Building A Self-Sufficient Mini-Farm

Building a self-sufficient mini-farm can be a daunting task of you try to do it all at once.

We began our project several years ago, and we couldn't say exactly when we started. We can tell you however, we knew when we had built one. Last March, we were picking up a mail-order of some day-old ducks and geese at the post office, when the clerk asked, "Do you have a farm?" We said, "We do now!" We hadn't really thought much about it up until that point, but we knew that answer to the question when asked.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals. We like the way self-sufficiency expert John Seymour put it, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.” And then there is Teddy Roosevelt: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

We had had a vegetable garden for many years, when about five or six years ago, we decided to grow as much of our food as we could in our 800 square-foot garden area. And why not? We were already doing much of the work. A little planning and a bit more work and we thought we could attain our goal.  The first season included all of the usual favorites (inspired by our Friday night pizza custom): tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini, pole beans, bush beans, herbs, and so forth in the spring and summer; in the fall we had broccoli, beets, cabbage, peas, and some other cool season crops. The difference between this garden season and previous years was the amount of each crop.

We planned and planted with an eye to putting up enough to get us through the winter (especially the tomato sauce). We had purchased a food dehydrator several years previously, but had only used it sporadically. We started using it weekly, if not daily. We bought a stock pot and jars in which to can tomato sauce. We bought a pressure cooker and more jars to can other parts of the harvest.

The next year we expanded our garden area and planted some more of the stuff we wanted: okra, cucumbers, and loofah gourds to name a few. Fruit trees came next. We started three worm bins to convert our kitchen scraps into compost.

Somewhere in there we bought some chickens for the eggs, remodeled our pigeon coop to be a chicken coop, and started collecting the eggs.

We were pretty happy with the fact that we were raising our own veggies and gathering our own eggs, so we started looking around for what might be next. We realized that we were buying milk at the rate of about a gallon a day for our growing family. Hmmm... Cow or goats? We ended up with goats. Milk started coming in. Now we had veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk.

We also had plenty of manure  and straw to make into compost for the garden. In previous years, we went begging to the neighbors for leaves, lawn clippings, and horse manure to add to our own share of yard trimmings--we had pretty good compost with all of that. Now however, we had our own sources for great compost. This is were a good bit of the "self-sufficient" part of the farm comes in. With all the animal and fish wastes, we have plenty to sustain our plants. But we have only a quarter acre to live and work on, so our space is very limited.  Although our back lawn has become the pasture on which we feed our birds most of the year, and they get first crack at the kitchen scraps every day, we just don't have the room to grow the forage for the poultry year-round, let alone the goats. We bring in feed for them.

Water is another issue for us. We are not permitted to dig a well. We bought 3 IBC totes (275 gallons each)  to collect rain water (just a small step toward self-sufficiency here). It does rain enough in Southern California to easily fill these with runoff from the roof of our house. But one or two  weeks of watering the garden in the summer time used up our stores. To make a long story short, the totes became the fish tanks and grow beds for our aquaponic system--a much more efficient use of resources since aquaponics uses much less water than a similar-sized conventional garden. In a 48 square-foot area of our patio we can grow all the fish we would like to eat, plus bunches of veggies. At this point we have veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, and fish. Not enough to meet all our needs all the time, but we are getting close to that goal.

Eventually, we decided to buy some more chicks, and a friend gave us some eggs to incubate and hatch out. Of course, about half of these were cockerels. Since we had them, we thought it would be a good opportunity to raise them out for meat. We did. It was a great idea!  About that same time, we received from some good friends some fertile Marans (chicken) eggs. We incubated this brood of chocolate-colored eggs and hatched out about a dozen. We kept the hens, ate all but one of the cockerels, keeping the best one as our rooster. For a couple of years now we have had a constant supply of chicks for layers and meat birds. We've recently added Pilgrim geese, Campbell ducks, and Muscovies to our poultry flock. We've eaten some Muscovy, and we're getting ready to eat some ducks. The geese haven't laid any eggs yet, but will soon. When they do, we'll be raising a Christmas Goose!

What this means for us now is that we are able to produce a good bit of our food needs--veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, fish, poultry, and meat from our goats if we want--on the piece of ground we have. We know we can do more and are constantly working to improve and increase our self-sufficiency. We have to purchase our water and most of the feed for the animals, but from that minimal investment we are able to feed ourselves, exclusively if need be.

We want to encourage you: if we can do it, so can you! Start small and work your way up to your goal slowly. Set a  modest goal to attain. Once you have achieved that goal, and are consistent in meeting it, add another. Over time, you'll be able to accomplish more than you would have though possible.

We recommend this book to get you thinking about the possibilities and to get you started:

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!

February in the Garden

February is just about the last chance to plant peas. Also plant mesclun, lettuce, beets, cole veggies (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale), radishes, Swiss chard, turnips, carrots, and potatoes.

Choose the Right Carrot Variety for your Soil
When choosing carrot varieties, consider the heaviness of your soil. Sow short, stubby carrots in heavy clay soils and longer, tapered ones in looser sandy soil. Tips of the tap roots will grow four to six inches further down than the edible portion.

Plant bare-root asparagus, horseradish and artichokes.

Prune fruit trees if you haven't already. Feed them. Mulch avocado trees.

Make a compost pile.

Start seeds indoors for:

• Cole crops (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage) -- 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. That would be the first part of February. These can be transplanted into the garden two weeks or so before the last frost.
• Tomatoes -- 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. That would be mid February.