Food self-sufficiency for 9 people on 10 acres, what would you do?

We have around 10 acres of land that can be easily cleared, the rest is steep forest.

I want to provide for all our needs and all our animals needs without a feed store, tractor, ongoing inputs, or power tools.

Rainfall is around 40 inches a year, mostly in winter and spring. Zone 8 or 9.

The permaculture handbook recommends a diet of around 1 million calories per adult per year to provide enough food for an active lifestyle, so for a family of 9, we want to produce around 9 million calories of nourishing food according to that estimate.

If this were your situation, what would you choose to grow and raise?

Not going to suggest crops so much as strategy…

As far as I understand no one has been able to have no inputs without fallowing, or food foresting.

The figure I have heard (maybe Will Bonsall said it?) is that cultivating more than one fourth (give or take) of the land at a time necessitates inputs—the rest being perennial something that goes into a composting (or animals). As a goat farmer the latter option seems wise! It’s also possible and possibly beneficial to rotate the cultivated area and leave the rest fallow.

So the goat manure and bedding go to making compost for your beds, which take up only 1/4 or less of the entire land (about a quarter acre per person— 9/4=2.5 acres). Turnips, say, could be good crops, and other roots—greens and vegetables could be gathered from the forests and fallows.

I also would include the forests and non-arable land into the food calorie equation because they can be excellent sources of all sorts of food—mushrooms, greens, some kinds of shade tolerant berries, etc. Especially if there are nut trees. And since they cannot be cultivated they need little input.

I would always emphasise foraging because it is so reliable and doesn’t require us to take up space in our own land.

Is it typically foggy/cloudy (my ignorant conception of Tasmania) or do you get plenty of sunny warm days?

Thom Bri wrote:Is it typically foggy/cloudy (my ignorant conception of Tasmania) or do you get plenty of sunny warm days?

Different parts of the island get different amounts of fog. We get pretty much no fog at our place, and a mix of sunny days and overcast, but enough sun to rely on solar power and be able to grow tomatoes, zucchini, and other shorter-season summer crops outdoors.

Right now it's peak planting season, and the weather forecast for this week says minimum 5ºC (41ºF) to maximum 19ºC (66ºF). It will heat up more in December, January, and February, but generally it still gets pretty cool at night, and rarely gets above 30ºC (86ºF).

Kate Downham wrote:

Thom Bri wrote:Is it typically foggy/cloudy (my ignorant conception of Tasmania) or do you get plenty of sunny warm days?

Different parts of the island get different amounts of fog. We get pretty much no fog at our place, and a mix of sunny days and overcast, but enough sun to rely on solar power and be able to grow tomatoes, zucchini, and other shorter-season summer crops outdoors.

Okay then! You have lots of choices. Simplest is a rotation of potatoes and maize. That pretty much maximizes calories on small acreage. Both are easy to grow and pretty resilient.

Add in beans, other grains, other root crops like sweet potatoes and turnips, squashes. All high calorie and  easy to grow.

Any experienced farmers or gardeners in your group?

M Ljin wrote:Not going to suggest crops so much as strategy…

As far as I understand no one has been able to have no inputs without fallowing, or food foresting.

The figure I have heard (maybe Will Bonsall said it?) is that cultivating more than one fourth (give or take) of the land at a time necessitates inputs—the rest being perennial something that goes into a composting (or animals). As a goat farmer the latter option seems wise! It’s also possible and possibly beneficial to rotate the cultivated area and leave the rest fallow.

So the goat manure and bedding go to making compost for your beds, which take up only 1/4 or less of the entire land (about a quarter acre per person— 9/4=2.5 acres). Turnips, say, could be good crops, and other roots—greens and vegetables could be gathered from the forests and fallows.

I also would include the forests and non-arable land into the food calorie equation because they can be excellent sources of all sorts of food—mushrooms, greens, some kinds of shade tolerant berries, etc. Especially if there are nut trees. And since they cannot be cultivated they need little input.

I would always emphasise foraging because it is so reliable and doesn’t require us to take up space in our own land.

I wonder if John Seymour's approach for 5 acres would work well, but scaled up a bit.

On 5 acres, he ploughs up half an acre every year and sows it to a crop rotation, and then it stays in crops for 4 years before being returned to pasture for 4 years, so he has at any time 2 acres pasture and 2 acres various crops such as grain, fodder roots, potatoes, beans, etc. It sounds a bit more intensive than Bonsall's one, but it has animal manure and Bonsall does not, so that could make up for it. Pigs could potentially do the ploughing, if we had enough food for them.

