This is paraphrased from an email I sent to someone recently who was also interested in sustainable farming. After writing it and realizing how long it was (over 2000 words!), I decided I needed to write more about this on my blog.
I'm sorry this is so long. I thought about just starting with introductions, but then decided to jump right in.
I hope none of this comes off as too crazy sounding (it sounds crazy to me, I just hope it doesn't sound too crazy) but I thought I'd send an email about where my family is currently at in the whole self-sufficient process. I'm hoping we can "swap notes" and try to learn a little from each other. I'm hoping that some of this info is useful and that you might share with us where you are and what you see happening in this area. I think one of the keys to self-sufficiency that I've been missing lately is working with other people who are going where we are with this. That sounds strange, that self-sufficiency needs other people, but it really does make sense in my head.
I have slowly over the years woken up to the fact that if you treat everything like an assembly line (something gets made, gets used and the gets thrown away) that you will eventually run out of stuff to make anything with. Things can't work forever in a one way street of consumption. Landfills just don't get mined for the natural (or un-natural) resources they contain. Water can only pour from a pitcher so long before it needs to be refilled. With this in mind I started to really look at how we live our lives and realized that nearly everything I did or used followed this model. We've only really been doing this for about 100 years or so and on the one hand everyone now thinks it's perfectly normal and on the other hand, since the world is so big, we don't know where the limits are of this model. Thinking in a short term world has us not planning for the long term world and I think I need to stop doing it. That's kind of a very condensed version, but it's basically where I am now; re-aiming my entire life to live in a way that's not so wasteful and harmful to everything.
In that vein, I've been studying sustainable farming techniques (permaculture, I guess it's called. I've always heard that word but didn't really look it up before). There's a farm in Copley that I bought vegetables from and worked at last summer (Lavender Lane Farm). They follow Bio-Dynamic farming and have been building up the land there for a couple years now. They have chickens (we buy eggs from them every week), goats, and rabbits and about 1 acre that they farm. For a while I was going down every week to work and, even though I don't plan on doing the CSA there this year, I hope to go and work again.
I have a little more scientific bent and have a slight problem with the idea of the astrological aspects of Bio-Dynamic farming. That's why I've been studying, and applying on a small garden, Bio-Intensive farming techniques. They've done a lot of research on a couple of farms scattered around the world and have a ton of great info focused on sustainability on the land. I have much respect of their techniques and own quite a few of their books and pamphlets. You can get the How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits
book from the library, if you want to take a look.
We've been working on some skills we think we might need too. Obviously, I'm working on the gardening/animal husbandry side and Amy hasn't milked one of the goats yet, but it's on her list of things to do.
I've done a lot more cooking with raw ingredients than I used to. I've always been into cooking, but now I make an effort to do it everyday, including making our own bread (can't eat the store bought stuff anymore, even the whole wheat), dinners every night, chicken stock for soups, cooking with dry beans, etc. I've been building up a stock of cast-iron pots and pans (mainly Lodge Logic) and I love cooking with them. It's amazing how well they transfer heat.
I've also been grinding my own wheat. I still haven't quite found a farmer in the area that grows wheat (there's got to be one somewhere) but I bought a big enough bucket online that I won't need any for a while anyway. The mill I bought is a wonderful cast, made in the USA, beast of a machine called the Country Living Grain Mill. It's a hand crank, although the wheel can be hooked up to a motor with a belt. (I actually have a dream of hooking it up to some bicycle petals someday!) It gives you one hell of a workout though! I don't use the wheat for everything, mainly waffles and some breads. I plan on working on recipes for it since it seems to be a lot harder to work with whole wheat than your normal starch-heavy bread flour.
We've also done canning for the first time this year. We made about 13 jars of jam (again, I can't stand the store bought stuff now) and canned peaches, green beans and tomatoes. In the summer when the cheap produce hits the stores, we now buy a lot and can most of it. I want to buy more directly from the farmers this next summer, but I still plan on canning a lot of what we get.
