Has anyone ever become (or tried to become) self sufficient? Am I too much of a dreamer?

[WelliesAndPyjamas]

We moved abroad and a major part of this jump in to the unknown was to 'live the dream' (sorry - it's corny but true!) and become as self sufficient as possible.

So far, after about 18 months we have one season under our belts of growing veg/fruit and of keeping chickens. We now want to go further - a couple of goats for milk and meat, a pig for meat, a new orchard for more fruit, and more chickens. We have an acre and own our own house and land so no mortgage. We run our own safaris company but it isn't a full time job all year - DH is away a lot as the guide in the summer and we both work year round on promoting the safaris. I have been teaching part time to keep the bills paid while the safari thing was taking off, and after our first attempt at growing our own food, we have done pretty well at keeping the food bills nice and low.

The dream idea is that with the safaris well established I can give up the teaching (which I find very boring tbh) and vastly increase the amount of work that goes in to the future smallholding, to the point that our only real expenses should be electric, the occasional gas bottle, and animal feed (although we would also look to grow as much of this as possible), and coffee!

I'm imagining that with goats' milk I would have enough milk for us to drink and to make cheese/yogurt. A pig and the chickens would provide us with meat and chickens year round. And if we plant a third more than we did last year then we should also have enough fruit and veg to keep us fed. We have good storage facilities under the house and it has worked admirably in keeping everything edible so far.

Longer term, more livestock would be a consideration, as would be alternative energy and trying to find a water source on our land, even if it is only for the veg and animals.

I know I am going on a bit so apologies for that and thanks for following so far. I would really love to hear from anyone who is/has doing/done this. Or anyone with experience of keeping any of the above livestock who could advise me whether I am being realistic? And whether there is more we could be doing?

Should I 'gor for it'?

Cor that sounds like hard work. It's The Good Life in khaki.

Well, you've got so far, why not?

this sounds great and exactly what we would like to do(tho in europe along with a gite) are you in africa somewhere? how much impact would the climate have on your dreams?

no, we're in europe (they're mountain safaris not african safaris - sorry! ) and the climate and land is just great for what we have in mind. Well, a bit too cold and snowy for me in the winter but the nice summers make up for it!

this part of the country is famous for being good for growing so we are lucky

then I think you should go for it and see how you get on. make a plan (treat it like a business) and what you need to achieve at each stage and then work from that. Lucky you - and remember, you do only live once so you do something you love

I haven't done it, but my parents have been nearly self sufficient for a number of years.
You have to work out how much milk you will need per day including making yogurt, butter, and cheese. Then depending on the breed and inclination of goat, you'll get between 4 and 15 pints per day and they are usually kidded every other year so will have a 4 month dry period for each one every other year. With a breed such as British Saanen, you'd therefore be looking at maybe 4 does to provide 2 or so male kids for meat a year plus provide milk etc

A pig is quite hard work, but they do turn over rough ground well, and can provide up to 12 piglets a year. For both pigs and goats you'd need to think about access to suitable males

Chickens are very easy to keep, and nicely self sustaining.

We used to trade for some lambs each year to get extra meat, which was worth it

Feed bills might be higher than you think - with only an acre you'll need to buy in hay and straw, plus concentrate.

If you are going to keep animals, it is really important to go and get some training in foot care, animal maternity, milking etc. I can't tell you how many times Dad has been called by the vets to go and sort out someone who thought that keeping goats would be fun, and didn't learn these things. Its also a real tie - goats need milking twice a day, every day and depending on how fast you milk can take 10 minutes or so each. Not easy to get someone to come and hand milk either.

If I were you, I'd start with some chickens and upping your fruit and veg, and maximise what you do with that before starting on bigger livestock. Maybe some geese to keep the weeds down too.

Yes - I looked at your pics and realised it was more snow than sun after my post! Umm, The Good Life in earmuffs? Don't the animals get frostbite?

My grandparents were self-sufficient - but out of necessity rather than choice I think. It was a very hard life - they literally had to do all the work by hand, no mechanised tools, etc.

They kept chickens (eggs and meat), a few pigs (which I think they sold when they were big enough), two cows for milk (also made their own butter.) Calves were also sold on when the time was right. Grew all their own veg and fruit and also grew hay and some other crop for winter feed for the animals. (This was harvested by hand using scythes). They also cut their own fuel for an open fire which was the only source of heat. Anything surplus to their own needs was sold to buy stuff they couldn't make or grow themselves. At one stage they had no running water and had to get drinking water from a well which was quite a distance away (not on their property).

My mother and her siblings had to help out a lot when they were growing up and tbh I think they couldn't wait to get away from that lifestyle. It was also very restrictive in that the family couldn't ever go away together because of milking, etc and even if one of them went away for a few days it put a lot of extra work on the person who stayed behind.

I feel very priviliged that I was able to experience this lifestyle when I was a child but to do it without any other source of income would be quite a challenge I think (though the work is probably not as physically hard nowadays if you buy machinery, etc). I have friends who are hoping to do something along these lines once they can find the right property to buy but they intend that one of them will still work.

Agree that one acre would probably not be enough to do it totally yourself...

You'll need more land if you want to keep more livestock. An acre really isn't enough for pigs and goats. Five acres would be more likely.

With a small amount of land, you won't get many economies of scale. If you want to make it easier, you'll need machinery - a small tractor, cultivator etc. You'll also need to buy fuel, and know how to maintain them.

You'll have to buy feed, bedding, hay, other inputs for the animals.

