A Countryside reader wants to know to know how to plan a homestead. How does one know how many chickens to raise or how much corn to grow? The good news is there is a simple formula that will give you a basic measure of what each person on your homestead consumes. Once you know that information, you can start planning.

To determine your homestead’s total consumption of food per year, follow these steps:

1. Keep a family food journal for one week. Write down everything consumed. Everything. This includes mayonnaise, salt, and all those other things that we only use a dab of. Don’t try to control the amounts. The point here is to be honest so you can get as accurate a picture of your food consumption as possible.
2. After recording what has been eaten on your homestead for a week, multiply the recorded amounts by 52, the number of weeks in a year. For example, let’s say one of the things your family eats is tuna salad sandwiches. After keeping a food journal for a week, you might discover that in an average year you will consume 52 packages of chunk light tuna, and depending on your recipe you might use 52 medium onions, 3 jars of mayonnaise, 4 jars of pickles, and 20 loaves of bread if you serve tuna salad sandwiches for lunch once a week.
3. Don’t forget to add special meals like Christmas dinner to your consumption list as well as home-baked gifts.
4. Make a list of all consumables on your homestead: toilet paper, soap, cloths, animal feed, nails, tools, etc. Again, you can keep an extensive list for as little as one week and then extrapolate it out to get a feel for how much is consumed over the course of one year.

Once you have an honest idea of what sort of resources you require and in what amount, it’s time to start sourcing your supplies. How much of what can you provide for yourself? How much will you have to purchase? This process isn’t as easy as you might think. In my next post, I’ll discuss how to decide where to start. Until then, follow my updates on Twitter.

If you’re new to homesteading, you might want to join the Countryside community.

Tags: food licenses, food preservation, food storage, Homestead Skills, save money, self-reliance