The Whole Homestead Plan
I’ve spent a lot of time working out whether my one-acre homestead idea could actually work. Now I have a plan.
The goal is simple: produce all of my own food, including food for the animals, without buying food or livestock feed. I’m not trying to be completely independent of the outside world—I’ll still need tools, supplies, medical care, and all the other things that come from outside. This is about becoming as close to food self-sufficient as I can.
The heart of the homestead will be 18 paddocks, each 33 × 66 feet, with a 4-foot lane running through them. Eight paddocks will provide pasture and five will provide hay. The remaining five will rotate through crops for livestock feed and human food.
The livestock will be small and carefully chosen: two Nigerian Dwarf does and a breeding buck, with the does raising their kids; one Babydoll Southdown ewe, with two lambs planned each year; four laying hens and a rooster; six Barred Rock meat chickens; and one pig, raised to around 250 pounds.
The goats and sheep will share the pasture and hay system. The goats will provide milk for me—about two cups a day plus enough for a gallon to make cheese each week—and eventually meat as well. The sheep are primarily there because my late husband loved lamb meat and I want to honor his memory.
The crop paddocks will provide the rest of the system. I’ll grow soybeans for livestock feed, along with sunflowers, flax, livestock roots, and a mixed garden for my own food. The soybeans replace the field peas I had originally considered, and I’ll heat-treat them before feeding them to the pigs and chickens.
The homestead will also have an orchard, berries, hazelnuts and other perennial foods around the house. Those areas are separate from the paddock rotation.
Nothing is intended to stand alone. Milk becomes cheese, and the whey goes back to the animals. Crop residues become animal feed or compost. Manure goes back to the soil. Animal byproducts that I don’t eat can help feed the dog. The goal is to make every part of the system work with the others.
I’m planning this around one acre, and the numbers now suggest that the food-production system is possible on that scale—with the important understanding that the quality of the land, water and forage will determine whether a particular property can actually make it work.
I don’t have the land yet. But now I have something much more useful than a dream. I have a plan to test.
SMALL HOMESTEAD by the river 