The following post by Sharon Astyk is extremely informative and establishes in very good detail the amount of land that is practical for hand-cultivating:
From the article:
I would say that a 2 acre hand-tended garden is the absolute outside of what a young, healthy person should attempt to produce by hand working full time. A 1 acre hand tended garden is plenty for a family with older kids who can help out, with one partner working full time. A half acre is probably enough for a healthy older couple or people with young children. And a quarter acre or less should be the absolute maximum for people with health issues mild enough to let them garden, but enough to constrain them. And these are limits assuming that you really need the food, and that other things aren’t so pressing - you might actually want less garden than this, I’m talking about outsider rabges.
Where I might quibble is that this does not take into account a good woodlot and it's possible that no-till methods could expand this 2 acre estimate significantly. In any case, it ties in very well with our initial estimates in the homestead project. (Note: I plan on resuming work on this project in the near future)
Ideals vs. Limitations
I've heard estimates based upon how much land is required to grow enough food to feed a family without any outside inputs and it is (obviously) more than her estimations . . . I think 2.5 acres for 2(?) people or maybe just one person, I can't remember right now. I will have to re-consult my source. That is without animal husbandry, which would require more land. And YES a woodlot is going to be very useful too!!!
However, supposedly if you had a russian stove, you could get by with burning shrubby matter (gathered maybe more sustainably?) and still keep your house warm and your food cooked.
All that said, I can certainly appreciate her perspective on running up against labor limitations.
Russian stoves
Jade, can you talk more about Russian stoves? Are they the ones that we talked about this summer when we visited you?
Russian Stoves
Yes, Crunchy, you remember correctly. Russian stoves are typically built with bricks, and you can use them to heat your house as well as to bake bread or other foods. What makes them more efficient than say a woodstove is 1. the masonry retains heat better than metal and 2. all the heat from a fire is used, as opposed to just the heat in the wood-burning area. Let's see if I can explain this . . . in a woodstove some of the heat from a fire exits quickly with the smoke through the stovepipe, whereas in the russian stove the smoke takes a longer, winding path out thereby releasing more heat into the bricks before finally exiting the stove. I should really track my husband down and make him explain it to you. He's the one who has looked into this subject. I only know what little I've retained from his explanations. :)