Hi. I am slowly turning my husband into a homesteader. He used to work a job he loved but at a company he hated. Since I make good money, he quit, went back to college, and is now responsible for most of our animal husbandry while he studies. He is enjoying the outdoors (after 15 years of being cooped up in a machine shop), and really getting interested in raising and growing things on our land. I have wanted to homestead since the mid-90's so when I moved to Vermont (from Los Angeles) 14 years ago, the goal was to buy a property of 50 acres or more to start living a more self-sufficient lifestyle.
We live an 80 acre property that used to be used for raising deer for commercial sales so we have tons of fencing, a decent barn, a maple sugar house that has been converted to a 240sqft chicken coop, and a variety of wood sheds (besides the main house), one of which was converted in a pig enclosure. We have 24 chickens, combo layers/meat birds. At some point we'll get a rooster and start raising our birds from the egg. Maybe next year.
We have two pigs, one for us and one for my in-laws, and are about to pick up our spring pig really soon here. The vast majority of our meat intake is chicken and pork so the goal is to be at least 90% self-sufficient. I don't want to raise cows/cattle and can't raise salmon so that is the closest we'll get to 100% of our meat needs, but that is fantastic in my mind.
I started a garden last year, and like most 1st year gardens it gave only a so-so yield. This year, some of last year's crops failed while the new crops did well. So maybe next spring/summer, both groups will do well? Fingers crossed. We hope to have lots of good fertilizer from the animals this time and that should help. I work (albeit mostly from home
) and the kids are still small (ages 3 & 4) so I need the garden to function fairly well on its own with only occasional tending. I have purposefully bought plants and seed that are local, heritage varieties. This fall we will quadruple the garden's size, fence it in and put up a frame for a greenhouse (hopefully; this might have to wait til next spring if it gets too cold early). Next year, the kids will be old enough to do some work in the garden and help take care of the chickens.
We have a small apple orchard (which is in need of serious pruning), acres and acres of raspberry and blackberry bushes, and wild strawberries (hoping to add blueberries). I have yet to make jams/jellies/butters, but I make lots of syrup/sauces and we freeze many pounds of berries for the winter. This year, a local farm had huge quantities of organic peaches that were some of the most gorgeous things I had seen in years so we bought 20 pounds or so and made peach juice, cobblers, and diced up the rest for freezing. I am going to love those in December.
Someone asked about growing strawberries from seed. There are some inexpensive varieties sold on
Amazon or you can buy these dried plants. We just got them this year (so no fruit yet), but they were quite hardy. I would recommend trying them out and for $15 how can you go wrong, right?
http://www.amazon.com/25-Evie-Everb...=1378216676&sr=8-1&keywords=strawberry+plants
I don't can. I freeze everything. I have never cared for the taste of preserved food, but I have no problem eating something that was frozen for months. Call me crazy.
The freezer doesn't use a lot of electricity (it is new and energy-star rated) and we are working on generating either solar or wind (or both) energy so hopefully this will be more self-sufficient at some point.
My father-in-law came to us about 5 years ago to start making our own maple syrup, and at first we started small, but now we make enough for both families for an entire year. We need about 5 gallons. The inlaws might barely use a gallon. We are mostly paleo-style cooks so the maple is used in the place of sugar for most things (honey and date sugar fills in the rest of our needs).
Like a previous poster, we have a wood furnace that heats the house, and we use a lot of dead fall to manage that and a small wood stove we have as a backup. So we take care of our woods so that they stay healthy and can continue to provide us with maple syrup and hardwood to burn.
Oh and I forgot, my hubby and daughter are celiacs so I mill a lot of our gluten-free flours. I have a Blendtec kitchen mill. I buy millet and rice in 10 pound volumes and mill that into our flours. I buy almond flour because the mill cannot handle nuts with a high oil content (it gets warm and gums up the machinery). I leave out a couple of pounds in ball jars and freeze the rest for later use.
Happy to see this thread. Would love to share ideas.
none. Maybe if I had an experienced-ie OLDER canner that would be willing to teach me then maybe I would feel a little more comfortable
