Part-time "hobby farming" on 3-5 acres?

[McCulloch610]

Hi everyone-within a year my family and I are going to be relocating and we have our eyes on properties between 3-5 acres because given the type of house we need (at least a 3 bedroom/2 bath) that seems to be about as much land as we can afford. We may end up getting lucky and being able to score as much as 10 acres under the right circumstances, but given current prices (and taxes) in our area 3-5 acres seems much more realistic. I'd like to hear from others who have made similar moves for similar reasons:

Currently we live in an older subdivision on a 1/4 acre lot and we are somewhat self sufficient. We grow a small garden, heat our home almost exclusively with wood we source and process ourselves, hunt and fish, and we DIY pretty much all home/property improvement projects and repairs. We would love to have laying hens and maybe some other small livestock (town ordinance prohibits these on properties smaller than 2 acres) and a larger garden, but with the property we currently have it's just not possible. However, in the surrounding rural townships, 3-5 acre properties are plentiful, and because the townships are more rural to begin with, they have even less restrictions on what you can do with your property than we currently have, living "in-town." One major motivation for wanting more land, small livestock, etc...is to involve our girls in local 4H activities. They just turned 4 and 1, respectively. Though the farm will be a family affair, we are looking forward to teaching them about the value self-sufficiency and hard work, but also to having a little fun with it as well. Our four year old loves animals and taking care of them and has been begging us to get chickens ever since the first time she was old enough to remember visiting the county fair.

Finally, my wife and I both work full time. She is fairly close as she is a schoolteacher in the area, but she is usually home by 3:00 p.m. and is of course, off from the end of June until the end of August. I work longer hours about an hour away from home. I'd love to hear from others who keep livestock under similar situations and about how their schedule works with caring for and feeding their animals. We are looking to start small, with no more chickens than we would need to never have to buy eggs from the store again. Eventually, as we get more involved with 4H, we'll likely graduate to other livestock, time permitting, but for right now the goal will be to have enough land to do the following:

• Raise chickens for eggs (eventually also for meat?) - How many do we need to produce a dozen eggs a week?
• Dedicate about a half acre to a garden - Right now we grow a few tomato plants, peppers, and cucumbers and that's it in a very small space. We would like to scale up in order to have enough to can for consumption year-round.
• Bowhunt for deer and turkey - Where we live, hunters can legally bowhunt 150' or more from structures, which means that on 3-5 acres I could likely hunt a large portion of my property without having to ask neighbors for permission because I will be out of range of their house/shed/barn.
• Have enough room to have firewood delivered in log length, process it, and have at least eight cords on hand split and stacked in a covered shed.

I've definitely browsed through threads by folks who are doing a lot with smaller plots of land, so I'd love to hear from them and others about the best way to organize and manage space, etc... I should also add that we don't expect to make any money selling eggs or produce, we simply want to produce enough for own use, and to give our daughters an education in the process.

 

[Mini Horses]

When buying be sure to check zoning, deed restrictions and all local requirements to do the things you are planning. I looked at a "zoned for horses" property once which had deed restrictions that did not allow you to build a barn or other such building. Yep.

Remember that a lot of acreage is a lot of upkeep without animals to help -- graze, etc. So plan accordingly as you are looking at prospective places.

As to chickens, 3 good layers would give you a dozen but, you may want more than that dozen once you have them there.
Plus, during molt they generally quit laying. But you will learn how to work thru that, like we've all had to do, with storing, age of hens, feed, etc. Get up with us once you are ready to buy them.

Note that such things as gardens, fruit trees, young shade trees, etc., are all subject to "attack by animals" -- that is, goats, sheep, etc. can easily destroy them. Plan planting and fences to prevent such damage. Have garden close enough to see and use it. Learn to buy seed and start plants, more than buying starts. Costs less, fun, good learning experience for the girls....plus, you get the varieties you want.

As you already know, planning is key to making this work. If you increase the garden dramatically, you may loose some of the enthusiasm if suddenly overworked. Start slow and grow.
3 acres or less would allow for a small animal (s) like goats or sheep, large garden, wood lot, small barn, etc. It's often the expansion of land that gets us into more than we want. Within reason, your animals will adapt to most schedules. Chickens can have 24/7 food & water, so that helps with your own time limits. You may find a property that has some wooded acreage from which you can harvest your wood.

I love that you are teaching your girls to appreciate where their food comes from, how and a respect for that process. Plant some "fun" things for them...popcorn strawberries, p-nuts, etc.

I'm sure others will chime in as the week moves along and they log-in to read and respond. Just tossing some things to ponder as you are still in the looking stage.

 

[baymule]

Welcome to the forum! We lived in town, just blocks from city hall. I gardened in the front yard and had chickens in the backyard. Most chickens lay an egg a day. Some lay every other day. I currently have 6 hens and get 4-5 eggs a day. You don't have to have a rooster to have eggs, and with that few of hens, the rooster would likely mate them too much.

For gardening, join SS's sister site, www.theeasygarden.com the link is on the right on this page. You can get lots of help with your garden, organic growing, heritage seeds, canning, freezing and dehydrating your produce.