What skills do you bring to the table for this project?

I grew corn and beans on 3000 square feet (7% of one acre) last year and got about 290,000 calories just from the corn not counting beans/potatoes etc. No machines, no chems or fertilizers.

2025: https://permies.com/t/279261/Sisters-Garden-year
2024: https://permies.com/t/249459/Sisters-Garden-Year
2023: https://permies.com/t/233039/Fall-prep-spring-sisters-garden

I would also plant oaks or chestnuts for nuts, because I feel like they’re one of the healthier staple foods for starch, all considered. Red oak (Quercus rubra) is the kind growing here and they double as a source of fat.

Or maybe you have some excellent native nuts?

While looking up Tasmanian trees I found a fascinating species, not really a nut tree though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans?wprov=sfti1#

I agree with M Ljin the path most likely to succeed is going to focus on perennial crops.  I don't know anything about the adverse pressures Tasmania, but assuming the climate zone reference is anything like the USDA climate zones we use here in the USA you're in a good macroclimate to meet the challenge.  I'd focus on the long term challenge, which won't be calorie production.  In that climate with consistent effort I'd sail right by the calorie threshold in a few years just developing the land on autopilot.  The real challenge will be dietary nutrient profile and a degenerative environmental impact if practices neglect a waste stream, introduce a parasite cycle, redistribute nutrients with a geographic bias, etc.  That's where my attention would be during design activities.  I'm interpreting no inputs to mean short term dependencies on outside resources.  A land area of just ten acres is several orders of magnitude to small to avoid resource scarcities.  

Ten people is also an abundance of labor for ten acres so I wouldn't shy away from practices that require intensive management, but I'd still avoid practices that make the local (site) ecology dependent on human labor.  After a good year of observation I'd plan transit ways, cite structures and water works, then work up a plan for the long lived stuff.  Without knowing the site any proposal I make is just blind guessing, but it would likely involve a lot of timber and nut trees, some kind of livestock integration, and an alley cropping system (or equivalent) to make use of annual plants and your abundant labor resource to compensate for whatever design deficiencies appear until they're resolved.  I'd probably also give a lot of consideration to aquatic and riparian areas.  You've the rainfall to support them and the labor to do the land forming.  They're just so productive!  A one acre pond full of panfish and surface plants (lemna, azola, watercress, etc) with a half acre island full of running bamboo, waterfowl, locust and almond, and various utility infrastructure could be a powerful local resource center.

Fun question!

An ancillary part of other answers given is to make sure that everyone is committed to eating what is available during whatever time of year that is. I assume this would already be the case given the post title.

Eating in season, including planning farm animal population ebbs and flows, greatly reduces food preservation needs and frees that time up for other things.

Adding in the local wildlife, such as deer and fish, really helps unless they are fattening up by eating your crops!

If humans require 1 million calories per person per year, they would have gone extinct right out of the gate.  Living off fruits and veggies you grow is the most efficient, with chickens for eggs, then perhaps, a few goats for milk and cheese.

Based on my own limited experience with a family of 7 and 5 acres in a 7/8 zone and not a lot of free time, here's what I would do.

#1 Goats. The easiest livestock to feed, bar none. They eat almost all the weeds, including a lot of easy winter fodder: evergreens like privet, pine and honeysuckle.  Their fencing is hard to get right at first,  but once you have that is smooth sailing and you've got a great source of meat and milk for the roughest acres.

#2 Ducks.  Great foragers, good at avoiding predators,  lower maintenance than chickens. Meat and eggs. Just need a little water.

#3 Jerusalem artichokes. The ultimate no input, high yield staple,  available 5 months out of the year fresh. Very useful as animal fodder too.

#4 Figs & Mulberries. Weedy growth,  long harvesting windows, easy to preserve.

#5 Moringa. Needs some babying in the winter but worth it. A multivitamin in salad form.

#6 Kale. Great to have when all the other greens are gone. Handles neglect beautifully.

#7 Cherry tomatoes. Everbearing, prolific, easy harvest and the most prolific self seeder I've ever come across.

#8 Sorghum. The easiest grain. If you can get a cane press, a terrific dual use plant as well.

#9 Chinese chestnuts.  Very vigorous. Early producers. Processing is a little bit of a pain but can't beat the yield.

#10 Water lotus.  Dependent on water again but a beautiful and versatile food crop that can take a beating.

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. There is a lot to think about!

For getting more food-producing perennials going in the forest, wildlife and goats can be an issue, but I am thinking that for a big tree like an oak or chestnut it would be worth putting up pallet tree guards. Or I could just spread a bunch of acorns around and see what happens.

