Living off how much land?

Posted by: dweste

Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 06:54 AM

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?
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 02:35 PM

Either; both.
Posted by: Jeanette_Isabelle

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 02:53 PM

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
Posted by: NuggetHoarder

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 04:07 PM

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.
Posted by: LesSnyder

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 04:09 PM

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...
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 04:12 PM

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..
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/13/11 05:35 PM


"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
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/14/11 01:50 PM

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.
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/14/11 05:19 PM

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
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/14/11 10:21 PM

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.
Posted by: ILBob

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/15/11 09:41 PM

Subsistence farming is a full time job and a very hard life.

The hunter/gatherer model is even harder.
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/15/11 11:53 PM

Particularly interested if anyone actually has figured out how much land is needed. I do not care so much about the particular environment, but just about the factors and calculations used, and the source of data for each factor.
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 02:17 AM

The environment is going to control the figures. Five acres in the Mohave Desert will produce less than five acres in Grass Valley or somewhere in the central valley there.

With decent soil, I read a reference some years ago that it would take about one-quarter acre to feed a family of four. But that has to be some intensive growing with considerable experience, IMO. I don't know if that would include two teenage boys who are constantly hollow, though.

One acre or more might be closer to the truth for beginners climbing the knowledge ladder. Keep in mind that if you produce tree fruit, no real crops can be planted within the dripline (or further) of each tree, so that cuts down on the actual amount of available ground area.

The USDA has a chart on how much you would have to plant for X number of people. I would like to find that again and print it out -- it's kind of hard to find. You could start from that, figuring how much you would need per person, how many plants it would take to produce that amount, etc.

And an ongoing problem with that scenario is that vegetable cropping uses the more nutrients from the soil than any other type of growing. Those nutrients have to be returned if you want to continue getting a good harvest, it can't just be take, take, take. You either have to recycle your own waste (human and animal) and return it to the soil, or you have to import nutrients from outside your acre. TANSTASFL applies here, as in most other situations.

If you could grow your own fish (for example) and use the fish-wastewater as fertilizer, that would also return some nutrients.

My mother said that her mother told her that when she was growing up in England during the later 1800s, the ladies of the houses on the street would keep an eye out for horse droppings, and would scurry out with a broom and dustpan to collect it for their vegetable gardens.

Sue
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 03:01 AM

FOUND IT!

This is the chart provided by the USDA on how much to plant (vegetables) per person. The info is copyright-free, by the way -- see Conditions of Use

You can print out the whole thing (it comes out in landscape form), and there's a form for you to customize your needs.

It gives estimates for
1. Need in pounds per person (fresh, and if preserving);
2. Length of row to plant per person;
3. Estimated yield per foot of row;
4. Amount of fresh produce (in pounds) needed to produce one canned or frozen quart.

And I'm sure you would want to plan for tree and bush fruits, nuts and herbs, too. Fruit trees come in grafted dwarfs, genetic dwarfs, semi-dwarfs, and standard sizes. Standards get too large for most smaller properties, so consider the smaller types (you'll have to do your homework for success).

Of course, you need to keep in mind that you might have crop failures for different reasons, so don't cut your estimates too fine. And if you can produce more than needed, you can use the produce for trade.

Sue
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 09:32 AM

Sue, I cannot seem to get there [to the chart] from here.
Posted by: pforeman

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 01:02 PM

http://www.plant-materials.nrcs.usda.gov/pubs/mipmcot9407.pdf

I think this is the publication you are looking for. Sue?

Paul in MN -
Posted by: NuggetHoarder

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 01:58 PM

You also have to figure in livestock. If all you have are a few chickens and some rabbits it's not too hard, but once you get into the bigger animals it's much harder to calculate. If you want to keep a steer on your place or a dairy cow, you are talking about quite a bit of pasture to support that animal especially if you want to grow your own hay and straw. One of the best ways to figure this out is to look at your neighbors. What do they do? Most of them probably buy hay and straw but you might find an old timer that is more self sufficient and will let you learn from him.
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 06:28 PM

Thanks, Paul!
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 06:50 PM

Paul, yes that's it, thank you!

*muttering to self*... Left out the link, what a ditz!

Sue
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/16/11 07:02 PM

Nugget, you're absolutely correct.

Most smallholders need to stick to small livestock: chickens, rabbits, ducks, goats. It's hard to beat chickens: eggs, manure, meat, self-foraging if you choose correctly, and they will eat almost anything in a pinch.

Large livestock simply eat too much -- either you need the land to support them, or you need to import feed. Not to mention if they get into your garden it's usually major devastation.

