Home food production design
Mike has a fondness for talking about the zombie apocalypse. He figures, since he can live on beans and packet noodles, he's in better shape to survive it than I am, with my gourmet tastes for a ridiculously wide range of foods. My brother and his wife are living off the grid (except that they hop over here to use the shower, washing machine, and internet connection) and have a truly lovely vegetable garden.
I want to get in on this apocalypse-prep game, but my way of doing it is to skim about fifty million web pages and a few dozen books on the subject before I do anything that requires physical work or much investment of money. Besides, I don't really think that the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise) is coming anytime soon, and in the meantime none of us are making much money (to put it mildly). So, I have spent the past four or five days calculating our food needs, projecting costs, and figuring out how that all lines up with what kind of food we can produce on our three acres of sand without putting in more than 5-10 hours a week, max. Because in all likelihood, I'm the one who's going to be doing all or most of the work, and I don't want to be a full-time subsistence farmer.
Figuring out the cost of food and the cost of gardening is a bit of a puzzle. Because we're living with my parents, I can't get a good food-cost estimate from our current grocery bill, but when I was single here I always seemed to spend about $200/month at the grocery store. $200/week seems to be a reasonable estimate for a family of four in our very expensive neighborhood, and it lines up pretty closely with the USDA "moderate" food plan. I also looked at prices in the grocery store - $7.50/lb for the cheaper chicken breasts, $5 for a half gallon of organic milk (but only about half that price for the regular milk), and $3 or more for most of the fresh produce, except for bananas, onions, potatoes, etc. which are a bit less than a dollar a pound. I figure this is the expensive stuff, and that organic fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy products have the highest markup of anything in the grocery store. Most grains and dried beans are cheap, most spices won't grow here, and growing tropical fruits here is pretty much out of the question.
So, let's assume that the annual cost of food would be about $10,000 for a family of four, because that's a nice round number and pretty close to my best current estimate (and the USDA's numbers, too). The cost of gardening and raising animals is a bit harder for me to figure.
Fruits and Vegetables:
Let's start with gardening and my pet project, the orchard. Fencing seems to be about $1/foot. We would need 200 ft. to enclose my planned garden, 300-400 feet for the orchard. So, in the interests of keeping numbers tidy, let's say that's $500 of fencing. A cheap greenhouse/cold frame will run about $500. If those last 5-10 years each, that makes $100-200/year for fencing etc. I'll say $200/year, because really, I know it will be even more than that, even if we get fence posts out of our own woods (we have a couple of locust trees). I'll also figure about $200/year for fertilizer and mulch. We make some compost, but this land needs a lot of enrichment. Another $100-200 a year would go to seeds and plants (I know this could be done for less, but I'm trying to be realistic). So, the cost of my vegetable garden should run about $500/year, no more than $1000/year.
The cost of our local CSA is on the upper end of that range. They're pretty good, but you can't choose what you get and there's usually a lot of waste. They also don't do fruits, except for some raspberries. In addition, they're only open 5-6 months of the year. My hope is that we'll be able to get close to year-round vegetable production using the techniques outlined in Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. So yes, I think I can make that work.
Dairy Goats:
I would like to keep goats, but I know it would take a lot of time and effort, and Mike thinks it's going way too far along the road to actual farming. But just for fun, let me run the numbers. Suppose we kept 2 milking does and 1 wether. They would need housing, fencing, and milking equipment, probably a solid thousand dollar's worth or more, which might be good for about ten years (coincidentally, that's also the approximate working life of a milking doe). From the look of things, they'd get a lot of forage around here, but miking does would still need grain and all that plus the odd bit of veterinary care. Let's say that's $5/day total for 3 goats (based on price of Purina Goat Chow and feed estimates at the Fias Co Farm website). That's almost $2000/year (rounding up)... I looked up some other sites and this estimate seems way too high, but it still seems like you're looking at at least $20/week for feed for a few milking goats, taking into account the fact that we're on an island and everything here is expensive, except for perhaps the goats themselves. You can buy a goat around here for about $75-$100. Total cost of keeping some dairy goats: probably not much less than $1500/year.
