if upfront costs are no object and you really want to save labor check out the NYC garden, I just saw it on PBS. They use massive pine beams to make waist high raised beds so you don't even have to bend over. I don't know what the life expectancy of a 4 x 4 untreated pine beam with one side covered in compost is, but carrots will have to go sky high or we will have to start trading the Comfort Index to get our moneys worth.
This is amusing as our families' several hundred acre farmland is worth less then a small apartment in NYC. Just how much do you think farmland costs? We will sell ours for $100K/acre (probably worth a few thousand/acre right now). JJacksET4
Just one example of cheap farm land - noone who screams to buy up farmland ever seems to put their money where their mouth is. http://www.pifers.com/view.php?id=1367 JJacksET4
97 acres? I had 80 acres of prime farmland in Iowa I used to rent and finally nobody wanted to farm it anymore because they said it was too expensive to move all the machinery around for just 80 acres.
What I was looking for is how many acres, generally speaking, would it take to feed an average family of four, independent of any other sources of food.
It was just one example - you can easily find 100s of acres for sale for various prices, but nowhere near what things in NYC cost, what gold costs, etc. And then we always have people coming on here saying to buy farmland - just a few rich guys could easily buy up 90% of farmland in the U.S. if they really wanted to IMO.
oh I got ya. Very little. 25 x 25 ft will provide all the vegetables you can eat. A little more if you do a lot of canning. 1 acre and you can add chickens, and some fruit trees and berry bushes. Rabbits if you have the heart to kill them. And many more I don't know what all. But now if you're going to grind your own corn for flour and want a dairy cow then I guess 5 acres.
at anyrate, price not withstanding, that 159 acres looked beautiful. And everything about it sounded wonderful. You know, they're not making any more of it right now.