Ok, Whats your own personal idea of a good homestead?

[21st century pict]

I wouldn't mind living in a Tipi in a Birch forest for a year or two, then again I wouldn't mind roughing it and going walkabout along the skeleton coast for a bit with just bow a knive a tarp for shade and a 357 in my pocket.

 

[janso]

I've considered the 'sharing' option before with group dividends from produce, etc. loads of legalities and trust to gain and earn. It would good though for like minded folk with contrasting skill sets...


Sent from my hidey hole using Tapatalk... sssh!

 

[British Red]

If you are a mile apart your kids walk a mile to play - its exercise - it does them good - its healthy. Actually I think its a very healthy thing for kids to be out of earshot and out of sight. This being tied to Mummies apron strings is a modern thing - and not healthy at all in my book!

Shared responsibility doesn't beat basic maths I'm afraid - 10 acres isn't a large enough woodlot to supply much more than firewood for a single family - let alone construction Timber, pig grazing and all the other needs. 600 acres is what the Americans issued in the early 1900s - its fine if a lot of it is grassland grazing.

Greedy isn't the word - practical is. Sure we are a horribly over populated island - but a good homestead needs to be self sufficient (or at least my good homestead does) - that means not having to work and buy in the majority of things. To do that takes land - a good amount of land. The US amount of 160 acres of prime land reflected that - it became more as the available land was scrubbier and not prime alluvial land

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts

 

[Toddy]

But we don't live in the USA, can we not find a practical, and feasible, landholding size that would work for the UK ?

Mummy's apron strings stretch y'know
Besides, I liked to know that the little blighters weren't 'really' building dens and rafts on the Clyde They walked the mile+ to school every day, that's just dawdling distance

M

 

[Haggis]

It took a lot of searching, but I found 100 acres (30 of pasture and 70 of woodlands) back in 1997. We are just 4 miles from two different villages, and yet, a mile from our nearest neighbor. We have State land on three sides of our property; the people are all to the west, and miles of empty State land on the other sides. I kept 12 head of cattle, including 3 Jersey cows for milk, for a few years. I raised pigs for a while. I raised rabbits for 10 years. I still have chickens and ducks. We were lucky enough to be able to pay cash for our land ($9,900), and we built our house out of pocket, so no mortgage. It is a quiet place, very good deer, grouse, and black bear hunting. Blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and chokecherries grow wild in the open places. We call our wee piece of Heaven, Wolf Cairn Moor, in honor of a wolf skeleton I found on a large pile of stones a farmer had removed to the edge of the pastures many decades ago. Now, I don't keep large beasts, I hunt other sorts of beasts, and I snowshoe in winter rather than fight the ice and snow to feed and water everything. I can catch as many hares in the woods as might might have raised rabbits in my cages, and without filling water bottles or buying feed. Still, for all this, I flew to Paris last June, traveled around France a while, flew to Edinburgh for a week, and went to see the Highlands. I really liked France, Périgueux and Poitiers especially, and I really liked Edinburgh. The bush is nice, but there is much to say for a decent restaurant, one with white table clothes, and for whisky bars, with a few hundred varieties of single-malt, and there is something charming about a vineyard. I love the bush, hunting, canoeing, snowshoeing, just in general being out of doors, but I enjoy equally a fitted Harris Tweed coat, a crisp double cuffed shirt, and shined shoes. Living this far out in the bush, there is no opportunity for the latter.

 

[santaman2000]

As BR said, the original Homestead Act opened up the western US for homesteading; by definition, homesteading is the act of filing a claim on federal land, then making improvements such as a home and/or barn, then staying put for a set period of time such as 5 years before actually getting the title.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s it would have been difficult for one man to work 2 or more quarter sections alone sections (a quarter section is 160 acres and a full section is 640 acres) but it was never intended nor envisioned that a single person would ever attempt it alone; it was always done as a family.
Today the average family farm is between 200 and 300 acres and is relatively easy to work alone due to modern technology (mind the word "relatively" as farming is NEVER truly easy) That said, modern technology comes with a price; dependence on fossil fuels and electricity.