If we spend $30/week on good milk and cheddar cheese, that's also $1500/year, and a whole lot less work. I know that you can make goat butter, but frankly it sounds like more trouble than it's worth. The only way I think it would be worthwhile is if you could share the goats among 2 or 3 equally committed and involved households -- not a likely scenario, given what people are like. I'd also like goats to clear out some of our brush, but that's a different scenario. OK. I'm scratching goats off the list for now!
Chickens, Eggs, and other poultry:
My brother and his wife keep chickens. They seem to be pretty easy, not too much work on a day-to-day basis, and Nova enjoys them. They go into their coops at night, and forage freely during the day. I don't think they eat much chicken feed, at least not in the summer. The down side of their free-ranging is that we never know where the heck they're hiding most of their eggs, though there are usually a few in the laying boxes coops. Also, they poo everywhere.
They shared a big batch of mixed-sex chicks with our cousin, Jethro, and they all planned to use the male birds as meat. This has not been as successful as the egg end of the business. Slaughter, plucking, and gutting are all pretty nasty, and there are vegetarians around. I think it might be worth it, though.
Another option would be to get ducks, which are cuter than chickens and have nicer voices. I just ate a duck egg and it was yummy. Duck meat is awfully good, too, and quite a luxury item. They're also good at eating bugs and slugs, and so complement the vegetable garden.
I like this page for a run-down on the cost of raising chickens, and feel confident that because even the cheap eggs here are $3/dozen, it would be worthwhile for us financially. At present, our household of goes through one egg per person, per day, on average. Most of us have an egg for breakfast most days, and some go into baking and cooking. So, for my theoretical family of four we'd want 28 eggs a week, over two dozen. If those eggs cost, say, $2 less per dozen than our grocery store eggs, and we extend the laying season a bit and store some for the early months of winter, that could be a savings of $4/week, or $200 over the course of the year. Not big money, but something.
Small Livestock for Meat:
I have a book called Backyard Livestock, which I've been poking at on and off since I picked it up a few years ago. It's almost got me convinced that we could save oodles of money by raising our own animals for meat. However, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, like our current lack of fenced pasture land, the cost of transporting animals off-island and halfway across the state to the nearest federally licensed slaughterhouse, and the fact that Mike is threatening to turn into a vegetarian. In any case, I will leave that part of the project for another year.
In Conclusion:
I'm pretty sure we can save money by growing most of our own vegetables and raising chickens &/or ducks, but the jury is out on doing anything involving mammals.
I want to get in on this apocalypse-prep game, but my way of doing it is to skim about fifty million web pages and a few dozen books on the subject before I do anything that requires physical work or much investment of money. Besides, I don't really think that the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise) is coming anytime soon, and in the meantime none of us are making much money (to put it mildly). So, I have spent the past four or five days calculating our food needs, projecting costs, and figuring out how that all lines up with what kind of food we can produce on our three acres of sand without putting in more than 5-10 hours a week, max. Because in all likelihood, I'm the one who's going to be doing all or most of the work, and I don't want to be a full-time subsistence farmer.
Figuring out the cost of food and the cost of gardening is a bit of a puzzle. Because we're living with my parents, I can't get a good food-cost estimate from our current grocery bill, but when I was single here I always seemed to spend about $200/month at the grocery store. $200/week seems to be a reasonable estimate for a family of four in our very expensive neighborhood, and it lines up pretty closely with the USDA "moderate" food plan. I also looked at prices in the grocery store - $7.50/lb for the cheaper chicken breasts, $5 for a half gallon of organic milk (but only about half that price for the regular milk), and $3 or more for most of the fresh produce, except for bananas, onions, potatoes, etc. which are a bit less than a dollar a pound. I figure this is the expensive stuff, and that organic fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy products have the highest markup of anything in the grocery store. Most grains and dried beans are cheap, most spices won't grow here, and growing tropical fruits here is pretty much out of the question.
So, let's assume that the annual cost of food would be about $10,000 for a family of four, because that's a nice round number and pretty close to my best current estimate (and the USDA's numbers, too). The cost of gardening and raising animals is a bit harder for me to figure.
