Sustainable Living

[12SERIES]

Yeah, agreed. It's nice to have this thread without a "SHTF" context. That has its place too... not knocking it... but good to have a plain discussion sometimes.

12SERIES, not to pry but was hoping to get some reference points... how many in your family? Do they all work the homestead? Do you make a living from the homestead, or do you have other employment?

Just trying to get an idea how you shape your life around this. What works for a retired couple with a pension to be self sufficient (for example) might be different than a guy with a whole bunch of kids from diapers to high school (like me, ouch!).

We have 4, my wife 2 boys 5 1/2 and 8 and myself. I do 99 0/0 of the work. I grow the food and my wife takes care of cooking canning ect. She helps outside during the busiest seasons and ill help with canning and freezing. My oldest son has autism and he's just now able to work and focus outside. He's doing fantastic and really is learning how to work and enjoying it. Loves all things mechanical and helps with the rototiller, steering the riding tractor as I mow. It's a beautiful thing. The younger son walks beside me and tags al

[12SERIES]

Yeah, agreed. It's nice to have this thread without a "SHTF" context. That has its place too... not knocking it... but good to have a plain discussion sometimes.

12SERIES, not to pry but was hoping to get some reference points... how many in your family? Do they all work the homestead? Do you make a living from the homestead, or do you have other employment?

Just trying to get an idea how you shape your life around this. What works for a retired couple with a pension to be self sufficient (for example) might be different than a guy with a whole bunch of kids from diapers to high school (like me, ouch!).

We have 4, my wife 2 boys 5 1/2 and 8 and myself. I do 99 0/0 of the work. I grow the food and my wife takes care of cooking canning ect. She helps outside during the busiest seasons and ill help with canning and freezing. My oldest son has autism and he's just now able to work and focus outside. He's doing fantastic and really is learning how to work and enjoying it. Loves all things mechanical and helps with the rototiller, steering the riding tractor as I mow. It's a beautiful thing. The younger son walks beside me and tags along with everything. Both boys plant in the garden with us and they earn points for their chores. The can cash the points in for stuff they want. Elijah is the youngest and he lives to hunt like the old man. He wanted a youth .22 for Christmas and he worked all fall for his gun points. Cleaned chicken coops too. He earned his points and his gun. We shot that .22 on Christmas Day and went squirrel hunting over his break.

My wife and I run a business so we have a flexible schedule. This has become a part time job with number of hours I put in. In terms of money, our food bill for a family of 4 averages 65.00$ a week. We estimate that we save about 750.00 a month which translates into about 9000 a year that we don't spend. Since we are growing surpluses we sell eggs, berries, chicken ect and the money we make goes into the 65.00 we spend at the store so our food bill is a net zero. I can't tell you how much that helps these days as prices rise.

This works because my wife meal plans based upon what comes out of the back yard. Venison, the pig we bought and butchered, lots of chicken and turkey soup. She does a great job and the economic gains we have are because of her hard work. We are going to try selling at farmers markets this spring. We been told by the vendors at the markets we've been to that we will do fine. We will see.

The best part about all of this is what it's done for our family. My boys are learning that life is hard and requires hard work. If you work hard you earn good things. You must be honest and respect your parents and if you want to eat eggs well the chickens need to be fed.

I am determined that my sons will become men who produce and contribute. I refuse to let this culture turn them into useless pieces of human debris!

All the questions are good and I'm glad I can help.

[12SERIES]

I haven't talked about this in terms of SHTF because it may not be the best scenario for surviving a real long term SHTF event. Agriculture is a fixed asset that must be visible by its very nature. It is exceptionally vulnerable and for all but a few properties impossible to defend long term. Spare me thoughts about the extent of your arsenal. We buy homes and properties based upon availBity and asthetic appeal. Few of us choose based upon tactical considerations.

In a true SHTF event where food is scarce and hunger is real, people will kill to feed their children. A sustainable farm to feed a family will be picked clean in a heart beat. You could fend people off for a while but superior numbers who are armed would prevail in time. Plus if SHTF you'll be working to grow as much as possible and vulnerable. Our property is a tactical nightmare to defend especially on a 24 hour basis. From dawn to dusk we simply can't defend against a plague of locusts and work the property too.

From SHTF preparedness standpoint I've come to conclude that the homestead will provide us an abundance to stockpile in advance. In a SHTF event I would go as long as possible with the homestead, bUt it was a choice between a firefight with a superior force over strawberries where I could die and leave my family to fend without me, take the berries. My family would suffer beyond measure. I will rely on stores of food if necessary.

