You would have to put up/store all the produce through the non growing part of the season.

You couldnt use hybrid seeds. They would have to be heirloom seeds. Dont know if potatoes and stuff like garlic would fit into this catagory (hybrid ) or not. Dont think it would effect them.

I would think that 1 acre per person would be about right. Then you could trade any extras that you "could" have.

I would plant lots of corn, potatoes, and squashes.

You might want to read Novella Carpenter's book Farm City, not only for amusement (it's a funny, fun read), but she had an experiment where she lived entirely off the fruits of her garden for a time. (She kept chickens, ducks, and pigs too.) The results were telling. Her largest problem was a lack of carbohydrates. So, whatever you do, plant plenty of potatoes and the like.

a few books that answer your questions:

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! by Carleen Madigan

Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens by Kathy Harrison

The Urban Homestead (Expanded & Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) by Kelly Coyne

Here is a link that might be useful: Food Storage Calculator

You can estimate pretty closely what your household use is for vegetables and that's a practice I review each year because I can most of ours to use when the garden is not producing. If you consider a pint to a quart of them for two people once a day for four/five/six months you can get an idea of how much you need to produce. Then you must figure out what your ground and geographical area limits in the way of production. IOW I have clay soil and do successfully raise and grow root crops, but it wasn't without years of soil ammendments.

I cut out the novelty stuff from my garden and stick to the basics I know I can produce lots of and that's what goes in my garden. You also have to figure there will be years you have crop failures from out of season freezes, draughths, floods, disease outbreaks, critter raids. It can impact production immensely. We have bramble patches, fruit trees, and nut trees on premises and I keep a flock of chickens. We also butcher our own beef and pork.

It takes years to tweek your property to provide yourself with a good amount of your own food. I still buy stuff from the market, but mostly staples I can't grow like coffee, tea, salt. It's not an overnight thing to do successfully it's learnt over a lifetime.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-Vegetables-Possible/dp/0898157676

http://www.amazon.com/Gardening-When-Counts-Growing-Mother/dp/086571553X/ref=pd_sim_b_16

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Garden/dp/1890132276/ref=pd_sim_b_4

And check out many of the books and booklets at the Ecology Action site

Here is a link that might be useful: Ecology Action

Oh man... Lots of assumptions here (by me)... I guess it would depend on what you are eating, the rainfall per year, what zone, ideal/less then ideal growing conditions (too much/too little heat/cold/wet/dry)...

just and example=

If you figure you can live on say 1500 calories/day... x365= 548,000 calories/year

Potatoes here in Wisconsin yield roughly= 13,250,000 calories/per acre

You can't live off of pure potatoes, but an acre would go a long way! An acre would support roughly 25 people?

AN acre of apple trees can yield more calories then that... and a nut tree comes out the best (walnuts) (from my research, but that is CA grown walnuts...ideal climate).

I've done research on this, so i can dig up some of my info if you'd like.

Good question! I've wondered about this, too. Although I'm not ready to abandon the grocery store, it would be nice to grow more of our own food.

Potatoes and squash/pumpkins are good choices, but I think corn would be lost to the deer and racoons. Any ideas on how to keep them out, short of an 8' deer fence?

Beans, peas, spinach and broccoli are all good to freeze and root vegetables are great, if you have the room to store them. Canning is another skill that would be very useful, for self-sufficiency. There are even some peas and beans that will grow in the colder zones that can be dried and used for soups.

Right now, I'm glad that we don't have to be self-sufficient, but with some of the recent food scares, I have planted a lot of blueberries, strawberries and raspberries lately...and would like to get some more apple trees and maybe some grapes, if I can find some that will do well in our zone. Veggies are great, but fruits make for a happier, self-sufficient lifestyle...especially in jams, pies and muffins :)

Look into Mother Earth News Mags and on line.
A lot of info on sustainable living. HTH Nancy

Or, you can sell your surplus summer vegetables for cash so that you can buy apples and bananas during the winter and spring . . . Wait a minute! I'm back in the market economy!

Steve's digits

Since you are in zone 5 I would get one of Eliot Coleman's books on year round gardening with plastic hoop houses and other season extending methods. Last year I lost a late planting of beans to an early frost. This year I have some Agribon-19 fabric that might make the difference on an early cold night (Sept 18 last year and I was away for the weekend. The beans were blossoming when I left.)

