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.