Hi all,
I hope this post finds everyone having a wonderful day! As someone who recently passed a PDC but who has almost no practical experience with gardening, etc., I need some advice. I'm close to buying a property, but I want to resolve some last-minute doubts before I make the purchase.
The Property (as-is)
The property is ~ four acres (16000 sq. meters) in southern Minas Gerais (Brazil). It has 300 sq. meters of ponds, roughly 250 sq. meters of structures, 600 sq. meters of orchard (to be turned into food forest), and about 1500 sq. meters of wooded land with a mix of native trees and fruit trees (around 2-3 springs that feed the ponds). The rest is used as pasture land for three horses, and I'd say that about 1000 sq. meters of that is best left to zone 5 forest due to slope. So, I'd say about 3 acres (12000 sq. meters) is left for me to work with.
What I need from this property
My goal is to feed 12 people off this property. (I don't have 12 people to live there immediately, but it isn't out of the question that we could have that soon.) Either way, I realize that it is generally considered a stretch to make 4 acres that productive. But I also know that using greenhouses, aquaponics, etc., people have found ways to make small properties very productive -- productive enough to make a good living selling surplus. I'm hoping some combination of strategies can make this property productive enough to feed 12.
My questions
I'm having a hard time finding any helpful data on how many pounds/kilos of veggies I should expect to grow per year, per sq. meter of greenhouse. I'd like to use a combination of raised beds & aquaponics in it, but I'm open to doing it any way that will maximize productivity at a reasonable (i.e., low) cost in terms of $ and labor. So it is hard for me to figure out how big the greenhouse needs to be.
(1) How big do you think the greenhouse should be? And what strategies do you think I should pursue to maximize productivity? (Obviously, we won't be growing all of our food in a greenhouse. I'd like most to come from food forests around the property. But we'll be eating a lot of things like cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and other annual veggies, and I'd like to maximize productivity somehow -- and, so far as I can tell, a greenhouse is the way to go to accomplish this.)
(2) Am I trying to do the impossible on this piece of land?
Thanks!