How much land do you have/need/want?

[~gd]

Wanted to add as well that need to store real books with needed info. I have way to many books out in storage as well as inside. But we will have entertainment and info.

A very astute observation Hinotori...
I've felt the same way for quite a long time. One thing is for certain, the books will still work even if the electricity goes out. One of my friends in town gave me the entire set of 1974 World Book Encyclopedia and the year book for every year since including 2013. I've been collecting books on "how to..." for quite some time because in the event that I need something, my guess is that I will probably have to do it myself...assuming the materials to do it are still available in some way. I guess that is why I loved the TV show "Junk Yard Wars" because they gave a hand full of guys all the tools they wanted, put them in a junk yard and pitted them against each other in a contest to make a "?" thing. What a hoot. Those guys were so creative. I loved watching and learning how they think.

I noticed that Britesea made an observation about the gumint confiscating our food supplies for "re-distribution" and find that very interesting observation that they are mostly interested in "commercially preserved foods". That never occurred to me that they would do that but why? are the folks getting the benefit of the "re-distribution" too lazy to cook for themselves? Home canned foods are cooked too Trim but if I were selecting foods from most places I would take the commercal and leave the home made stuff.alone. the commercial food has been properly prepared and QC'ed. Reminds of what the ;Rebels did in the war between the states when the slaves took off to be free and Sherman was living off the land they would hide food in hopes that the yanks would find it and quit looking for their real stash. here in NC the moonshine that was meant to be found was distilled using lead pipes rather than the traditional copper ones Since the officers and Sr enlisted got first choice of what raiders brought back to camp they were the prime targets. It worked well for a short time. at least ~gd

I guess what concerns me is the fact that there is even a thought that the folks who operate and administer our Constitution would even consider violating our privacy because "the king declared an edict" to allow it. What happened to our nation that the "King" has the right to issue "edicts" (or executive orders...if you will) in order to force communism down our throats. How clever. G*d save the "King". (or something like that...)

 

[Britesea]

Well, MY home canned and home dried foods have been properly prepared and I feel safe eating them, but I will be very happy if the government officials don't feel sanguine about them- hopefully they will let me keep them and eat them.

 

[Icu4dzs]

Well, that does it then. For what it is worth, I am guessing that the answer to this dilemma is "NOT to store anything"...particularly anything that is already prepared. The King seems to want to preserve his "non-working force" so that those who work can starve at a satisfying rate. You know, a little over 220 years ago, we (yes, I mean WE the "ants" of this nation) got together and told the King we didn't want any of his nonsense and gave him our notice.

What about uncooked, unprepared things like beans, rice, and other dried goods? Are they at risk of confiscation as well? Did the king suddenly decide that those who would make no effort to prepare for hard times (i.e. the grasshoppers of this country) would suddenly find a way to start learning how to soak beans and cook them? Not likely...from what you are saying, they are too lazy to even cook. They will steal only that which is easily eaten and "QC'd". Well isn't that something?
I do think that makes us in the SS community a lot better off, knowing as we do that anything we store that is easily eaten on the run would be stolen by the "locusts". Frankly, I never thought of storing much in the way of food but more in the form of "pre-food" condition. Seeds are more valuable than a can of beans in my way of thinking. I imagine thought that with all the high tech equipment that the "locusts" are using, they'll know exactly when to attack our gardens and our animals...but then the food isn't prepared or QC'd is it? They will have to kill our cattle, skin it, remove all the entrails, cut it into smaller pieces and cook it...all of which takes time and effort; and NOT the sort of effort the grasshoppers are willing to put into it. They are going to be looking for the Twinkies and cans of Mt. Dew, huh?
Any wonder why they don't prepare?

 

[Wannabefree]

And it's a darn good thing Twinkies made a comeback!

 

[Britesea]

lol.

I am not positive about what kind of food might be confiscated, just guessing based on what is allowed to be donated.

