Sustainable Living

[12SERIES]

New to the forum and don't know how much this has been discussed. My wife and I have a 5 acre farm that we have homesteading for the last 4 years. We are have raised too much food, our freezers are full and we are going commercial this spring selling eggs, chicken, turkeys, strawberries, fruits, vegetables and geese. We are now self sufficient with food production when you consider that the surplus we sell covers the cost of food we currently do not produce ourselves i.e. dairy, cereal grains, snack foods for the boys.

We have a lot of hard learned lessons to share for those who are considering raising food as a part of their survival/shtf strategies. If this has been discussed at length before, well sorry for cluttering the boards. If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share our knowledge.

[Inkslinger]

Greetings. There's all ready a thread on this.

https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=104090

[PA PATRIOT]

Welcome,

Some here are into raised gardens of all sizes and there has been prior discussion on raising rabbit and chickens for a self sustaining live style but its actually great to have someone add their experience on real world application of raising animals for food.

What type of geese do you raise and how long is it from egg to harvest?

[12SERIES]

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.

[C4IGrant]

Welcome to the forum. If you have a top 10 list of your hardest learned lesson, I would like to read them!



C4

[PlatoCATM]

I'd be interested to hear some other "best practices" similar to using the geese for weeding, too. I've been reading a lot of mother earth news and other magazines for homesteading tips.

[12SERIES]

I'll be glad to post things that I wish I knew before starting. If I'm covering ground that has been discussed some one let me know.

If you are thinking about growing your own food diversify. Each year something will work no matter how hard you try. We talk with other growers and some years everyone's vegetables do poorly. Some worse than others but we all scratch our heads. Last year's early spring and late freeze in central PA froze blossoms and devastated fruit growers. Orchard harvests were down 75% - 80% from average years. We didn't get a single piece of fruit from any of our trees. Our strawberries and raspberries blossom later and were fantastic.

When you diversify, choose plants that work for you year after year. Once established fruit trees produce into the next generation. A well maintained asparagras bed will produce for 15 years as will blueberries. Strawberries will yield for 3 - 5 years after planting. These require attention, but nothing like planting vegetables every year.

If you are thinking about any back yard farming, start your fruit trees this year! It takes 3-5 years for any decent yield. Each year you wait to plant is one more you wait to eat fruit. Don't plant one just one apple, peach or cherry. Most varieties need cross pollination to fruit effectively. Set up a small "orchard". 6 trees will provide you with apples, peach and cherry enough to pollinate one another and give a good chance of having fruit when one tree or variety has a slow or alternate year. Many apple varieties yield well one year and "rest" the next.

DO NOT PLANT ANY FRUIT TREE WITHIN 60 FEET OF A BLACK WALNUT TREE. THEY DO NOT DO WELL AROUND OAKS EITHER.

Read about planting and maintaining your varieties on the web but read they Extension publications from major universities. They are the most accurate and researched based. FOLLOW THEIR ADVICE TO THE LETTER ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN EXTREME CLIMATES LIKE MINNESOTA OR SOUTH TEXAS.

You must follow pruning guidelines and ask your nursery to prune your trees before shipping. If it looks like they sent you sticks in the mail, don't worry. Plant and them. They will grow. It's amazing to watch.

Follow your nursery guidelines for planting your trees. Some simply will not make it and every good nursery has a one year guarantee and replace it with another of the same if you call. Don't try to replant in June, your tree won't make it. Wait till fall or next spring.

Hope that helps. More to share if you are interested.

[C4IGrant]

Cool info. Keep on going!



C4

[12SERIES]

If you're interested, I'll post something new every day or two.

I was going to get an M4 after the first of the year back in Nov. then the insanity hit. I scoured this site for every bit of info I could and because of the reading I knew enough to get my hands on a 6920 that a family I knew was selling after their father passed away. I didn't waste cash on a delton or dpms (not bashing the rifles just the prices) at inflated dollars. Also got a stripped lower that I'll build out this year. This place has great honest info. If I can repay everyone with info that's helpful I'll gladly do it...

[rackham1]

Thanks for joining and congrats on the 6920. Good score.

Based on your OP, my family is 4 years behind you. My end state looks like where you're at right now. Basically starting from Point A this spring... trying to prioritize the first steps based on available money and energy.

I like the advice of starting the fruit trees NOW. I might have delayed that if you hadn't pointed out what should be obvious. I understood your post to mean planting ~6 each of those trees, not 6 total, correct? Is that sorta the sweet spot of productivity/use/waste for a family-level homestead? I don't want to fall short, but don't want to plant too many and waste upfront energy/money. Tough for me to guess since they'll be a couple years from being productive.

Never considered geese and don't know anything about them. Can they live and "work" with the chickens, or do you need to keep them separate?

Do you have a root cellar? I've got the space to construct one into a hillside pretty easily this spring and I'm putting a relatively high priority on that. I don't want my only storage option to be canning, and I don't have a basement, so seems like a root cellar is necessary. Any thoughts?