A homesteaders questions

General Fruit Growing
1

I recently saw this post on facebook homesteading

“To those that started an off grid life style later in life, say after 50, we’ll say on land with a cabin. Roughly how long did it take to get self sustaining food wise? I have 23 acres with a cabin on solar and shallow well, but nothing else. In a true SHTF scenario, wondering how long it would take me.”

My opinions on this would be the following

1.) Get pear trees , persimmon trees , grapes ,blackberries, pawpaw, autumn olive, mulberry in the ground asap.

2.) First focus on 3 sister vegetable plantings
(squash, corn, beans)and tomatoes.

3.) Get a pond built for fish ,water etc.

4.) most people have to big of a house. Homesteading is about survival not keeping up with the jones’s

5.)You need milk, eggs, and meat decide where the animals feed iscoming from

My opinion is 3 - 5 years. What would you recommend to people in this situation?

The problem is they need knowledge they dont have. I hope they find us because they will need us sooner than later. Pears like orient, kieffer, harrow sweet , ayers, duchess D’ Angoulme and others keep you alive. When we plant things they must be the right things. My opinion is to provide enough food for your family 3-5 acres is needed. A really hard worker can do it with 1 acre. Surviving on the land is easier the more land you have.

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2

Potatoes. Humans can live (possibly become healthier) on just potatoes for years… maybe decades or longer.

Use that as the foundation then grow other things as luxuries or desires.

The conception or misconception of things that are ‘needed’ vary from person to person let alone culture to culture.

I need coffee… so theres that. But not really.

I dont think you can as just about everyone has a different ‘need’ in their diet let alone lifestyle…even though we are all just human beings with the same basic needs.

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3

I might add: Jerusalem artichokes since there is no work required to grow them and they store in the ground until the ground is frozen.

Another add would be gooseberries and currants. No work food that comes in high volumes before the larger fruit of the season.

I would remove grapes from your list. While they are very versatile, they rot and get eaten by birds and every bug imaginable.

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4

Good feedback @ZombieFruit @krismoriah

Concords are spray free here.

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5

hazelnuts are a great addition to a diet and start producing by year 3 with no inputs. Siberian pea shrubs are N fixers and the thousands of seeds in the pods are 30% protein. during ww2 Russian farmers overwintered their chickens and other livestock on them. in a pinch can be ground into a powder and consumed by people as well.

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@steveb4

I didnt know you could grind abd eat them!

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7

You will never be self sustaining 100%. There will always be things I buy. I’m simply not making my own butter unless its the end of the world. And I’m not growing enough rice to feed the family.

But if you are going for bulk food and aren’t worried about too much variety, I would say winter squash and ditto on Jerusalem artichokes. Potatoes when you have looser soil made and carrots store well also.

Perennial herbs and greens won’t keep you alive but they are crazy easy to grow and you would be thankful for them when it’s day 360 of potatoes.

I’d also focus on foraging. You get enough greens to preserve for all year.

Plus, have chickens. And supplement and feed them as minimally as possible and force them to search out food, bugs and grass and not only living on purchased grains and pellets or crumble. People spoil chickens unnecessarily.

I’d pick apples for the bulk of trees, they are the most versatile.

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If not coffee, there is always tea. Tea is a native plant here. I have brewed some myself…not too bad.

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9

Depends on where you live and what grows well. You also have to think about nutrients and not just calories.

Fully agree about sunchokes. They are very easy to grow and taste good.

In the south, blackberries are easy to grow. Not many calories though. Pears do great here, so do figs and persimmons.

Also consider what grows during spring, since that is when calories will be the scarcest. Asparagus is easy to grow and could help get you through that time period.

Livestock would be a must but I haven’t ventured further than chickens. I prefer growing fruit trees over livestock.

For livestock and grains you need to grow corn, sorghum, wheat, etc.

It would be impossible to do it all yourself. The amish have strong community and that seems to be how they survive.

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10

We are building a homestead. It is a process. One may know all the right answers today, only to learn that he failed to ask many of the right questions.

I moved here is October. Murphy has a way of slowing down everything. But, the changes and roadblocks help one learn to adapt and be flexible, important lessons for anybody trying to increase sufficiency.

We are thinking 3-5 years to really be up and running.

Building homes, barns, other outbuildings takes some time. Building fencing, drilling wells, burying pipelines, planting trees ( for food, wind breaks, shade, fodder etc) establishing herds, flocks, etc, establishing pastures, growing gardens… The list goes on and on.

