planning a homestead, suggestions?

My wife and I are looking at moving out of our small city into the country. We'd be building our own house (I'm in construction so no issue), and want to start raising our own chickens/cow/pigs and have a greenhouse to grow year round. Our goal is to be quasi self sufficient.

Anybody else already there? Any ideas? Pitfalls to avoid? Resources to read/tap into? Any suggestions welcome!

Make sure you get a decent sized woodlot. A productive ten acre hardwood lot should supply enough firewood each year for a normal well insulated home.

bosco

Chickens & rabbits. Once you get the populations established, you'll have fresh eggs every day & plenty of lowfat meat to eat. Supplement their feed with kitchen & garden scraps. If you let the chickens run loose, they'll eat bugs, lizards & small snakes all day long. Bunny droppings make great garden fert & if you build a bin under the cages, you can compost it right there & farm worms in it; worms LOVE it! Use the worms for fishing, or feed 'em to chickens, sell 'em for bait, add 'em to your compost piles. Compost everything you can & add it to the garden.
Regards, GF.

You may also want to try a food forest. You plant it once and harvest each and every year no planting no weeding. I'm also a huge fan of earth shelters and earth bermed houses. Rain water collection for grey water use. I have also heard good things about the rocket mass heater which runs on wood scraps. Mike Oehler has a book on earth shelter solar greenhouses he keeps rabbits in the bottom and they heat the green house in the winter. He grows veggies until January February in Idaho with out heat. This website has a ton of info permies.com. This has been a dream of mine for a while. When we get out of the army our plan is to do a homestead.

Good luck man! We just moved in to a 6.5 acre property with an old old farm house. We're planning a garden for next year and have considered rabbits for meat. A friend of ours is doing this so we'll get their opinion after a year or so.

You live in Canada, so therefore it's going to require a ton of extra work to be self efficient. we have a short growing season and long winters. which means you need to store a ton of food to make it from late fall until spring.

chickens are pretty easy to keep. my neighbour brings in 75 chickens for meat each year and also has 12 chickens for eggs. the egg birds free range all year (except winter) and he feeds the meat birds grain. he will usually sell 20-30 birds to pay for the ones he keeps. excellent tasting birds.

not sure exactly where in Alberta you are moving too, but i wouldn't bother raising rabbits. You likely have so many rabbits running wild you could easily snare them. i'm in Ontario and set 10 snares up and everyday i catch 1-2 rabbits with minimal work, during the winter months only. i set snares in about a 3-4 acre area and keep rotating. take 4-5 from one section and move to another. i have about 150 acres i can snare.

i wouldn't do the beef/pork thing right off that get go. i would get everything else in order. that is a big task in my opinion.

Good luck in your new venture!!

Get some good books and good support. Check out backwoodshome.com, they also have a magazine. Warning: They are pretty Libertarian and have a lot of gun stuff, but the other stuff is worth wading through it if you don't agree with their views on other things. There is one lady who writes an article and a blog as well as a Q&A column who is great. Here and her husband are pretty self sufficent and live in Northern MN so a lot of her stuff will be relatable in terms of short season for you. Her name is Jackie Clay and she has some great books too. Lastly a book that is great is called Self Sufficiency by John Seymor. He is in England so you'd have to adapt some things, but he has a well thought out system.

Homesteading in Alberta, I'd seriously look into earth sheltered homes. You might want to invest in a wind generator, solar too, but in winter, the wind will blow when the sun doesn't shine. Deep cycle batteries & electric heat for a backup to your primary heat.

You could also use your greenhouse to heat your home, there are many designs for this. You might think about combining a bit of aquaculture with your greenhouse, plenty of designs out there for that too. It would be nice to use a net to get fresh fish to go with those fresh veggies in January, and never even have to put your coat on to do it.

I'd also plant plenty of apple trees. Obviously you get to eat/ferment the apples, but they'll also attract deer; applsauce is a tasty condiment with venison. I'd plant some honeyberries too, taste a lot like blueberries & hardy down to -20*F, packed with vitamin C & antioxidants.

Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck on living the dream!
Regards, GF.

gratus fermentatio said:

Homesteading in Alberta, I'd seriously look into earth sheltered homes. You might want to invest in a wind generator, solar too, but in winter, the wind will blow when the sun doesn't shine. Deep cycle batteries & electric heat for a backup to your primary heat.

You could also use your greenhouse to heat your home, there are many designs for this. You might think about combining a bit of aquaculture with your greenhouse, plenty of designs out there for that too. It would be nice to use a net to get fresh fish to go with those fresh veggies in January, and never even have to put your coat on to do it.