It's hard work and a lot of responsibility. I grew up on a smallholding in Ireland in the eighties. There were no days off from milking goats, feeding chicks and everything else. We would have chores to do before going to school and after coming back. Dad had a business and Mum worked as a relief nurse - we needed the income.

John Seymour's book Five Acres and Independence is not a bad guide - it's slightly unrealistic, and based on a temperate climate, but contains much that is of value.

Lots of great thoughts and advice here, thank you very very much everyone.

What we are essentially hoping to do is to live in the same way our neighbours do, with a small number of livestock on a small patch of land, to support a small family. I hope that it could actually work out. We would just be lucky to have our safaris providing a little extra income.

Machinery. Do you think we would really need some with an acre? We cut our own grass with a scythe last summer and it went fine (well, you know, it was a bit of a backbreaker on a scorching hot day, but it did get done ). We have a chainsaw for wood. Our CH is wood or coal burning and there is a great system here whereby you can get a permit from the forestry and go and 'clean' the forests i.e. taking broken wood etc from the forest floor, and it has worked really well (and cheaply), paying back the chainsaw in the first season! So far we have paid to have our land rotivated each time by a local tractor-owner and at roughly £8 a go for a quarter of an acre, we have been able to justify it. What other machinery would anyone suggest we might need?

ANyone know about rabbits? Worth trying as my next step?

walnutshell - the cockerel got a little bit of frostbite on the top of his comb this winter but has recovered now. They don't tend to come out very much on the very cold days and make sure their coop is warm enough. It isn't that cold all year, only really for three/four months. (Thankfully!)

when I say neighbours, I mean most of the people in the surrounding areas, not a specific couple that we are trying to copy or anything

Best thing to do is to go and talk to your neighbours about how they do things - people in an area have a much better idea of how to deal with local conditions than we can guess at. It would also give you people to ask for help, and to swap youngstock with. It might also work to exchange produce with neighbours.

If theres someone to rotavate your land, then don't worry about more machinery for that. You might like to look into permaculture and other ways to minimise the hard physical work.

If you want to make butter, you'll need a separator as goats milk doesn't naturally separate.

Rabbits are a good meat source, but I do know that people who aren't used to killing and eating their own animals have a lot of problems doing it with rabbits.

thank you cmotdibbler

I hadn't come across that info about goat's milk so far so that is useful to know. Luckily we have got out of the british habit of eating butter since moving here, and since the price went up by 200% last year .

Having just had a quick memory refresh of what permaculture is, I think we've been learning to work more and more in this way over time without even knowing it! It has nice logical efficient order - just how I like things!

Our neighbours are great. Always happy to show how they do things so we have had a lot of encouragement and help from them. I guess I know that in principle I know that it is possible for us to live in this way (within the limits of the size of our land obviously) but it still feels like a pretty massive step to take, coming from the UK and changing our lives so completely already.

we have friends who are as self-sufficient as they can be but still need an income. What will you do about clothing, medical care (for you and animals), soap and cleaning materials? You also need a fallback when disease/bad weather takes your crops.

You should also be aware that their teenage children hate their lifestyle and can't wait to earn a fortune.

We have friends over in the Hebrides who are fully self sufficient but who spend every waking minute working.
Here is a link to the Crofters Forum just to give you an insight into how Scottish crofters cope given the small areas of land they have, problems encountered etc
A good compromise is trying to be as self sufficient as is possible but also contributing to the local economy too when needs must.
link

I forgot to say that my friend has to supplement their income with B&B and that they are not wealthy at all...far from it.

Have you read the John Seymour book, the complete book of self-sufficiency? it was my bible when i first started out...

re. the rabbits, if you can get over the fluffy bunny emotions they are very good source of protein, really tasty and well.. they breed like, er... rabbits. Very easy to keep and once you've invested in a rampant buck and vaguely interested female you are set up.

Tatt's point about the kids' attitude to the lifestyle is a good one - although I now have an allotment and enjoy it, as a teenager I was mortified by the fact that our neighbours had lawns in their front gardens, and we had potatoes. To say nothing of being called a "goatsucker" at school.

lol at the teenagers
DS is still only 4 and overly enthusiastic about everything but ask me again in ten years' time...

we have that john seymour book, and it is useful as a first point of reference for a lot of things. After that I tend to start googling for more in depth information.

I mentioned further up the thread that we do also have a supplemental income from our mountain safaris so we are not being truly self sufficient. So we already have the equivalent to your friend's B&B, in the form of the tours. Could there be a specific word for people who, in the 21st century, produce most of their own food, manage their land, and have an extra trickle for bills etc? Semi-Sufficient?
We don't want to be wealthy by Western standards (or we wouldn't live here that's for sure!) and we really only just scrape by with my teaching now, having put a lot of money in to starting up our business. Having no money for new clothes and other luxuries doesn't bother us. We did the big salaries and swishy jobs back in the UK and it didn't suit us - we never got to see our son and were always dreaming of trying this out! Guess I had better just go for it after all that!

the rabbits - won't know until I try it whether the fluffy cutsie thing will bother me. Have done ok with the chickens but then they have faces that only a mother could love!

off to check out your link, gentleotter

ah well good luck my love. hope it works out for you.... x

Go on www.telegraph.co.uk and search self sufficient to see the article in their magazine today about a couple who did it. It is very very hard work however.

thanks for that xenia, will go and check it out now

and thanks mankymummy

Nothing is impossible and all that

I raise my hat to you Wellies It sounds as if you have got it well sussed and good luck with everything.
Anything is possible if you see it in your mind's eye.

DON"T GIVE THEM NAMES!!!!

If you intend to eat ANY of your animals, don't ever give them names.