Table Of ContentThe classic USDA handbook to self-reliant living,
now completely revised and updated
Who hasn’t daydreamed at one time or another about selling
produce at a farmer’s market, keeping chickens, or planting an
orchard of fruit trees? Inside every do-it-yourselfer is a longing for
a more independent lifestyle and the satisfaction that can come
from getting one’s hands dirty while turning some earth.
Whether you are thinking about a second home in the country,
starting a part-time farm, or going back to the land, Living on an
Acre will help you realize your dreams. This classic USDA guide is
replete with comprehensive and fully updated information:
+ The benefits of rural versus urban life
+ What to consider when remodeling an older house
+ How to build a barn
+ Growing produce for self-sufficiency versus growing for profit
+ Beekeeping
+ Raising livestock
+ Putting land into conservation
And much more!
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s team of experts is an
impressive array of authorities ranging from farm management
specialists, to state farm advisors, to agricultural economists, to a
former Secretary of Agriculture.
Christine Woodside is the author of Energy Independence (Lyons
Press) and a freelance editor and writer whose articles have
appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor,
Backpacker, Yankee, Woman’s Day, and Publishers Weekly. She
lives in Deep River, Connecticut.
US $16.95/CAN $18.95
Lyons Press
Guilford, Connecticut
www.LyonsPress.com
Lyons Press is an imprint of
Globe Pequot Press
Cover design by Georgiana Goodwin
Printed in the United States of America
Living on
an Acre
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Also from Lyons Press
Backyard Structures and How to Build Them
Barns and Outbuildings
Basic Wilderness Survival Skills
The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living
The Homestead Builder
The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Mushrooms, Fruits,
and Nuts
Living with Chickens
Living with Goats
Living with Pigs
Living with Sheep
The Mating and Breeding of Poultry
Mountainman Crafts & Skills
Primitive Living, Self-Sufficiency, and Survival Skills
The Secrets of Wildflowers
Traditional American Farming Techniques
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Living on
an Acre
2nd edition
A Practical Guide to
the Self-Reliant Life
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Fully edited and updated by
Christine Woodside
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Special contents of this edition copyright © 2010 by Morris Book
Publishing, LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing
from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to
Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box
480, Guilford, CT 06437.
Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN 978-1-59921-885-4
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The author and Globe Pequot Press assume no liability for accidents
happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the
activities described in this book.
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Contents
Foreword to the Original Edition, Living on a Few Acres 1
Editor’s Preface to the Second Lyons Press Edition 3
Acknowledgments 5
Part 1 Pluses and Minuses
Living in the Country—a Diversity of People 9
Consider the Trade-Offs Before Leaving the City 12
Face the Realities 17
Changing to a New Lifestyle: Little Things Add Up 24
Part 2 Acquiring That Spot
Selecting a Community 31
Alternative Rural Communities 36
Making Your Final Choice 39
Part 3 Improvements for Your Place
Remodeling a House—Will It Be Worthwhile? 45
A Personal Experience 54
Building That Dream House: Don’t Be Caught Napping 57
Work and Storage Areas Outside 64
Landscaping: Get Help, Plan Carefully 73
Land Improvements—What You Need to Know 81
Your Farmstead Buildings 89
Water and Waste Disposal 101
Power Sources and Equipment 111
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Part 4 The Big Picture
Five Years on Five Acres 121
Welcome to SweetAire Farm 124
Pigs and Pumpkins 129
The View from Golden Hill Farm 132
Attracting Wildlife to Your Land 135
The Benefit of a Woodlot 140
Part 5 Growing and Raising: How to Do It
Fruit Trees 147
Grapes 155
Four Kinds of Berries 163
Vegetables 171
How to Market Produce 179
Ornamental Plants 190
A Plant Nursery 193
Dried Flower Arrangements 200
Herbs 203
Greenhouse Gardening 207
Beekeeping 215
Christmas Trees 225
Growing Nut Trees 233
Keeping Chickens and Other Fowl 238
Raising Pigs 248
Raising Rabbits 253
Raising Beef Cattle 258
Raising Sheep Part-Time 266
Raising Dairy Cows 269
Raising Dairy Goats 276
Raising Horses 282
Vacation Farms 291
Part 6 Property
Disposing of Property 297
Transferring Land with Preservation in Mind 301
Providing for Your Heirs—Nonsale Property 303
How to Get Help 307
Notes 309
Further Reading 313
Contributors to the USDA 1978 Yearbook of Agriculture 315
Index 319
vi Contents
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Foreword to the
Original Edition, Living
on a Few Acres
The New Back-t o- the- Land
Movement
Americans keep going back to the land. It is a pilgrimage that makes
more sense to a lot of people than living in cities, enticing us with the
promise of escape from freeways, assembly lines, and crowds.