I'd also plant plenty of apple trees. Obviously you get to eat/ferment the apples, but they'll also attract deer; applsauce is a tasty condiment with venison. I'd plant some honeyberries too, taste a lot like blueberries & hardy down to -20*F, packed with vitamin C & antioxidants.

Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck on living the dream!
Regards, GF.

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I would also grow some rhubarb and atkins cherries. If you can find it the st croix grape does well here, it is supposedly hardy to -40C. there is a person on edmonton kijiji who usually sells them for $5 a vine if I remember correctly. You can use as a table grape and it also makes a decent wine

mbauer013 said:

Get some good books and good support. Check out backwoodshome.com, they also have a magazine. Warning: They are pretty Libertarian and have a lot of gun stuff, but the other stuff is worth wading through it if you don't agree with their views on other things. There is one lady who writes an article and a blog as well as a Q&A column who is great. Here and her husband are pretty self sufficent and live in Northern MN so a lot of her stuff will be relatable in terms of short season for you. Her name is Jackie Clay and she has some great books too. Lastly a book that is great is called Self Sufficiency by John Seymor. He is in England so you'd have to adapt some things, but he has a well thought out system.

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I would think you would want a gun if you are homesteading

Learn how to properly preserve and store food.

It's a lot of work. SWMBO's folks do it on about an acre for everything but flour (and they're vegetarian, to boot...), but one or the other of 'em has a full-time job in the garden throughout the growing/harvest season.

Canning and pickling are key... luckily, you already have a big pot, a big burner to bring it up to a boil, and plenty of experience with sanitation. Although, root veggies will last just about for ever packed in sand and left in the dark, as will winter squashes with unbroken skin.

Some do, some don't. I may have one or two poking around somewhere, but a lot of people don't like the magazine I referenced due to overt gun culture and other libertarian leanings so I thought a warning was in order.

I just came across these and found them fascinating. I don't know how you feel about earth shelters but I thought it was worth a look. You could grow your own barley on your roof.

Awesome, thanks for the replies! I was busy this week (wife just had a kid) and jumped on for the first time in a bit.

I'm still going to be commuting into the city, so we won't be completely self sufficient, and while I like the idea of an earth home, my wife would definitely shoot it down .

Honey berries? I'm going to have to look those up! Never heard of them!

And I never thought about lots of apples to attract deer! That's awesome! Any good resources for developing fruit trees that you can recommend?

I may get a sub to that homestead magazine, I'm no libertarian, but no opposition to guns here!

Whats a forest garden? I've never heard of it. The problem with this whole deal is I live on the edge of the prairies and the foothills, so whatever land comes up close enough to commute from, and is in our price range, we'll probably take. And it could be prairie or forested. Hard to plan for.

Have to do the whole thing on a budget as well, so a lot of DIY.

Any suggestions on the best bang for our buck in terms of investments? Develop a garden/greenhouse? Chickens? Renewable energy?

Any feedback on impact to standard of living/family life with a 1hr commute each direction?

Earth man cave/bar

As far as commute, my girlfriend has one hour each way and hates it,

But I talked to a guy once that moved from houston down to next to the bay. He said before with traffic it took him 30 to 45 minutes to get to work. Now it takes a solid hour. But he said moving out there next to the water and opening a small restaurant his wife runs (living their dream) makes it totally worth the drive

Earth man cave, awesome! Didn't think of that! Or even a cheap root celar to store garden preserves... I'll have to look into it more!

Definitely learn to ferment vegetables. Super easy, best thing I've ever done, and makes somewhat benign vegetables so much better for you. I never though cabbage could be so awesome till I made my own kraut. Plus if you garden cabbage is super-hardy and can be fermented/preserved throughout the winter if you make really big batches. My great grandparents got along well by the miracle of fermentation and a good root cellar in rural Ohio back before they had electricity or refrigeration. Pickle, Can, and ferment everything you don't eat fresh.

a food forest is planting perennials that you only have to plant once and can collect food from every year, like apples and blueberries. here is a link to one in Seattle.http://beaconfoodforest.weebly.com/

Check out earthineer.com
It's a forum totally dedicated to Homesteaders and Do It Yourselfers and it's free.
I also subscribe to Backwoods Home and Countryside magazines.

You might find this useful:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0756654505/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
It's not the homesteading "bible", but it might be helpful.

I'd buy all the trees bareroot to save money. It's a little more work that way, but you can really save a lot. Here's a link you may find interesting & useful:
http://www.hardyfruittrees.ca/

Honeyberries are also known as haskap & are a type of honeysuckle, here's another link you will find informative:
http://www.fruit.usask.ca/haskap.html
Regards, GF.