We try to avoid carbs but cannot skip winter squash. You are going to have to experiment with what varieties of vegetables are good keepers. I found Confection squash at Johnny's Seeds that keeps late into the winter/early spring whereas our previous favorite Buttercup usually didn't make it until Christmas. Parsnips spend the winter in the ground which gives you some fresh eating as soon as the ground can be dug.
Calliope makes a good point about a lifetime of learning. This year I got spinach seeds in as soon as I could and we had a fantastic crop. Just had to cut the last of it (July 7) because it was bolting due to the heat. Sugarsnap peas are also doing well. I hope to do better with late plantings this year so I can get something out of the garden into October. I really need to improve succession planting methods.

I agree that corn isn't worth the trouble if you can get if from a local farmer.

I would also locate a good source of manure!

Sometimes there is just no substitute for experimentation. Last year, we planted a large garden. Had enough to eat fresh, started a 'root cellar' and bought a huge old freezer.

We froze beans, corn, broccoli, and cauliflower. Stored potatoes, squash & onions. Canned tomato sauces (spaghetti, pizza, salsa), beets, relishes, kraut.

I kept close track of what we preserved, and how much we ate. This year I'm adjusting the quantities (more broccoli, less beans) and improving my storage methods (potatoes only lasted until late December).

It's a fun project, but will take a few years for me to 'fine tune' it.

Lavender lass asked: Any ideas on how to keep them out, short of an 8' deer fence?

I read an article awhile back that stated that deer will not jump over anything that they can not see around/through. They dont know what is on the other side so they will not take the chance. The article said that they used 5 or 6 foot high burlap around their garden.

You could run some chicken wire, you may want to bury some of it into the ground, around your garden to keep out the raccoons with some burlap over that to help keep the deer out.

Hope this helps.

For medieval gardens, they used briars and thistle to make a fence around their gardens, they also used hedges. I bought arborvitae seeds by accident not knowing they grow 40 feet high, then now I bought Japanese barberry growing up to 8 feet high and 6 feet wide at it's widest, but planted closer together, they won't be as big or as wide. Barberry is a picker bush and should work. I'm cold treating my seeds tonight and will plant in about a month for next year and hopefully for years to come.

I tried milk thistle and couldn't get them to sprout in my yard, so my natural fence failed miserably and the bunny/ squirrel/ mole/ groundhog eating down my bean plants and sweet potato plant is having a field day every now and then. Haven't used the ropel on them yet, but I bough it.

I hope that helps.

Makete and Scarletdaisies- Thanks for the suggestions! I've also found (on another forum) that two fences close together are supposed to work, too. Either two four foot fences, or a fence and a hedge. All good ideas, so I'll see how much room I have around the garden next year.

Camp- I want to grow potatoes, but also concerned about keeping them long term. Please, let me know how your research goes.

Defrost- Confection squash, I've never heard of that, but it sounds like a good option. Is it similar to Buttercup squash?

Re: potato storage, I've been growing and storing potatoes for two years. I keep mine in the basement, away from heat. My basement is rather cool, in the low 60's. I brush the dirt off of them but don't wash them. The Yukon gold are eaten first. The Norland Red and the blue potatoes get stored.

I'm not ready to grow my own wheat, but I do can peaches and pears, freeze tomato sauce, make strawberry and raspberry preserves, and freeze corn. I eat something that I've grown and/or canned every day.

Chickens are the next adventure.

It is quite a staggering mental exercise when you start really delving into the question of self-sufficient food production. Trust me, I have.

A very quick and dirty answer to your question is this: the best bang for your buck are potatoes and beans. Easy to grow, great return, good carbs, vitamins and proteins. That being said, who can live on taters and beans alone?

For veggies that require the least amount of inputs (fertilizers, water, labour) and produce a balance of quantity and quality, you are looking at: peas, potatoes, beans, spinach, beets, kale, cabbage, and onions. If you have the space, I would add squashes (both summer and winter) as well as corn.

One of the main stumbling blocks is the long-term health of your soil. Year after year of vegetable production will lead to eventual failure (ever increasing degrees of failure) and in a survival situation, even a 20% reduction in yield can be life threatening.

To that end, if your survival situation is a short term program (i.e. you need production for 3-7 years) it's not as much of a problem if you have some rudimentary inputs like fertilizer and water. If, however, you are looking longer term, you would have to plan on doubling or tripling your person per acre figure to take into account plot rotations. You would be spending as much time growing, processing and incorporating soil improvements such as cover crops and green manures as you would for growing food crops.

