Growing Food for the Year on 1/4 Acre | Self Sufficient Garden Tour | Three Sisters Garden
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2022
- Year-round self-sufficiency is possible! We’ll show you our homestead garden and explain how.
A home vegetable garden is lovely. Who doesn't love fresh produce in the summer and fall?
But what about those long winter months? How do you feed yourself then?
On just a 1/4 acre of our property we are able to grow well over half of the food our family consumes each year. This includes meat, fruit, and a variety of energy rich storage crops that we harvested last fall and are still eating into July.
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I hadn't considered putting the trees inside the garden. I'll definitely consider this type of design.
Glad this was helpful - Thanks for watching!
"chicken tractor" makes me think they're all having a party in there :)
Ha, only when you’re not looking!
What a nice couple!
Thank you!
Love it guys!
I really like your set up. Thanks so much for sharing, I really enjoyed the video.
Thank you for watching!!
Great video. Thanks for sharing. All the best.
You’re welcome! Thanks for watching!
Thank you very informative.
This was so informative. Thank you 🙏
So glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!
Excellent practical video. Key point you mentioned is that you can modify this system to your plot. Thanks!
Thanks for pointing that out! Glad it was helpful and thanks for watching!
well done!!!
Thanks so much for watching!! ❤️
Lots of great information!
Thanks for watching!
The row width designed for chicken tractors is a great method. Do you notice any reduction in insect pests in the garden with the chickens nearby?
We don’t see a ton of pests so I think it helps. Just the diversity of the space I think helps too. I’d love to find a way to free range them a bit more in the future which I’m sure would really keep pests away.
Good morning, I saw your channel on Facebook and thought I need to check you out. Well I love it so have subscribed. Merry Christmas my new friends.
Wonderful - thanks so much for being here and the support! Merry Christmas!
Beautiful People 👍
The leaders America needs.
More valuable than 10,000 government employees 😊
Awe! Thanks for your kind words and encouragement!
@@FromScratchFarmstead it's teaching people how to live, and how to live honestly.
Enjoyed this very much. We just lost a duck yesterday to our neighbors dog. We’ve been keeping them in their large pens until we figure out how he’s getting in. Our birds have always been able to free range but I’m thinking tractors are the way to go. Thanks for the video.
Oh no! So sorry about your duck! Losing animals is always hard. Tractors are a really good middle ground and so far we’ve not had predator issues. Another thing you could try is moveable electro netting fence. This would give you opportunity to still free range them and keep dogs or other predators out. We picked ours up from premier 1 and use it from everything to protecting gardens and chickens to rotationally grazing ours cows. All the best to you!!
shoot the dog
yo get into some shroomies I recommend winecap to start! love the design and the wine caps would do good by the trees with some mulch and hay
Love this thought! We've been trying to figure out what we'll use to fill in the rows between the trees since it's not feasible to plant in them forever. Might just have to consider this. Thanks for watching!
awesome vid! never thought about putting the fruit trees permanently in the middle of annual crop rows... will definitely consider this. can you share any potential downsides any inconvenience you experienced with this method?
Hey! That's a really good question. I think this post goes into a bit more detail on it: fromscratchfarmstead.com/how-to-create-a-quarter-acre-self-sufficient-homestead-garden/. But we have actually abandoned planting annual crops actually IN the tree rows now, and only plant in the 2 separate rows between the rows of trees. We did that about 2 years after planting the trees - as the tree roots were getting more established, I didn't want to risk disrupting the root structure when tilling up rows to plant. If you kept it no-till, you could probably still keep planting in those rows. My plan long term is to plant some form of perennial or semi-perennial plants in those tree rows - berry bushes, raspberries, strawberries, etc. Just havne't gotten there yet :) And the other obvious drawback is that as the trees grow larger, you gain shade but lose the full sunlight that's ideal for most annual crops. Thanks for watching!
Great answer. Thank you
This is amazing. How many chickens fit in each tractor, and do they stay in the tractors all the time or have a coop for night?
