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

[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.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I think that you might be pushing it to try and maintain 2 cows on 1 acre. Most information says 1.5 to 2 acres for a cow/calf pair with lush pasture during the growing season. Winter would necessitate hay and/or grain.

On the other hand you could probably support quite a few more goats on that same acre. With adequate browse a little supplemental hay you might get away with 6 or so good milking goats that would supply an ample milk supply. Even supplemental feed for that many goats would still likely be less than for two cows. Sumi is right - cows eat a LOT!

The other thing to consider is that even the biggest milk goat is considerably smaller than even a small cow. Something to think about when handling an angry, obstinate and/or ill animal. One more consideration is that there is quite a learning curve when starting out with farm animals. If you lose a goat it will break your heart for sure - but it won't be the financial loss that you would suffer from losing a cow. And, if you have several goats you haven't lost your entire milk producing herd. If you are milking one cow and she dies - you've lost it all.

Hope you find just the right place and please keep us informed. Oh, and pictures are always appreciated!

 

[McCulloch610]

Thanks for the feedback-I've also been looking into smaller breeds, like Dexters, and actually just found that there is a Dexter breeder near me. According to what I've read they are pretty manageable for a small homestead.

 

[Denim Deb]

I was going to suggest a mini cow since they're smaller and you don't need as much land for them. And, you get quite a bit of milk from one.

 

[McCulloch610]

I was going to suggest a mini cow since they're smaller and you don't need as much land for them. And, you get quite a bit of milk from one.

That's what we're looking into now. I think Baymule is envisioning two Holsteins or full-size Jerseys at 1000-1500lbs each on one acre. I'm talking about two Dexters (or a similar breed) weighing about 600lbs. We're going to look at the property this weekend-going over the satellite photo in a little more detail reveals that a 1.5 acre enclosure would likely be possible. Plus that's another .5 acre I wouldn't have to mow

 

[sumi]

Take some pics while you're out there?

 

[McCulloch610]

Take some pics while you're out there?

Will do! Here is a picture (from the listing) looking from the front porch toward the road:

Again, that's about an acre and a half + of cleared land, save for the few small trees here and there which I would take down. The structure off in the distance near the road looks to have been some kind of garden with a deer fence around it. I think the black thing to the lower left of that is the wellhead. I can find no guidelines from the town or the county on having a wellhead located within a pasture, but searching the topic seems to indicate no issue as long as it's covered and that the casing is in good condition.

Also, you're in Ireland, correct Sumi? Dexters are an Irish breed that originated in the mountainous southwest-are they still common in Ireland? That's another attraction of the breed for us since my wife and I are proud Irish-Americans whose ancestors came to the U.S. between the 1840s and 1920s from various parts of Ireland. My wife still has cousins that she keeps in touch with from time to time in Roscommon.