Hello, I am Mike. I live in Corbin Kentucky. My wife and I have started to homestead on a third acre lot in town. We plan to sell and start a farm eventually, but for now we are using what God blessed us with.
from your neighbor in WV, Mike! So glad you came and I think you are on the right track...grow where you are planted. If you wait until someday, you won't have any skills in your back pocket when some day arrives.
What Bee says. Welcome Mike. You can do a lot with 1/3 acre. There are a lot of threads here re: animal husbandry and gardening to get you started. Got animals and garden yet? Share a little about what you've got going so far, or what your plans are. We all live vicariously through each other's efforts. Here are some fun topics:
Ruth Stout deep mulch gardening. Back to Eden gardening. Deep litter in chicken coop and run. Lasagna gardening. Hay or straw bale gardening. Brooding chicks with Mother Heating Pad system. Square foot gardening.
My advice: start small. If chickens, build coop, run, and brooder about twice as big as you think you'll need, and then have only half as many chickens as you think you have space for. Absolute minimum: 4 s.f. in coop and 10 s.f. in run per bird.
Actually we started with some canning and it has ballooned from there. We have meat rabbits now. We are working on 2 small gardens to maximize our space and today or tomorrow I am starting our hen house.
Sweet. Check out Woods Open Air style coop. Also, the many benefits of building a coop with soil floor instead of standard floor construction. If your coop is going to stay in one place, and you don't plan on moving it, a soil floor provides fantastic option for deep litter bedding. No odor. all you do is add more materials which the birds turn into fantastic compost. You don't have to clean the litter out, unless you are harvesting compost. Of course, what ever building method you employ, you'll need to make it predator proof: including to digging animals. Chicken wire is not pred proof.