, etc. which makes this entire exercise a bit subjective and dependent on local variables. 10 acres in Kansas is not going to be enough to hide a building, but 10 acres in the Appalachian backwoods is virtually invisible to all but satellites.

I have 15 acre place in the Kentucky hill country with 5 acres cleared and the rest is hardwood forest with lots of available water from two springs and a creek. You wouldn't know it was there if you drove by. I have a large garden and a few animals and I'm slowly ramping up to mini-farm status as the prices at the grocery store continue to rise. I try to use permaculture principles in everything I do out there so I don't have to buy any fertilizer or pesticides and the place sustains itself. I've also started coppicing a small part of my forest so that I only need to use a small area and can leave most of the forested land undisturbed.

One note I'll add... it takes years to develop a sustainable mini-farm. It's also incredibly hard work.

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#233648 - 10/13/11 04:09 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
LesSnyder Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 07/11/10
Posts: 1680
Loc: New Port Richey, Fla
you might check out GardenPool.Org, or Earth boxes for some ideas..

I live a couple of miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and a couple of Earth Boxes, some potato mounds, some pinto beans for carbs, and for protein, two cast nets (bait and mullet) along with a good pole to "snatch" schooled fish is my plan...blue crab traps baited with entrals... couple dozen red head jigs and couple hundred 2/0 hooks...

if you've never sprouted beans before, give it a try...


Edited by LesSnyder (10/13/11 04:10 PM)

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#233649 - 10/13/11 04:12 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
Eugene Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 2997
Its not one set number as it depends on the land. 5 arces might be with good land, bad land takes a lot more. My grandfather was the last of the full time live off the land farmers in WV, he had him and his wife a 7 kids and it took 200 acres..

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#233658 - 10/13/11 05:35 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA

"One note I'll add... it takes years to develop a sustainable mini-farm. It's also incredibly hard work."

Pay attention to that!

Even if you have most of the tools, you aren't going to provide enough food for a family from any size of garden if you start from scratch when the disaster strikes. You would have to have the production already going and growing, and then just keep it going. The smaller the area you have to garden, the more intensively you have grow, and you have to pay attention to every detail. To extend the seasons, you'll need a greenhouse or walk-in hoop-house.

Most people haven't even gotten a basic $15 soil test to find out what the nutrient level in their soil is like. They don't have enough hand tools for the job. They don't have enough seeds. And they don't have enough knowledge. The learning curve in food production is pretty steep.

I'm learning, but the more I learn about the needs of soil, the more I realize how much I don't know, and there are lots and lots of details to remember.

And even if you know, the changing weather is creating havoc with the crops. Here in the PNW, it rained all winter and spring and into summer. Summer temps didn't start until about Sept. 1, and lasted a full two weeks. Whoopee. If I had to live on what my garden produced, I would starve to death.

The soil of the PNW and NE is nutrient-poor because all the precipitation washes the mobile nutrients out. Much of the South doesn't freeze, so they have ongoing bug and fungus/mold issues.

There's a new Dustbowl going on in the same area as the old Dustbowl of the 1930s, caused by the same things the prior one was: severe drought, 70 or 80 years of poor farming methods, and no use of cover crops. Many American farmers are slow learners, esp the corporate ones. Do you live near the 100th meridian? Well, good luck!

Foraging in a large-scale disaster is nothing but a joke, and some people need to get their heads wrapped around that.

So, if/when our steadily-faltering economy crashes, EXACTLY what is your plan?

Sue

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#233739 - 10/14/11 01:50 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
Eugene Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 2997
I have the additional hurdle that I'm 250 miles away from my farm. I'm looking at fruit and nut trees that I could start planting now around the place so they can just grow themselves.

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#233754 - 10/14/11 05:19 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: Eugene]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
Eugene, in what area is your farm?

If watering is an issue, get hold of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. There are two volumes, I don't think #3 is out yet. They are in the library system. Tons of info.

But one of the cleverest ideas was where a friend of his was planting trees in Arizona, several hours drive from where he lived, so watering was an issue in that dry climate.

He dug oval holes for his trees, and packed half of the hole with old telephone books, junk mail, and newspaper. Then he filled the hole with water and moved onto the next hole. When all the water had been absorbed by the paper (or drained out), he planted his trees and watered them again.

Then he drove away. He returned 3 MONTHS later and the trees were still alive. He dug down to the paper, and it was still damp.

I thought this was brilliant!

Sue

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#233765 - 10/14/11 10:21 PM Re: Living off how much land? [Re: dweste]
Eugene Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 2997
On top of a mountain in WV


There is an old well, I'm hoping to fix up a small solar pump, I have a little 12v rv pump, going to seal it inside pvc pipe so I can drop it into the well then see if I can pump a small flow of water back out. Its a little 1 gallon/second, thought about just using a small solar panel with no battery so it would only run in bright sun.

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