Of course, in such a dire situation as subsistent agriculture under the stress of a survival situation, you are going to need animals of some sort for variety and comfort. Chickens are the obvious choice, but to have a consistent supply of 12 eggs / day for instance, you are going to need about 25-30 egg laying chickens. To have one whole, roasted chicken once a week (more for more people) you are going to need 52 broilers, assuming no losses. So let's say a flock of 100 layers and broilers might stretch it. So what are these chickens going to eat? They require a good 22% protein feed to remain healthy and productive, and that's not easy to get from one or two sources. Sure, you can pasture them, but what about the winter? What about supplemental feed to increase weight for slaughter?

As you can see, there are many, many, many factors to be taking into account for subsistence farming. Our pioneer ancestors did it, but it wasn't easy. To quote Hobbes, life is short, brutish, and mean.

Michael

If you are looking for wheat alternatives, you might try amaranths, you can also save the seeds on sorghum to make flour from. Wheat is not a production crop in a small gardens, so the most bang for your buck on those are amaranths, but mine did not seed well in my garden at least, there are lots of wild varieties.

Dehydrating veggies is the cheapest method that stores the best, using the least amount of space. You do lose more nutrients that way.

Composting on your garden during the winter season is the best way to revitalize it. You won't be able to plan a winter crop there if you do this. Green manures like planting ragweed, rye grass, clover, beans, etc., will help restore it for next year and tree leaves packed on top of it will give it lots of good nutrients. Manure is good of course, collecting it from barnes from what ever animal, sheep, goat, horse, cow, rabbits, chickens, etc..

What you can do is have 2 garden areas, during the growing season of your vegetable garden, you can grow the green manure crops and compost the whole year. This should set it up to do well, and just alternate each year between the two plots.

Michael is too pessimistic. A household produces more than enough fertilizer to feed a family. More so if livestock are involved. For micronutrients, all one needs to do is save the wood ash. Surely in a survival situation no one will worry about those rare case of infection.

Thanks for the great info everyone!

I happened to find at the library last night a book that gives some good insight into this question. The book is an older book called "The Self-Sufficient Suburban Garden", by Jeff Ball. In the book, Jeff talks about planning for a year's supply of any vegetable, and recommends you figure out the frequency which you eat that vegetable each week or month, times 52 weeks or twelve months in a year...then, think about how much you have at each serving. Working backwards like this, you can see how many red peppers etc. you would need each year. He seems to recommend green beans, tomatoes and carrots as good core crops for a summer garden. I also found this link about the most prolific vegetables:

http://www.veggiegardener.com/top-10-prolific-vegetables-for-vegetable-garden/

Times 52? Peppers? I think Jeff Ball is out to lunch. We eat peppers about one month a year, lettuce three months, etc. Crops are limited to time of harvest, except those that go in the root cellar or in the freezer. Collard and kale, under hoophouses, do give you about 4 months worth of greens from November to February, but that is tops.

Also, the list is possibly OK in Zone 8, but I guarantee that for Zone 5 it is even more out to lunch (it does not give pounds per sqft either). Eggplants yields are small around here, just like peppers, and okra, puny or non-existent. It is not hot enough for them to produce abundantly, or at all.

Even cool weather crops like peas will not do well on a year like this, when it gets hot in May. For zone 5 productivity, potatoes, cabbage, chard, beet, carrot, fava greens, turnips and lettuce will be tops, specially potato, cabbage and lettuce, all giving you more than a pound of food per square foot.

Tomatoes and string beans might crack the list, cukes will go to bacterial wilt heaven in a survival situation, and even without, they will never give you close to a quarter pound per.

I got to agree with most of what Glib says,

except tomatoes yield very high here in S. WI... I think its a combination of lots of rain, high humidity and some cool nights mixed in throughout the summer (seems to increase flowering). Peppers do great here too... first year with eggplant. Potatoes are a huge crop in Wisconsin, especially northeast of here in central WI.

Lettuce is horrible here...it bolts by early June...maybe if you start it in Feb you'll be ok...same with cole crops... i'm trying brussel sprouts for the first time, so i'll see how they yield.

I'd rather have a variety then grow one crop, but if i was going to grow a lot of one thing, it would be tomatoes... they can be used in almost any dish it seems, plus they can/freeze/dry great... I freeze most of mine because i have a huge freezer and its so easy.