Goats I haven’t really added into the equation. We had a really good system with them for years, where they would just free range (unfenced) and come back every morning to be milked, but this winter they stopped coming every day, went away for too long, and dried up, so it’s hard to rely on them after experiencing this, unless we do a lot of fencing.

Total free range is good when it works because they are understocked and just nibbling stuff here and there. In the past we kept some goats in fences, and the forage took a very long time to regenerate, so I am not sure if fencing off large areas of forest is going to be worthwhile.

So far I’ve been thinking along the John Seymour lines that I mentioned earlier, but with swales with fodder and food trees dividing up paddocks in the pasture/cropland rotation.

We have around an 1/2 acre near the house planted to vegetables and fruit, and around another 1/4 acre that’s semi-cleared and needs to be fenced and planted, perhaps fruit and nut trees on seedling rootstock with a plan to graze geese, sheep, and pigs underneath eventually. We produce nearly all our vegetables (hopefully 100% of them this season), and our fruit trees and berries are getting better year by year.

I need to get better at gardening without inputs. Once we can catch more animal manure this will get easier.

This leaves around 9 acres for the rest of the plan.

At 4 sheep to the acre, this is 36 sheep, or around 16 ewes with lambs. If we got on average 750ml per day per ewe, we would get around 2700 litres of milk in an 8 month lactation which might yield around 500kg cheese and 160kg butter.

We’d also get around 19 lambs to eat every year, which if raised to around 14 months old could provide around 266 meals, plus some fat for cooking with, which is roughly how much red meat we eat at the moment.

So if the sheep idea works out roughly as planned, we’ll be getting enough red meat, butter, and cheese to provide for what we currently eat, plus some extra cheese that we could eat instead of other foods.

I am wondering if 2 ewes (plus their lambs) to the acre with no inputs is too much to expect? We would need to produce our own hay from this land, as well as grazing. Tagasaste and other tree hay plants could help towards this. The sheep enjoy eating some of the wild trees we have here too, so there is also the option to harvest branches of these, or try pollarding some of them for more intensive harvesting.

We would also want to keep pigs, to help till up bits of land for grains and fodder roots, to make use of excess buttermilk and other ‘waste’, and just because we like bacon.

For grain, at our current usage, we’d want to grow around an acre a year of it. If we stopped feeding it to dairy animals, then we’d only need 3/4 of that, and we could reduce it a bit more if we ate less bread or the chickens ate less grain. If we wanted to feed the chickens some legumes, we’d want maybe 1/4 acre of those, and if we wanted to grow some roots for fodder, we’d want maybe 1/2 an acre for that. So for these crops we could plough up 1/2 acre a year with pigs or potatoes, and then grow a rotation of potatoes (or combine potatoes and roots), roots, wheat, barley/oats/rye/legumes, then pasture again, so at any time in the 9 acre plan, we’d have 1 1/2 to 2 acres in crops and 7 to 7 1/2 acres in pasture.

Or I am wondering if the pasture would be healthier if it remained perennial, and we had an extra 1 1/2 to 2 acres for crops set aside permanently?

What are your thoughts?

You mentioned tagasaste - that's a great idea. I've heard all kinds of good stuff about that plant. Evergreen, nitrogen fixing, nutrient-dense foliage and pods, vigorous.  I would feature it heavily.

I've only been able to find one seller in the US (and it's apparently borderline in my zone anyway), so I envy you!

What I would do is fence nine acres of the ten for sheep - the sheep would produce both milk and meat (and wool, depending on what breed you decide to raise). In my climate, and probably also yours, you can run about four adult sheep per acre of land, with proper management.  On the one acre remaining, I would put my vegetable garden, some ducks (or chickens if you prefer, or both), and a shed for some caged rabbits. You said you also have some wooded land; I'd put moveable electric fence for pigs in the woods, and shift them regularly. You can plant widely spaced useful trees in the sheep pasture, and also, as you cut some trees in your woods, replace them with useful varieties. If you want, later, you could find a spot for a fish pond, or aquaculture tanks, but I would start with the other stuff first.

We get most of our calories from meat, some from dairy (we can't eat eggs, unfortunately). So as long as we are able to raise our meat, the plant foods are optional and mostly just provide some variety and seasonings. That's for our household.

