Hi Everyone:
My husband and I have bee married 12 years now this past June and 2 years ago, we finally purchased our Doublewide, on 3 acres, outside city limits! We jumped in like we knew what we were doing that first year and fell flat on our xxx......LOL Found out we need more than just pure desire, dreams and a few acres! LOL So we have been, well I have been doing a lot of researching and reading up on lots of things and we now have a sort of "plan", and "projects" that we are working on to get ready first with what we are going to need, before jumping in the 2nd time, this time!
We know for sure we DO want chickens, both layers and meat, with all the layers being "dual purpose" for when they stop laying. We now know which breeds you choose matters and we even have a portable run for them and their chicken coop/house is near finished. Just need to finish framing out the people door and get it hung, as well as making the door for the chickens. I think hubby still has to build the nesting boxes too? He built them a "mansion"! Size is like near 8 ft. tall for storing feed, etc., up in the attic loft space. Dimensions are 4' deep by 8' wide! We figured they'd want room to walk around inside on cold and rainy days. Plus, we may let one or 2 hens brood their own young to hatch sometimes? But even if we choose to use an incubator, once hatched, the chicks will be in the coop in a brooding box with a heat lamp overhead for about a month taking up floor space in there. (Gosh, hope we built it large enough, now that I think about it)???
This has been our dream, to live out in the country, raise our own meat and grow our own veggies and fruit trees! The only thing is, neither one of us has any experience! Just heart! LOL So you might say we are just a couple of greenhorns!al
We want to build a greenhouse, (heated/fans), for this year's garden, along the order of a "high tunnel" look, using pvc piping, and a bunch of work tables about 30" high, upon which we will then build our 4' x 4' raised garden beds. We are going to then have a dump truck load delivered of a 5 to 1 mixture of top soil and compost, to place within each of our raised garden beds. Then, for the first year or two at least, I am going to order heirloom seeds from an organic seed catalogue company.
We will be starting those seeds indoors for most things, probably beginning in February.
Our greenhouse will be designed where we can completely remove the mil plastic once all danger of frost is past and the days get warm. The soil should be warm enough to plant in since it will be broken in smaller beds, while being inside the greenhouse under the plastic covering. We won't need to use the heat in there for very long after we transplant what all we began indoors from seed, I wouldn't think?
Had a question about the heating for in the greenhouse to ask you all what your thoughts on it would be. Was thinking about how we could heat for free, using wood fires around in there? Just like they do for the orange and peach trees once they have flowered or begun to fruit and a late, unexpected overnight freeze hits them! They usually go round up all the smudge pots, lighting them up and down between the rows. However, we don't have any smudge pots and all that oil to purchase and keep on hand can get expensive! So couldn't we do something similar only using little fire pits between the rows?
Also, there is my husband and myself and a family lifelong friend who is helping us with projects galore! So for 3 people and to also have enough left over to take to a weekly farmers market and sell........How large of a greenhouse do you think we would need to build? And how many of these 4' x 4' raised beds do you think we would need to make up and have built and ready to go???
Along with those actual measurements.....counting #'s of each of the various
plants.......how many pounds of white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage do you think I would need to last out the winter??? I was guessing at maybe 100#'s of each???.....So to end up with that amount of harvest yield for each of those crops.....how many seed potato pieces would I need of each type of potato? On my white potatoes, I want to be able to store about 30#'s of large russet baking potatoes and the other 50#'s of regular potatoes for boiling, fries, and cheese augratin potatoes, along with about 20#'s of small new potatoes for making some good old fashioned potato soup on those chilly Fall and Winter days! (YUM)! As well as some for making good old New England Boiled Dinner, (with the boiled cabbage, carrots, potatoes and of course corned beef)!....Geeez, we just ate supper not all that long ago and I am making myself hungry already! LOL
In addition to the chickens and the gardening questions........we also wanted to get some goats or sheep, not just for meat and making cheese, etc., but we also want them to eat all this over grown brush that is lined about 10' deep and extending about 450' beginning at the road at the very front of our property and going the entire length of our property all the way to the very back border! The brush does have a little tiny bit of some poison oak/ivy and or sumac occasionally in some parts of it. However, mainly what is growing there are those prickly, thorny, red berry bushes. Oh shoot, what's the name of those berries??? I'm drawing a total blank! They are a great source of Vitamin C if you are stranded out in the woods with no food. But you can only boil them down to make a tea, because it is what they use to make "itching powder" out of and it would totally do a number on your throat of you tried to just eat the berries! Is that "Elderberries", I'm trying to think of???
