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digitS'
Garden Master
Tell me, milkcow, what on earth is wrong with you?
Hoo, milkcow, what on earth is wrong with you?
Now, you have a little new calf, hoo, and your milk is turnin' blue.
~ Robert Johnson
Ready for Self-Sufficient Gardening?
- Thread starter digitS'
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Hoo, milkcow, what on earth is wrong with you?
Now, you have a little new calf, hoo, and your milk is turnin' blue.
~ Robert Johnson
Trish Stretton
Deeply Rooted
haha, when you taste that wonderful thing called 'fresh from the cow milk', you will kick yourself for putting it off for so long.
Nothing beats fresh home made Camembert cheese....To Die for! unless its a nice hard cheese you crack open in winter.
I just wish I had found a few acres years ago so I could indulge in fresh milk, cream, cheese, meat......ne'mind I have my fruit trees
Nothing beats fresh home made Camembert cheese....To Die for! unless its a nice hard cheese you crack open in winter.
I just wish I had found a few acres years ago so I could indulge in fresh milk, cream, cheese, meat......ne'mind I have my fruit trees
flowerbug
Garden Master
whole milk yogurt is one of the things that i discovered one trip to the east coast to Vermont and New Hampshire. it was so good.
baymule
Garden Master
200# hog will need about 600# of feed so I would have to grow about 20 bushel of corn-with old technologies, that would be 1/2 acre.....I’d better get started digging..... wait, do Imdig the garden spot first or corn field, oat field, wheat field first? My head hurts.....
Just shoot feral hogs. They are free, no feeding involved, just a bullet. Aim well, they get fighting mad when wounded. LOL
Ridgerunner
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200# hog will need about 600# of feed so I would have to grow about 20 bushel of corn-with old technologies, that would be 1/2 acre.....I’d better get started digging.....
We grew 2 acres of corn using old techniques, plow horses and hoes. The corn went to feed hogs, the plow horses, and a milk cow. A tiny part was ground for cornmeal, practically all went to feed the animals. With five kids a milk cow was a necessity. The chickens pretty much fed themselves but with snow on the ground we'd shell some corn for them. Between shelling corn for the chickens, milk cow, and horses we had plenty of corn cobs. In those situations you don't do what you want to do, you do what you have to do. Romance meets reality really quickly.
Don't start digging, start looking for a turning plow, double-shovel, triple-foot, a wagon (got to have a wagon), mowing machine, and hay rake. You can probably barter for horseshoes and nails but learn to shoe a horse. Build a hay barn with a corn crib as part of it. Learn how to build mouse traps if you want to keep any corn. In addition to hoes for every family member you need an ax, mattock, pick, wedges to split wood, a sledge hammer, shovel, scythe, sickle, pitchforks, and small tools like saws, hammers, pliers, and wrenches. Even then being self-sufficient took a lot of tools and equipment, some powered by horses, some powered by you.
Dad had about 75 acres. probably 5 of those were woods, he had about 7 or 8 acres flat enough to plow and usually had just under three acres in crops, rotated them around. A fair amount was hay fields but a lot was too steep for anything except pasture, which was kept cleared. His cash crops were about 8 cows to sell the calves and he raised about a ton of tobacco each year.
Dad was able to stay self-sufficient until the mid 1950's, but times changed after the war and he finally got a factory job. He still kept up with most of the farm at night and weekends but fence rows started growing up and some things changed. One thing that did not change was that extended family helped family and neighbors helped neighbors. At least there.
We grew 2 acres of corn using old techniques, plow horses and hoes. The corn went to feed hogs, the plow horses, and a milk cow. A tiny part was ground for cornmeal, practically all went to feed the animals. With five kids a milk cow was a necessity. The chickens pretty much fed themselves but with snow on the ground we'd shell some corn for them. Between shelling corn for the chickens, milk cow, and horses we had plenty of corn cobs. In those situations you don't do what you want to do, you do what you have to do. Romance meets reality really quickly.
