how would one undertake such a task?
You don't. You're setting your goal way too high and would be doomed. Respectfully, your sights lower. Don't try to grow all your own food- how about just making yourself self sufficient with one high value product, like eggs? Just that one goal is big enough for many folks, at least for a while. Then once you get proficient in egg production you can learn how to process chickens for meat, since you already have chickens around. Or for gardening, grow a small garden but not with the goal to replace your trips to the grocery. Rather, learn how to preserve what you grow. Canning, dehydrating and freeze drying are all skills to learn. Grow specific produce to try different preserving methods. Only once you have those kinds of skills in place are you ready to start growing big gardens and thinking about true self sufficiency.
Solid advice, I've been raising some chickens for almost a year now, still getting the hang of it, also attempting to clear a wooded lot with a chainsaw and a brush cutter is a lot of work, didn't really want to pay for someone to come in with heavy equipment to remove all the trees and destroy the very little topsoil we have. Its way more than I expected.
Once you get chickens down, rabbits are the most efficient way to produce red meat. Highest amount of protein per dollar spent in feed. I'd look there too.
Yeah I've had others suggest rabbits too, was thinking about that next, my wife wants a mini-cow though. I think rabbit is easier to process, though some say beef is really not that hard.
Clearing land is a shit ton of work. I had a taste of it on a 5 acre unimproved lot which wife and I owned outside of New Cuyama, CA. I attacked it with a chainsaw for about a week or two with pitifully scant results.
Neighbor rancher with 10,000 acres and cattle swings by, takes pity and tells me he rented a Cat D8 bulldozer for some work on his land, and he could let us hire the worker and machine for an hour if we wanted. We did, and in that hour the guy did more work than I could ever do. He dropped the blade and pushed, and nothing would stop that beast. That experience completely changed my understanding of what heavy machinery is capable of doing. Cleared the whole lot minus some more mature trees in 45 minutes. Allowed us to then focus on getting actual stuff done. That is key. The amount of work it saved us in those 45 minutes was incredible.
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