Homesteading on a small lot - Join and share experiences and ideas

[nayeli]

@babylove1985 why is only 1/2 of your land useable?

 

[babylove1985]

once you account for the land taken up by the house, garage, and two outbuildings and the back of the property borders the "river" so about 6-8 feet in is sandy/rocky.

 

[lilmizscareall]

Sorry, posted on the wrong thread!

 

[Beekissed]

hey everyone! I just relocated to Wyoming and have almost a half acre of property but only about a quarter is usable. I am putting in a couple raised beds this year and hoping to stock my flock as well. anyone have any suggestions on how best to prioritize what to plant/raise on the limited space? the soil quality here is extremely poor so pretty much anything I plant will have to be in containers or raised beds.

Concentrate on high yield plants that take up less space and also will be something your family will actually incorporate into menus or something you can preserve for later eating. Tomatoes, beans, lettuces, onions, peppers, cukes or squash on a trellis. Find some information on square foot gardening and four season gardening to maximize your garden's ability to produce food. Also glean info on cold frames for having some winter crops of cold hardy spinach, lettuce, kale, etc.

Don't grow corn, potatoes and other crops that take up space...you can buy them cheaper and in bulk and better than you can ever grow from farm stands. Buy the sweet corn in bulk and can it or freeze it.

Start a deep litter system in your coop and run to start producing your own soil amendment for your garden space and also make friends with local horse ranchers/barns and start your own compost bin filled with horse manure. It can even occupy space inside your chicken run and be a place where they can glean food. Seed it with red wiggler worms and they will grow their own replacements and provide your chickens with more food. You can also place some graze and come again frames in your chicken run to provide some more natural food selections(if you are unable to free range) for all year round...you can erect plastic tunnels over them for winter time and plant cold hardy items like kale, spinach, white dutch clover, beets.

Stack livestock and keep rabbits over your chickens in the coop...the rabbits will yield you more meat than will chickens and are quiet, easy to grow and provide wonderful manure for your deep litter system.

Ferment your chicken feed so you can save half on total feed costs, have cleaner smelling coops and healthier chickens.

 

[OwlandBear]

I have a little over a 1/4 acre. Most of it is yard as I have a wedge-shaped lot, with a small front yard and a small house. We garden, raise chickens (layer and meat chickens), have fruit trees, and I have enough room for rabbits but not enough shade (I live in the southwest). The one thing I should be doing is using gray water on my plants, but it's tricky since my washer is smack-dab in the middle of the house and I'm not confident enough to try messing with my shower lines. I hang some clothes on the line, but consider a huge waste of time to try hanging my socks and other small bits--however, my dryer recently broke and I've been forced to hang those essential bits of clothing and yep, huge time-sucker.

On the gas easement, can you do portable structures? Like a chicken tractor for meat chickens? Or a garden bed in galvanized troughs...something that can be moved if needed?

I keep a couple of 5 gallon buckets in each bathroom, and harvest as much bath water as I can, then carry it out to the barrels in the garden. You can take one into the shower with you to catch the "waiting for the water to warm" water and any soapy rinse water you can contrive to get in there.

 

[MoonShadows]

Good idea Owl and Bear. A couple of years ago, we disconnected the pipe that the kitchen sink and washing machine emptied into that connected to the main house drain and then into our cesspool (yup, we have an old cesspool on our property...grandfathered in for decades). We then diverted it to that into a polyvinyl flexible pipe that we buried down to our garden. We can divert this gray water into our field or our garden when it needs water. Great way to conserve fresh water and recycle the gray water.

 

[babylove1985]

thanks everyone for the tips!

 

[ChaoSS]

I've never looked into gray water systems, does the soap in the water not cause any problems on the lawn/garden?



Beekissed, I'm planning on reading the 300 plus pages of your thread on fermented food, but I've been busy, so just a quick answer is good enough, I don't need an in depth explanation here, but can you ferment pelleted food or is it just straight grains? Or rather, does it have the same benefit, since the grains in pelleted feed is already processed, and, I'd assume, somewhat easier to digest?

 

[Beekissed]

I've never looked into gray water systems, does the soap in the water not cause any problems on the lawn/garden?



Beekissed, I'm planning on reading the 300 plus pages of your thread on fermented food, but I've been busy, so just a quick answer is good enough, I don't need an in depth explanation here, but can you ferment pelleted food or is it just straight grains? Or rather, does it have the same benefit, since the grains in pelleted feed is already processed, and, I'd assume, somewhat easier to digest?

You can ferment it all and it will yield the same benefits. It's such a cheap way~free~to enhance your common feeds and provide better intestinal health for the birds that it's a no brainer. List of benefits discovered or researched so far:

Increases protein usage by 12%(according to scientific studies)
Changes proteins and sugars to a form easily digested and utilized by a monogastric animal~amino acids.
Less feed waste due to more utilized at the point of digestion and also from feeding a wet feed.
Less feed consumed due to total nutrients increased in the feed~resulting in a decrease of total feed costs by nearly half.
Intestinal health and culture increases, intestinal villi lengthen thus increasing total absorption area and blood flow to the intestines.
Increased immune system function.
Increased parasite resistance.
Increased yolk size/weight.
Increased rate of lay.
Increased feather quality and growth, increased rate of molt recovery.
Increased scale, beak quality due to increased nutrient uptake(some have reported correction of cross beak after using FF).
Less undigested matter in the feces~resulting in less nitrogen in manure, less smell of the fecal matter, less attractant for flies, less ammonia production as there is less break down needed of waste material.
Less water consumption due to feeding wet feeds.
Less incidence of pasty butt in young chicks, faster weight gains, faster feathering of young chicks as well.
Thicker egg shells.
Less feed waste to rodent predation.
No changes in winter warmth issues as core temps do not depend on rates of digestion of feed~no more than it does for any other animal or human.
Increased mild flavor of eggs, removal of sulfur or "eggy" flavor.
Increased mild flavor of meat, removal of "gamey" flavor.
Increased overall health and appearance noted and reported with continuous use of FF.
Prebiotics and probiotics available in feed increase resistance to disease/illnesses such as coccidia, e.coli, salmonella, flagella, etc.

 

[Ole and Lena]

Here's an idea for the pipeline easement. You can usually plant low ground cover. Alfalfa or oats for the chickens, edible pole beans or peas (without the poles), squash and pumpkins. The reason for the no permanent plantings is that they don't want brush growing and pipelines are surveyed by air and/or satellite to detect leaks. Herbaceous low ground cover will not be a problem, but YOU are planting at your own risk as they may spray with herbicide from time to time. You still should clear it with the pipeline company first.

Another idea for around your lot are wine cap mushrooms. They grow well in woodchip beds in partially shaded moist areas such as along foundations or under landscape shrub plantings. You can mix them in with tulips, hydrangea, etc. Mine love the lilac hedge at the edge of the property. They are delicious! You can also work some shitake or oyster mushroom colonized logs into your landscaping and gardens as borders. You can usually find the logs for free from your neighborhood when people are landscaping in the spring or after a windstorm. Some strains can be grown on pallets or scrap lumber also. Grow some upside down tomatoes and peppers under your eaves. If you have understanding neighbors and no small children, apiculture would be interesting.