Amy is also starting to knit a lot, which has been great in the winter since I got a new, very very warm wool scarf and Kelly's all decked out in matching hat, scarf and mittens. Amy's also working on learning to spin her own yarn from wool and flax. There's a shop in Cuyahoga Falls called Stitch, Piece and Purl that teaches spinning and that's where Amy bought her spinning wheel from. They're surprisingly compact and don't look like the old timey wheels at all.
As far as food goes, we've been buying as much organic as we can, although I know that the organic label certainly doesn't mean sustainable. I don't know where you are on the vegetarian spectrum, but we get a wonderful cheese made by Guggisberg in Millersburg, Ohio that's grass-fed. It's a great, creamy not too strong swiss cheese and they sell it at Mustard Seed and our local Giant Eagle. We buy all of our meats from a ranch in New York called 8 o'clock Ranch. I really love their philosophy towards their animals and their products and the meat is really good. I also don't mind paying shipping on meat when I know that they are "doing it right". I've looked at buying from a local ranch and we even got a ~10 cubic feet chest freezer for it but I just don't like the idea of getting that much meat. We don't eat a lot of beef and really only eat ground beef when we do. (We aren't steak people and usually have it for tacos, chili, stews only). Buying a half cow just seems like too much and would probably last us a good 2-3 years. (The meat probably wouldn't even last that long.) Buying from 8 o'clock lets us choose what kind of meat we want without having to get meat we don't want.
All of the above was just a way of saying that I feel guilty for buying food from so far away, but I have reasons for doing so. I guess. 
Our future plans are as follows:
We sold our house recently because I felt that the housing stimulus would help us sell the house for more (and boy did it. We got a good price and the buyer only put down $300! Can you say housing bubble 2.0?). We are now renting and I think that prices will be falling again soon for real estate (with the latest news on the record foreclosures happening, this is probably true) and we will be able to put more down for something that we want. I'm really hoping that a combination of investments and dropping housing prices will allow us to buy something outright, but I won't hold my breath on that. I do think it's incredibly important to own the land quickly though, because you can't be self-sufficient with debt hanging over your head.
I plan on having about 1/10 an acre per person for the garden. With case studies from the Bio-Intensive people, that would be more than enough to feed a family of four and have some left over for selling off. I don't think I'll be able to do the whole thing in the first year for sure, but slowly work up to that over time and maybe even into more. I don't plan on using any tractors or anything and the main goal will be food crops that I want to eat and not all just one crop to sell.
We also plan on having rabbits and chickens for manure and food. Rabbits are great at converting scraps to plant food and chickens are great at converting insects and food scraps into eggs and meat. We've already looked into different varieties and we're figuring out what we want. Amy's been talking about getting Angora Rabbits because she'll be able to shave them and spin yarn from their fur (poor rabbits).
We'd also like to have sheep for the wool. I'm not sure yet how many, but I think we would want a ram too, even though I've heard they can be a hand-full. I know you can get milk from sheep (at least the vikings did), but I'm not sure if we'll do that or not since I hear you don't get much and it might not be "worth it" whatever that means. I'm sure we'll try it and decide later.
We've debated cows, goats and pigs. I'd lean more towards getting pigs for all the help they can be in the garden and thinking of taking care of a cow just seems overwhelming to me right now. All of this is going to happen over a period of decades though, so who knows what we'll eventually decide. I like the idea of focusing on just a couple things and having other people around doing the same thing that could trade with us. (See, it does help to have other people to be self-sufficient!) Just imagine doing the crops, the milk, the bacon, the wool, the clothes-making, the cooking, the eggs, the cheese, the beer, the wine, the butchering, the hay-making, the building construction and everything else just makes my head spin. The hallmark of any successful economy is a separation of labor and I think that will be near required to really be successful at this.
Books that have helped us:
- How to Grow More Vegetables: Lays out all the information on Bio-Intensive farming.
