My project to achieve a self-sufficient "farm-garden"

Lotus-eater

Oh it can be done. Just not by you and not the way you want to do it. I'll let you find out the hard way.

yumyums

OP, people are just trying to help, despite what you may think. I imagine being self-sufficient is very difficult and maybe you should start a bit smaller at first. Have you had any experience of growing food / keeping animals?

Do you want to be self-sufficient so that you won't have to deal with other people on a daily basis?

simmed

yumyums wrote: »

OP, people are just trying to help, despite what you may think. I imagine being self-sufficient is very difficult and maybe you should start a bit smaller at first. Have you had any experience of growing food / keeping animals?

Do you want to be self-sufficient so that you won't have to deal with other people on a daily basis?

SOME people aren't "just trying to help". As usual on MSE 90% of people are helpful and offer advice but there's always that minority of people who barge in yelling "IT CAN'T BE DONE!!" etc.

Btw, I mean a self-sufficient garden, not total self-self-sufficiency.

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Oh I have lots of advice, you see I have real life experience with what you want to do, so do others that you are doing your best to alienate.
So am am going to shoo. bye

Once again - if you aren't willing to offer advice and are just going to moan about how impossible it is, I'm not interested!

annie123

simmed wrote: »

Sooo, thoughts/comments/advice? You have had some but you didn't like them

Can it be done? Yes

Are there any fundamental flaws with the above plan? Yes

OP......If it was as easy as you have made it out to be in your post, many many more people would be doing it.

You have stated general ideas, and got general answers.
The knowledge you need to do this takes, ideally, years of experience at best or at least many many hours of research and attending a few courses. No one here can impart the information you need to do this successfully in a few short paragraphs.

You sound stressed and upset that you have not been told "yes that's a great plan". Please do not take it personally, but no one here would want to be part of the consequences of you charging off in a direction that you obviously have very very little knowledge about.

In theory can it be done? yes it can. Are you capable of doing it? we don't know, but based on the info given you have 'told' us that you lack the knowledge required to get started.

I'm sorry it's not want you want to hear but you did ask for thoughts,comments and advice.

valk_scot

simmed wrote: »

SOME people aren't "just trying to help". As usual on MSE 90% of people are helpful and offer advice but there's always that minority of people who barge in yelling "IT CAN'T BE DONE!!" etc.

Btw, I mean a self-sufficient garden, not total self-self-sufficiency.



Once again - if you aren't willing to offer advice and are just going to moan about how impossible it is, I'm not interested!

I think Lotus Eater is right. You need to do some more in depth research than just ask on a general gardening forum. Even these of us with long term allotments don't tend to go in for closed-loop gardening and self sufficiency. One of the more specialised forums that do deal with how to run a sucessful smallholding might be more helpful.

I have run my allotment as a closed-loop system in the past, and "vegetarian" to boot, as in no animal manure or animal products like bonemeal. It's possible but not in the long term totally sustainable due to the loss of biomass...that is, you eat some of it! It's easier if you can import at least some composting ingredients, especially ones that supply micronutrients that crops take out the soil. Manure is one, obviously, but seaweed is another very much overlooked resource. To do it sucessfully you need a good grasp of the principles of soil science and basic botany, at least where it applies to plant growth. I've got both an honours degree and a masters degree in botany and ecology so I was well ahead with the basic knowledge I needed, but I still had to do a LOT of background reading to make it work properly. Then I got bored and went back to a more pragmatic approach, truth be told. Once again, you're going to have to do some serious research.

Using human excrement as fertilizer is ....well, fraught with perils, not least of which is the extremely high risk of killing yourself with an overdose of E. Coli. If you're determined to do this though I suggest you research composting toilets and buy a good pair of wellies and elbow length rubber gloves, plus keep your innoculations well up to date. A much less risky idea is to use urine on the compost heap to provide trace elements.