Another thought would be to grow an acre of grapes, and make wine...then just drink away your problems ;)

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How did I manage to visibly display HTML tags without causing them to be rendered as a tag? Voodoo.

Jeepers. To open a link in a new tab, right-click on the blue text and then select 'open link...'. Sheesh!

Frank, let me help with the lettuce. First, I have a lime oakleaf variety that is by far the best at bolting (bought at Amsterdam airport, so no seller in the US). In full sun in a warm year, it has yet to bolt, though it is starting to look ragged. Incredibly, another lettuce I planted on the same day bolted, so I planted the same lettuce in the deep shade of cardoons, and that one bolted, too, while the oakleaf in the sun kept going and going. This one certainly has given more than one pound per square foot. I know I have given away more than 40 bags from a single bed, and we eat it every night.

A lot of other lettuce goes in interplanting, so that yield is really "free".

Second, I start romaine in September, it overwinters in the hoop house, so in April it is edible. Third, a classic combination is lettuce and garlic. The garlic will shade it in hot weather giving it a longer season. And fourth, it is advantageous to have partial shade beds, where things bolt a lot more slowly. In spring there are so many things to do, I don't like constant reseeding. I stretch the season by combining shade, sun, and resistance to bolting.

Apart from grains, you can grow enough vegetables to live on year-round on much less than an acre per person. I would guess that a homestead for a family of five would have a quarter-acre vegetable garden, a couple of acres for a milk cow or a few milk goats, an acre for some meat and laying chickens, a hog pen, an acre of grain, a few acres of horse pasture (you need horses to pull the plow, drag logs, etc.), and a few acres of hay and corn for winter feed. Triple that for rotation of crops and pastures, add half an acre for a small orchard, half for an irrigation pond, 5 acres for a woodlot for firewood and lumber, maybe 10 acres for game ... you probably need 20 to 30 acres for a family for "sustainable" self-sufficiency. Stock up on salt, saw blades, matches, tools, etc.

I think you could come pretty close, but to do all of it without tractors, automobiles, electricity, heating oil ... pretty tough. And if you're going to run a tractor on industrially-produced gasoline or diesel, and pay a mechanic to keep it in repair, and buy new tires and spark plugs made in a factory somewhere where do you stop? Why not buy grain from the big farm down the road, or down the interstate?

Good answers, nygardener! This sounds more realistic.

I agree on buying most of the grains, but I would do it now, then continue to replace what I used during that year, when it is harvest time for that product.

Dry packed wheat will last for years. If your storage place is dry and cool you can store dry packed oatmeal, corn, and rice for several years. Flour does not store for very long, so grind as you need it. I would buy while it is affordable and available rather than try to buy or barter in time of need.

If I were planning for a survival situation, I would choose nothing larger than a goat. For the last several months, I have averaged about a dozen eggs a day from 17 hens, and 3 of those are a breed not noted for being good layers. I am sure that the number of eggs will reduce in winter and as the chicken age. Rabbits and quail may be something you want to consider. I live on a lake so I have access to fish.

Growing your own food is something you need to learn to do. Decide what you would need to have to sustain life and work on learning to grow those crops. It doesn't matter how small a space you have, there is something that you can start learning to grow. If you have a small plot, start building up the soil. If you must grow in containers or raised beds then choose carefully and practice as many crops as you can. Each crop is unique, and you will learn if it is possible to grow it where you live, or if you even want to.

You can save seeds from your own plants if you plant only open pollinated types. Some people call them heirloom, but not all open pollinated seeds are heirlooms. I will link one web site that sells only open pollinated seeds, but there are others.

My best advice to anyone wanting to achieve a self sufficent lifestyle would be to START NOW. It will take you a long time to get there, so begin now and take a few baby steps as you dream.

I planted a lot of peppers and tomatoes this year. We eat all we can fresh. The extra peppers, I clean, remove seeds, and cut into the size pieces that I use for cooking and freeze them. I do bags labeled 'peppers' that I might grab for an italian dish, and bags labeled 'spicy peppers' that have both sweet and hot that I might want for a mexican dish. I do quart freezer bags, but I just take out what I want each time and zip it back up.