- The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: Book by John Seymour. He's been doing this for a lot longer than me and this book is filled with tips and tricks that I find very useful for planning.
- The Encyclopedia of Country Living: Another good book stocked full of tips for nearly everything you might need to do.
- The Art of Simple Food: Great book. Really helped me understand how to cook without a strict recipe.
- How to Cook Everything: As the name implies, it's a very complete cookbook. Written by Mark Bitten, all of the recipes use raw ingredients and goes well with a lot of Micheal Pollan's books about eating better food. Not just recipes but also details on how cooking really works. It even has an entry for Sunchokes, which I didn't even know about until I got some from Lavender Lane Farm. (and they're delicious!)
Websites:
- Youtube: Seriously, there's a ton of stuff out here. Amy learned knitting from watching Youtube videos. It's an amazing resource.
- http://www.bountifulgardens.org/: Kind of the online store for Bio-Intensive farming. They sell equipment, books and pamphlets and, most importantly, seeds of heirloom and non-GMO vegetables. A great resource.
- http://www.tomatobob.com/: A seed seller in Ohio. Since all the seeds are from his farm, you know they'll grow around here in Ohio. He used to sell just tomatoes, but he sells a much bigger variety now.
The peas are doing well, although I skimped on building a structure for them to grow on and am now seeing them strangle each other as they reach for higher ground. I figured that was going to happen and plan on building a couple trellises over the summer for next year. We've already had a side serving of the bush peas and I need to get out there and pick a lot of the snap peas since they're ready to eat. I, like most everyone else, used to hate peas, but then realized that I've never actually had peas before since the sludge that comes in the cans can't really be called the real thing.
The zucchini are starting to flower and I hope to get something from them very soon. The super hot weather should help them along since I hear they like that sort of thing. I'm trying to train them to grow outside the actual garden so they don't start strangling the tomato plants. I'm only watering them on one side to try and get them to reach in that direction, but they're not long enough yet to know if it's working. That seems to be working much better with the watermelon, but we'll see how it goes.
I think one of the biggest successes has been the beans. We did some contender green beans last year, maybe about 7 plants, and the output was amazing. We've stepped that up this year since we liked the beans so much and would love to get a couple more meals out of them this year.
I'm also trying a experiment with the corn (I love experiments). I've planted them a little further apart than normal and planted a pole Lima bean in between each plant. I understand this is not a grand experiment since many, many people have done this for hundreds of years before me, but I'm just trying the timing of when I should start them. The beans have now begun sprouting and it's a race to see who will grow the fastest. I'm hoping the beans don't go so fast that they overwhelm the corn, but we'll see how it goes.
We're also getting a huge crop of blueberries. I can't say any of this is my doing since they were here before I was, but at least I get the benefits! We have so far picked almost 10 pounds of blueberries off of two of the bushes. We have four bushes on the property and two of them aren't even ripe yet so we've got a lot more blueberries to go! It's a good thing I like blueberry jam. We're planning on having a "picking party" this weekend because I have a feeling that a lot more will be ripe very soon.
I also built a compost shelter out of some scrap wood that was in the barn. It's already got a good pile going that will give us compost in about two years. I've read up a lot on how to do this right to get the most useful and rich compost possible and I've been able to get the internal temperature of it to stay around 100F (which isn't hard in this weather). This usually indicates good microbial activity in the pile, so I have my hopes up that I've got the right mix of carbon and nitrogen working away in there.
The shelter is a two part system that I picked up online somewhere. You basically fill up one side until it's full, which could take up to a year. You then let that sit and cure while filling up the other side. After another year, you can then empty the first side and apply it to the garden and start the process all over again. The bad part is, you need a least two years before getting any compost at all. I'll probably buy something next year to apply to the garden like rotted cow manure that they sell at the farmer's exchange, but in a couple of years I'm hoping to keep the compost in a sustaining system all on the farm. 