That's not to say I wouldn't defend with whatever means necessary, I won't live a pipe dream that somehow I'll hold off the zombie hordes with 2 ar's an 870 .270. My wife will shoot to defend too but this all has its limits.

An excess of food would help to create alliances, but this is all conjecture at this point. What I know from my experience thus far is that agriculture is a dawn to dusk operation if you are growing food for a family for a year especially in a SHTF event. You can't hoe corn and watch for zombies at the same time. At night you're so tired you can hardly move. With agriculture you're easily patterned as crops and animals must be tended.

If you're going to use a homestead as a food source during a SHTF event you'd better have a REALISTIC tactical long term defense plan in place too. Just my thoughts.

[Pinmonkey05]

We use a variety of geese called Pilgrim and we use them to weed our strawberries, corn and other vegetables. I don't really know the minimum time to harvest. We get them in the spring so that they are about 6 weeks old by early May and turn them out in our strawberries. They will eat 90 o/o of our weeds and will not eat the plants. Ill rotate them into other crops to weed for us. When the crops are done in early fall we butcher them. Geese are expensive to keep over winter with the amount of feed they eat. Pilgrim is a good breed that is a medium body size and weeds well. Very good for the table when the time comes.

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Holy crap I have never heard of that.

[Pinmonkey05]

I haven't talked about this in terms of SHTF because it may not be the best scenario for surviving a real long term SHTF event. Agriculture is a fixed asset that must be visible by its very nature. It is exceptionally vulnerable and for all but a few properties impossible to defend long term. Spare me thoughts about the extent of your arsenal. We buy homes and properties based upon availBity and asthetic appeal. Few of us choose based upon tactical considerations.

In a true SHTF event where food is scarce and hunger is real, people will kill to feed their children. A sustainable farm to feed a family will be picked clean in a heart beat. You could fend people off for a while but superior numbers who are armed would prevail in time. Plus if SHTF you'll be working to grow as much as possible and vulnerable. Our property is a tactical nightmare to defend especially on a 24 hour basis. From dawn to dusk we simply can't defend against a plague of locusts and work the property too.

From SHTF preparedness standpoint I've come to conclude that the homestead will provide us an abundance to stockpile in advance. In a SHTF event I would go as long as possible with the homestead, bUt it was a choice between a firefight with a superior force over strawberries where I could die and leave my family to fend without me, take the berries. My family would suffer beyond measure. I will rely on stores of food if necessary.

That's not to say I wouldn't defend with whatever means necessary, I won't live a pipe dream that somehow I'll hold off the zombie hordes with 2 ar's an 870 .270. My wife will shoot to defend too but this all has its limits.

An excess of food would help to create alliances, but this is all conjecture at this point. What I know from my experience thus far is that agriculture is a dawn to dusk operation if you are growing food for a family for a year especially in a SHTF event. You can't hoe corn and watch for zombies at the same time. At night you're so tired you can hardly move. With agriculture you're easily patterned as crops and animals must be tended.

If you're going to use a homestead as a food source during a SHTF event you'd better have a REALISTIC tactical long term defense plan in place too. Just my thoughts.

Very true.

[12SERIES]

I was surprised to learn about geese eating weeds too. A couple of old timers told me about that and I hit the Web. Geese were used a lot in the south to weed cotton and corn up until herbicides were invented. Now people are starting to return to them to avoid the chemistry.

[12SERIES]

I haven't posted here for a while. Spring is almost here and we've been busy. I have more to share if anyone is interested.

[usmc2014]

1st post on this thread. Please share what you know! I for one am about to get out of the Marines and am planning on starting something like this. This is the way I grew up and I miss it horribly

[12SERIES]

1st post on this thread. Please share what you know! I for one am about to get out of the Marines and am planning on starting something like this. This is the way I grew up and I miss it horribly

Thank you for your service. We live as we do because you served us. So we will serve you with as much info as we can. I will post here but my wife and I started a blog about this. You can find us at crossroadshomestead.wordpress.com the wife says not to put a www in front of that.

If you're missing that kind of life, check out the blog. I think you'll. enjoy it.

My wife puts up canning info and recipes so ladies will might be interested too.

[12SERIES]

Stark Brothers nursery is having a season end sale. Pears peaches and other varieties are reduced and some more than half off. It's not too late to purchase and plant trees for most planting zones although if you are in the Deep South, Texas or Arizona you'll want to chat with them. The heat in those climates might overwhelm young trees.