 

[KellyK]

Currently renting a house with 6 acres. Looking into a place with 5 or more acres. If it wasn't for the kids we would be back in WV on the family farm. WV is not very kids friendly, IMO. My DH agrees. We grow as much food as we can for ourselves, the children, and our animals. We can, freeze and store all we can. Raise our own chickens, ducks and rabbits. Want to be able to add a few goats, sheep, and pigs eventually. Next spring I am suppose to get geese, Muscovies and more ducks. Possibly adding more chickens.

 

[the_whingnut]

I think i could do well with 20 - 40 acres.

 

[Britesea]

Although it's not nearly enough to make me self sufficient, my 1/2 acre is about all I can handle. My garden is more than twice the size of my house, lol, and I suspect that it will get harder when SHTF and I have to haul water by hand.

 

[Tirtzah]

I hope this is an ok place to put this, not sure where it would go so very sorry if its in the wrong place. I am just wondering how much land everyone has or wants or needs to run a self sufficient homestead? Right now I have 45 acres with a 2100 sq ft modular home. We have no water here. We haul our own water in and I hate it. It's dry 10 months of the year, looks like a desert, hot as all get out, just not where we want to be. We want to be in the mountains. We are also very house poor. Our house payment is sucking us dry. In the future (hopefully sooner than later) I would like to be 100% debt free and not have to worry so much. Between our house payment and insurance it's about 45% of our take home pay. So we got some inheritance money and we have the opportunity to buy land in the mountains with it. We went and looked today and found out we have a few options.
1. We can but into a subdivision of like minded people and get about 30-35 acres for between 20-22 thousand. We have at least half down for that, would need to get a well and then build on it. The realtor said wells are running between 5-10 thousand in the area. The problem with this is the location is closer to mountains with a *fantastic* view of the mountains but its on the open plains just like we are now, no trees, just open land (although it is a lot greener). This option would put me roughly 12 thousand in debt with the well and no house or place to actually live.
2. We can but 5-12 acres, more in the mountains, most don't have open meadows or anything but I would clear the forest out a bit for fire mitigation anyway so that's not a huge problem, but they are in more populated areas because instead of 30 or more acres we are looking at a maximum of 12, probably closer to 5 though due to budget. This land also needs a well drilled and all the work that goes with vacant land. It's also in the 20-30 thousand range so again we would have about half the money down. This would start me in debt at somewhere around 30 thousand in debt with having to buy a well and that's with no house or place to live.
3. Get very very creative with our financing and see if we could get up to say a 60-70 thousand dollar loan and get 20-50 acres up in the mountains. Some of these plots of land already have a well saving us possibly up to 10 thousand in the near future. But this means I am heading strait into debt of at least 60 thousand without even putting anything on the land.

What we want to do with the land is get it, sell our house we are in now and move up there, live in a yurt or very very small cabin and build some sort of earth ship or similar style house. Moving up there will be me and my husband and 2 kids (possibly more kids in the future), my brother, and our best friend. They will both need their own little houses to live in or maybe just connect two little one room earth ship houses to our main one with a greenhouse??? I don't know. My mother in law is also planning on coming to live with us when her husband dies but that's another can of worms to open at another time. We want to have 2-3 cows (meat and dairy), goats (we have 5 right now) for meat and dairy, rabbits, chickens, possibly turkeys, also have 1 horse (a mustang) but would like to get a few drafts to round out my herd lol and we want to have a huge garden and a greenhouse so we can grow our own veggies. I think I covered all the bases here of what we want, there are just so many ideas I have lol. So am I crazy? Could I even do all this on 5 acres as the minimum amount of land that I am willing to buy? What would you all do? I know I am going to need to bring in extra hay for the animals because 5 acres just can not support that many animals. I am very familiar with rotational grazing and keeping the land in good condition and not letting my livestock make it a barren waste land, I am just wondering if this is possible and what my best option would be. What would you do???? Thanks!!!

I forgot to add that we are really big into shooting sports so one of the biggest things I am worried about is right now I have a 700 yard shooting range and up there with anything less than 20 acres I will be down to at the most a 200 yard range, and that will be pushing it. Probably more like 50-100 yard range is what we will end up with.

I don't know if this helps but right now we are just over 90 thousand in debt with our house and 1 loan we took out against both of our cars.