Again, working with your neighbors in a survival situation is the key. You can produce vegetables, a neighbor has fruit trees, another neighbor can produce chickens, yet another can keep rabbits, a larger property owner can maintain a few head of cattle, someone can keep goats, and you can all trade. It's nearly impossible to do it all yourself. There was a reason for big families in the old days: cheap help. (Also one of the reasons the lifespan was 47.) And they knew what they were doing, which mostly isn't the case these days.

Sue
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/18/11 07:57 AM

Any guidelines for how many of what kind of livestock to support a given number of persons? Anything like the plant guide?
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/18/11 07:02 PM

Quote:
Any guidelines for how many of what kind of livestock to support a given number of persons? Anything like the plant guide?


Americans' annual consumption of beef in 2000 was 64 pounds. Total red meat consumption (beef, veal, pork, and lamb) was 114 lbs. Annual consumption of poultry (chicken, turkey) in 2000 was nearly 50 pounds annually.
from How Much Meat We Eat Meat is a luxury in much of the world. I doubt that many countries eat as much as we do.

Raising your own meat under survival conditions requires properly mineralized soil (nutrition from soil to plant to animal to you), and enough land to feed them year-round, as you couldn't depend on outside sources.

A beef calf needs enough good nutrition to get him up to 700-900 lbs, and that happens more slowly on straight forage (no grain), but it's the most natural. Rotating pastures (see Joel Salatin's book Salad Bar Beef) is best for ongoing pasture maintenance and can probably sustain more cows on the least land while keeping it in good shape, but you still need a goodly amount of land.

Sheep eat grass, goats eat browse.

Chickens need short grass and grain, and are often good foragers if you choose your variety carefully. Free-range birds can hunt weed seeds and insects. If you had to use commercial feed exclusively, one layer hen would require 80-90 lbs of feed per year. Or, you would have to grow enough feed on your land to equal that amount.

Eggs are a great source of protein and fat, and can replace a lot of meat. Some chicken breeds will lay through the winter if they aren't stressed too much by cold. My Buff Orpingtons stopped laying early in Nov, and didn't crank up again until the days got longer in May. My current girls, Columbian Wyandottes, started laying in June and popped out eggs daily all through winter (a surprise), through the wet spring and summer, and up to when they started molting (fall). They are also less finicky about wet weather and are great foragers. Chickens lay the most eggs their first laying year, and less every year after. Some of the egg laying machines produce about 300 the first year, 200 the second and about 120 a year for the next 3 years , averaging about 800 for a 5 year lifespan. But many of these are poor foragers, so that increases the amount of feed you have to supply.

According to the book by Gene Logsden, Small-Scale Grain Raising, with decent soil you can grow one bushel of grain per plot:

Field corn: 10 x 50 ft (56 lbs, shelled)
Oats: 10 x 62 ft (32 lbs)
Barley: 10 x 87 ft (48 lbs)
Rye: 10 x 145 ft (56 lbs)
Buckwheat: 10 x 130 ft (48 lbs)
Grain sorghum: 10 x 60 ft (56 lbs)
Wheat: 10 x 109 ft (60 lbs)

These are estimates, but nine bushels (approx. 500 lbs) of assorted grains might be raised on 1/6 of an acre.

Choices would depend on climate,season, weather and soil, and you would have to keep in mind that for chickens, corn would have to be at least cracked (they can swallow it whole, but they don't get the nutrition out of it), oats* have to be threshed of their tight hulls, and barley* has to have the awns at least clipped.

* Hull-less oats and barley are available, which eliminates the worst of this problem.

And don't forget the lesser-known grains and pseudo-grains: Millet, the 'old wheats' (einkorn, emmer, kamut), triticale, flaxseed, grain amaranth, quinoa (must be rinsed before eating, humans or chickens). The wider the range of feed, the better the nutrition.

Sue
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/18/11 10:32 PM

Those crop estimates are quite high, I know my land its a lot lower.
My family of 4 uses about 1/4 of a cow per year. We eat out too much so we should probably be more like 1/2. My parents never raised anything else, my grandparents had pigs and chickens but it was before I started school that my grandmother had them, I can just barely remember walking out with her to the chicken coop and getting an egg for breakfast. I remember one year her burning the hairs off a whole chicken after they plucked it.
My father bought a corn picker and combine, we did 10 acres of corn and oats and ground it up for grain for the cattle for the winter. Had at most 3 dozen head of cattle.
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/19/11 01:16 AM

Quote:
Those crop estimates are quite high, I know my land its a lot lower.


His estimates were for experienced gardeners with smaller plots of improved soil, not 300-acre farmers.

Sue
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/19/11 08:42 PM

But I mean its not about at acreage or experience, its about land quality. My grandparents were experienced but had much less yield due to less water, rocky ground, etc. There is no one exact number and you need to prepare for the worst not the best.
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/19/11 10:21 PM

The point is that if your plan includes living off the land, maybe you better get deeper and more specific in your planning so that your expectations are reasonable - wherever and whatever land you are counting on.
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/20/11 02:01 AM

Quote:
...so that your expectations are reasonable...