We moved to 8 acres in February and have been busy ever since. Fence, fence and more fence! We are using 2"x4"x48" non climb horse wire to keep all our animals in, and others out. We have 3 feeder pigs and just bought 4 bred ewes. One of the pig is for us, the other 2 are for friends. The sheep are hair sheep, for meat. You might like goats for the milk, since you have small children. www.backyardherds.com another sister site has great forums on animals.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[Denim Deb]

Forget the half acre for a garden. If you do that big a garden, your weekends and your wife's summer are going to be spent doing nothing but gardening. Instead, look into companion planting and square foot gardening. Also, if you mulch heavily, it will cut down on the amount of weeding and watering you need to do. When my kids were small, my garden was 52'x24'. And, I was still able to grow enough tomatoes to make enough sauce for a year as well as stewed tomatoes. And, I had a ton of beans as well. The only thing I couldn't grow enough of was corn. Things like cucumbers and melons can grow vertically, which will take up a lot less space.

If you have at least part of your property as woods, you can get some of your wood there. One thing you can do is to coppice trees. This way, you can get more wood out of less space.

As for the hens, are you planning on having lighting in your coop? If not, remember, chickens normally take the winter off-unless they've started to lay in the fall/early winter. So, if you're not lighting the coop, you're going to want to rotate your chickens to have eggs all year long.

 

[McCulloch610]

Tons of great advice here-thanks all!

 

[Britesea]

You can freeze or dehydrate extra eggs to get you through the winter when the girls are not laying as much

 

[sumi]

@McCulloch610 first of all, welcome to SS! Having read your post above a lot of ideas go through my head:

- Pigs? They need little space (compared to most farm animals), turn "waste" into pork and are very low maintenance. Not to mention their manure is garden gold, though you have to allow it to age quite a bit before you can use it.

- Laying hens, 6-12 hens should do, depending on your egg needs. Some breeds lay through winter as well. Some friends of mine has Buckeyes and say they keep going, even in the middle of winter, they still get some eggs. My leghorns from a previous flock kept going even when our light hours dropped to around 9 a day (I'm in Ireland).

- Rabbits for meat?

- Denim Deb gave you some excellent pointers for the garden already. I'd go with what she said, plant and think storage and little work required.

I used to keep a large flock of chickens (I had over 100 at one point) and they took very little time. Feed twice a day, collect eggs as often as you can. Clean the coops now and then and go over the flock carefully now and then to check for problems, health issues, pests, etc. Ditto pigs. The garden was where I spent most of my time, but I enjoyed it and I had time, so I spent a lot of it there

 

[FarmerJamie]

Greetings! Sounds like the start of a great adventure. Lots of good advice here, little bits of extra things to think about. I had a similar background. Let me throw out a few other ideas as I had 3 acres plus work a full-time white collar professional job. Did most of the work myself with little assistance from the family.

- eggs, for a family of five, I had 20-25 layers. Kept the family in eggs, plus sold the extra at work, which paid for the feed and then some.

- some folks here are going to disagree with me here, but I am a big fan of raising Cornish X's for meat. 8-9 weeks from hatch to freezer, very low maintenance meat production. I would do 2 or 3 batches of 20-50 birds each year and always had meat in the freezer. I paid to have them butchered - my schedule was tight all the time. You can have your yearly meat supply done in just a few months

- fruit trees and bushes. 5 years it took to start to get production from very young tree stock. Blueberries in just 2 years.

- you're going to have to figure out what works best for you gardening. Soil types, different growing methods, are going to determine what works best for you I did a mix of traditional, raised beds, mulched, etc. Climate has a big impact too. I did a lot of canning. Plant what you like to eat or want to experiment with. Lots of staple like tomatoes, peppers. I had a farmer neighbor who raised sweet corn. At the end of the season, I always got to glean his remaining fields free of charge before he cleared the fields (100 dozen ears that last summer)

 

[McCulloch610]

Bumping my own thread now that winter is almost over and we're back looking at properties again. This weekend we should be seeing a home on 5.5 acres, set off the county road on a private lane with a few other large properties. The house needs a little updating/TLC but nothing major. The back 2.5 acres is densely wooded, which I'd like to keep as it's a perfect location for a deer stand. With the way the properties are spread out I'll have no issue hunting out back. The law here is 450' from a structure with firearms unless you have permission from the owner-I could bowhunt (only 150') literally anywhere on the property.

About 1.5 acres in the front is completely cleared for a lawn, and the rest is sort of sparsely treed. I'm judging all of this from driving past it once and looking at satellite photos/listing photos right now. As I said, we're starting off with just chickens and seeing how things go from there, so obviously there's plenty of room for that, but we're now leaning away from goats and sheep and more toward a dairy cow. Good friends of ours from church are a family of seven from the next town over and they would be interested in some kind of sharing agreement as we as a family of four would never be able to use all of the milk produced by one cow, even sharing with a calf. That said, would 1 acre enclosure be adequate for 2 cows? Also, another big plus of this property is that there's already what looks to be a 24' x 24' concrete block detached garage in the back, plus a single attached garage, so plenty of equipment storage!

 

[sumi]

This property sounds very nice, from your description. We used to have a few cows, 5 adults and the odd calf. They grazed over a few acres of good quality pastures and in winter we had to supplement their feed. Cows eat a LOT! Sheep on the other hand can be kept on poorer grazing and don't need as much, goats doesn't need much space and some breeds give a lot of milk.