Build a Virtual Homestead
Drag to walk around your plot. Add people, garden beds and chickens; flip on solar. The land, structures and sustainability score respond in real time.
Worked Example: Feeding Two People
- Calories first. Two adults ≈ 4,400 kcal/day ≈ 1.6 million kcal/year. Vegetables alone cannot supply this — calorie crops (potatoes, corn, beans, squash) must anchor the plan.
- Potato math: potatoes yield roughly 15,000–25,000 kcal per 100 sq ft in good soil. Covering just 25% of those calories with potatoes needs ≈ 2,000 sq ft — about sixty 4×8 beds — for that one crop line.
- Vegetables: intensive gardening guides commonly estimate ~200 sq ft of well-managed beds per person for a serious year-round vegetable supply in temperate climates (roughly 6–7 beds each).
- Eggs: a healthy laying hen gives 4–6 eggs/week in season. Six hens comfortably cover two people, with surplus to trade.
- Power: an efficient off-grid home draws 4–8 kWh/day. At 4 peak sun-hours, that's a 1.5–2.5 kW array plus ~10 kWh of battery — a far smaller system than a typical grid home would need.
- The honest total: most homesteading references land between 0.5 and 2 acres per household for high (not total) food self-sufficiency — plus 15–30 hours of labor a week in season. It is a part-time job paid in food.
What Beginners Get Wrong
Calories vs. salads
A lush tomato garden can still leave you hungry. Tomatoes are ~90 kcal/lb; potatoes ~350. Plan the starch acreage first, the salad bar second.
Preservation is half the skill
Harvests arrive in spikes. Without canning, fermenting, root-cellaring or freezing, an August glut becomes a February shortage. Budget storage space and time from day one.
Water is the hidden constraint
A vegetable garden wants roughly 1 inch of water weekly — about 62 gallons per 100 sq ft. Rain catchment sizing (roof area × rainfall × 0.62 gal) decides what survives a dry month.
Start before you move
Every skill here — gardening, preserving, small repairs — can be practiced on a balcony or backyard now. The land is the last purchase, not the first.
The dating-app joke lands because off-grid living is genuinely cooperative: two skilled people roughly halve the labor per person while sharing fixed costs like wells, fencing and solar. Community, it turns out, is the highest-yield crop.