How to start a 1-acre, self-sustaining homestead

(Mother Earth News) Expert advice on how to establish self-sufficient food production, including guidance on crop rotations, raising livestock and grazing management. Your 1-acre homestead can be divided into land for raising livestock and a garden for raising fruits, vegetables, plus some grain and forage crops. Illustration by: Dorling Kindersley

Everyone will have a different approach to keeping a self-sufficient homestead, and it’s unlikely that any two1-acre farms will follow the same plan or methods or agree completely on how to homestead. Some people like cows; other people are afraid of them. Some people like goats; other people cannot keep them out of the garden. Some people will not slaughter animals and have to sell their surplus stock off to people who will kill them; others will not sell surplus stock off at all because they know that the animals will be killed; and still others will slaughter their own animals to provide their family with healthy meat.

Enterprising community aims for total food self-sufficiency with free edible landscapes

Imagine strolling through your town and finding the post office surrounded by raised beds, lush with produce that is free for the taking, 24/7. Or a police department with a gratis community vegetable garden, complete with curly kale, carrots, lettuces and onions. And orchards, as well as berry bushes, lining public walkways that offer up fresh fruit -- on the house. Sound too good to be true? Not in one innovative hamlet where a veritable paradise of edible landscaping has taken root. What's more, the community is working towards absolute food self-sufficiency by 2018.

Thinking outside the box