Sam Shade

I have two peaches and two nectarines.  Hugely productive but the bugs get pretty much all of them.  Gonna try running the chickens under them this year to break the cycle.

Cameron Green wrote:I am interested in trying an edible variety that will be left in my greenhouse in 7 B.  Please contact me if anyone has them available for sale or barter.  Thank you.

Remind me this fall, I should have some.

You can find a surprisingly wide variety of imported kei trucks...  just got me one of these.

They are the Swiss army knives of small farm vehicles. You can get them registered in most states. You can drive them around the farm like a side by side.  You can flip it into 4 wheel drive and go off in the bush.  You can cart around small animals. You can quiver in fear as you floor it to go 40mph on a busy highway as 18 wheelers fly by going 70.

My silver fox doe kindled in late December. 7 babies.

My New Zealand on the other hand hasn't shown any signs.

Born are in colony set ups.  We built enclosures with cattle panels taking advantage of existing structures (the chicken coop for one,  the north side of the house with an old garbage burning exterior fireplace for the other). Keeping two sets of breeding pairs in two different colonies has worked well to mitigate the disease problems we had when they were all together.

I just ordered billington hopniss from Experimental Seed Network.

I had some growing in my jerusalem artichoke patch a few years back and I didn't like the flavor so I chucked them... which I greatly regret now.  Didn't know they had so many other benefits and other ways they can be prepared.

Now the plan is to get this handful going and hopefully two sisters them with my ever expanding jerusalem artichoke patches.

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.

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 like my Nigerian Dwarfs quite a bit. Can contain them with 4 foot fences and landscape staples. They pack quite a bit of meat for their small size, good mothers, very low maintenance.

Haven't really tried milking them but some friends told me it's kind of a pain.

I live on a moderately busy 2 lane road but I have a thick barrier of shrubs and trees separating it from the property and the house sits on a hill overlooking it so it makes me feel like the lord of the valley.

Easy access to jobs is a big priority for those of us who don't generate much income from agriculture. I have a 5 minute commute to work thanks to my proximity to the city which frees up a lot of my non work day to do stuff on the land.

As for soil,  if it grows anything, that's a good starting point! My land is overrun with invasive shrubs that outcompete a lot of what I plant but that just makes it ideal for goats.

I've spent a lot of time planning for this goal; one of my favorite topics.

It is of course possible but the challenge for me is finding a way I would actually do it. That requires methods that draw the least on my two most limited resources - time and land.

My strategy is this two pronged, aiming first to minimize inputs by building much of their diet on weedy perennials that produce abundantly and multiseasonally, and second seeking multi use crops that also feed my family and our other animals, thus making maximum use of our space.

The heavy lifting perennials I'm doing my best to establish and expand are Chinese yams,  sunchokes, duckweed, mulberries, arctic kiwis, chestnuts, elderberries, persimmons, comfrey, and perennial kale, along with self seeding or similarly easy annuals (sorghum, amaranth and sunflower are my standbys).

Most of these are multi use - Chinese yams are the best example. They produce abundant popcorn sized bulbils that the chickens love while also producing tubers for the family underground.  Further,  they trellis up chicken chops, dropping feed into the run and their bulbils store over winter very well.

The other key multi is strategy is fitting them in with other animals. They pair particularly well with rabbits,  who breed so prolifically and must be harvested constantly. Rabbit viscera and scraps are great protein sources for chickens.  Once we start milking our goats,  I hope to provide additional protein and calcium by giving whey to the chickens.