Here we are very close to self sufficiency. Our homestead produced 1 million calories this year including 1700 pounds of produce. Part was meat and parts where fruits, vegetables, grains herbs, berries  and nuts. I have a 3300 square foot food forest garden and 23 large raised beds.
One thing I have learned, is that there are limits to how many vegetables you can eat, so you might produce it, but the volume will be too large to eat. This means you have to produce calorie dense vegetables or seed to press oil from. If you have cattle, you can get your fat that way.
Another thing you have to think about, is logistics. You need pick varieties where you prioritize covering a year. Here that means picking fruit and berry varieties that ripens at different times of the year. If you get snow, you need to produce things that can be preserved for winter eating. If you don’t get snow/frost or only get a little, but have hot summer you plant to fit that. A good example here, is avocados and strawberries. Hass avocados can be harvested from spring to fall, and a fuerte from fall to spring thus covering a full year. Growing 7 different varieties of strawberries means we have fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year. This year I added sapote fruits, to cover November and December, since we don’t produce fruit during those two months, and rely on storage apples. I use planners and calendars to make sure this happens. Also, remember that if you get frost, you can grow food in cold frames or caterpillar tunnels. Cold hardy strawberries thrive in tunnels during winter time.
Calories that stores well are beans, peas and corn, since they can be dried for later use, and store very well for a long time. A good root cellar will also keep root vegetables, pumpkins and squash fresh, for a very long time.
A lot of this is hands on, so finding perennials is a must, or you end up overworked. We also plan harvest times, so my family takes time off work to help harvest, preserve and plant. A good layer of mulch will cut down on water needs and keep weeds away.
You also have to take into consideration what your family likes to eat. Just because you grew it, they might not want to eat it. For specialty fruits I suggest buying some of it first and then ask your family if this is something they want me to grow for food. I grew passion fruits at one point, but no one wanted to eat them, so it was a waste of space.
I hope these suggestions will help you in selecting your crops.

I gather importing is a big no-no in order to protect the ecosystem.
I have a friend in Tas who has giant beetroot (mangelwurzels)  that grows wild and I would definitely take advantage of that!. Personally I find anything in the squash family is easy to grow and high yielding, but I would check into chayotes as well if I were in your zone, if they are available at a market, I would ask to arrange for some plants, otherwise take your chances growing them from store bought if available.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:Here we are very close to self sufficiency. Our homestead produced 1 million calories this year including 1700 pounds of produce. Part was meat and parts where fruits, vegetables, grains herbs, berries  and nuts. I have a 3300 square foot food forest garden and 23 large raised beds.
One thing I have learned, is that there are limits to how many vegetables you can eat, so you might produce it, but the volume will be too large to eat. This means you have to produce calorie dense vegetables or seed to press oil from. If you have cattle, you can get your fat that way.
Another thing you have to think about, is logistics. You need pick varieties where you prioritize covering a year. Here that means picking fruit and berry varieties that ripens at different times of the year. If you get snow, you need to produce things that can be preserved for winter eating. If you don’t get snow/frost or only get a little, but have hot summer you plant to fit that. A good example here, is avocados and strawberries. Hass avocados can be harvested from spring to fall, and a fuerte from fall to spring thus covering a full year. Growing 7 different varieties of strawberries means we have fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year. This year I added sapote fruits, to cover November and December, since we don’t produce fruit during those two months, and rely on storage apples. I use planners and calendars to make sure this happens. Also, remember that if you get frost, you can grow food in cold frames or caterpillar tunnels. Cold hardy strawberries thrive in tunnels during winter time.
Calories that stores well are beans, peas and corn, since they can be dried for later use, and store very well for a long time. A good root cellar will also keep root vegetables, pumpkins and squash fresh, for a very long time.
A lot of this is hands on, so finding perennials is a must, or you end up overworked. We also plan harvest times, so my family takes time off work to help harvest, preserve and plant. A good layer of mulch will cut down on water needs and keep weeds away.
You also have to take into consideration what your family likes to eat. Just because you grew it, they might not want to eat it. For specialty fruits I suggest buying some of it first and then ask your family if this is something they want me to grow for food. I grew passion fruits at one point, but no one wanted to eat them, so it was a waste of space.
I hope these suggestions will help you in selecting your crops.

Seasonal distribution is a very important consideration esp. in areas that get below 32 F;  jealous of your sapote. I've planted a lot of persimmons in hopes of having some fresh winter fruit. I rely heavily on my freezer to keep the mulberries and blueberries we pick in spring and summer to give us some variety amidst with all the winter root/tuber crops.

It's the reverse in the summer when I'm loaded with fruits and greens but I don't have any more tubers.

Another big factor in self sufficiency is having food for your animals, with seasonal distribution again key.  This is why I'm such a big advocate of goats... lots of evergreen browse for them. Chickens are sort of easy too because their diets mirror ours pretty closely.  

