Outputs vs effort: a homesteading reckoning sheet.

— WHAT'S INSIDE

The honest math, output by output.

Every line on the sheet has the same six columns: output, monthly yield, hours per week, monthly input cost, monthly retail-value equivalent, and verdict (start with this, start later, or skip entirely at this scale). Three example tables, one per scale, show what the answer typically looks like — calibrated for South African pricing and the kind of household most readers actually live in.

• Townhouse — 3 to 10 m² of growing surface. Herbs, salad greens, spring onions, sprouts, a worm bin. R300–R800/month at peak season, 30–60 minutes a week. The case is taste and freshness, not food security at this scale.
• Suburban — 200 to 1,500 m² yard. Raised beds, 4–8 hens, a citrus tree, soft fruit, a worm-bin-and-compost loop. R2,000–R6,000/month year-round, 4–10 hours a week. The scale where the economic case becomes clearly positive — if the household has the time.
• Rural — 1+ hectares. Five outputs the publication covers authoritatively: eggs, year-round vegetables, lamb, an orchard, soft fruit. R6,000–R20,000/month, 15–40 hours a week. Specific to a smallholding broadly like ours.

Plus a blank template for your own scale, a labour-hours discipline page (the hidden cost most homesteading content underplays), and a substitution test page — the one bar every output has to clear: does growing it yourself beat buying it at the supermarket on cost, quality, or resilience?

— WHAT THIS ISN'T

Not a recipe book. Not a market-garden plan.

We don't tell you which cultivar to plant or how to manage layer-hen disease — that's practitioner work, and the primer's reference list (Coleman, Fortier, Rand Water, FAO) is where to go for it. We're also not pitching this as a side-income blueprint; the economics here are household substitution economics — what you displace from your own grocery bill, not what you sell at a Saturday market. And we're explicit that most homesteading content fails the year-two test because it underplays the labour. The reckoning sheet's job is to be honest about that upfront.

— DOWNLOAD

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You'll get a confirmation link first (one click, takes ten seconds). After you confirm, the welcome email arrives with the download link. You'll also be subscribed to The Weekly Despatch — one short editorial letter a week from the publication.

— THE PUBLICATION

Where this sheet comes from.

Survival & Prepping is a serious editorial publication on self-reliance, security, off-grid living, homesteading at any scale, and food security. Calm, evidence-led, scoped to the South African household, anti-fearmongering. The productive-homestead primer is one of our four cornerstones; this reckoning sheet is its companion artifact. Read more about the publication or browse the primer itself.