I'd recommend that you look into Earthships. I'm quite a ways away from being able to have my own (maybe 40 years or so...) but ive done a lot of research into them. They're meant for self-sufficiency.

I found this website, which has improvements on the original earthship design and great FAQ's/Facts.
http://www.touchtheearthranch.com/index.html

Cheers and good luck! (My fiance started raising some chickens at her moms farm. 5 hens laying a few eggs a day. I never am wanting for eggs anymore )

Thanks for all the tips. I looked up garden forests, and I think that's a great idea! Combined with a small row garden, you'd have a ton of produce with very little work!

Thoughts on a greenhouse. You might want to consider making it an attached greenhouse to the actual house. Possibly attach it off a garage (if you have an attached garage). I am not sure of your climate, but if you live somewhere cold, it is awfully nice to be able to walk straight from inside your house right in to the greenhouse. Plus in the winter time you can open the greenhouse to the house to let the solar gain in.

For night time buffering, I'd suggest a number of water barrels in the greenhouse as well as constructing on a concrete pad (insulated from the ground). The thermal mass from the concrete and the water in the barrels will help the greenhouse keep a much more even temperature through the night as well as on overcast days.

I envy you by the way. I only got halfway to my dream of a homestead. Last year we moved out of the exurbs in to the far reaches of the suburbs. You could almost call my location rural. My "homestead" is sadly only an acre (actually 1.01A, as I like to say they tacked on the four hundred square feet just so you can call it "more than an acre"). I do have a few dwarf apples I planted this past spring and a 300sq-ft garden my wife and I plan on expanding to about 1,000sq-ft eventually. Also plans for some grapes and a whole bunch of blueberry and blackberry bushes (only 4 blueberry bushes planted so far).

No plans for animals (other than our 2 cats). Our neighbor across the street has a 6 acre horse farm and she has about 15 chickens. She gives us eggs all the time. We also live 2 houses in to our neighborhood (a few 1 acre plots from the 1960s, mostly 3-10 acre horse farms and rural houses, one small subdivision with about 40 1-1.5 acre lots on it built a few years ago). Across the rural highway from us is a nice sized 60 acre farm and the community supported agriculture collective we joined is the farm behind that one (about 100 acres for that farm, plus they own another farm down another rural route about a mile away that is 70 acres). It isn't really walking distance, but it does mean we only have to drive a mile to get to it (since we can't go across the farm inbetween us).

I still dream of moving further away from the city to 3-4 acres and raising chickens and goats (wife won't allow goats, but she would allow chickens...just maybe not till the kids are a little older).

We do have plans for a small greenhouse attached to our garage once we tear down the existing one for a new 2 car garage and master suite addition (current 2 car attached garage is kind of run down).

gratus fermentatio said:

Homesteading in Alberta, I'd seriously look into earth sheltered homes. You might want to invest in a wind generator, solar too, but in winter, the wind will blow when the sun doesn't shine. Deep cycle batteries & electric heat for a backup to your primary heat.

You could also use your greenhouse to heat your home, there are many designs for this. You might think about combining a bit of aquaculture with your greenhouse, plenty of designs out there for that too. It would be nice to use a net to get fresh fish to go with those fresh veggies in January, and never even have to put your coat on to do it.

I'd also plant plenty of apple trees. Obviously you get to eat/ferment the apples, but they'll also attract deer; applsauce is a tasty condiment with venison. I'd plant some honeyberries too, taste a lot like blueberries & hardy down to -20*F, packed with vitamin C & antioxidants.

Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck on living the dream!
Regards, GF.

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The deer around me love my apple trees. Two tricks, grow a lot of apple trees and then your loses proprotionately will be pretty small. Or, two, get deer repellent. Generally the best is coyote urine. It doesn't smell entirely pleasant (as my wife found out when the wind went the wrong way when she was spraying and then smelled like coyote piss the entire day, even after showering). It will however not be noticable more than a couple of feet away (to you) and it WILL keep deer away. We sprayed out apple trees and our garden and the deer left it alone then (garden is fenced with 5ft high fences, but they still nibbled through the fence). They then went after our plants in front, we spray those and they started eating the hydrangaes outback, which we then sprayed and now they leave everything alone.

I think you have to spray every month or two, but the stuff isn't that expensive. For the 3 apple trees, plus out couple of dozen bushes, bunches of herbs and 300sq-ft garden a $14 bottle should last more than a year.

