One-Acre Homestead

One-Acre Homestead. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
There is a growing interest today in raising your own fruits, vegetable and more. People are just wanting to become more self sufficient. A recent article in Mother Earth News caught my attention about starting a self-sufficient farm on just one acre of land. Cheryl Long, Editor of Mother Earth News says many people are surprised by that idea.
LONG: People think they need a lot of land if they want to really raise livestock and try to work toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle but the fact is they don’t need very much land they can do a great deal on a single acre but they have to relearn skills that unless they were lucky to be around a farm when they were growing up a lot of folks maybe don’t even know quite how to plant a big garden and so they sort of have to ease into it.
Those skills can be quite varied from bee-keeping to milking goats and cows to working in a garden.
LONG: But I think a lot of people think gee it sounds like so much fun, it sounds interesting, it sounds like it would be a more secure lifestyle but I don’t think I can do it, well they can, they just don’t know they can. They just need the tools and information but they don’t have to do it over night. It’s something you can build over a lifetime really.
Another issue many people contend with is whether having a one-acre farm is something they have to devote all their time to or whether it can be accomplished part-time.
LONG: Absolutely part time. Lots of people do serious, large scale farming part-time. Or in their off hours they have a full-time job and then they still do farming on the side and this is the same way you can do this in your leisure time and for many, many people growing a garden, keeping chickens is every bit as much pleasurable as it is profitable. It’s something that is a lot of fun to do and the challenges are interesting
Of course the savings can be substantial for anyone who wants to put the extra time and effort into it. Mother Earth News has been around since 1970 and is still very much focused on helping people live wisely.
LONG: We’re very much about teaching people skills for more self sufficient and secure lifestyles so we cover a lot of organic gardening topics. We talk about raising livestock especially the small livestock; chickens, rabbits and goats. And then we cover renewable energy and environmental issues. We talk about solar power, wind power even hydropower from creeks. It all comes together in kind of a focus on how you can be more engaged with your life in sort of an essential way and be more self-sufficient.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.