Outside A College Town

[Debbie M]

Re Austin: that's not for you, NYC ERE. It's a city; anything only 10-12 miles from any of the colleges will still be in urban (or worse, suburban) areas with the possible exception of due east with few roads. The habitat is scrub--I know there are deer and squirrels, but I don't know what else you could hunt. The soil is either black clay, limestone, or black clay with huge chunks of limestone in it. The black clay has plenty of nutrients for growing food, but the rocks make things very difficult or impossible and the lack of steady rainfall means you'd need to irrigate. There are torrential rains, so you might be able to use a huge rainwater catchment system for irrigation.
It also sounds like you know almost nothing about your lifestyle, and jumping into a brand new lifestyle with limited funds sounds a bit scary.
**
College towns have literate residents. There are free or cheap lectures, musical performances, and movies on campus, plus you can audit classes for cheap. There are places to go that are cheap enough for college students--I like "college ghettos" more than regular ghettos.

[Q]

@photoguy - I live in Sunnyvale myself - only the east side of San Jose is "cheap", but not "safe" relatively speaking.
Some "nice" places have popped up here and there off Tully road, but I think it's move south to Gilroy/Morgan Hill/Hollister that is looking more and more feasible.
Burlingame had a few TIC's available, but that is super risky to me...

[NYC ERE]

@ photo @ Debbie how much land will i need for food? i have no idea, but efficient gardening apparently only requires a 10'x10' plot for a person/family, so i hear--to your point, Debbie, that i don't know much about my planned lifestyle; sad but true! however, i'm 4.9 years away from ERE, so i have time to cultivate the skills. as mentioned in other threads, i will be hunting for the first time this fall/winter. i haven't figured out the gardening thing yet--apparently there are long waiting lists in NYC for community gardens, but i'd like to find somewhere outside the city to do my gardening anyway, in hopes of having better quality air/soil--my fantasy would be to ride 20-60 miles out of the city each weekend and tend to it.

[George the original one]

For a pair of adult mostly-vegetarians, half an acre is sufficient (source: Organic Gardening West of the Cascades). If you're trying to dry-garden, then you'll likely need an acre.

[photoguy]

I was thinking some more about how much land one would need to support oneself and I remembered that ted kaczynski (the unabomber) lived on ranch by himself and grew his own food. I'm not sure how big his garden was, but It turns out that he had only 1.4 acres of land.

[Muji]

This family self-sustains on about 4350 sq. feet. It's really quite amazing.
http://urbanhomestead.org/