There are many people, near where I live, that successfully live off grid, mostly self sufficient. With lots of work, a fair bit of time and money invested, and did I mention lots of work, it can be done. One of the e̶a̶s̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ and probably most important things one can do to be successful is to redefine one’s " needs."
Many people, here, have chosen to live much more simply and have many fewer “needs” than most people. It is a different culture than most people have ever really experienced.

My boys aren’t excited about milking, but they enjoy ice cream… They don’t really like weeding the garden, but they like dinner. Similar for feeding cows, pigs, chickens, etc

Some people think it wrong to put my family through this, but my wife and I think it is good. It isn’t much different than what my kids have known most of their lives, just a bit more remote here and we are going to pretty much ditch the grocery store completely in the next few years

Sorry for dragging on… I could go on forever… Just a few thoughts. L!

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11

@Browndrake

Thankfully, you’re putting your kids through milking cows instead of drug infested crime-ridden neighborhoods where they get beat up and robbed on their way to school and home every day. Pigs and chickens or gang violence? Weeding gardens or drug addiction? It is not always that black and white but inner cities are not exactly a walk in the park. Tell the kids you could have just as easily bought a place in detroit where they wouldnt have to worry about chores. There people worry about bring murdered every day. My biggest heroes are those who help the homeless , beautify inner cities and turn them into gardens. I’m like you trying to make the world a better place and that starts by working on me everyday. Your a great parent.

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12

Okra is a fine veggie to grow. Mine normally starts producing pods by early July and continues until first hard frost. 3-4 month of production. You really need to pick it every other day when it is producing… you can… can it, freeze it… eat it all winter too.

I also grow greens (mostly leaf lettuces) all fall,winter and spring. In a protected hot bed.
We eat great salads from October thru May each year.

TNHunter

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13

My greenhouse has increased fruit production 10x on an area basis over outdoors. Plus, it allows production of more fruits and vegetables. YMMV depending on location and needs.

In my country jujube, apples, pears, and persimmons outdoors. They can all be dried for winter consumption.

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14

I think it’s really important to establish your goals as a homesteader. Am I trying to feed my family all the calories they need or am I focusing on the things we enjoy? Am I trying to make my homestead look like the “professional” homesteaders on YouTube or make it uniquely my own? What do I mean when I say I’m trying to be self sufficient? We’ve hashed this out in other threads, so there’s not much point of doing it again, but 99.99% of people in our culture today are not truly self sufficient. It’s a pet peeve of mine when homesteaders claim they are self sufficient all while buying 3 tons of grain a month to feed all their livestock. With that being said, I am genuinely happy to see an increase in people in this area growing more gardens, raising chickens, etc.

So establishing what your desired goals are is very important. Joel Salatin says that in Virginia new homesteaders only stick with it for an average of 5 years. People jump in with both feet and then a few years later they’re exhausted and burned out and they quit pretty much altogether. Working toward longterm goals with trees and perennials helps prevent that. Maintenance and harvest of trees and perennials is much less labor intensive than establishment or growing annuals (generally speaking).

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Some friends of mine gave this a shot. They have a huge spread on good ground and did very well. Made their own soap, cheeses (from their goats and a milk cow), meat and veggies. They got super close to being truly self-sustaining. Toughest for them was making their own flour. You don’t need flour, but without it you can’t make tons of things. They grew and processed their own wheat for one year and said never again. Takes up a ton of space and it’s a lot of work. They settled for “mostly self-sufficient” and have been doing that for 20 years now.

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16

@PatapscoMike

I always thought of flour as easy.

17

I grew up ‘homesteading’.

My Mom and Dad sold their city home and bought a farm in the peak of the 1970s inflation.

The farm was in total shambles. We lived in a tent in the front yard for almost a full year except the winter where we stayed under the roof that barely kept the rain out. We nearly froze to death at least I did… and the water in the well was frozen so theres that too.

The house was unlivable. Floors rotted, roof leaked, windows broken… and the foundation was logs and sand stone.

Long story short… my mom and dad worked daylight to dark and beyond on the house and garden. No TV, no electric in the house, an outhouse and a well that went dry often. No A/C… nothing but bugs and noises of animals and creatures at night.

We lived out of an old metal cooler that had dry beans, peanut butter and potatoes and other root vegetables.