Thanks so much for watching!! The tractors fit 25 chickens comfortably - 30 starts to get a bit cramped. They do stay in the tractors all the time. Thankfully we have not had any predator problems. We keep an electro netting fence around the area which helps protect everything.
I don't get it. All I saw was a few chickens and some bees.
I was expecting to see more of the gardening aspect. Those rows seem few and small for a whole family.
I'm not expecting to be able to feed myself on that much, let alone a family. So many questions i have now. How is it self-sufficient?
I saw corn, potatoes, chicken, and honey. Is that all you eat?
Hey there! I think our garden rows were still pretty young when we filmed this. The three sisters rows produce enough winter squash, corn, and beans to last us a full year. Between those and the potatoes, you've got quite a few crops that will store all winter and provide a good source of energy and in some cases even protein. There are also 30 fruit trees we have planted in that space that will eventually go on to produce an abundance of fruit - of which many varieties are optimized for storage as well. You could plant othere vegetables in that space as well, but we have a separate 30'x50' garden space that's more of our summer kitchen garden for things like tomatoes, peppers, Brussels sprouts, greens, etc. So technically no, that's not all we eat. We do go to the grocery store or farmers market occasionally for some variety. But if needed, between this space and our kitchen garden, we could definitely grow enough food for our family of 6 to live off of for the year. And for the most part, these foods make up some 75% of our diet throughout the year. These are the types of foods our ancestors lived off of for generations. The variety we're accustomed to today with year round globally supplied supermarket food is a pretty recent luxury. Hope that helps break things down a bit more. Thanks for watching!
Where did you find your bee hives? I can't drop $1000 on bees which is what 5 hives would cost me.
Check fb marketplace or trying to find them second hand!!
Do the fruit trees get bigger? Would they block out sunlight making the rest of the garden unusable?
Yes, the certainly will! We expect the whole system will evolve over time, largely due to that. There is the option of pruning the trees very aggressively to keep them small. Or you could get dwarf trees too. This year we are abandoning planting in the row in line with the trees as the roots of the trees get more established. That still leaves the rows we tilled up between the rows of trees to plant into. And they should get plenty of sunlight for a few years, or possibly forever depending on how big the trees get. Long term, we may move to grazing either small ruminants or pigs through the orchard area which would totally change how the system functions. Thanks for watching!
1/4 of an acre is 1011 square meters
Thanks for watching!
Just found your channel, how long have you guys been homesteading there.
We've been on our homestead here for just 3 years! Thanks for watching!
👍Do you treat your fruit trees organically in some way? We have been battling leaf curl. Thanks
We haven’t had to treat for anything yet. They’re all still pretty young, so I’m guessing we’ll need to figure something out eventually. The Asian Beatles have been ravaging the leaves so maybe that’s actually helping to protect them from disease in some roundabout way 🤣. If you find something that works let me know. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead
Thanks for the reply. Will do my friend.
In those three rows how many fruit trees do you have planted. Seems like a lot.
10 trees per row so 30 total! Thanks for watching!
I am assuming the chickens need to be fed extra food in addition to what they scavenge?
Yes, we feed them twice a day typically and they go through a pretty good amount of chicken feed. We have another video that breaks down those costs: ua-cam.com/video/ejirwcVl2tk/v-deo.htmlsi=R9MalLezdRBfsL_g. But the grass, plants, and bugs they're able to eat from the regular moving of the tractors definitely helps supplement their diet. Thanks for watching!
How much it cost to buy a homestead in northern IL? I live in Chicago and am thinking of buying one for becoming self sufficient.
It can really vary so so much. But if you're looking for a very basic home on about 5 acres of so you're typically looking in the $250K-350K range I'd say. And that might be with needing to do some work on it. Something nicer with a bigger home and that's move in ready will probably run in the $400K+ range. Not cheap. Prices really jumped the last couple years but I'm sure they'll cool off at some point. We bought a small foreclosed house on 5 acres just before prices started to jump and got a very good price. The same property now would easily be $50K more. Good opportunities are out there but you need to be patient and be willing to wait for the right thing. Check out illinoisfarmlink.org, create a profile, and sign up for their newsletter. That's the best way to keep up to date on opportunities other than what you can find in the standard real estate market. And their staff are really friendly and helpful in the search process. Best wishes to you and hope you find the land and lifestyle you are after!
