How Much Land You Need for a Homestead or Farm | High Sierra Permaculture (2024)

I can hear you saying, alright Bret, I get it. It take a bit of planning to figure out how much land I’ll need. But can you give some examples of what one might be able to do on different size farms or homesteads?

Glad you asked, yes I can answer this from the homesteads I have been over the years!

Here are some homestead acreage examples with permaculture and sustainability in mind:

Mini Homestead: 1.5 acres to 5

A client of mine has been working on an incredible mini homestead on just 1.5 acres!

They have an home, garage, orchard, garden, water harvesting earthworks, native garden and wild garden. Their master plan ultimately include chickens, rabbits, a couple pigs, bees and a tiny house in the next couple of years.

Even with all of this in the works, they still have a bit of room to spare, though things are packed tightly and space is at a premium.

While smaller properties are limited in some ways, such as not being able to keep large livestock (humanely), you can still do a lot.

Permaculture encourages people to “stack functions” which helps save space.

Stacking functions, briefly, is having something preform multiple functions. For example, your green house might serve as a winter run for your chickens if the weather is too cold in your area.

When it comes to building, planting, creating on the land, people always look forward and backward, left and right. But what about up and down? Permaculture also teaches that we can stack things vertically to save space.

A perfect example of this is the well-known Three Sisters Guild in the garden.

It’s a Native American guild of 3 plants: corn, peas and squashes. The tall corn acts as a trellis, giving support for the peas to grow, which in turn fix nitrogen in the soil, feeding the corn. The squash are low-growing vines that cover the ground, protesting the soil and reducing water loss to evaporation. A lot of food can be grown in one small garden bed using methods like this!

PROS:
– Under 5 acres is very easy to manage
– Lots this size can be closer to towns or cities, easier for job situations
– Potentially cheaper purchase price, land taxes and overall cost to maintain
– Still plenty of space to grow food

CONS:
– Not enough space to really keep anything more than chickens, that are not confined to a “sacrifice zone*“
– light on resources like trees for firewood, space for water harvesting
– smaller garden space requires careful planning and less opportunities for subsistence crops like wheat
– often close in proximity to neighbors
– may have more county limitations for what you’re able to do with the land

* Sacrifice Zone = area of land that is always dead, bare dirt, often seen in chicken runs or goat pens. This is not, in my opinion, a humane or health way to raise an animal. Chickens for example, are foraging animals that need a diet that is composed of protein (mostly bugs, some grains) and plant matter. Even organic, whole-grain chicken feed does not provide a truly healthy and balanced diet. So a healthy chicken, one that will give you the healthiest eggs and meat, will need as much area to forage from as possible. (This topic of course could a an entire article on it’s own – this note is just a short definition to what I consider a sacrifice zone and it’s limitations.)

Small Homestead: 6 -10 Acres

I have spent a lot of time on 5 acre homesteads and it is a great size for the majority of of people.

You have enough space to do the majority of things you might want to on a homestead. Many of the properties I have been on of this size include everything mentioned in the mini-homestead section and still have acres to spare.

Starting in this size range there can be multiple homes or trailers. Often these are used for rental income, storage or farm work traders.

PROS:
– Enough land to do what 80% of people want without the difficulty of lots of acreage to manage

CONS:
– Limited in grazing ability
– Limited in lumber and firewood sourcing

Medium Homestead – 11 to 30 acres

This size feels like the sweet spot to me (maybe it’s a bit biased because we’re sitting on 30 acres currently), but overall it is great size if your goals include multiple dwellings, large gardens, using timber for lumber or firewood, buffer space from neighbors, etc.

It’s the minimum size I would suggest for someone who is really striving to life a self-sufficient, holistic lifestyle on the land.

Currently, we’re utilizing about a 8 of the 30 acres. In this space we have our home, a shop, greenhouse, pasture for chickens, about an acre for garden and orchard, a rice paddy, a small wheat field, water harvesting earthworks and spaces for relaxing and entertainment. The other 22 acres are mostly untouched, leaving room for expansion of another dwelling and using the tree resources for milling and firewood. We intend to leave much of that wild for wildlife, however it does still need maintenance to keep fire danger at minimum, which is no small task.

PROS:
– Enough space to expand for almost any homestead desire
– Lots of resources (rocks, trees, water etc)
– Lots of microclimates, varied topography and terrain
– Ability to keep larger livestock and start free-ranging
– Ability to keep wild lands in tact and set aside for nature
– Enough land to maintain privacy and serenity from neighbors
– Typically less restrictions on land use

CONS:
– Often can be far out of town, meaning long commuting times to work, school or stores
– Higher taxes or initial land cost
– A lot of land to manage, can be costly to keep maintained
– Resale may be more difficult

Large Homestead: 75 to 200 acres

I am confining our definition of a large homestead here to 75-200 acres, mostly because most readers will not embark on homestead adventures this large. If you are, awesome. This amount of land is best suited for larger scale agricultural endeavors and ranging livestock.

PROS:
– With this amount of acreage you can do about anything you want. The sky is the limit

CONS:
– Cost to maintain land is very high
– Higher property taxes
– Cost to acquire is high
– Less people want to buy larger parcels, resale might take longer than on a smaller parcel