I have been considering what trees to plant in the next season.  Right now a front runner is a few mulberry trees.  Not the fruitless, which are pollen producing.

What I like:  fast growing shade tree with high protein leaves (silk worms are able to produce silk from an all mulberry leaf diet).  If the leaves aren’t palatable to humans, then animals can eat them and make them in to milk cheese eggs and meat.

Once full size, mulberry trees can be coppiced or pollarded.  A good many street trees in the western USA are pollarded mulberries.

A source of rods and poles, firewood, fence building materials.  There’s a great thread here on permies where the community compiled a list of more than a hundred uses just for sticks)

They fruit for an extended period of time, so you don’t have to pick and preserve.  If you let the chickens free range, they will discover the berries under the tree.

And I don’t think I made this up, but check first before counting on it, a female tree will bear fruit without being pollinated, but either they are seedless, or the seeds are sterile.

And if one of your youngsters gets interested in coming years, they could try out silk production.  Hardest part, so I have been told is killing the pupating caterpillars… 😢 hard sad, not difficult to accomplish.  

Ra Kenworth wrote:I gather importing is a big no-no in order to protect the ecosystem.
I have a friend in Tas who has giant beetroot (mangelwurzels)  that grows wild and I would definitely take advantage of that!. Personally I find anything in the squash family is easy to grow and high yielding, but I would check into chayotes as well if I were in your zone, if they are available at a market, I would ask to arrange for some plants, otherwise take your chances growing them from store bought if available.

You can buy the seeds for those beetroots at rare seeds dot com. That’s where I get mine.

Sam Shade wrote: Seasonal distribution is a very important consideration esp. in areas that get below 32 F;  jealous of your sapote. I've planted a lot of persimmons in hopes of having some fresh winter fruit. I rely heavily on my freezer to keep the mulberries and blueberries we pick in spring and summer to give us some variety amidst with all the winter root/tuber crops.

It's the reverse in the summer when I'm loaded with fruits and greens but I don't have any more tubers.

Another big factor in self sufficiency is having food for your animals, with seasonal distribution again key.  This is why I'm such a big advocate of goats... lots of evergreen browse for them. Chickens are sort of easy too because their diets mirror ours pretty closely.  

If you are jealous of my sapote, you would probably also like that we grow both coffee and tea here. I also grow peaches, apples, bananas, strawberry guava, Meyer lemons, oranges, plums, cashews, tangerines, elderberries, any berry you can think off and so much more. My Barbados cherry and my Surinam cherry are still too small to produce, but grow nicely.
As for food preservation, getting a freeze dryer has been a game changer, and has paid itself off, in the 2 years we have had it. I also do a lot of fermented vegetables and fruits, I can fruits and freeze them too. This is how we get through November and December, and part of January.
Spreadsheets and Calendars has become my new favorite gardening tools LOL
We grow a lot of the food for our chickens, ducks and rabbits. We have tree collards and other greens year round, I grow extra pumpkins and squash for them, and grains. As of now, we grow about half of the feed we need as of now.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:

Sam Shade wrote: Seasonal distribution is a very important consideration esp. in areas that get below 32 F;  jealous of your sapote. I've planted a lot of persimmons in hopes of having some fresh winter fruit. I rely heavily on my freezer to keep the mulberries and blueberries we pick in spring and summer to give us some variety amidst with all the winter root/tuber crops.

It's the reverse in the summer when I'm loaded with fruits and greens but I don't have any more tubers.

Another big factor in self sufficiency is having food for your animals, with seasonal distribution again key.  This is why I'm such a big advocate of goats... lots of evergreen browse for them. Chickens are sort of easy too because their diets mirror ours pretty closely.  

If you are jealous of my sapote, you would probably also like that we grow both coffee and tea here. I also grow peaches, apples, bananas, strawberry guava, Meyer lemons, oranges, plums, cashews, tangerines, elderberries, any berry you can think off and so much more. My Barbados cherry and my Surinam cherry are still too small to produce, but grow nicely.
As for food preservation, getting a freeze dryer has been a game changer, and has paid itself off, in the 2 years we have had it. I also do a lot of fermented vegetables and fruits, I can fruits and freeze them too. This is how we get through November and December, and part of January.
Spreadsheets and Calendars has become my new favorite gardening tools LOL
We grow a lot of the food for our chickens, ducks and rabbits. We have tree collards and other greens year round, I grow extra pumpkins and squash for them, and grains. As of now, we grow about half of the feed we need as of now.