We're fixing to move to the States next year, primarily Arizona. The Wife wants fruit trees and we are looking into north central AZ, the highlands. I told her my experience from growing up was that for every 2 fruit trees we planted, we had to plant 1 more for the deer. I grew up mostly in Michigan.
we are definitely looking into some acreage for a small homestead. Fruit trees, garden and just chickens and rabbits to start for animals. For the next house, we plan to attempt an attached greenhouse incorporating Aquaponics. That way we can raise fish and vegetables in a self contained system.

Subsailor said:

We're fixing to move to the States next year, primarily Arizona. The Wife wants fruit trees and we are looking into north central AZ, the highlands. I told her my experience from growing up was that for every 2 fruit trees we planted, we had to plant 1 more for the deer. I grew up mostly in Michigan.
we are definitely looking into some acreage for a small homestead. Fruit trees, garden and just chickens and rabbits to start for animals. For the next house, we plan to attempt an attached greenhouse incorporating Aquaponics. That way we can raise fish and vegetables in a self contained system.

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You'll want to plant several, and even then we only get a few good years for them every now and then. Mostly the issues up here are late freezes (sometimes as late as May) incredibly high winds during the early-middle-and late spring which blows every blossom off the trees, and recently this year a lot of trees were damaged by several storms of quarter diameter hail (you should see my hop garden). That's not to say there are good places in northern AZ, but up here in Flagstaff gardening and having fruit trees will definitely stretch your agricultural skills. If you actually go somewhat lower in elevation into the Verde Valley/Payson region of the state, but still north of the Mogollon(moh-ghee-yon) Rim, you can grow practically anything you want and the land is cheaper, but you'll have to enjoy fairly hot temps in the summer. The Verde Valley is also part of AZ's wine country if you can believe it, so if fine wine can be produced here, just about anything can short of rice paddies

RachmaelBenApplebaum said:

You'll want to plant several, and even then we only get a few good years for them every now and then. Mostly the issues up here are late freezes (sometimes as late as May) incredibly high winds during the early-middle-and late spring which blows every blossom off the trees, and recently this year a lot of trees were damaged by several storms of quarter diameter hail (you should see my hop garden). That's not to say there are good places in northern AZ, but up here in Flagstaff gardening and having fruit trees will definitely stretch your agricultural skills. If you actually go somewhat lower in elevation into the Verde Valley/Payson region of the state, but still north of the Mogollon(moh-ghee-yon) Rim, you can grow practically anything you want and the land is cheaper, but you'll have to enjoy fairly hot temps in the summer. The Verde Valley is also part of AZ's wine country if you can believe it, so if fine wine can be produced here, just about anything can short of rice paddies

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Hi and thanks! Her parents live in Wenden (Too Hot!) and her sister lives in Prescott Valley. We really liked the Verde Valley/Payson area. She's in healthcare and so I don't think it will be too hard for her to find a job. I'm retired military and will be early retiring from the State.

Goofynewfie said:

I would also grow some rhubarb and atkins cherries. If you can find it the st croix grape does well here, it is supposedly hardy to -40C. there is a person on edmonton kijiji who usually sells them for $5 a vine if I remember correctly. You can use as a table grape and it also makes a decent wine

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I meant evans cherry, not atkins

Fully Self sufficient is tough work and involves serious sacrifices (no coffee!) but growing a garden, tending berries, fruit trees, and getting large portions of meals from your land is much more reasonable. I live in VT and we raise 40-60 broiler chickens/yr, have 8 apple trees for cider and sauce, grow a 3000 sq ft garden ( although we are cutting back some this season), make our own jam/pickles/etc, and of course I brew.

As for a garden, just start planting. I recommend Dick Raymond's Joy of Gardening to get started. A rototiller or garden tractor are well worth the investment.

For livestock, broilers and rabbits are easiest for meat. I built a chicken tractor and a tub plucker and we do our own processing. Cattle and pork would require large areas be fenced off, a field processor and butcher be hired. I'd prefer to raise more birds and find someone to trade with. Layers mean more infrastructure as well (insulated coop, predator protection,etc) so we trade meat for eggs too.

I'm a terrible hunter but I have a shotgun and rifle that I walk around with in the fall.

We're not fully self sufficient - I have to buy feed, some veggie seeds, and brewing supplies - but were a hell of a lot closer than folks that eat McDonald's a couple of times every week.

Best of luck and PM me if I can help.




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Not a homesteader, but I can definitely speak from the perspective if a small family farm. The most important thing for me is to make wise choices on tools, equipment, etc. on our farm, we tend to buy equipment that meet the following criteria.