The land offers freedom, a chance to test your mettle against nature’s
challenges.
The pilgrimages began with our agriculturally-minded, freedom-
loving forebears of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In waves
since then—from the founding of community utopias in the first half of
the nineteenth century, to the homesteads of the later 1800s, to the flight
of the unemployed from a collapsing economy of the 1930s—Americans
have returned to the land.
Now the tide of Americans that swept to the cities after World War II
has ebbed. The flow has reversed. People are populating the countryside
faster than they are cities.
I know their motives. I am a farmer.
So I know that country life can push some people beyond their en-
durance, can shatter illusions with a heavy and indifferent hand, and can
press poverty upon the backs of the unlucky and the unprepared.
This book is intended as a practical guide for those who make the
journey back to the countryside and for some of you who are already
there. It is mainly for those who intend not to gain their principal income
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from the land, but rather to have a job in town or live on a pension or
some other source of income.
USDA programs offer valuable assistance at the local level. In addi-
tion, this department has a major responsibility for all federal efforts in
rural areas.
Living on a Few Acres describes both the pitfalls and the satisfactions
of country life. There are plenty of both. And there is nothing quite like
country living.
—Bob Bergland, former Secretary of Agriculture, 1978
Editor’s Note: Homesteading fever ended for a while in the 1980s,
but the numbers swelled again in the 1990s and interest has not
flagged since. Half of all American farms are small-scale opera-
tions, with income of anywhere between $1,000 and $250,000 a
year, according to the USDA. Most rural areas in the United States
are growing steadily and quickly. Demographers find the strongest
flight to quieter lands is taking place in the Mountain West, the
Upper Great Lakes, the Ozarks, parts of the South, and the rural
Northeast. Rural populations are declining in the Great Plains,
Western Corn Belt, and Mississippi Delta.
2 Foreword to the Original Edition, Living on a Few Acres
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Editor’s Preface to
the Second Lyons Press
Edition
This book helps people go forward on their land by going back in time.
It is a revision of a classic book that sat on homesteaders’ shelves for a
generation or two, but it includes twenty-first-century knowledge, tech-
nology, and perspective. Meet the smart USDA staff that tried to help the
hippies avoid disaster when they bought their tracts of rural land during
the homesteading boom of the late 1970s.
Buoyed by energy shortages, the environmental movement, and a
recession, homesteading fever gripped many Americans, just as today’s
local food and farmers’ market movements seem an antidote to energy,
climate, and financial pressures. The United States Department of Agri-
culture, perhaps sensing that new enthusiasts might not know what they
were getting into, decided to devote its yearbook of agriculture for 1978
to the movement. They called the book Living on a Few Acres. The USDA’s
yearbooks of agriculture compiled the best advice for anyone who desired
to learn from 1894 through 1992, when, unfortunately, they ceased pub-
lication. The yearbooks even now make a distinguished set of themed
guidebooks for farmers, would-be farmers, and anyone who wants to un-
derstand soil, climate, growing, and raising.
The 1978 volume followed that pattern by laying out practical, gen-
eral advice from experts who talked almost as if they had stopped by
your house to chat. Living on a Few Acres, edited by Jack Hayes, addressed
people who wanted to try farming on a small scale and experienced
farmers scaling back to part-time work for retirement. The book you are
holding is an updated version of it. I have worked hard to leave intact
the blunt yet sympathetic tone of that book while adding up-to-date data
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