We made many trips to town for building supplies and sure i would get a cold pop or something. I looked forward to those trips.

Life was even harder after that as we began to grow tobacco and larger gardens on top of finishing the house.

Eventually after the house was livable my dad got a good job and my mom and i tended the fields and things started happening like a fridge, canners, stoves, beds… kitchen table.

My mom didnt drive and we only had one car and a farm use truck anyways. So we never left the house other than supply runs or to buy things needed for the farm or church.

I am omitting many thousands of hours of chores and work and labor involved to even get to the level of a livable home and a somewhat good ‘farm’.

I bought the farm from my dad so that he could live out his life at it… without worry of money many years ago. Then i took it over when he passed and i was left with a farm that was in total shambles.

No sense telling my part of the story as it involves contractors, laborers, equipment and all the modern things that a person could want.

I am not sure i would the life i had or wish it upon anyone…unless they had a phenomenal amount of energy and time and had zero desire for anything outside of the lines of their property. To endure the hottest summers and coldest winters without the luxury of 68 degrees on the thermostat.

If you can ‘homestead’ for fun or pleasure i say go for it… but as a lifestyle…its much harder and taxing than you can imagine i think.

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18

I’ve spent A LOT of time thinking about this. Finding land with utilities in place while you build infrastructure of both trees and buildings is important. Water, either rainwater collected in tarp/Remay pools or stream/springs is imperative.
Berries come into production quite quickly, relatively speaking - choose according to your climate conditions. Some kind of ground-sheltered storage for fruit/veg, 2 separate storages for both high ethylene and low ethylene crops is important.
Rabbits are premium for animal protein - chickens are fancier and yield fat, but are fussier. Pigs give great meat and fat but need rock-solid infrastructure, Remay + metal roofing + t-posts or 4"x4" posts. Goats also need solid pens or they will eat your plants.
Depending on climate, hazelnuts are quick for nuts (oil and protein) at 4 years, then grafted chestnuts for starch at 6 years, then black walnuts/heartnuts/butternuts for nut proteins at 7-9 years. Asian pears, pie cherries, peaches. and Asian plums are quick to start producing in 1-2 years and can be dried in a solar dehydrator. Some columnar/mini-dwarf apples can produce in 2 years. Mulberries start in 2 years - quince starts same. Elderberries same and provide medicine - also figs - which give tea and wraps as well as fruit.
Euro plums and Euro pears can take 4-5 years to produce, as well as persimmons, semi-dwarf apples, medlar.
If you can live on annual crops like squash, beans, potatoes, nightshades, sunflowers, millet or sorgum, beets (food and fodder), for a few years until more crops age into the system, I would say 4 years of concerted effort.
Don’t forget labor to water all the young trees - 5 gallons twice weekly when temps are under 80F, and 10 gallons twice weekly when temps are higher.
Wheat and sugar are luxuries - let them go.
Lots to do!

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19

though ours wasnt as bad as yours, i was raised in a 1964 trailer in a area that saw -40 often. those old trailers werent insulated well back then so we would cover the windows with plastic. in winter. we had a old potbelly stove besides the cruddy oil trailer heater. pipes froze often. dad had a hard time finding work in the mid 70’s to early 80’s. dad poached alot of deer and we grew a 1 acre garden. we mostly foraged for fruits and nuts when available and canned alot of the extras. when i turned10 i started picking potatoes by hand then once i hit 15 i went on the harvester then potato truck driver and potato packing house. also did alot of rock picking and haying. all the money went to mom who bought what we needed then if there was extra we divided it and bought something we wanted. we never went without but we ate alot of mac n’ cheese and cheap meats with alot of veggies. we foraged for good wild apples and mom froze slices and canned tons of applesauce. that was our dessert after most meals .candy and soda were rare. sweet tea , kool aid and what ever fruit that was in season fed our sweet tooth. the older men in town had a local watering hole and gambling place abut 75 yrds. down the road from my parents. we would offer to take their emptys home and dad would bring them to the redemption center for us. that gave us about $50 every 2 weeks. back then that was alot of money for a kid. we got mocked by others pushing the wheelbarrow full of bottles down the road but we didnt care. it was tough times but id do it again in a heartbeat.

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Those were some great stories, the kind that I love to hear. Thank you for sharing them with us, and I’d definitely be interested to hear more about them.

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