Don't start digging, start looking for a turning plow, double-shovel, triple-foot, a wagon (got to have a wagon), mowing machine, and hay rake. You can probably barter for horseshoes and nails but learn to shoe a horse. Build a hay barn with a corn crib as part of it. Learn how to build mouse traps if you want to keep any corn. In addition to hoes for every family member you need an ax, mattock, pick, wedges to split wood, a sledge hammer, shovel, scythe, sickle, pitchforks, and small tools like saws, hammers, pliers, and wrenches. Even then being self-sufficient took a lot of tools and equipment, some powered by horses, some powered by you.
Dad had about 75 acres. probably 5 of those were woods, he had about 7 or 8 acres flat enough to plow and usually had just under three acres in crops, rotated them around. A fair amount was hay fields but a lot was too steep for anything except pasture, which was kept cleared. His cash crops were about 8 cows to sell the calves and he raised about a ton of tobacco each year.
Dad was able to stay self-sufficient until the mid 1950's, but times changed after the war and he finally got a factory job. He still kept up with most of the farm at night and weekends but fence rows started growing up and some things changed. One thing that did not change was that extended family helped family and neighbors helped neighbors. At least there.
seedcorn
Garden Master
@Ridgerunner Sounds just like my grandparents place in Southern TN. After the War, kids help support them-some more than others. One uncle (& wife) were great at just never ever able to help but made sure he got his helping of pork-he also had the highest paying job, Remember wagon well as they would load us up in it and away to “Center” we’d go to buy food staples. On way there, I’d jump off and n and grab soda bottles for $.02 each. Old Prince never went very fast. To buy that equipment now, would cost a lot since most are in museums or private collections.
@baymule Never understood since it is open season always on hogs, why locals don’t thin them out. I’ve thought of reaching out to farmers in south and bringing 5-6 of us down to do just that but assume many lease their ground out to hunters-what went on in Illinois. Assume most of coverage about damage done by hogs is over done as I’m sure many would love to thin them out, just don’t want to pay license to farmers. I don’t know, you live it.
@baymule Never understood since it is open season always on hogs, why locals don’t thin them out. I’ve thought of reaching out to farmers in south and bringing 5-6 of us down to do just that but assume many lease their ground out to hunters-what went on in Illinois. Assume most of coverage about damage done by hogs is over done as I’m sure many would love to thin them out, just don’t want to pay license to farmers. I don’t know, you live it.
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flowerbug
Garden Master
pig biting mad!
flowerbug
Garden Master
if you are not actively turning so much dirt and just can get by scraping the surface you can vastly reduce how much energy you are expending (muscles or otherwise).
this goes back to the no-till or low-till techniques, but i can tell you that the amount of work i have been doing to bury that chunks of wood pile that i'd already broken up last fall is so much more than what i do compared to when i can skim. the same garden and soil just skimming i can clear it and it will be a mess because it is heavy clay enough to be a challenge but the factor of effort might be 10-20 times.
the North garden where i have already cleared it and it is sandier loamy topsoil i can skim almost the entire surface area in about an hour. this is several hundred square feet. once it gets planted i'll have to be more careful. this spring i'm already having to be careful around crocuses that i did not find and move last year when i was going through it (because i could skim i didn't did those areas out to find all the crocus bulbs). i knew they were in there... so as the season goes on i will mark them before they die back so i know where to dig them up come late summer fall so they can be moved out of the way so i don't have to keep working through them carefully. i do enjoy having the flowers in the gardens here or there, but in this particular unfenced garden having crocuses is just bunny food and temptation for the deer too.
for self-sufficient, if i were growing hundreds of lbs of food i would not want to be feeding large amounts of that to animals. if i could grow dry beans and fresh vegetables and things i can put up instead in that same space then you avoid the conversion factor between plants and animals and get the energy more for your own needs. yes, i do thinkg that diversity in food sources is important so i would want to raise some rabbits and chickens if this were a SHTF situation and i had no others to barter with. since i don't think things will get that bad i'll stick with the dry beans and peas and other vegetables and we'll keep buying the dairy, eggs and other supplies we need once in a while.