I rarely can tomatoes, but I do know how. Instead I make picante sauce. I would much rather have to buy a can of tomatoes to cook with that try to find an expensive jar of salsa that is as good as my own. Once I get the speciality items made, I might think about canning plain ole tomatoes.

In the spring we had all the broccoli we could eat fresh but our season turned very hot very early. I didn't get as much broccoli as I would have like, but we ate a lot and I put 13 packages in the freezer.

In the spring, I had lots of lettuce, and other green things, but we always seemed to choose in favor of the chinese cabbage, and it became our 'spring green of choice'. The addition of the fresh snow peas, just enhanced it. Soon I will start those things for fall, along with some brussel sprouts. I live in a hot climate so fall things are more difficult.

I get free sweet corn from a farmer friend, so I don't grow it. I wanted to make sure that I knew how to grow dent corn, for grinding into grits or cornmeal, in the event that I ever needed to. I took a very small spot of my garden and planted about 40 stalks. It is heading up but I will never grow it in my garden again. So, from the experience I learned that I could do it, but that I needed to find a new place for it.

I am not a big potato grower but by growing them this year, I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that I don't want to use my good garden space for growing a crop that would be in my garden a long time and be ugly the last half of that time. I will find an out of the way place to grow them from now on. I only planted enough to produce a few new potatoes to eat, and the space alloted to them could have been covered with far less than two sheets of plywood, for a size comparison. I had over a hundred medium size potatoes and many small ones and I would guess that it was roughly 60 pounds. I proved that I can do it. They were delish.

Everytime I pull a plant from the garden, my chickens begin pacing and talking to me, because they know that some of it may be for them. They get the weeds, the spent plants, the broccoli leaves, the lettuce that goes to seed, etc. and they can't wait. They like most anything green. They also take care of most of the kitchen waste.

In return, they give me fresh eggs, excellent fertilizer, and entertainment.

I grow lettuce, spinach, etc in the fall and keep it going until mid December most years. If it is going to be really cold, I throw a blanket over it at night. If you had it under a hoop house, you could probably do that too.

If you are still in the planning stages of buying, then I would suggest that buy as much as you can afford, but plant less than a quarter acre, and learn from that.

For reading (and learning) I suggest the Eliot Coleman books.

It is a lot of work, so be prepared. Good luck. Carol

I agree with most of what soonergrandmom says, especially about getting started now. It is a process. My wife and I have been working on this for nearly 30 years and it still scares me to even think of producing all and only what we would consume. I would recommend that a person start out by focusing on just a couple things which they really use/love. Be sure that you actually, already cook and enjoy those things. Soonergrandmom makes a very important point about buying ahead and rotating staples in and out of the pantry. We even do that with some animal feeds.

Every crop and every type of animal requires special learning and takes time. Even different breeds of chicken behave very differently and have different requirements. We raise Kraienkoppes and Buckeyes which are quite different. The Kraienkoppe is a scrappy little game type bird which is a fanatical forager and determined "mama." It produces sporadically at times. But, we've given some birds to a family who simply had them living in the bushes alongside their trailer (I wouldn't recommend this). They only threw them a few scraps, not enough to sustain life, and yet they survived and managed to raise a single chick in a year. The Buckeye is a much larger, meatier, calmer bird. It makes phenomenal eating and lays dependably. But it requires more protection and input.

The dairy goat is, in my opinion, the most valuable homestead animal, even ahead of the chicken. But there is A LOT to learn, and one should find a good mentor, perhaps through 4-H or a local club. Get Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats, or some other good book. Study, ask questions, start out with a couple of kids, and learn as you go.

Learn basic butchering. One cannot maintain a flock or herd of anything, for long, without culling. It is a sin to waste good meat.

Learn/keep learning to cook. It is so important to be at easy with cooking with basic staples and materials on hand. In the last couple of years we have branched out into cheese making. Since we have dairy goats, we are learning to use milk in more ways than most people.

Knowledge and practice of basic seed saving and propagation of food plants is essential. There are some great books out there. I've written a couple of simply guides, for use in seminars. If anyone wishes to email for them, they're free. I have ones on saving your own bean seed, tomato seed and hand pollination of squash (which you can find on Gardenweb as a thread). But the key is to start. It takes time to learn. Have fun and don't become a slave to this.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox ;)

Here's a link which has lots of helpful info. I thought they listed "Recession Proofing Your Pantry," which is a wonderful book. But I couldn't find it there.