Well anyway, those things, some tall lemon grass, some various ferns, as well as loads of honeysuckle galore!!! So what I am wanting to know is if I had a couple of goats or sheep and turned them loose over there in all that thick brush.....with me not knowing what else might be growing amongst all of that thick brush....will they be safe? Would they know not to eat something that might be growing in there that I'm not aware of that might be poisonous to them, would they know not to eat any of it???
OK...........see? Told you I am pretty much a "Greenhorn" when it comes to living a self-sufficient life style! Hope you all don't get too tired of all the questions? But I sure am appreciative of you all being here and being open to those of us who at least want to try to become self-sufficient, living off the land! We love people! We just are against all the rhetoric, paperwork, continual appointments every time you turn around! "And you fill out a box online with your name and phone # to get an insurance quote and 50 times an hour, over the next 4 hours, your phone rings, so they can give you this promised "click here for your online quote".....quote! Only its' over the dad gim phone, instead!!! Heck, the phone even rings while you are talking on it because we didn't want to miss a call so we invented "call waiting"! So now you are trying to listen and there is this obnoxious horn that foes off in your ear 5 or 6 x and you have to keep asking them what the person said last to you while that horn is going off that is supposed to just be a little beep so you know to check who called and call them back next!.....LOL Our entire life's dependence upon the "Big Business" Major Corporate America dependency upon them to supply even the most basic of our life needs for electricity to keep warm, and dependence upon them to have clean water to drink, cook with and shower in. As well as just to have them take natural waste away and treat so that we don't all end up with the black plague again or something! When it is such a waste! It makes great compost material for growing healthy vegetables!!!
Well I am very glad to get away from it, even just a little bit!!! And I am very glad I found this forum here and hope that we can become self-sufficient out here and stop depending on corporate America, and Big Business, just to supply our basic of all human needs!!! Hope to hear from some of you all soon!
Thanks for letting me vent just a little bit too......LOL
Tirtzah
My husband and I have bee married 12 years now this past June and 2 years ago, we finally purchased our Doublewide, on 3 acres, outside city limits! We jumped in like we knew what we were doing that first year and fell flat on our xxx......LOL Found out we need more than just pure desire, dreams and a few acres! LOL So we have been, well I have been doing a lot of researching and reading up on lots of things and we now have a sort of "plan", and "projects" that we are working on to get ready first with what we are going to need, before jumping in the 2nd time, this time!
We know for sure we DO want chickens, both layers and meat, with all the layers being "dual purpose" for when they stop laying. We now know which breeds you choose matters and we even have a portable run for them and their chicken coop/house is near finished. Just need to finish framing out the people door and get it hung, as well as making the door for the chickens. I think hubby still has to build the nesting boxes too? He built them a "mansion"! Size is like near 8 ft. tall for storing feed, etc., up in the attic loft space. Dimensions are 4' deep by 8' wide! We figured they'd want room to walk around inside on cold and rainy days. Plus, we may let one or 2 hens brood their own young to hatch sometimes? But even if we choose to use an incubator, once hatched, the chicks will be in the coop in a brooding box with a heat lamp overhead for about a month taking up floor space in there. (Gosh, hope we built it large enough, now that I think about it)???
This has been our dream, to live out in the country, raise our own meat and grow our own veggies and fruit trees! The only thing is, neither one of us has any experience! Just heart! LOL So you might say we are just a couple of greenhorns!al
We want to build a greenhouse, (heated/fans), for this year's garden, along the order of a "high tunnel" look, using pvc piping, and a bunch of work tables about 30" high, upon which we will then build our 4' x 4' raised garden beds. We are going to then have a dump truck load delivered of a 5 to 1 mixture of top soil and compost, to place within each of our raised garden beds. Then, for the first year or two at least, I am going to order heirloom seeds from an organic seed catalogue company.
We will be starting those seeds indoors for most things, probably beginning in February.
Our greenhouse will be designed where we can completely remove the mil plastic once all danger of frost is past and the days get warm. The soil should be warm enough to plant in since it will be broken in smaller beds, while being inside the greenhouse under the plastic covering. We won't need to use the heat in there for very long after we transplant what all we began indoors from seed, I wouldn't think?
