Vegitables

The broccoli, spinach, and cabbage are coming in nicely, as are the tomatos and peppers. The problem is quantity.

A family of four will consume 2 heads of broccoli per weak, 104 per year. Since you get only 1 true head per plant, it follows that you will need 104 broccoli plants, at a minimum as you will lose some to bugs and disease, or about 10 raised beds with 10 plants per bed. That is a lot of digging. (We define a row as 15 feet long and 3 feet wide and raised about 8 inches before settling.)

Tomatoes? Same problem. In order to supply our family of four with all of our own tomato sause, pasta, salsa, ketchup... we figure we need 64 plants. Another 8 rows with 8 plants, and several more for losses.

Did I mention you will need several hundred jars to can all this stuff? Actually we freeze the broccoli after blanching but you will need to can tomatoes...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... So you need a 35' by 30' foot garden area just for the tomoatoes, more for the brocolli, slighly smaller for the spinach, 15' x 15' for the peppers and another for the cabage. Carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, egg plant, etc... each will take an additional 15' x 15' area.

Potatoes for a familiy of 4 will require a minimum of 50' x 50'. Wheat requires a 100' x 100' plot and Corn requires 40' x 40' (and that does not include animal feed).

Again you must prepare all of these items to store over winter.

I hope that I am not discouraging you by posting this but it takes A GREAT DEAL OF WORK to grow most of your own food, and several acres of land. How much land? I will have a better idea next year but for right now I would say that a minimum of 5 very productive acres for a family of four.

Pigs!

Every family should have a pig. Well, any family that eats meat (pork) should have a pig.

We have 3 pigs and they are now about 75 or 80 lbs, up from 15 lbs on March 21 - Incredible! But the cool thing with raising a pig is that table scraps and food refuse from a family of 4 will provide more than half the feed for 1 pig. If you think recycling glass is efficient, it does not come close to a pig. The amount of household garbage that is food refuse is much more by volume than you might imagine, and your pig will happily consume it all, and give you some very fertile soil in the process. One 240 pound pig will give you about 160 pounds of meat when dressed out, certainly enough pork for a family of 4 for 1 year.

Pigs do smell pretty bad - actually really bad. Our pigs are 300 yards from our house and we can smell them if the wind is right. They really could not be rasied in anything other than rural country side. But they do have their advantages for the small holder, self sufficient farm. Besides eating all our food waste, our pigs are digging up and fertilizing a significant portion of next year's garden better than any garden tractor. We move them by rearranging metal hog panels and fence posts that we bought from the local farmer's co-op. After a couple weeks on a 16 x 32 foot area we move them, and they leave behind well loosened, fertile garden soil.

I will let you know how things go as they grow, as I have heard that some are diffiuclt to handle after a certain size.

Birth Announcement

2 of our goats have kidded; one had twins, a male and female, and the other had 1 female. The single kid is obviously half La Mancha, with its distinct ears. The mama goats were already bred when we got them, so we don't know much about the fathers. We now have a total of 23 goats, although we plan to sell or eat the 4 wethers (castrated males). This is our breeding base.

The pigs continue to grow, weighing about 50 pounds now, still cute, but not as cute as they were when we got them. I am told they will be 250 lbs in the fall. That is alot of pig. So far the pigs gain about 1 pound for every 3 pounds of feed.

We are constantly composting and adding organic matter to the garden and have begun a little experiment. We planted corn in 2 differnt patches. In one, we composted heavily, and the other not at all, just turned the soil and planted the corn. Neither plot will receive commercial fertilizer.

I will let you know.

Progress

We are making progress. corn and the beans are starting to come up, and the vegitables are doing well.

We planted 5 plum, 6 apple, 4 peach, and 3 pear trees, along with 10 grape vines. So far, they are all alive. The trees are in their second season, and we expect some to yield next year. 2 of the plum trees are yielding right now!

We purchased a herd of dairy goats, 15 does, mostly nubian and alpine. We also bought 2 nubians bucks, so next years kids will be 1/2, 3/4, or full blood nubian. The goats are very low maintenance, living for the most part off of the land. We are not drinking their milk yet, as I am de-worming them. The milk is going to the pigs at the moment, but the goats produce far more milk than we require.

The chickens continue to lay about 6 eggs per day, and the chicks have feathered out. We also bought 3 roosters: 2 Rhode Island Reds, and 1 Jersey Giant. The Jersey Giant is truly a giant bird. We have one Jersey Giant Hen and she lays HUGE eggs, though not as often as the Reds. Although it sounds like we are self suffcient on eggs, we are not. To be truly self sufficient we need to grow our own feed, which we are in the process of doing - corn for this sumer and winter wheat for next spring. Each laying hen will eat about 100lbs of food per year, so we have to put up a lot of feed.

The chicks will not begin to lay until late August, right about the time that the hens will start to lay less due to lower light levels. We hope that they will make up the difference.

Frost is bad for your garden

We were fooled by 85 degree weather in late March and early April, and planted our garden with tomatos, bell peppers, brocolli, cabbage, and spinach.

Around April 7 the tempatures plunged to about 20 degrees for 3 nights in a row. We lost every tomato, brocolli, and pepper plant, and all but 2 of the cabbage. The spinich survived by being buried in straw. What a drag.

We had to replant using plants bought from a nursery. I realize this is cheating but it was either that or forget this growing season except for beans and corn.

We also bought 3 feeder pigs of about 15 lbs each.

Chicken Coop

We constructed a chicken coop out of cattle panels bent over a square of 8 by 8 foot 2 by 4's, covererd with chicken wire and a tarp. It can be dragged each day to a new spot of pasture, giving the birds access to new bugs, seed, and grass each day.

In addition to the 25 day old rhode island red chicks, we bought 12 layers or different breeds at a flea market. They are averaging 6 eggs per day, and consume about 2 pounds of feed every day.

6 of the 25 chicks died during the first week. I blame the post office, not the hatchery, as the post office let them sit for 1 full day beofre calling us.

We ordered our chicks today. They will arrive during the second week in March as day old chicks. For the first several weeks they must be kept warm, so we set up a place in the garage.

Does anybody have plans or pictures (or both) of a chicken coop? I want to build a coop with a run so that this group of chickens avoids the fate of last year’s flock. Please email at the address below if you have anything.

Also, this might seem like a silly question (remember, we are new at this)… what is the difference between bush beans and pole beans? I am assuming that pole beans need a trellis…

Also, as soon as we have some dry weather forecast I plan to build some ferro-cement water catchment cisterns. That is unless anyone has a better plan for retaining rainwater for the animals and the garden.

We plan to plant tomatoes, sweet corn, several kinds of peppers, cabbage, spinach, carrots, beans, radishes, and lettuce. Last year we planted 5 blueberry bushes and 4 blackberry bushes, and several different types of grapes – but after reflection (and harvest) this was not nearly enough. This year I will ad 20 bushes of each and at least 10 additional grape plants.

Thanks!

Almostselfsufficient (at) yahoo (dot) com