Expectations are one thing, reality is another! Nothing gets in the way of someone's expectations like Real Life.

Sue
Posted by: bigreddog

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/20/11 08:31 AM

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Complete-Boo...942&sr=1-12

This is a great starter book for this sort of thing. You can do a lot with an acre. The key issue to remember is that if you start it will take a while (3-5 yrs probably) to get things up and running properly - a lot of people imagine they can just start up the day after teotwawki but you really can't
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/20/11 01:44 PM

Originally Posted By: NightHiker
Originally Posted By: Eugene
But I mean its not about at acreage or experience, its about land quality. My grandparents were experienced but had much less yield due to less water, rocky ground, etc. There is no one exact number and you need to prepare for the worst not the best.


Soil composition and nutrition levels, irrigation (or lack of it), insects and other scavengers, diseases, amount of sunlight during your growing season, temperature vairations...there are a ton of variables before you start considering the individual's knowledege, experience and techniques.


Thats what I'm trying to get at. A lot of the examples I see are assuming good soil. It takes a lot more work to make and keep soil good If your planning to live off the land then you need to plan for the worst and not the best because you may not be able to get all the $$ fertilizers and pest control to keep that soil good.
Posted by: dougwalkabout

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/20/11 03:29 PM

I think everyone should pay close attention to the posts by NuggetHoarder, Susan, and Eugene. These represent cold, hard, practical reality.

It does indeed take years to develop a productive mini-farm, and a lot of hard work. Don't expect to sit around playing video games while your land magically feeds you and heats your house. If you don't get your butt in gear and get the work done, it won't get done. Your hobbies and interests had better be connected to the work, or the whole enterprise will fail. The gardener's shadow is the best fertilizer.

Developing and feeding fertile, productive soil is half the job of gardening. Soil is an ecosystem. I probably have 10,000 square feet in active production (garden and orchard). That's roughly 1/4 acre. It takes at least 4-6 times that much lawn and light bush to produce the clippings and leaves to keep the soil fed. Areas with longer growing seasons have the luxury of planting winter cover such as ryegrass as green manure. Otherwise, it's necessary to rotate crops (which is often necessary for pest control anyway). You also need to adjust your soil-feeding to compensate for high or low pH as well as nutrients (for example, in my naturally high pH soil, I have to limit nitrogen and biochar in areas where I'm planting potatoes; otherwise the flea beetles and nematodes will ruin my crop).

The long and short of it: there is no substitute for putting a spade in the ground. You need to know your soil. Hypothetical plans only produce hypothetical food.
Posted by: Susan

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/20/11 04:39 PM

There it is in a nutshell: "You need to know your soil."

When you know your soil, you know it will take more of your sandy, rocky, thin-topsoil land to provide the same amount of food as the guy in the valley sitting on four feet of good topsoil.

Even on the gardening forums, I've noticed that many people don't/won't get their soil tested. They seem to be afraid that they won't understand the results, or they won't understand the suggestions, or that if they call and ask questions, the lab people will laugh at them. Step One: DON'T BE AFRAID!

Here's mine; they offered the overview in a comfortingly-familiar letter format:


Susan,
Here are the results of the soil testing you requested.

Organic matter: 15.6%. This is quite high. Organic matter provides water holding capacity and some slow release nutrients. Given your address, I'm assuming this is Rochester Grand Mound prairie. This soil (Spanaway complex) is gravelly with stable organic matter that tends not to release much in the way of nutrients. [Note: I think it is too high, probably due to my incorrectly collecting the sample.--Sue]

Phosphorus: At 57 ppm, you have plenty of phosphorus for this season. I like to see at least 30 ppm.

Potassium: at 63 ppm you you are a little low. I like to see potassium in the range 120-200 ppm.

Magnesium: at 73 ppm it is low in relation to calcium.

Calcium: at 992 ppm is moderate. Increasing the magnesium and calcium will improve the pH.

pH: at 5.8 this is moderately acidic. Most garden crops prefer near neutral conditions.

Nitrate nitrogen: at 3 ppm this is the limiting factor. You had virtually no available nitrogen at the time this sample was collected.

Sulfur: at 11 ppm is adequate for this season.

Nitrogen is definitely the limiting factor at this time. You need to apply 5 to 6 lbs of available nitrogen per 1000 sq ft of garden area. It is best to split your applications. Apply half at planting and the rest as the crop develops.

I would suggest that you plan to lime this garden with dolomite lime. If you haven't tilled the garden yet, you could till in about 150 lbs of dolomite lime per 1000 sq ft of garden. If you have, then wait until fall after the corps are off and till in lime for next year.