How about whole grains?
How much more land would I need to include Grains ?
Great question! We've really wanted to figure out grains. I believe you'd want a good bit more land than just the rows that we are planting on. Like maybe a 1/4 to 1/2 acre field to make the yield worth your while. The bigger challenge is, which we haven't figured out, is harvesting and processing smaller grains efficiently. If you or anyone finds info on how to do it on a small scale, let us know! Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Well, years ago whole large families did with small machines and people power.
Nowadays, I don't know either but could it be worth it to rent some sort of machine for the day or 2 needed during harvest?
Maybe think about a co-op collective mill.
I'll have to do the same.
Why are the rows so far apart? You could quadruple your production in that space.
We run chicken tractors through the pasture alleys, so they're still producing food! Plus, they can help provide diversity of habitat within the system and create less risk of soil erosion. Short term we could definitely till up wider rows to grow more food on but when the fruit trees get big enough to shade things out I think we'll be glad we kept the rows smaller. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Ahh, chicken tractor. Makes sense. I figured there was a reason.
People don’t realize what can be grown on a 1/4 acre. My goal is to eventually turn my 12.24 acres into a food forest. Please let me know what you think? Merry Christmas.
That sounds amazing!!
I don't understand why you don't just turn the chickens loose. We've got a lot of chickens and they're loose all day, and locked into their coup and the barn when it gets dark. We turn them loose in the morning and lock them into their coup at night. Only reason why they're locked in at night is because of predators that hunt the chickens at night.
We've talked about just letting our meat chickens free range many times, but there's a couple reasons why we don't. 1) Crops - we plant many crops in that quarter acre system the chickens are raised in and it would be very tricky to fence off those crops and keep the chickens out of them. 2) Aerial predators - while the perimeter fence keeps ground predators away, we have a fair amount of aerial predators like hawks and whatnot by us. There's very little overhead shelter where we have them so they'd be easy targets. And we're not out there often enough to keep watch and ward things off. We do let our laying hens out to free range every day all year round and do something similar to you where we close them up in our barn coop every night. They have a lot more shelter to hide from hawks under, but we still lose a few every year to hawk attacks. Hope that explains it! Thanks for watching!
And what types of fruit trees do you have? 30 seems like a ton??
It is a lot of trees! We have apple, pear, peach, cherry, and plum. We’ve tossed around a lot of ideas of what to do with all the extra but there will be plenty to go around. And we may even graze animals like pigs or smaller livestock in that space once the trees are well established that can forage on any of the fruit that drops.
No one can be completely self sufficient. How much dent corn, amaranth, or wheat? You are supposed to have at least a acre per person.
We aren’t fully self sufficient but grow about 80% of our food and try to source the rest of what we can locally. We just grow dent corn of the 3 you mentioned. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead we grow amaranth. We use it like rice or oatmeal. It is very prolific and is very good for you. You can pop it like popcorn and you can add it to soups and stews. It is more tender than quinoa. We are going to try some gem corn this year. Wish us luck.
Looks more than a quarter acre
I think it can be deceiving because of the rectangular shape but it's right at 1/4 acre. Thanks for watching!
Test
Thanks for watching!
Hey y'all, when planting your 3 sisters garden, what type of squash, corn, and beans do you grow?
Hi! We share all of our favorites and what we plant in this post fromscratchfarmstead.com/10-essential-storage-crops-you-need-to-grow/
Too much work moving and dealing with Chickens! I have large loam/comp bins and grab organics with my loader and go first of the season and I'm done!!!
Fair enough! Definitely not trying to make a case that this is easiest way to go. But in reality, moving the chickens a couple times daily doesn't take too much time. And when we raise all our chickens for the year in one batch, we're really only tending to them about 2 months out of the year which isn't too bad. Thanks for watching!