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Farm-steading community- kind of weird

str8line

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The Riverbed Ranch is a 250-family, online-but-off-grid, modern farm-steading community located in Utah. The community is for families that are determined to live a more self-reliant / self-sustaining lifestyle. Most of the families that join our community join for one of these reasons: To live a lifestyle independent of mortgage, power, and water bills. To live a healthier lifestyle, eating pesticide-free food and breathing clean air. For safety, either from things now, or things that may come down the road. Receiving income as a shareholder as the community grows and thrives.

For more information visit bit.ly/agri-coop
 

The Riverbed Ranch is a 250-family, online-but-off-grid, modern farm-steading community located in Utah. The community is for families that are determined to live a more self-reliant / self-sustaining lifestyle. Most of the families that join our community join for one of these reasons: To live a lifestyle independent of mortgage, power, and water bills. To live a healthier lifestyle, eating pesticide-free food and breathing clean air. For safety, either from things now, or things that may come down the road. Receiving income as a shareholder as the community grows and thrives.

For more information visit bit.ly/agri-coop
Are you saying you are a member?
 
What would you say if I were?
I'm not sure what you're getting at. If that's how you want to live your life I say go for it. Everybody should do what makes them happy. Why so passive aggressive about it?
 
I would also ask how you like it? What does the day to day look like? Etc.
 

The Riverbed Ranch is a 250-family, online-but-off-grid, modern farm-steading community located in Utah. The community is for families that are determined to live a more self-reliant / self-sustaining lifestyle. Most of the families that join our community join for one of these reasons: To live a lifestyle independent of mortgage, power, and water bills. To live a healthier lifestyle, eating pesticide-free food and breathing clean air. For safety, either from things now, or things that may come down the road. Receiving income as a shareholder as the community grows and thrives.

For more information visit bit.ly/agri-coop
I agree that if this is what the families want, good for them.

To me, it screams "one major disaster from starvaton".
 
I'm not sure what you're getting at. If that's how you want to live your life I say go for it. Everybody should do what makes them happy. Why so passive aggressive about it?

Seriously, what do you have against farmers? You know they are responsible for your food? But I'm sure you respect them for working with all that dirty dirt.
 
Seriously, what do you have against farmers? You know they are responsible for your food? But I'm sure you respect them for working with all that dirty dirt.
Seriously what the hell are you talking about? Why are you trying to pick a fight over nothing. I guess troll gonna troll.
 
I agree that if this is what the families want, good for them.

To me, it screams "one major disaster from starvaton".
Apparently str8line is using this as a troll thread.
 
Seriously, what do you have against farmers? You know they are responsible for your food? But I'm sure you respect them for working with all that dirty dirt.
Your OP comment was written in the first person. It made it seem like you were part of that community but I felt like you had actually copy/pasted the comment and were not part of the community. So I had the same question. No judgement, just looking for clarity.
 
Your OP comment was written in the first person. It made it seem like you were part of that community but I felt like you had actually copy/pasted the comment and were not part of the community. So I had the same question. No judgement, just looking for clarity.

Yeah, I meant to put it in quotes and forgot.

Their website has a video with a guy talking about it... sounds kooky.
 
That would be a real strange setup as best I can tell, best of luck to 'em. Is 2 acres enough to feed a family off down there in Utah (I'm not familiar with your grow season)? Presumably a largely veg diet (maybe some chickens), but then they have a picture of a big feed lot looking thing? Real odd.
 
That would be a real strange setup as best I can tell, best of luck to 'em. Is 2 acres enough to feed a family off down there in Utah (I'm not familiar with your grow season)? Presumably a largely veg diet (maybe some chickens), but then they have a picture of a big feed lot looking thing? Real odd.
Well if I could use those 2 acres to grow MJ and sell it I'd be feeding my family real nice.
 
That would be a real strange setup as best I can tell, best of luck to 'em. Is 2 acres enough to feed a family off down there in Utah (I'm not familiar with your grow season)? Presumably a largely veg diet (maybe some chickens), but then they have a picture of a big feed lot looking thing? Real odd.
My brother-in-law has 1.25 acres in Oregon (for those of you following along, he is the closet racist one I have spoken about before), and he has embraced the do-it-yourself lifestyle, really planning for the apocalypse and the mormon Millennium, serious end of days type ****.

They raise all kind of vegetables, they have about 30 chickens, of which 10-15 at any given time are "meat" chickens (the ones that grow so fast their feathers don't cover their entire body), and he breeds chickens and sells them as meat, chicks, and sells their eggs. During growing season they grow all kinds of vegetables, including corn, cukes, tomatoes, carrots, asparagus, cabbage, watermelon, cantaloupe, lettuce, and on and on.