George
Tahlequah, OK

I agree, this is a lifetime subject. In fact, all of our ancestors spent the majority of their lives on the "calorie problem". Not until the hydro-carbon age did it become that most people could live in food ignorance.

No small group of crops are the answer for every place. Where I am, for example, potatoes are an intensive crop because summers tend to be dry and the soil is droughty. Properly adapted grain maize does very well with little input. Amaranth is a weed. This year I have begun trials to see if sweet potato gets sufficient heat units to be reliable (thanks, George!).

If I were to attempt to produce all of my calories I would include dairy goats or cows, but no animals for meat because its too inefficient. Few if any human civilizations pre fossil fuels could afford to be big meat-eaters.

This year I moved into a an 1840 colonial/victorian house. I like the idea of a self sufficient homestead. I have been clearing small trees, and trying to amend the soil as I go along. I have a lot of work to do inside the house, but the garden is a pleasure because it gets me away from the other work.

My eventual plan is to become more self sufficient as I go along. I knew this can't be done in a few years, so I planted a little of everything because I realized there is a learning curve. Would you like to know how it's going?

Corn is doing good. I tried to start the corn in a little greenhouse thing from the big box stores, it was a waist of time. Direct sowing worked great. I only planted 20 stalks, 10 when the soil warmed up, and ten a month later. They are finally tasseling and silking. I'm excited to tast real fresh sweet corn.

I bought two squash plants at a 4H garden sale, one turned out to be watermelon. I planted them under the corn thinking that was a good idea. It was a good idea until the corn started shading the plants, so yeald is very low.

Tomato's are doing ok. my soil was not amended where I planted them, and you can tell my looking at them. But I have fruit, and variety. I like the heirlooms.

Beans and peas got eaten by a ground hog. It kept happening until I caught him in the garden. As it turns out, groundhogs aren't all that accurate at exiting a fenced garden when a 6'3" garneder is approaching. lol. He wont be bothering my garden again.

Carrots and broccoli are pathetic. Again, I think it's bcause of the soil.

I ordered strawberries from an online place. I ordered them because I want variety, not what everyone else is selling. They arrived late, and I lost 10 out of 25 plants. However, they are throwing off shoots, so I will be able to fill my bed with them. I did amend the soil a little for them, but I need to do a lot more if I want to eat something from them.

I planted potatoes too. I have no idea what to expect from them, but they are in the ground, and growing fast.

My girlfriend planted lettuce like mesculin and a few others (I know mesculin is a mix of different types of lettuce) They were revished by flea beetles I think.

I also have blueberry, raspberry, and grape plants that I am trying to get in the ground this year. Oh, and a pear and cherry, and apple. The most difficult adventure is trying to find a fruit tree that is self pollinating and one that is supposed to tast good. But trial and error is the name of the game.

In the end I am living the proverb "He who expects nothing, will never be dissapointed." I am not expecting anything out of my garden, so when I do get something out, I am ahead of the game.

I will look into a few books that people suggested. I have a problem with books that were printed a looonnnggg time ago. Just like everything else, a lot has changed in the past decade, and a book that was printed in 1986 (jeff ball, the Self Sufficient Surburban Garden) has got to be out of date with technology and practices. Heck, the internet wasn't even around.

There are places like this where you can ask a question and get a lot of different answers, some more helpful than others, but all very important. In the end I think there is no right or wrong, yes or no answer. It is all about the experience. And in a few years I might have enough food from my garden to make it worth my time and money.

So, good luck to all of you. As long as we keep helping each other out, we will succeed.

Okay, this thread is making me very, very tired at all the work that goes into being truly self-sufficient. There's something to be said for community, and not having to do it all yourself.

While I wish you all the very best of good fortune in this fascinating endeavor, I'm just happy I can supplement my existence with the bounty from my garden and I don't need to do it all. I'm happy to be a spectator on this one!

Yep, there is no limit to how much work it can take. Some of the effort turns out to be useful, some not. I guess the thing about experience is if one is paying attention the unuseful effort can be pared down.

And then there are things that can only be considered doing for the heck of it, like growing wheat on a garden scale. Just got finished harvesting some with shears. Going to let it dry out more on the cut stalks to thresh later. But there is always the taste and nutriment difference - fresh grain is hugely more flavorful than year-old super dry grain that is the only option in the commercial chain. You havn't tasted cornbread, for example, if you havn't had it made from grain right off the stalk in October.