So I keep running into the same issue over and over again while I'm trying to plan for when I am finally able to get land and start my off the grid lifestyle: I cant seem to figure out how much land will be needed for growing food. It's pretty much the only thing I don't have at least a vague idea about. If it was just me, I could get away with a small garden, but I'm looking at possibly having a decent sized group of people with me, ranging from 10-20, depending on how things work out. I would want to grow a wide variety of edible plants, ranging from wheat and corn to the smaller normal garden foods, the wider the variety the better really. I've even been looking into green houses so I could grow more tropical plants. I understand how irrigation works and the various types I could use, but still no idea how much land I would need to make sure that I could feed the myself and the people with me. For now I am looking for plots of land that are 20+ acres in size (would rather have more than I need than not enough), but still no idea how much of that would need to be used for farming.
Are you planning on raising animals also? Animals need space. Garden takes space, people take space. 10 acres is not as big as it seems. My Mom is on 10 acres and all of it is used. Apples trees, gardens, house, pond plus the barns, pastures and saw mill all take up space.
1 acre is traditionally the amount of land 1 ox can plow in a day/the amount of land it takes to feed a family for a year.
AxesAreBetter where did you get that idea. My grandparents had 80 acres in AR and that was barely enough to be self sufficient with animals, truck gardens orchard and fish ponds. In a more desert environment it requires more land for grazing. There are places in the west you can only run one cow per section. So location is key for the amount of land you need with live stock.
I hunt a hundred acre farm, and I think it would be a bit small for more than a dozen. Each wheat plant and corn plant is takes space to live, and gets harvested once. Some crops can get two crops a year, but that is all. So all that baking and storing, and preserving needs to be more than you can consume. And you will not be producing much of anything edible all winter, but you will.be eating. So go big, or go home.
If you blend vertical and regular gardening, you can grow a ton of produce in a regular backyard.... add some orchard space is pretty simple in a small area.... grazing of animals depending on breed and the amount of them take variable space. Rabbits and chickens are pretty easy to manage in a smaller space.... Foraging, gorilla gardening, hunting and fishing expand your sources.... Bottom line, it is how you manage what you have for land, the folks in your team and what you have adjacent. If you have forest, BLM, DNR next to you.... that is a big difference to being in a development..... YMMV.
Yes, this is a rehash of a previouse thread. And I still will add my comments. Ultimatley, the amount of land you need to provide for your and or your groups needs is what can you aford to pay for.. If you can only aford five or ten acers in Arizona, good luck. Land that is cost effective at five hundred an acre may not provide you with the needed resources that land selling at two thousnd an acre would. I know of land available at two to three thousand an acre with water available, yet has a shorter growing season and even the game has the good sense to get out of there during the winter. I wish you luck in your search for your paradise. I have found mine at thirty eight hundred feet and no one else has the guts to live up here..
That is a traditional, (think Medieval) reckoning on things. And that is subsistence, not for profit, sorry if there was any confusion there.
The original definition of an acre was the amount of land one man and a mule could plow in a day. I have never heard the added reference before now.
Acre was the amount of land a man could plow in one day with an ox and was the retirement system of the army of Rome. Private got one day and each higher rank got more. I live in New Hampshire and the land I live on was given to an officer after the French and Indian war. Must of been some dude, he got 4 square miles. Was raised on a farm in Minnesota and we did not get power until I was 10. None of our neighbors had it either. There are no easy answers as to how much land you need to live off grid. Are you going to farm with horses? My grandfather used only horses on the 1920s to farm about 200 acres. My dad had a picture of him as a kid with the 28 horses that they were using on the farm. Used 4 horse hitches on the binder and the big plows. The horses had to be rotated every couple of hours. They still had gas engines for the corn shredder and the sheller and the thrashing machine. Then are you going to have an orchard, or a wood lot. The old houses in the small mill towns in NH often had a 10 acre woodlot that were often a mile or two away. It seems that must have been about the amount of land they needed for heating and some lumber.