They freeze all kind of veggies and meat, and do a lot of hot canning (bottling in mason jars). They have 4 huge chest freezers and they practice food rotation so it stays mostly fresh. He built an underground cellar where he has a small "bunker" type thing he could live in and it is where he keeps his canning stuff. It is built under his driveway so he doesn't interfere with the rest of the homestead. He recently built a greenhouse and now even in the winter they are producing much of the produce that doesn't preserve well, like tomatoes and lettuce, etc.

He has about 1/2 of his acreage as pasture land and is working with a neighbor and they raise cattle and pigs (maybe 4 or 5 at a time), purely for meat, although he is branching into small-batch milk and cheese production. He doesn't breed the animals, yet. He buys the calves and piglets and raises them.

It is pretty crazy what he has packed onto that acre. Last time I spoke to him he said they are producing about 70-80% of what they need to live on, buying really only things like condiments, bread products, treats, and things he can't grow to fill out their diet or for special occasions. His monthly food budget (as in what gets spent at the grocery store) for him and his wife and the 3 kids he has that still live at home he claims is maybe $300 per month.

He also installed solar panels and a small wind farm with vertical wind turbines that are more quiet and not a big threat to birds, and he says he is often selling electricity back to the power company.

It is admittedly pretty impressive, no matter how unlikeable the guy is.

So yes, it is very doable on 2 acres.
 
During the Soviet time the government gave people little bit of land a la from 200 m2 to 1000 m2 to have a cottage and land to grow vegetables, because the food supply was kind of scarce.
At the moment we have cottage, which belonged to my father in law and now to my wife. Size is about 800 m2 and includes a house (footprint about 50 m2), some small sheds and a greenhouse (about 25 m2).
During the Soviet time the greenhouse had about 10-20 cucumber plants and 40-60 tomato plants. Today we have about 10 cucumber, 20 tomato, some chili pepper plants and little bit of rucola and basil. During the Soviet time all the area which is now under grass was used for potatoes. We have also strawberry and some raspberry and blackberry plants.
The first tomatoes are ready usually at the end of June. 20 plants are more than enough to eat as much as you like and we give also a lot of to my parents and my wife's aunt. When we remove the plants at the beginning of september, then those partially green tomatoes last until november (i eat about 2 tennis ball size tomatoes per day). So with careful conservation technologies - 40-60 plants would supply enough tomatoes for entire year per family specially if you conserve them well.
We also have 6 apple trees. 4 of 6 can provide with careful planning about 200-300 litres of juice, but we usually make only 30-40 litres, because you have to heat the juice to about 80 degrees celsius and package it and it is quite tiresome. Other eatable ones are put in boxes and with my average consumption (2-5 apples per day) i have still about 4 boxes left.
Needless to say - those tomatoes sold at stores taste kind of bad compared to homegrown ones although we are not even experts at gardening. I have always wondered how homegrown exotic fruits like banana, mango, apples and pears which grow in southern US and pineapple taste compared to those in supermarket.
 
The neighbourhood of where our cottage is located:

Which US region is most similar to that? Something in Montana, Maine or other northern States?
And why the private houses in USA are without almost any garden and fence at all? Based on tourist photos, movies and Google Street view - the gardens are either super luxorius with only fancy plants like those in Malibu, Beverly Hills or super tiny with a garden which basically has only a play are and maybe pool? Based on Google Street view - you can see, that the main building/house is pretty nice and the car is good - is the price of land so high that owning an expensive car is costing pennies compared to extra 200-500 m2 land area?
 
The neighbourhood of where our cottage is located:

Which US region is most similar to that? Something in Montana, Maine or other northern States?
And why the private houses in USA are without almost any garden and fence at all? Based on tourist photos, movies and Google Street view - the gardens are either super luxorius with only fancy plants like those in Malibu, Beverly Hills or super tiny with a garden which basically has only a play are and maybe pool? Based on Google Street view - you can see, that the main building/house is pretty nice and the car is good - is the price of land so high that owning an expensive car is costing pennies compared to extra 200-500 m2 land area?

Hmm, probably something more coastal than Montana, but not super familiar with the East coast here in the states, and Estonia is generally a bit colder than the West coast here. Not sure on the best comparison, maybe coastal Washington.

Not sure on land prices in other areas, here in Iowa decent farm land goes for around $10,000 an acre these days. I imagine that's about as high as anywhere that isn't in a city and or being sold for its scenery. So cars are still notably more expensive than the amount of land you're talking about.

@LogGrad98 Cool about the BIL (well, the homestead bit)! Sounds believable to me, I know Oregon has some decent farming land, I was more curious about Utah in particular, my other concern is about this place and how they're all just pre-assigned 2 acre plots, a random 2 acre plot can be a lot different than one you can select. But if y'alls grow season/soil are alright it should certainly be doable in case anybody on the board is feeling up to it.

Edit: Ehh, West Coast is probably too wet. I'm honestly not too sure about the best comp to the Baltics here in the US.
 
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