of course, 5,10,or 20 acres in the country would be nice but what could you do simply making a stand where you are? and not taking on the debt of buying a "hobbyfarm". here's a link to an "urban homestead" in kalifornia, a family grows more than 1/2 their food yearround, produces their own energy etc,al on 1/5 acre near some freeways...,interesting: The Urban Homestead® - A City Farm, Sustainable Living & Resource Center, A Path to Freedom towards Self-Sufficiency youtube video story:
Lots of great links to self sufficiency articles there! Interesting site..... way hippie, but interesting. They would be better off eating a few of the chickens and ducks their raising imho. Vegetarians just plain scare me. Growing 3 tons of food annually on a tenth of an acre is impressive. On the surface one would think they would do alright in a post shtf world, but living next to a major freeway with all that food probably wouldn't last long. I get the impression they probably don't believe in owning guns. Don't get me wrong, I admire their ability to live the way they are, I think it's great, and survivalists could learn a lot from this family. It's just for me, you've got to add meat and guns to the equation.
they already had rabbits for compost, (fertilizer production)...Don't see why you couldn't add more hutches ormore chickens. Big animals bring a whole slew of their own sustainability problems...( i'm not a veggie), but feeding them uses alot of grain and water for a bit o beef....I think I've got some frustrated hippie living inside somewhere...
Information Rabbit Raising: I posted this before Rabbits: I posted this before on another site and had a little time here to rewrite it. I have had a book since childhood called Raising Small Livestock by Jerome D. Belanger. The book is out of print, but he has done more recent books. He breaks down the benefits of rabbits versus other animals by weight produced by the female after being bred. So, I would choose rabbits, sheep/goats, pigs, and lastly a cow. Important facts: A rabbit doubles its birthweight witin 6 days after birth. A calf doulbles it weight in 47. A typical litter of rabbits has 8 bunnies versus one calf. In a single breeding of a rabbit, taking into account the 8 vs. 1 rule, there is a doubling of the combined weight of the bunnies in less than 1 day. I quote from page 47, "To look at it another, more meaningful way, an 11-pound rabbit that weans 30 four-pound fryers a year produces 120 pounds of meat a year or over 1,000% of her live body weight. A 400lb brood sow that produces two litters of eight a year, with pigs averaging 25 lbs each when weaned at 8 weeks, produces 400 pounds of meat a year or 100% of her live weight. A 1,000 pound range cow producing a 400-pound weaned calf gives a return of 40 percent." OSB
Math 101: 400 pound calf trumps 120 pounds of bunny . . . Maybe a little closer on 'dressed weight'. And you get some milk . . .
Think about this for a moment. 4 rabbit does would give you 480 pounds of meat but 10 bales of hay and say 200 pounds of grain would keep all of the rabbits and their babies going through the winter. That amount of feed would starve the cow to death. You can feed the rabbits tree branches, the cows won't eat them unless they are half starved. Rabbits can be kept in the house, so if you have people trying to steal food the rabbits could be kept safely in the house. During the Great Depression my grandfather told me that they had cows stolden they would just find the hide and a gut pile.
