Living Afield Homesteading

Too many people believe you need acreage to raise your own food. To be honest, I used to think the same thing. It was not until I moved to a small two acre rural property that I realized the foolishness of that belief.

Whether you live on hundreds of acres, a small city lot, in an apartment, or somewhere in between, you can provide inexpensive and nutritious food for yourself and your family.

It was not until we began raising chickens and rabbits, and growing a large garden, that I began to realize just how many thngs we could have been doing on our small urban property to provide healthy and nutritious food for our family.

The meat my wife and I eat comes from the rabbits, chickens, goats, sheep, and hogs we raise, slaughter, and butcher. We do literally every part of the process ourselves. We freeze the majority of our meat, but we also can a good bit of it. To hedge our bets, we also dry/dehydrate/smoke some of it as well. You never can tell when you might lose a freezer and all of the protein it contains.

In our almost 4000 square foot garden we also grow the vast majority of our produce. We plant and harvest tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, swissh chard, collard greens, kale, cucumbers, zucchini, summer and butternut squash, pumpkins, and rhubarb. To preserve this bounty for winter, we can, pickle, freeze, and or dehydrate. We also grow apples, red raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, and golden currants. We have also planted pear and cherry trees, and are eagerly awaiting their first harvest. From these fruits we make preserves, jams, pies, and other baked goods.

To supplement the meat we raise, I also hunt and fish. I spend quite a bit of time afield foraging for and harvesting edible and medicinal plants. I use these for food and medicine. Wild plants provide an excellent source of vitamins and nutrients that are missing from many of the plants we cultivate. Too many of our cultivated vegetables and fruits have had their bitterness and nutritinaly value bred out of them.

What exactly is a Homestead?

The broad definition used by the federal government for reasons of taxation is "a permanent free-standing house, a condo or a manufactured home that the owner occupies as their principal residence".

For the purposes of this website, we will define a homestead as "a place of residence where the occupant grows and or raises some portion of the food they eat, and the medicines they use to maintain good health".

As I wrote above, my wife and I live on two acres down a dirt road in a rural county with a population of approximately 13,000. We fenced in approximately 1.5 acres of our 2 acre lot. This allows us to let our two large 3/4 Great Pyreneese and 1/4 English Mastiff mix dogs to roam free. We grow all of our vegetables in an almost 4000 ft² garden. The rest of the land allows us to raise rabbits, chickens, goats, sheep, and hogs for meat.

Our New Zealand rabbits were raised in a 10' x 20' warren we made using panels from a 10 x 10 dog kennel placed against the side of our pole barn. We started out with 2 does and a buck. Each doe produces approximately 5 litters or 6-10 kits per year. We raise the kits for 3 months before processing them. They average about 4 lbs of meat. This means that even at the low end of 6 kits per litter they provide us with over lbs of meat for the freezer.

After losing many baby rabbits, kits, we decided to transfer our rabbits to individual hutches. This allows us more control over who breeds with whom, and when we can expect each litter of kits. It also gives us the flexibility to observe which does are the best mothers, and use those who are not for meat.

When we first started with chickens, we wanted to have chickens for eggs and for meat. We began with 12 rhode Island Red chickens and 12 Ameraucana chickens. I designed and built a raised 45 ft² chicken coop with 12 nesting boxes and 2 8' long perches. I then enclosed it in a 500 ft² chicken run.

At about 6 months of age, the hens provided us with more eggs than we could consume. We feed our dogs raw food that we make ourselves. We had such a glut of eggs that we fed each dog 2 eggs a day. We also gave them to family members and still had more than we could eat. That is when we decided to cull some of our flock. We processed perhaps 8 of the birds for the freezer. However, when we ate the first one, we found out dual purpose chickens are a myth. While one can technically eat the meat of a dual purpose chicken, it is so tough and stringy that it not at all pleasant. Even braised for hours the meat was not much better.

We decided to look into raising chickens bred for their meat, specifically broilers. After doing our research, we settled on Cornish Cross chickens. They are bred to grow quite quickly, and can be ready for the freezer in 6-8 weeks. We ordered 50 chicks from an online source. We raised them almost 9 weeks, and the average yield per bird was a little over 6 lbs of meat. This allows us to put around 300 lbs of chicken in the freezer.

We also raised 2 mangalitsa hogs for a year. We do all of our own slaughtering. At the end of the year's growth, the hogs average around 400 lbs each. That provides us with 320 lbs of pork for the freezer, and over 154 lbs of rendered lard for cooking and soap making.