That's fantastic.  And cashews, another dream crop for me! I used to be in 9b in the Inland Empire but I didn't grow anything but dust and bamboo... but in my defense I had less than 1/10 of an acre...

How much did your freeze dryer run you? I want one but it will take a propaganda campaign to justify it to the wife.

First let me say that I am well out of my league here. But, as a urban "farmer" there are some techniques and tips you may be able to use from Cassandra Brown at Becoming a Farm Girl. She has a YouTube channel of the same name and this website: https://becomingafarmgirl.com/. I also learn from her newsletter, "No-Acre Almanac:" Homesteading Wisdom, No Farm Required

While you may not need all the tips and techniques she shares, I think you might benefit from her talks on vertical gardening, fermenting, canning, and other preserving methods.  I would also encourage you to plant as much vegetable variety as you can. Having lived on a delicious and very hearty potato and ham soup for a mere 5 days, I can attest to how immediate the need to savor something else arises. Your 9 people will want variety.

I would also encourage you to read the recipes at least in Eat more, Weigh less by Dr. Dean Ornish and anything by Christina Pierello. Christina, like Our Fearless Leader, survived cancer by changing her diet.

I realize my experience in permaculture is tiny, some will say non-existent, but I've learned a lot from all three of these sources.  Good luck. You're doing a good thing.

Sam Shade wrote:

That's fantastic.  And cashews, another dream crop for me! I used to be in 9b in the Inland Empire but I didn't grow anything but dust and bamboo... but in my defense I had less than 1/10 of an acre...

How much did your freeze dryer run you? I want one but it will take a propaganda campaign to justify it to the wife.

It takes time transforming dirt to soil, and we started with dirt. You can see how we did it, in my blog (building a food forest on the edge of the desert) here on permies.

As for the freeze dryer. We paid three thousand dollars for it, and then later upgraded to an oil free pump. We have the medium freeze dryer from blue alpine. I only got it, because I inherited some money, it’s definitely not cheap. That said, when you produce as much as we do, it’s a blessing. In the fall of 2024 we grew 800 pounds of squash and pumpkins. While I canned some, and froze some, the main load was put in the freeze dryer and Mylar bags. The frozen ones start loosing nutrients after about a year, the canned ones 5 years and the freeze dried ones 25 years.
I also grow and make my own flour mixes from grains, roots and vegetables. Only the freeze dryer makes it dry and crumbly so it can be milled into flour. The biggest saving though, comes from herbs. I grew 58 pounds of herbs last year (herbs is a passion of mine), and the freeze dryer locks in the flavor and don’t destroy the essential oils. In herbs alone, I saved 2000 dollars last year and the quality of them is fantastic. I make dinner leftovers into camping meals. Our chickens produce 3000 eggs a year, but due to the heat, and molting they only lay eggs 6 to 8 months of the year. While I have tried waterglassing eggs, freeze dried eggs are so much better, and will last up to 25 years if stores in cool dark areas in Mylar bags. Eggs cost a lot here, especially if you want a good quality. Often the price is 75 cents up to a dollar each.
So you can see why I needed and love my freeze dryer.

Lots of good advice here.  I particularly like Matthew Woods' advice, above, to reserve a little bit of space for some sort of aquatic system.  I hadn't immediately thought of that, but it it is true that they are inherently more productive than any terrestrial system.

You will need to layer your permaculture plan in time.  Perennial system elements are great at reducing required inputs, including your labor, but they won't be feeding your family this year.  Root crops and legumes are probably the easiest solutions for that.  Over time, you will rely less on those crops.  Just remember that how your property functions at first doesn't have to be how it functions forever.

