Becoming Barbara Good

D'ya know, I've started this post about three times now but abandoned it thinking "oo no, people will think I'm silly/unrealistic". But hey, I'm gonna post it! I know there's another whole self-sufficiency forum devoted to this sort of stuff but I find it a bit intimidating there - I much prefer my fellow grapes Long post so I bolded the point of it.

I have decided that what I want to achieve in life is to be mostly self-sufficient in food. I'm not a big consumer of unnecessaries, although I do have a few must-haves, like running my car and having internet, and initially I will have a mortgage. Because of those (i.e. because neither Virgin Media, Shell or the banks accept cabbages as payment) I will require a job of some kind to get the real monies, but I want to be in a position where any job I have is a supplement to my living, rather than the other way around, if that makes sense. Obviously my aim is to be mortgage free, but in the mean time my aim is to grow most of what I can eat, and keep my costs down in other areas so I am not utterly dependent on a job, and I can save up to pay off mortgage asap.

Most of what I read and see is families downsizing to the country, one keeps an office job, the other works the land etc. All calculations on how much space is required etc. are based on that sort of thing. My issues are that I can't downsize since I don't actually have an original size (living with parents finishing a PhD, on the point of finding a Real Job at which point I can start to think about buying a house), and I am single and likely to remain so, which is a positive in that there are less of me to feed, but a negative in that there are less of me to do the graft too. I always planned to become self-sufficient when I had a good job to support it (so, 5-10 years down the line) but realised recently that potentially that's backwards - I should become self-sufficient so I don't need to have a good job and can work instead doing something I enjoy now, rather than work my life away now so I can afford to work less/do what I want when I'm older.

So focussing on the food-side of things, I've been thinking about what sort of food I could produce myself. At the moment I'm a carnivore, but I have no issues with becoming quasi-vegan - I'd like to keep chickens for eggs but don't feel the need to raise my own meat, so I'm fine cutting meat out of my diet. Dairy I do like but again I don't really want to keep goats for the sake of milk in my tea, so will probably go without, or treat milk and cheese as a luxury I buy occasionally. I've no issue almost removing cereals from my diet since they don't agree with me anyway. And I can make my own wine

Food I know I will need to buy are larder things I can't make easily - oil, flour (for the occasional bit of bread or pastry), sugar, salt, vinegar, yeast, coffee, tea, rice and cat food etc. and the luxuries of fish and dairy occasionally. Plus I can't rule out food related costs for chickens or structures like beds etc.

House-wise I will be getting somewhere with a garden, it's a requirement and I'd be over the moon if the whole garden was productive in some way, so no issues with preserving a lawn or anything. I'm aware that over winter I may have to buy in some food, especially if we have a year like this one although I will preserve a lot and I'm generally unfussy about what I eat. Do you think it's realistic to think that on a diet of mainly eggs, fruit and veg it could be possible to be mostly self-sufficient in a modest garden? I think I'd need a garden about the size of a full sized allotment... does that sound sensible?

Not sure if I'm being unrealistic or not at the moment! Can't seem to find any comparable tales of people who've done this sort of thing alone, and at my life stage (aged 30, but still considered an 'early career' academic) - lots of blogs on families etc., can't find any on people in my situation.

I do have my own boiler suit, head scarves and lots of woollen clothes already.