if this does come down to SHTF situation then the neighbors will have to band together and there is a good chance the surrounding lands would be turned into vegetable production but also other mixed uses like grazing and green manure crops for bunnies and such. all of that would work here and for me. i know what i'm doing on this land.
this goes back to the no-till or low-till techniques, but i can tell you that the amount of work i have been doing to bury that chunks of wood pile that i'd already broken up last fall is so much more than what i do compared to when i can skim. the same garden and soil just skimming i can clear it and it will be a mess because it is heavy clay enough to be a challenge but the factor of effort might be 10-20 times.
the North garden where i have already cleared it and it is sandier loamy topsoil i can skim almost the entire surface area in about an hour. this is several hundred square feet. once it gets planted i'll have to be more careful. this spring i'm already having to be careful around crocuses that i did not find and move last year when i was going through it (because i could skim i didn't did those areas out to find all the crocus bulbs). i knew they were in there... so as the season goes on i will mark them before they die back so i know where to dig them up come late summer fall so they can be moved out of the way so i don't have to keep working through them carefully. i do enjoy having the flowers in the gardens here or there, but in this particular unfenced garden having crocuses is just bunny food and temptation for the deer too.
for self-sufficient, if i were growing hundreds of lbs of food i would not want to be feeding large amounts of that to animals. if i could grow dry beans and fresh vegetables and things i can put up instead in that same space then you avoid the conversion factor between plants and animals and get the energy more for your own needs. yes, i do thinkg that diversity in food sources is important so i would want to raise some rabbits and chickens if this were a SHTF situation and i had no others to barter with. since i don't think things will get that bad i'll stick with the dry beans and peas and other vegetables and we'll keep buying the dairy, eggs and other supplies we need once in a while.
if this does come down to SHTF situation then the neighbors will have to band together and there is a good chance the surrounding lands would be turned into vegetable production but also other mixed uses like grazing and green manure crops for bunnies and such. all of that would work here and for me. i know what i'm doing on this land.
Ridgerunner
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Interesting. Our oldest plow horse was Ol' Bob. He was the steady one that Dad used to train us boys how to plow with a horse. Out younger less steady horse was Prince.
One of my uncles wrote of a childhood memory that my second cousin once removed used in her genealogy book about families in that area. It was about how his father and mother (my grandparents) would take a horse and wagon a few miles up the valley to visit their oldest son and his family. They boys would hop off and run after the wagon for a while, but when they got tired they'd hop back on and ride a while.
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digitS'
Garden Master
John Jeavons suggests 2 years between deep soil cultivation. I don't go as deep as the biodynamic and French Intensive but certainly don't bother with cultivation for 18 months.
Location, Location. There is a story around here that the rockiest ground is the farmers' best. Of course, they use soil cultivation for crops even if it is not annually. I think that one "advantage" with rocks, and maybe the bigger the better, is that many plants are not especially inhibited by them. Roots can work their way around and under rocks, which likely hold more moisture and nutrients on the down side. A crop of carrots may not be harvested that is marketable or even easy to use in the kitchen or even easy to harvest, however. Alfalfa may benefit. The farmer's problem is controlling weeds and getting seed in the ground.
(Ever thought about that fan - no electricity ...)
Steve
Location, Location. There is a story around here that the rockiest ground is the farmers' best. Of course, they use soil cultivation for crops even if it is not annually. I think that one "advantage" with rocks, and maybe the bigger the better, is that many plants are not especially inhibited by them. Roots can work their way around and under rocks, which likely hold more moisture and nutrients on the down side. A crop of carrots may not be harvested that is marketable or even easy to use in the kitchen or even easy to harvest, however. Alfalfa may benefit. The farmer's problem is controlling weeds and getting seed in the ground.
(Ever thought about that fan - no electricity ...)
Steve
