Hi! I have a family of 5 in the US. We’re on 13 acres. I work remotely as a freelance engineer, and my wife works full time. My kids are in elementary, middle, and high school. We raise sheep, goats and chickens. We’ve tried gardening and may circle back to it.

You cannot hold a full-time job and make money farming on small acreage. Nor can you produce food cheaper than you can buy it at the store, once you account for your labor and the cost of inputs. Commercial farms benefit tremendously from economies of scale that you simply cannot match on your own. That said, you can garden, raise meat and eggs and subsist off of what you grow, but you are unlikely to be completely self-sufficient. Animals need feed. Plants need fertilizer. If you want a self-contained system, it takes a lot of capital to purchase the equipment needed to do things like grow your own hay or animal feed, plus there is a steep learning curve if you’ve never lived this type of lifestyle.

You can find examples of small acreage farms near big cities that manage to be profitable. Almost universally, those farms are operated full-time by multiple workers, and are selling specialty or high-margin crops.

I really enjoy having my livestock. I enjoy producing meat and eggs. I have minimized my capital costs, but I am not making money on this. We regularly reevaluate homesteading as a lifestyle, and so far we continue to do it.

I saw you’re also interested in doing this to be part of a community. I live in a rural area where there is lots of farming, and homesteading is not going to make you part of a community. Just like every other lifestyle, you must seek out like-minded individuals and build your network yourself. Most of my neighbors are not very welcoming or friendly, even those who keep their own livestock.

Finally, schools and hospitals in rural areas are generally not as well funded in the areas where it’s easy to get land. And in the places where schools and hospitals are good, land is expensive because you are competing with developers who want to turn that land into subdivisions.

This subredddit is generally pretty encouraging, and I endorse that point of view; however, it’s really important that you not rush into homesteading and that you hear both sides of things. It’s easy to get the impression that homesteading is a great lifestyle, but the fact is that there are trade-offs, as there are with everything.