[nickstinemates]

I love raising my own meat, and look forward to being 100% self-sustainable for all meat consumption across hunting, fishing, and livestock for a family of 5. Meat processing and butchery is very rewarding.

Turning a whole pig into a mix of charcuterie, roasts, and sausage doesn't take a lot of time and is completely worth it.

This is the opposite of cheap, and is not a 'profitable' endeavor by any means. Buying from the store would be a lot cheaper and a lot less work. But the difference is incomparable.

[jdavis703]

This all sounds pretty labor intensive to me. About how many hours per year do you think goes in to this? Like is this something that could be a weekend hobby? Or does it require more substantial lifestyle change?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Raising animals is definitely not a weekend hobby. It can be a hobby, but it's daily work that you really can't avoid. When people start waxing poetic about how nice it is to live "out here" and how beautiful horses are, I usually mumble something about how it's nice until it's -20F and the snow is coming down horizontally and they still have to be fed and watered. Water freezes pretty fast at -20.

I'd say that the most substantial lifestyle change is that it becomes very difficult to go anywhere for more than a day. Depends on the animals of course: you can leave chickens with a few days of water and feed if it's above freezing. Anything larger and you have to at least have someone check in on your animals to be sure they haven't escaped: a few head of cattle/horses on a main road is a major hazard. And that's assuming the animals are fine with just pasture and you can leave enough water for the time you're gone.

That's best case scenario. As a rule of thumb, your animals will need to be fed/watered daily and that's usually when you have a chance to make sure that one of them isn't injured in some way. So going on vacation generally means that you either pay someone to do it, or you exchange favors with someone in a similar situation.

[Gustomaximus]

At our property (small cattle farm) we rely on neighbours for the most part to get away.

Pre-holiday you prep everything and someone will drop by ever day or few and throw some food and generally check on livestock.

If going away for a longer period often people find a house sitter.

But 100% it does take over life vs 'enjoying the view' type view of the lifestyle. Busy as it is I find it amazing. Something wholesome about it you don't get in urban life. Not least this covid period where lifestyle hardly changed for us vs friends in the city.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Covid reminded me how privileged I am to live where we do. While I'm reading stories about people in big cities confined to their cramped apartments, my life was actually improving. With lockdown and WFH, I didn't need to commute into the office every day and when I did travel, the roads were almost empty. Rush hour was surreal! If I got bored, I could go for a walk and not run into a single other person. And with everyone trying to keep their distance, even the parks didn't feel crowded.

[jdavis703]

What? Where were you? Some of my favorite parks in the rural parts of the Bay Area were destroyed by all the extra visitors. Not too mention urban parks were more crowded: since clubs and bars were shut people would bring their alcohol, drugs and sound systems to the park to socialize.

[captainredbeard]

Probably one of the non-coastal states.

[nickstinemates]

You are absolutely right. Being tethered to home is a big responsibility/limitation if you have year round animal operations.

This is why I only have seasonal egg chickens, as an example and not full time layers. And why I grow the yearly amount of chickens at once. Same with Rabbit.

We spend a lot of time away from home, so all of the meat we raise is seasonal and pre-planned.

[krrrh]

Aside from when I was a kid and my parents hobby farmed chickens I have no experience farming, it presents its own benefits and challenges. For some people gardening really fills this void as well. It comes down to your personality in a lot of ways. For me it’s hunting.

My successful large game hunts have involved going away for a week or more with 2-3 other people. If anyone gets something it’s shared equally amongst the group. Pulling the trigger is about 1% of the effort compared to field dressing, packing out, butchering, setting up camp, etc. With a single moose or caribou you’re looking at a share of 70-100 lbs of meat in the freezer in the end.

There’s a substantial startup cost, and a yearly time sink in researching areas and learning about animal behaviour and habitat. Buying a gun and going to a range to learn how to shoot can be cheap or expensive depending on your tastes. Getting the outdoor gear you need is similar.

This is no way to save money on food, but it’s transformative in terms of how you relate to adversity, nature, and the food chain. Taking full responsibility for every aspect of the food that nourishes you, including taking the life of an animal, requires a lot of psychological work for most people.

Of course the meat is amazing and very satisfying to eat, but the payoffs are not really material. There’s something embedded in our evolution as a species that makes feeding your family and friends something you personally harvested deeply satisfying, it’s really hard to describe, and for me the experience was surprisingly profound. I saved some of the meat from my first caribou so it could be one of the first solid foods that my daughter ate. Feeding it to her was a very meaningful moment.

