My wife and I have been working on this whole thing for some time now. Still not there, but getting closer all the time. I have learned A LOT along the way, which I would be happy to share.
First, a bit of background-We live in central PA, in orchard country. We have good soil, although rocky, and plenty of rain. It's hilly to mountainous here, so, in the old days this was a dairy/orchard area. Both my wife and I have backgrounds in science/biology, and work as horticulture professionals. We have about 3 acres, a bit over 1 acre is fenced pasture, a bit less than one acre is orchard, plus, about a 6,000 sq. ft garden, soon to be expanded to maybe 10,000 sq.ft. We have chickens, geese, sheep, goats, guineas, cats, dogs, etc. We DO NOT buy any fruits or vegetables to speak of. That means no oranges, bananas, etc. We eat seasonally, so, now, we eat roots and squash, and canned, dried or frozen items. We are almost at the point of not buying any meat, should be there by fall of 2011. Hopefully, can be there with milk this spring. We raise our own animals, save our own seeds, etc.
Now, all that being said, we ARE NOT SELF SUFFICIENT, we still have to buy SO MUCH stuff. It's nearly impossible to be independent that way, even my great great grandparents bought things, although far less than we do today. Try making your own saw, shovel, glasses, shoes, hinges, etc. Growing your own food is a lot of work, but very do-able. Growing all the food for your animals is also do-able, but harder. I will provide some hints on that below,
1) Animals can forage most of their own food if you let them, in a good,productive environment. The animals have got to have good, healthy pasture or forest to forage in. No, if you make them find their own food, you will not get high productivity, but, if it's really just for your needs, who cares? I know a guy who raises hogs on pasture with almost no supplemental food given. He actually tried raising some with no food at all. They still produced litters, although much smaller litter sizes, but, if you are going to just eat them yourself, how many do you really need anyway? It should be obvious that predator control is essential!!!
2) If you want to be self-sufficient, super productive "improved' breeds are out. They have all been bred assuming you will feed them tons of grain, and medicate them as needed. A lot of the "improved' breeds are also constitutionally weak, and lazy. Don't get caught thinking about what your grandparents raised, they still had easy access to relatively cheap feed. You need to go back a bit farther, to what people raised when minimal food was available. I am not just talking about just cornish crosses here, I also mean Orps, Marans, Rocks, etc. My great great grandparents lived in the extreme rural VA mountains. They had dominiques, games, and probably mixes thereof. They were not raising holsteins or jerseys, they had shorthorns.
3) You have to learn what will work for you in your CLIMATE. What works for me in Pa probably won't work in Maine or Florida. I cannot overstate this enough!! The whole practice of agriculture needs to be different from place to place, especially, the varieties need to change from place to place. It takes time to figure out what will work, just try things and learn as you go.
4) You have got to start breeding, or at least selecting your own stock, of EVERYTHING, to suit your own needs. Everything from grain, to chickens, to squash, to beans, you must be taking a role in that process. Start NOW, it takes time to learn, and time to do!!
5) Summary- FREE RANGE, OLD, NON IMPROVED BREEDS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS, LOCALLY ADAPTED VARIETIES, MAINTAIN/BREED/SELECT YOUR OWN STOCK.
OK, HERE ARE SOME HINTS!!
-Feed everything to an animal that you won't eat. In summer and fall, I am literally dumping multiple 5-gallon buckets of spoiled produce in to the animals. This includes squash and bean vines, corn stalks, etc.
-Animals can eat roots.You have to cook potatoes first, but, if you heat with wood, this becomes easy. Most all other roots can be fed as is, raw.
-Animals can eat squash and pumpkins.
-You don't need to thresh or clean grains and seeds that are meant for animals. I feed whole sunflower heads, corn ears, etc to the birds. They can pick the seeds off themselves. You can pretty easily grow oats or wheat, and NOT thresh it, and just throw whole bundles in for animals. They will pick out the seeds, the straw becomes bedding.
-Dry leaves, pine needles, etc, work as bedding. Make a pile in the barn in fall.
-Larger animals will eat Honey Locust pods, which, around here ,I can gather a pick-up load in an hour for free.
- You can feed whole plants of various beans to ruminants, they can digest those without cooking. Don't give that to birds, rabbits, hogs, etc. What I am saying is, make hay from black eyed peas, feed it to your goats in winter.
-Rabbits can live off hay, sunflower seeds and roots. No, they won't produce huge litters. But, they can live without pellets just fine.
-Worms are not worth the trouble in my opinion.
-Yes, you can cut your own hay. Google scythe. Or, feed corn stalks, unthreshed grains, legume plant hay, locust pods, etc. Even branch tips of some woody plants. Apple trimmings , honeysuckle, willow, etc.
- You want vining squash, not bush.
-Corn is the easiest grain to work with. Wheat is next, all the rest are best fed right from the shook/sheave w/out threshing.
I could go on, maybe will layer, but, I need to go now.