I am intrigued by the "additional acreage" that you possess in steep native forest.  You didn't describe that space at all but, like others here have stated, I'd be interested in exploring the foraging potential there.  Also, a great way to expand your agroforestry potential without impinging on your 10 acres of prime crop/pasture land.  Find good trees among the native forest, possibly just near the edge where they are easiest to access, for pollarding to feed your animals.  Find or make little clearings and add productive trees of your own - hearty trees on their own roots that can compete with their native neighbors.  Find places to plant mushroom logs.  All this will add to the future foraging potential of those Zone 4/5 acres.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:Here we are very close to self sufficiency. Our homestead produced 1 million calories this year including 1700 pounds of produce. Part was meat and parts where fruits, vegetables, grains herbs, berries  and nuts. I have a 3300 square foot food forest garden and 23 large raised beds.
One thing I have learned, is that there are limits to how many vegetables you can eat, so you might produce it, but the volume will be too large to eat. This means you have to produce calorie dense vegetables or seed to press oil from. If you have cattle, you can get your fat that way.
Another thing you have to think about, is logistics. You need pick varieties where you prioritize covering a year. Here that means picking fruit and berry varieties that ripens at different times of the year. If you get snow, you need to produce things that can be preserved for winter eating. If you don’t get snow/frost or only get a little, but have hot summer you plant to fit that. A good example here, is avocados and strawberries. Hass avocados can be harvested from spring to fall, and a fuerte from fall to spring thus covering a full year. Growing 7 different varieties of strawberries means we have fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year. This year I added sapote fruits, to cover November and December, since we don’t produce fruit during those two months, and rely on storage apples. I use planners and calendars to make sure this happens. Also, remember that if you get frost, you can grow food in cold frames or caterpillar tunnels. Cold hardy strawberries thrive in tunnels during winter time.
Calories that stores well are beans, peas and corn, since they can be dried for later use, and store very well for a long time. A good root cellar will also keep root vegetables, pumpkins and squash fresh, for a very long time.
A lot of this is hands on, so finding perennials is a must, or you end up overworked. We also plan harvest times, so my family takes time off work to help harvest, preserve and plant. A good layer of mulch will cut down on water needs and keep weeds away.
You also have to take into consideration what your family likes to eat. Just because you grew it, they might not want to eat it. For specialty fruits I suggest buying some of it first and then ask your family if this is something they want me to grow for food. I grew passion fruits at one point, but no one wanted to eat them, so it was a waste of space.
I hope these suggestions will help you in selecting your crops.

That is a good point about year-round fruit. Apples alone in this climate, if the right varieties are chosen, can be ripening for 5 months of the year, and then there’s the stone fruit, berries, and in the right microclimates some citrus too. I could grow avocado here, but I'm the only one who eats it, so I'd rather grow other things.

It's also really exciting to hear about how much you are producing on that amount of land.

Medlars are not a well known crop, but they aren’t ready to eat until they’ve been stored for weeks or months, so are another good choice for low energy storage fruit. Some apples store better than others - we are growing a couple of different reinette trees, which are said to be the best storage apples. I make a lot of apple sauce as well.

I have the rocket-assisted solar dehydator plans and I’m keen to try making one of these sometime for dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and jerky. Currently we dry some things in the bottom of our woodstove oven, but this has limited capacity and gets too hot at times.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:What I would do is fence nine acres of the ten for sheep - the sheep would produce both milk and meat (and wool, depending on what breed you decide to raise). In my climate, and probably also yours, you can run about four adult sheep per acre of land, with proper management.  On the one acre remaining, I would put my vegetable garden, some ducks (or chickens if you prefer, or both), and a shed for some caged rabbits. You said you also have some wooded land; I'd put moveable electric fence for pigs in the woods, and shift them regularly. You can plant widely spaced useful trees in the sheep pasture, and also, as you cut some trees in your woods, replace them with useful varieties. If you want, later, you could find a spot for a fish pond, or aquaculture tanks, but I would start with the other stuff first.

We get most of our calories from meat, some from dairy (we can't eat eggs, unfortunately). So as long as we are able to raise our meat, the plant foods are optional and mostly just provide some variety and seasonings. That's for our household.

I think we are thinking along the same lines. If we could produce all (or most) of our calorie needs from animals, I would feel very reassured about self reliance, because we can always replace other foods with meat, eggs, and milk, and feel healthy on that.

That's really good to hear that you can run 4 sheep to the acre. We've fenced off around 2 1/2 acres of sheep land so far, around half of that is a bush paddock, which might turn to silvopasture over time, and several small paddocks of around 1/8 acre each, so that we can rotate the animals around.

I would focus on meat first.
-Ruminant animals appropriate for your climate - sheep and/or goats are best and easiest. Get sheep that twin. Be sure to choose breeds according to climate and topography! Rotate your grazing areas every couple of days so you **keep those silvopastures very healthy**!!

-Poultry! Again breeds according to your climate and topography. You’ll get meat AND eggs! Sell the eggs if you can’t eat them!

Nut trees are next.
Almonds hazelnuts pecans acorns walnuts hickory nuts

Root crops, again appropriate for your area.

Lastly, fruit trees - these qualify as dessert, in my book. Not a main source of calories.  
However one fruit tree to be sure to plant in your livestock areas is mulberry. The leaves are fantastic and branches are pollardable yearly. The bush form is easy for ruminants. The tree form gives more shade.