Had a question about the heating for in the greenhouse to ask you all what your thoughts on it would be. Was thinking about how we could heat for free, using wood fires around in there? Just like they do for the orange and peach trees once they have flowered or begun to fruit and a late, unexpected overnight freeze hits them! They usually go round up all the smudge pots, lighting them up and down between the rows. However, we don't have any smudge pots and all that oil to purchase and keep on hand can get expensive! So couldn't we do something similar only using little fire pits between the rows?
Also, there is my husband and myself and a family lifelong friend who is helping us with projects galore! So for 3 people and to also have enough left over to take to a weekly farmers market and sell........How large of a greenhouse do you think we would need to build? And how many of these 4' x 4' raised beds do you think we would need to make up and have built and ready to go???
Along with those actual measurements.....counting #'s of each of the various
plants.......how many pounds of white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage do you think I would need to last out the winter??? I was guessing at maybe 100#'s of each???.....So to end up with that amount of harvest yield for each of those crops.....how many seed potato pieces would I need of each type of potato? On my white potatoes, I want to be able to store about 30#'s of large russet baking potatoes and the other 50#'s of regular potatoes for boiling, fries, and cheese augratin potatoes, along with about 20#'s of small new potatoes for making some good old fashioned potato soup on those chilly Fall and Winter days! (YUM)! As well as some for making good old New England Boiled Dinner, (with the boiled cabbage, carrots, potatoes and of course corned beef)!....Geeez, we just ate supper not all that long ago and I am making myself hungry already! LOL
In addition to the chickens and the gardening questions........we also wanted to get some goats or sheep, not just for meat and making cheese, etc., but we also want them to eat all this over grown brush that is lined about 10' deep and extending about 450' beginning at the road at the very front of our property and going the entire length of our property all the way to the very back border! The brush does have a little tiny bit of some poison oak/ivy and or sumac occasionally in some parts of it. However, mainly what is growing there are those prickly, thorny, red berry bushes. Oh shoot, what's the name of those berries??? I'm drawing a total blank! They are a great source of Vitamin C if you are stranded out in the woods with no food. But you can only boil them down to make a tea, because it is what they use to make "itching powder" out of and it would totally do a number on your throat of you tried to just eat the berries! Is that "Elderberries", I'm trying to think of???
Well anyway, those things, some tall lemon grass, some various ferns, as well as loads of honeysuckle galore!!! So what I am wanting to know is if I had a couple of goats or sheep and turned them loose over there in all that thick brush.....with me not knowing what else might be growing amongst all of that thick brush....will they be safe? Would they know not to eat something that might be growing in there that I'm not aware of that might be poisonous to them, would they know not to eat any of it???
OK...........see? Told you I am pretty much a "Greenhorn" when it comes to living a self-sufficient life style! Hope you all don't get too tired of all the questions? But I sure am appreciative of you all being here and being open to those of us who at least want to try to become self-sufficient, living off the land! We love people! We just are against all the rhetoric, paperwork, continual appointments every time you turn around! "And you fill out a box online with your name and phone # to get an insurance quote and 50 times an hour, over the next 4 hours, your phone rings, so they can give you this promised "click here for your online quote".....quote! Only its' over the dad gim phone, instead!!! Heck, the phone even rings while you are talking on it because we didn't want to miss a call so we invented "call waiting"! So now you are trying to listen and there is this obnoxious horn that foes off in your ear 5 or 6 x and you have to keep asking them what the person said last to you while that horn is going off that is supposed to just be a little beep so you know to check who called and call them back next!.....LOL Our entire life's dependence upon the "Big Business" Major Corporate America dependency upon them to supply even the most basic of our life needs for electricity to keep warm, and dependence upon them to have clean water to drink, cook with and shower in. As well as just to have them take natural waste away and treat so that we don't all end up with the black plague again or something! When it is such a waste! It makes great compost material for growing healthy vegetables!!!
Well I am very glad to get away from it, even just a little bit!!! And I am very glad I found this forum here and hope that we can become self-sufficient out here and stop depending on corporate America, and Big Business, just to supply our basic of all human needs!!! Hope to hear from some of you all soon!
Thanks for letting me vent just a little bit too......LOL
Tirtzah
Your coop and plans sound wonderful!
Can't answer all your questions. But, for the shrubs and goats, they'll normally leave alone the stuff that is poisonous. W/out seeing your bushes, I can't say for sure what they are, but they're not elderberry. They have no thorns. If you could post some pics, and give me a general idea of your location, I may be able to ID them for you.
So, start slow and get one thing under control before you expand too far. You can always increase size but it is far harder to have to decrease and/or find you have more than you can maintain.