1) specific model in question has a notorious reputation for serviceability and durability.
2) parts are available easily, preferably from a trusted, local supplier.
3) never buy "consumer grade" anything. This means get your chain saw, weed wackier, etc. from a saw shop, your mower from a local dealer, etc. This of course means you have to save up more, but the quality pays off long term. Building relationships with local guys in these businesses will likely mean you are well recurred when looking for a deal, need to get something pushed through the shop quickly





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OP did you ever go through with this? Im curious as to your results. I am in the process of moving from the chicago suburbs to about 300 miles south to (what I call) psudo homestead - small income from non homestead business but most of income from homestead. Let us know how it is going.

Still working on it. Making plans. Keeping an eye out for the right property.

We don't plan to be full on self sufficient. We'd be happy if we could subsidize half our food bill over the year.

Thanks for all the pointers from you guys! It's really kicked off a lot of research and learning. We now have a test garden at our current house based on permaculture/companion planting principles and it's going great! We've got enough food growing for a few weeks in 100sq ft., along with a ton of flowers and other plants to protect/fertilize the vegetables. I figure if we make all the mistakes we can in 100sq ft, we won't make big costly ones when we find a property.

Go to groupbuilder.com (HBT's owner) and click on agriculture and homesteading. There is a lot of good info there.

Me and my wife want to go at least 80% at some point in the next 5-10 years - we've been doing a lot if research/working on our systems for the past 4 years.

I'd highly recommend this book by Ben falk http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603584447/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

He has built an amazing homestead in Vermont and has great new and modern ideas around the subject. Best book I've read on the subject.

Also if you live in a cold weather area look into Eliot Coleman's work on growing year round in hoop houses - he's got really great ideas around it and us very DiY

You might wan to look into the book "Introduction to Permaculture" by Bill Mollison. There's a lot of technical info, as well as quite a few good ideas, at least as far as streamlining the homestead and reducing total energy input while maximizing yield and output.

Also, while it's a little outdated, if you can track down a copy of "Five Acres and Independence" it'd be quite helpful. Again, lots of technical info, and a lot of the methods tend to be the older ones (i.e. from the 1920's).

Small strokes fell big Oaks.
We started homesteading (kinda) 20 + years ago on a bare 24 acres, 3 acres are field/old pasture.
I designed and built a passive solar home from the foundation up with little help on the mostly pay as you go plan. Custom built a solar hot water system about 5 yrs ago.
It all takes a huge amount of your time to become semi-self sufficient and building your own homestead but don't regret any of it.
Perennials yes, start them as soon as you can apples, asparagus, highbush blueberries for starters. Although apples can be a pain trying to get a decent non wormy crop the other two are quite easy to maintain with a couple decades of
bountiful harvest from one planting.
Firewood is a huge cost saver DIY. We have spent about $500 dollars total on heating here at 45* N. latitude over the course of 20+ years. Can't beat that.
Cut it down, limb it, haul it out with small tractor, buck it up and split it if needed and thats it, all hard labor but i recently kept track of my time doing this and it is worth about $20 hr. doing it yourself here.
Don't do any animals here , some like beef and pork have become cost prohibitive due to feed prices but each to their own.
Now on our second year of keeping bees , great for certain vegetable production plus some surplus honey for eating and Mead brewing.
Sourdough bread, learn how to do this and eat wholesome bread never having to buy yeast again . Haven't bought any of that nasty commercial bread for 5 years now and saved a bunch of money .
Potatoes and winter Squash from your garden will keep for many months in your ventilated cold storage room , ours is a in a partitioned off NW corner of
our basement. Just had the last potatoes from the previous gardening season last week and they were still very good although starting to sprout.
Too much more to cover but go for it and good luck !

We have just about finished our move. Our house in Alaska will close on October 9th and we are placing a bid on a 10 acre farm in Prescott Valley. here in AZ. It's already fenced and set up for animals, with 4 separate pastures, barn, shelters, hay barn and quarantine pen with shelter. It has a great well, just need to add Solar Power and be completely off the grid!
It has a nice bunk house that just needs a a new fridge and I have plans to convert it into my man cave/brewery! The bunk house is about 1000sqft, needs some TLC but its got a 3 burner stove (propane), air conditioning, sleeps up to 4 people, room for a table, chairs, has its own full bathroom, I couldn't ask for much more! The lady selling the place has some Hops growing on the North side of the house that her ex planted but she doesn't know what they are.
The property has an orchard; apples, pears, plums and peaches bordered with grape vines.

Sounds awesome Subsailor, hope you get a smokin' good deal on it!
Regards, GF.