Beyond that, my appreciation of, and commitment to the conservation of wild spaces became a major calling. It’s so different from camping or hiking when you have a goal every day that causes you do endure weather and uncomfortable situations in ways you didn’t think you were capable of. Sitting on a frosty hillside for hours with a friend while you both scan the landscape with binoculars while barely saying a word probably sounds boring to a lot of people but it becomes a communion with nature that is impossible to achieve in other contexts. Intensely watching animals and learning their patterns and habits made me love and respect them in a way that is hard to express to someone who hasn’t been though it. I know this sounds like a paradox, the desire to kill something that you also want to protect and exalt, and it is. Sorting out this paradox is a very human experience, and it’s one that most of us have become disconnected from.

I also really appreciate that this is basically one or two trips I plan each year that have the side benefit of letting me unplug and go off the grid, putting all my other stresses and concerns to the side and focusing on one big goal. I always come back worn out and battered, but also energized and more at ease. And when it’s not hunting season, my time commitment is pretty low.

[gopher_space]

We used to go in with the neighbors on 4H auctions. You just need a big freezer.

[nickstinemates]

Or your local butcher - they can source from farms directly, know who does slaughter, and will usually give you a good deal on whole animals.

This is how I started with pigs.

[nickstinemates]

Like anything - there's startup costs and then maintenance costs and a lot of it can be automated. But, tl;dr not much at all (10 mins/day for the bulk of the time) after infrastructure/a system is built.

I'll give you a simple example with chickens. On average, we eat a whole chicken once per week. So to be 100% self sufficient, lets say we need to grow 50 chickens.

A common cornish cross chicken goes from 0-5/6lbs in 6-8 weeks. If you want to be fair weather, then you buy in march/april, harvest in may/june. You can buy them online and they'll ship them to you direct, or in our case, to a nearby post office and we go pick them up. They cost about $1 each.

So, you have 50 chickens arriving, what do you need? A place to put them (fairly small space requirement, actually,) food, and water.

The baby chickens arrive, and you need a place to put them before they can survive the evening.

I made a simple brooder box (2'x6'x3') using 1x4 douglas fir, osb board, and some steel mesh / simple frame for a lid/roof. This took me about 2 hours to build because I didn't use any plans and kind of just winged it. I could make it in 30 mins now.

Next, I made a basic chicken tractor. This is a place for the chickens to sleep at night. Same idea as before, a simple box with some ease of access/cleaning stuff, and put it on wheels so you can move it about.

During the day, depending on your ethics, they need a place they can stretch their legs and move about that is protected from predators. In my area, I have bobcats, racoons, opossums, and hawks. And I live in a residential area, so effectively dealing with them is a huge hassle and I have to work around them. A combination of movable electrical netting and making sure your chicken tractor is raised off of the ground at night is very important. I learned this the hard way, there was a lot of very unsettling things the racoons did.

Lastly comes harvesting. It takes a couple of minutes per chicken when you're in a groove. The most time consuming is de-feathering and then vacuum sealing. You can do this all in 1 day with some friends, or spread over a few weekends if you're by yourself.

So direct answers:

> This all sounds pretty labor intensive to me

There is effectively 0 required labor until harvest, which you can outsource too. You can buy all of the stuff I mentioned for higher startup costs if you want.

> About how many hours per year do you think goes in to this?

Let's be very conservative and say 20 minutes/day for 8 weeks. Then 10 minutes per chicken. 8x7x20/60=~19 hours, +9 hours for processing, 25-30 hours a year

> Like is this something that could be a weekend hobby?

A small daily chore like working out or taking a shower. The downside is no (long) vacation during grow/harvest.

> Or does it require more substantial lifestyle change?

The biggest lifestyle change I have seen is people understanding where their food comes from and coming to terms with the fact that in order to eat meat, an animal has to die. If you're over this hump, and have a little space that you're willing to dedicate to this, no change is required.

Sorry for the essay, hope this helps.

[goostavos]

For the "processing," did you learn from someone, watch youtube videos, just... figure it out?

How was the first time? After doing it for years, is it just mechanical to process them?

It sounds really rewarding, but getting over the initial hump of doing the processing yourself is a big unknown to me.

[nickstinemates]

Youtube videos are a huge help. There's plenty out there. Chickens get very docile when held upside down and so they just hang out in a kill cone until you've steeled yourself to cut their neck and let them drain.

Evisceration (the act of removing the innards) is the 'trickiest' part, specifically around the intestines and making sure you don't get any poop or bile on the meat.

Poop is mostly solved by not feeding them for 24 hours prior to slaughter. This makes them easier to handle as well as by then they know you and the sound of food.