Fruits and Vegetables:
Let's start with gardening and my pet project, the orchard. Fencing seems to be about $1/foot. We would need 200 ft. to enclose my planned garden, 300-400 feet for the orchard. So, in the interests of keeping numbers tidy, let's say that's $500 of fencing. A cheap greenhouse/cold frame will run about $500. If those last 5-10 years each, that makes $100-200/year for fencing etc. I'll say $200/year, because really, I know it will be even more than that, even if we get fence posts out of our own woods (we have a couple of locust trees). I'll also figure about $200/year for fertilizer and mulch. We make some compost, but this land needs a lot of enrichment. Another $100-200 a year would go to seeds and plants (I know this could be done for less, but I'm trying to be realistic). So, the cost of my vegetable garden should run about $500/year, no more than $1000/year.
The cost of our local CSA is on the upper end of that range. They're pretty good, but you can't choose what you get and there's usually a lot of waste. They also don't do fruits, except for some raspberries. In addition, they're only open 5-6 months of the year. My hope is that we'll be able to get close to year-round vegetable production using the techniques outlined in Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. So yes, I think I can make that work.
Dairy Goats:
I would like to keep goats, but I know it would take a lot of time and effort, and Mike thinks it's going way too far along the road to actual farming. But just for fun, let me run the numbers. Suppose we kept 2 milking does and 1 wether. They would need housing, fencing, and milking equipment, probably a solid thousand dollar's worth or more, which might be good for about ten years (coincidentally, that's also the approximate working life of a milking doe). From the look of things, they'd get a lot of forage around here, but miking does would still need grain and all that plus the odd bit of veterinary care. Let's say that's $5/day total for 3 goats (based on price of Purina Goat Chow and feed estimates at the Fias Co Farm website). That's almost $2000/year (rounding up)... I looked up some other sites and this estimate seems way too high, but it still seems like you're looking at at least $20/week for feed for a few milking goats, taking into account the fact that we're on an island and everything here is expensive, except for perhaps the goats themselves. You can buy a goat around here for about $75-$100. Total cost of keeping some dairy goats: probably not much less than $1500/year.
If we spend $30/week on good milk and cheddar cheese, that's also $1500/year, and a whole lot less work. I know that you can make goat butter, but frankly it sounds like more trouble than it's worth. The only way I think it would be worthwhile is if you could share the goats among 2 or 3 equally committed and involved households -- not a likely scenario, given what people are like. I'd also like goats to clear out some of our brush, but that's a different scenario. OK. I'm scratching goats off the list for now!
Chickens, Eggs, and other poultry:
My brother and his wife keep chickens. They seem to be pretty easy, not too much work on a day-to-day basis, and Nova enjoys them. They go into their coops at night, and forage freely during the day. I don't think they eat much chicken feed, at least not in the summer. The down side of their free-ranging is that we never know where the heck they're hiding most of their eggs, though there are usually a few in the laying boxes coops. Also, they poo everywhere.
They shared a big batch of mixed-sex chicks with our cousin, Jethro, and they all planned to use the male birds as meat. This has not been as successful as the egg end of the business. Slaughter, plucking, and gutting are all pretty nasty, and there are vegetarians around. I think it might be worth it, though.
Another option would be to get ducks, which are cuter than chickens and have nicer voices. I just ate a duck egg and it was yummy. Duck meat is awfully good, too, and quite a luxury item. They're also good at eating bugs and slugs, and so complement the vegetable garden.
I like this page for a run-down on the cost of raising chickens, and feel confident that because even the cheap eggs here are $3/dozen, it would be worthwhile for us financially. At present, our household of goes through one egg per person, per day, on average. Most of us have an egg for breakfast most days, and some go into baking and cooking. So, for my theoretical family of four we'd want 28 eggs a week, over two dozen. If those eggs cost, say, $2 less per dozen than our grocery store eggs, and we extend the laying season a bit and store some for the early months of winter, that could be a savings of $4/week, or $200 over the course of the year. Not big money, but something.
Small Livestock for Meat:
I have a book called Backyard Livestock, which I've been poking at on and off since I picked it up a few years ago. It's almost got me convinced that we could save oodles of money by raising our own animals for meat. However, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, like our current lack of fenced pasture land, the cost of transporting animals off-island and halfway across the state to the nearest federally licensed slaughterhouse, and the fact that Mike is threatening to turn into a vegetarian. In any case, I will leave that part of the project for another year.
In Conclusion:
I'm pretty sure we can save money by growing most of our own vegetables and raising chickens &/or ducks, but the jury is out on doing anything involving mammals.
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