Today I think most people would think of a viable homestead as a smaller space (probably between 100 to 200 acres) and a lesser degree of self sufficiency. The issue of how near the neighbors are vs privacy is personal. There's a fine line between neighbors nosiness being an intrusion or a benefit. It's nice to have a nosey neighbor prying about a strange car in your drive while you're away on vacation. Or to have one knocking on the door to check that you're ok if they haven't seen you outside today.

 

[British Red]

But we don't live in the USA, can we not find a practical, and feasible, landholding size that would work for the UK ?

Its not a function of where - but a function of experience

I've already given the example of woodland - for me that has to be about 20 acres minimum - 40 is better, Then, if one assumes that people will eat bread, you need ploughing ability. If we assume we are not buying in tractors and fuel, then that means horses or oxen. They need land to graze, and more land to put up hay and oats and maybe beans for the Winter. They need to have space to breed and raise the next generation of draft animals.

And so on.

It works just fine in the UK. We just need less overcrowding. Of course people can get by with less - but less land equates to less self sufficiency.

To me if answering the question "what's my idea of a good homestead", the answer is a self sufficient one - and than means land . Of course others idea of a homestead will suit their preferred lifestyle

 

[rik_uk3]

Where I'm moving too but perhaps with a couple of acres, a few chickens and ducks and a hut for the gardener to live in would be nice

 

[Uilleachan]

That's pretty much it for me too, maybe a few hens and ducks for eggs, a couple of porkers and a bit of woodland.

Chickens are a given and the average rural garden is enough to keep 3 or 4 or 5 or 6, which is more than enough to keep most families in eggs for 9 months of the year, if one had electricity and a hot lamp the egg season can be extended to around 11 months, and as the hens tend to come on and off at slightly different times it's likely there'll be eggs enough to have them every 2nd day or so throughout the least productive period of the winter.

I don't have any myself at the moment, due to my work pattern

I don't want ducks as I don't have enough space, if I do want a duck I'll go shoot a brace or three.

Homestead sizes? a decent croft of 10 productive acres and some hill common grazing is more than enough to manage.

 

[boatman]

Although this act meant to reduce squatting the Elizabethans thought that four acres would work for a cottager. Plus access to common of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erection_of_Cottages_Act_1588

Then there is the American classic book Five Acres and Independence by MG Kains

Accepting that absolute self-sufficiency is impossible then the demand for the size of the land needed reduces dramatically. See also Fat of the Land by John Seymour.

 

[sandbender]

"...I don't want ducks as I don't have enough space, if I do want a duck I'll go shoot a brace or three..."

The experience of my wife's elderly relatives who muddled through the turbulent years between 1938 - 1947 in Transylvania is that it is geese and ducks (and their preserved fat) that keep you and your family alive in times of real need. Chickens don't cut it.

 

[British Red]

Producing enough fats and oils is certainly one of the challenges of self sufficiency. I would think that pigs make a good alternative to ducks and geese - but I do like a ducky egg

 

[Uilleachan]

For sure, the fat of the land. Laying in the lard was the main reason for keeping pigs in the past, more so than for the meat. Geese are the kiddies for the fat, but there really is no need to keep them here, the place is polluted with them to the extent the home office are relaxing the license and allowing some communities to sell on the meat, to encourage the shooting of them. We have them in plague proportions.

Geese and ducks make quite a mess, I'm thinking more of the homestead I have rather than the one I'd like, so unless one has the space one has to get used to duck & goose poo, salmonella et al, or not bother.

Edit, traditionally here in the highlands it was a cow that supplied the fat, in the form of cheese. So, one needed grazing and space to grow winter fodder, hay etc and a place to winter the cow. A cow yields milk for around 9 months of the year, excess cheese covers the unproductive 3 months.