Garden veggie annuals can always be grown in zone 1 areas. Focus on perennials veggies and herbs too - depending on climate again. Artichokes, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, oregano thyme rosemary etc

Kate Downham wrote:We have around 10 acres of land that can be easily cleared…

I would not “clear” any land. Keep it in silvopasture. Trees are fantastically productive and shade-giving as well as wildlife supporting. Completely Cleared fields are “the industrial way” of farming. No need to do that. Your pastures and meadows will thank you.

tuffy monteverdi wrote:

Lastly, fruit trees - these qualify as dessert, in my book. Not a main source of calories.  
However one fruit tree to be sure to plant in your livestock areas is mulberry. The leaves are fantastic and branches are pollardable yearly. The bush form is easy for ruminants. The tree form gives more shade. etc

I just want to point out, that fruit and berries might be dessert, it’s also an important source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. For example, I grow bananas for potassium, citrus and currants for vitamin C and elderberries for immune support. I grow raspberries not only for the berries, but because the leaves help relieve menstrual cramps.
We also have mulberries btw, and we love them. Mulberries are always the first berry to ripen, so they are an early source of freshness.
I wish we could keep more livestock, but our homestead is only 1/2 acre, so we only keep rabbits, chickens and ducks. We raised 500 pounds of meat this year, so it’s not too bad.

Kate Downham wrote:

That is a good point about year-round fruit. Apples alone in this climate, if the right varieties are chosen, can be ripening for 5 months of the year, and then there’s the stone fruit, berries, and in the right microclimates some citrus too. I could grow avocado here, but I'm the only one who eats it, so I'd rather grow other things.

It's also really exciting to hear about how much you are producing on that amount of land.

Medlars are not a well known crop, but they aren’t ready to eat until they’ve been stored for weeks or months, so are another good choice for low energy storage fruit. Some apples store better than others - we are growing a couple of different reinette trees, which are said to be the best storage apples. I make a lot of apple sauce as well.

I have the rocket-assisted solar dehydator plans and I’m keen to try making one of these sometime for dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and jerky. Currently we dry some things in the bottom of our woodstove oven, but this has limited capacity and gets too hot at times.

We do produce a lot of food here, but keep in mind, that since we are in grow zone 10b, we can grow food all year round.
Also don’t forget to grow herbs and spices. Depending on our needs, I grow between 30 and 40 herbs and spices each year. It’s where I really save money. It’s way too much for us, but we feed them to the animals too. For chickens it helps keep pests out of their nesting boxes and feathers, for all of them it boost their immune system. Right now, it’s nettle season which means a good calcium boost for me and help with my allergies.
One thing I find is important, is to look at homesteading, not just as a source of food, but a way to have a life that feeds the body, mind and soul. Nothing beats the feeling you get by sitting, with a cup of homegrown tea surrounded by wildflowers, watching the wildlife thrive and the neighborhood kids sneak in to grab a snack.
Gardening and homesteading isn’t just about survival, it’s about thriving and knowing that each year the earth heals and regenerates. It’s about community, about supporting and teaching others about these old skills, Showing children where food comes from and teaching their parents a way to food security.

@ Ulla Bisgaard:

Agree w all. Enjoyment of nature is and environs is wonderful.

I interpreted and answered the original poster’s question as a *main* calories question for “how do I efficiently feed 10 people on 10 acres”. My response was a brief plan on the primary question of keep enough healthy, sustaining food in bellies for the long haul while keeping land happy, not at all detailed or nuanced.
All that (medicinals, flowers, wildlife support, veggies, herbs, etc) can be filled in afterwards, as somewhat indicated in the Zone 1 phrase at the end of my response 👍

tuffy monteverdi wrote:

Kate Downham wrote:We have around 10 acres of land that can be easily cleared…

I would not “clear” any land. Keep it in silvopasture. Trees are fantastically productive and shade-giving as well as wildlife supporting. Completely Cleared fields are “the industrial way” of farming. No need to do that. Your pastures and meadows will thank you.

The land is typical Tasmanian clearfell regrowth, which is a big mess of shrubs with not much feed value, a few trees here and there that we can use for firewood and building materials, and no pasture or meadows to speak of at all. Clearing some of this to grow food is more of a matter of choosing where to get our firewood and mulch from, not industrial-scale clearing.

Got it Kate
Thanks for the clarification

Kate said
“Clearing some of this to grow food is more of a matter of choosing where to get our firewood and mulch from, not industrial-scale clearing.“

Well said!  To me this represents the very heart of permaculture!

I am going to be quoting and paraphrasing this in days and years to come.

Thank you, Kate.