You need some additional potassium. You could use wood ash to improve the potassium level, or you could use a muriate of potash fertilizer. About 3 lbs of available potassium per 1000 sq ft annually until soil tests indicate levels in the 150-200 ppm range would be good.

I am enclosing some handout information on garden fertilization. If you have questions, give me a call at ###-####.


The next page was from the lab, with the levels and Cation Exchange Capacities (CEC). On the back of this page was the explanations of the various info in the report.

I borrowed the video from the library of Neal Kinsey's Hands-On Agronomy, and sat watching it with my soil report in my hand. Quite informative, and he is easy to understand.

Sue
Posted by: Pete

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/21/11 05:37 PM

"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?"

I began the slow and painful process of growing food in my backyard this year. The results were not bad ... my 1'st attempt at preserving fruit jam worked fairly well, and the tomatoes were quite prolific (after almost dying at first). But I'm a LOOOONG way from self sufficiency. I think you've got to just start going down the path, and trying to improve each year.

I do expect people to be foraging after a major quake in L.A. Much of this activity is really going to fall into the category of looting grocery stores. After that's over, I won't be surprised to see people taking buckets and draining the water out of ponds at local parks. But I don't think enough city dwellers know survival foods - to really eat what's growing in the park or the side of the road. So their activities may boil down to "foraging by stealing other peoples' stuff at gunpoint". Hunger and thirst are big motivators.

Pete2

Posted by: Unca_Walt

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/21/11 06:51 PM

Originally Posted By: Pete
"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?"

I began the slow and painful process of growing food in my backyard this year. The results were not bad ... my 1'st attempt at preserving fruit jam worked fairly well, and the tomatoes were quite prolific (after almost dying at first). But I'm a LOOOONG way from self sufficiency. I think you've got to just start going down the path, and trying to improve each year.

I do expect people to be foraging after a major quake in L.A. Much of this activity is really going to fall into the category of looting grocery stores. After that's over, I won't be surprised to see people taking buckets and draining the water out of ponds at local parks. But I don't think enough city dwellers know survival foods - to really eat what's growing in the park or the side of the road. So their activities may boil down to "foraging by stealing other peoples' stuff at gunpoint". Hunger and thirst are big motivators.

Pete2



Too right you are.

One thing for sure: The "foraging period" will be chillingly short.
Posted by: Eugene

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/21/11 08:20 PM

At least your off to a start. I started growing things this year again too, had a garden before we had kids at our old house.
got a handful of beans and carrots and squash did well. Going to move things around next year and see if I can't get some of the other things growing better. Need to research and see what grows best in the shady areas.
Posted by: NuggetHoarder

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/22/11 09:17 AM

If you want to live off your land, as the title of this thread suggests, then you'll have reject a lot of what many modern farmers are doing. Sure, you can adopt some of their best practices, but for the most part, if you want to stay out of Tractor Supply and hold on to your wallet, you're going to have to embrace a mixture of old fashioned farming along with some outside the box thinking and incorporate the best of other methods like permaculture, organic farming, aquaculture, wetlands habitat building, heirloom seed storage, gravity irrigation, drip irrigation, rainwater catchment, agroforestry, wildlife management, passive solar strategies, hydroponics, and free ranging your livestock - among many other outside the box subjects.

For instance, most modern farmers who have too many bugs will simply drive down to the farm store and drop some serious coin on pesticides. A permaculturist would just tell you that you don't have too many bugs, you just have too few guinea fowl!

I can't recommend enough that you look into permaculture. It is the best way, in my opinion, to manage the inputs and outputs from your land if money is tight and also provides the most comprehensive set of techniques to bring together garden crops, field crops, nut trees, fruit trees, berries, water storage, livestock, timber, and wild areas - all in one self supporting system that minimizes the inputs and maximizes the outputs in a way that is permanently sustainable and allows a home and family to sit at the center of it all.

With all of that said, you can see how hard it is to say how much land is required to sustain you.
Posted by: dweste

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/22/11 07:14 PM

Originally Posted By: NuggetHoarder
With all of that said, you can see how hard it is to say how much land is required to sustain you.


That is why we ask those who have actually managed it to share.
Posted by: NuggetHoarder

Re: Living off how much land? - 10/22/11 07:25 PM

Originally Posted By: dweste


That is why we ask those who have actually managed it to share.


Well, in my first post, I said 15 acres is what I thought was a good starting point and it's what has worked for me. Since then, a lot of folks posted all kinds of statistics about yield that sound like they came out of a college textbook that also teaches intensive fertilizer and pesticide usage which is just flat out unaffordable for small holders - so I thought I should elaborate my answer and bring up permaculture.

Yes, I have "actually managed it". I live it every day.