If you didn't have the space, IE a cotter, then you kept goats.

Cheese was the main tradable commodity and means of paying the rent, pigs came later when people were forced off the hill onto the roadside verges and foreshore.

 

[Badger74]

I found a 3 bed property in Ireland with 33 acres for E95,000. It had sold when I enquired

 

[boatman]

Couple of friends of mine started crofting last year. Tenure is a complicated mixture of private ownership and community responsibility but it seems to suit them with the achievement of their ambition to live mainly off their own in an environment of beauty.

I have just seen a nice definition of a croft as a "small area of land surrounded by legislation."

 

[British Red]

Thats a tidy amount of land

I guess the thing we are all agreeing on here is - it depends

An acre gets you a pretty fair selection of veg

Five acres gets you basic livestock (but probably buying in weaner pigs etc. and buying in Winter fodder)

Ten acres gets you some space for raising hay and Winter feed

Twenty acres means you can keep some draft animals and maybe a boar etc.

Forty Acres gets you twenty acres of woodland for fuel and construction

....and so on

Obviously you can change the order you add things in, but the more you have, the more you can get towards complete independence.

 

[Goatboy]

Dick Proenneke's cabin and life sound ideal to me. Though health issues may make it a total pipe dream these days. Just watching his films or reading his words let me build it in my mind though.

Though weirdly in later years, me who's always sought solitude has come to rather liking company more. Still living in a village (this ones great) is good. Can be left to my strange ways but have a natter if needs be.

 

[Haggis]

Accepting that absolute self-sufficiency is impossible then the demand for the size of the land needed reduces dramatically. See also Fat of the Land by John Seymour.

Very true!!!

I started reading John Seymour books in the early 1970's, at a time in the States when there was yet another "back to the land" movement. It was he who made clear in my mind that "self-sufficiency" is and has always been a myth. One can be more involved in one's own life, one can personally take on some of the work usually done by others, but no one is or has even been "self"-sufficient. Drop a man naked in the bush and he will immediately begin leaning on the experiences and teachings of others in order to survive. His next step will instinctively be to try to get back to civilization, and this because he instinctively knows he cannot survive on his own; he knows he is not self-sufficient. I think on being "out there", on my own, as being much like being out in the extreme cold; from the moment I leave the warmth of my home I am dying. The trick is to carry along enough kit to protect myself until I can get back home to replenish my kit from necessities purchased from others. A small holding is the same, things must be purchased or bartered for from others in order for the small holding to survive. Still though, one can do much for themselves by taking on more of the work usually done by others, and there can be an immeasurable pleasure in that.

 

[British Red]

I remember a wise man talking to me on this very subject. He said that the mistake made by so many people into self sufficiency was the same made by doctors. Doctors try to extend life. They shouldn't, they should try to improve quality of life. The same question should be asked about self sufficiency - does what I am doing improve the quality of my life.

Some people prefer a more solitary existence, some crave human company. Some want to be almost entirely self sustaining, others just want to grow a few veg. The smaller people are those who seek to insist that others should conform to their vision.

There is no single answer to homesteading - any more than there was one type of pioneer who explored and settled new lands - some went further than others, both literally and metaphorically.

 

[Toddy]

In Scotland we call them fermetouns. We don't have a real history of villages here, clachans grew up around farm sites, sometimes mills and harbours while burghs were trading towns and where craftsmen settled.

Fermetouns could be self sufficient, but they were really the habitation of multi generation families. It meant that even when the youngsters headed up the hill with the beasts for summer grazings, after ploughing and planting were done, that there were always some folks left in the farm. It allowed for a true diversity of not only crops and animals but for an otherwise unaccessible exploitation of resources.
One man and his wife doing it all just didn't happen.
The fermetoun wasn't a village or town by our way of thinking, just a set of farmbuildings where people shared resources, meals, etc.,

M