Rats are not a good idea. They can strip field crops totally, or urinate and defacate over stored foodstuff, kill young livestock, pollute the water and generally make the place unlivable in. There will always be a few rats around but you don't want to encourage them. The solution is go vegetarian or at least have as few meat scraps as possible. A couple of farm cats would be a great asset for both these points.

Other cooked food can go into a wormery. There's a lot of info out there on these. Just Google "wormery".

Livestock. I've just got cats atm so can't help here. However if you're going to keep any livestock then you've got a responsibility to treat them humanely, also to know the legalities and about health problems etc etc. There are animal husbandry courses for smallholders that intend to keep pigs, rabbits, chickens etc. Well worth doing, if only from the animal's point of view. Even simple things like slaughter laws need to be understood and kept to. You're not actually allowed to just go after your pig or goat with a cleaver unless you hold some sort of licence or have the proper training.

Bees ditto. Go on a beekeeping course.

Rabbits btw are a multi-use animal. Meat yes, but you can also keep breeds that provide fibre. If you have sheep, goats (certain breeds) and rabbits (certain breeds) you can probably go the whole hog and become self sufficient in clothing too. You can also obtain fibres from plants like nettles. Yes, you would probably have to do some research and courses on this too. I teach handspinning btw. I can probably put you in touch with your local guild for courses.

Maize/sweetcorn. Yes, you can grow it in the UK very sucessfully, as well as many other cereal crops. Look in any of the UK gardening catalogues for maize, smallholding catalogues for cereal crops. You'll need some sort of field equipment to plough and harverst these byw, unless you're going to hand plough and use a scythe. Hand processing of cereal crops is also quite a complex business and labour intensive.

I wish you luck with growing nuts. I've got two hazel trees, had them for years, and the rats-with-fluffy-tails eat the lot, every year.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that though it's a fine idea in principle, once you start looking at it in detail you'll see there's a LOT of things you'll need to know and a LOT of practical skills you'll need to learn before you can really make an attempt at this. I do have a lot of these skills myself but if I personally were going to try this I'd be looking at a minimum of a couple of years of courses and study and background reading, with some hands-on experience with animals being essential. Even then I expect there would be some horrid moments in the first few seasons!

Also, how are you going to finance this? A smallholding such as you're thinking of is a full time job...many couples deal with the finances by having one partner with an outside job/income, and one partner being the full time smallholder.

I'll get back to you if I think of anything else....I'm sure there's tons....;).

mrbadexample

simmed wrote: »

Obviously I will need an initial "investment" of seeds and live animals but after that I hope the garden-farm will be self-sufficient.

Considering how much it costs me to grow a few veggies in the back garden, I reckon you should be up and running after about 20 years, and an investment of at least half a million quid.

misskool

can you keep the animals you want to keep in your garden? We're not allowed any poultry in our deeds. I have plenty of space otherwise.

I like your attitude but you will really have to understand that being self sufficient in your cyclical production will need some input from other things as well. You might want to brush up on laws of thermodynamics too.

valk_scot

mrbadexample wrote: »

Considering how much it costs me to grow a few veggies in the back garden, I reckon you should be up and running after about 20 years, and an investment of at least half a million quid.

Best laugh I've had all day.....because yes, it's too bloomin' true, isn't it? I've had that allotment for 14 years and though I'm mean by nature, recycle everything if possible and never pass an interesting skip I'm still pretty sure it would be cheaper to buy the stuff in Tesco. And that's before I add in the national minimum hourly rate for my time.

Lotus-eater

valk_scot wrote: »

You need to do some more in depth research than just ask on a general gardening forum. Even these of us with long term allotments don't tend to go in for closed-loop gardening and self sufficiency. One of the more specialised forums that do deal with how to run a sucessful smallholding might be more helpful.

The problem is, he or she wouldn't last 5 minutes on one of those, I've been on one for years and years and they are lovely people on there, but they expect politeness and grown up behaviour.
The one thing our green loving friend needs to learn before anything else, is how to be nice to people.

Living_proof

Quite apart from all the advice in Valk-Scot's excellent response, how much time do you have to devote to your project? How many folk will this venture need to feed and nuture?