How to live green and sustain yourself?

Question

okay this may sound weird but i really want to do this.

my family has LOTS of land out in europe, like a farm..

i want to live there and like plant my own vegetables, have my own chickens and use all this to sustain myself... like how the amish do it.. and how your grandparents and great grandparents did it... (except i'll cheat a bit and not grow wheat for example and buy flour hahaha)

the thing is, i've been having trouble finding information like how to do this.. for instance i know that before winter comes they get all their meat and smoke it and they save the seeds to replant after winter etc etc... but obviously if i'm going to do this i'll need to be more informed. so if anyone has any ideas i'd really appreciate it, or any links to websites where i can get this kind of information that would be great, because i've tried searching and not really come up with much.

thankyou.

Answer 1

with all that space you could install your own power generating wind turbines and solar panels.

it doesn't cost much if you make them yourself either.

i made my own wind generator and on it's own it's already slashed my electricity bill. you could make loads of them.

i made a site with a review of how i done it and my results: http://theearth4energyreview.blogspot.co...

Answer 2

Everybody has listed great ideas here. I am just going to add that they have books on it.  The following links are for books that you can buy and they show you everything from building your house from the ground up to growing, storing, canning your own food.  I think Back to the Basics in particular is an excellent book.  

http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Digest-Bac...

http://www.amazon.com/Barnyard-Your-Back...

http://www.amazon.com/Storeys-Basic-Coun...

I enjoy these books because I think they speak clearly and give you step by step instructions which is helpful particularly when you are just starting out.  The diagrams are good also.  Good luck with your plans, they are similar to mine and I am still working on them. One step at a time!!  Live Green~

Answer 3

I see your point.

My husband has most of his family living in Vermont, in the country, far from the big towns and your family and our family share similar point of views.

Not long ago, I started colaborating with a project I found very enviroment sensible. Now, I use most of their ideas and try having them applied to our life in different ways.

The group I found is known as agua-luna.com and basically the reason I decided to join the team is because my husband and I experienced living off the grid for sometime and we liked it. Agua-Luna is a ranch in a  very peaceful place, there's also plenty of work to do and needed of hands that share the same sentiment for living in harmony with the enviroment.

I will share how they talk about their experience, this is by Dan Martin:

"Let me start off by saying we (my family and I) live completely, 100% “off of the grid and are completely self sufficient.

Our house was built utilizing natures natural elements, in the shape of an octagon with 8ft wide arch doors on every wall to catch every angle of wind (typical 4 sided homes have half the chance as one with 8 sides. A circle being the most efficient design). Woodburning stoves, solar chimney, solar AC, solar heating, solar water heating (pool and home), solar stove, solar power, wind power, hydrogen powered back up generator, hydrogen back up water heater, hydrogen stove, 2 hydrogen powered trucks, 1 EV (electric vehicle) and satellite internet.

We also built many green small cabins on the ranch that we offer to family, friends and our on-site off-grid workshop guests, including one straw bale, one papercrete, earth bag and adobe, one cob and cordwood, one underground and rammed earth, one log and post and beam and one rock. Each one actually started as a test for what the main house would be and were later finished and turned into guest cabins. I later wrote a guide on how to build with alternative materials using alternative methods for next to nothing.

We raise meat and milk goats, chickens for meat and eggs, ducks for meat and eggs, trap havilina (wild boar pig), rabbit, quail. brew our own beer from home grown products, preserve our fruits, vegetables, etc. smoke and jerky the meat, make our own soap, cheese.

There are no utility lines, no water lines, no roads, tv, cell service, etc. on our ranch. EVERYTHING needed is produced here. All electricity comes from 27 solar panels, 2 main wind gens and a back hydrogen generator if needed (typically we can last 9 days with all luxuries of sunless windless weather, hasn't happened yet). Water is caught and storaged from the rain. Hot water is made with solar batch water heaters with an on-demand hydrogen hot water heater as backup. Even our vehicles use alternative energy (2 hydrogen trucks, 1 EV electric vehicle converted). Because of this we have no bills, no debt and no mortgage."

Reference:

Dan Martin

Alterative Energy / Sustainable Consultant, Living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World... Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY... All With Just One Click of A Mouse...For more info Visit:  

www AGUA-LUNA com

Answer 4

What you need to do is look into Organic Gardening, do a google search for Organic Gardening Magazine, or Rodale magazine.

http://www.organicgardening.com/

http://www.rodale.com/

or you can buy books here.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=bl...

Answer 5

My suggestion is start small scale, and learn what it takes to maintain a farm. Both my parents grew up on farms and we always had a small garden and chickens even in the suburbs. I live on 1/4 an acre and can grow most of what I will eat. I'm not ready to go back to killing my food, but I have found a local ranch that farms naturally. You may also want to go work on a farm for a season to see what it takes before you commit to the lifestyle. I'm not trying to talk you out of it, I just want you to know it isn't as romantic as it may sound.

Farming is hard work, and the Amish have little spare time. The also don't do it alone, they only function as a community, each person has a purpose. There is a lot of skilled labor and they aren't completly self reliant, they sell goods to earn money to buy things that aren't practicle to make from scratch like cloth and I'm sure some of their equipment.