Winter's Farmer Market

It's been a crazy week. Heavy work, a dog needing surgery (she's fine now), and lots of research for the farm. But I took some time out to head to the Winter's Farmer Market in Exeter, NH. Exeter is a gorgeous New England town and the perfect backdrop to purchase yummy sustainable meats, about 20 lbs of potatoes (for eating and seed). We also scored some fresh seeded bread and a tub of pork lard. Yes. Lard. I am so excited.

As I got through Coop Extension Fact Sheets, I am discovering the painful truth of how much I don't know. Gardening it technical and hard to communicate through the static pages of a book. There are so many different ideas and opinions about methodologies (not unlike riding). So I have come to the obvious conclusion that my first year garden will most likely be more of an experiment than a food source. That's the way it is, of course, but I tend to be the kind of person who does it 100% or not at all.

So I have to reconcile the learning curve and so I have a couple idea of phases:

Year 1:
Raise layers and meat birds (heritage birds) shipped to me as chicks. Process the birds myself.
Get soil tested and come up with plan for improvement.
Plant all the varieties of seeds I am interested in, as best as I can manage, and observe and learn.
Chart eating habits.
Study up on diseases, rotation, and New Hampshire specific climate.

Year 2:
Raise replacement chickens from my heritage bird flock, striving for a self-sustaining population.
Get soil tested and track improvement, if any.
Plant the varieties of vegetables that worked well, replace the ones that didn't.
Based upon previous year's eating habits, make sure to plant enough of the food we want to eat.
Experiment with intensive gardening.
Bees!!

Year 3:
Refine heritage bird flock for free-range hardiness, laying ability, and meat. Possibly look into two distinct sustainable flocks.
Get soil tested and track improvement, trending towards high organic content.
So on and so on.

Raising/growing/bartering or 70% of our perishable food is a five year goal and I think it will take all five years to get there. But that sort of education is priceless, so I have to accept the losses and inefficiency of learning. Every step forward is progress, the key is not to be overwhelmed by my ignorance.

Garden Plan

Funder asks some good questions about type of beds I will be using, raised, rows, etc. She's good like that, always pushing for me to have some sort of answer.

The honest answer is we're still planning. We have several different areas that we plan to cultivate and I imagine we'll use a combination of methods.

Here is the general plan. The main garden is a graded circle about 2800 SF with a seasonal spicket piped to the middle of it. My property is basically on the side of a hill, so as you go east, you go downhill. Since the garden is east of the house, it's about 10 feet lower than the house. The previous occupants terraced a section and planted berries. We will keep some of the berries and plant melons as well.

Looking down on the main garden.

Better view of the garden "disk"

Looking back at the house, note the terraces.

The main garden will be home to the vegetables and I am not sure if I will use rows or a more radial style of bed.

The herbs will be in a patch closer to the house and will likely be raised beds. The greenhouse will be just east of the house, and easy access to the bulkhead to the basement. Our basement has a concrete floor and is very dry. It also has a basin and work areas to process and preserve the produce. So produce will enter the house via the basement so proximity to the bulkhead is important.

Behind the greenhouse and further down the hill is where the chicken tractor will make its rounds once the broiler chicks are old enough to get out of the back half of the greenhouse, their brooder. I will also chicken tractor the areas of the main garden which will be planted in late May or June.

This is the first stage. There's an additional acre of lawn/lightly wooded area up front which can be reclaimed and put into some sort of production. I am trying to keep the "curb appeal" of the house and not add gross buildings, animals, or other which will anger neighbors. There's plenty of space, so no need to use the parts near the street.

A Big Plan

The plan for '09 is becoming less hazy. It's all well and good to say you are going to raise some veggies in the spring, but one thing gardening will teach you is: You need a plan. You need to plan ahead. Order seeds, prepare the soil, buy tools, sketch out the garden, pick your timeline. You can't run to the Quick-E-Mart for your slushy and farm-fresh broccoli. And, in many ways, that's the point.

Gardening takes time and discipline, two things over which I have never really felt control. But now, I have a goal to raise/barter/trade for 70% of my perishable goods. And that kind of accomplishment takes time.

Now, in the dead of January, it's time to plan for the '09 growing season. And things are getting sharply into focus.

Flora:
A greenhouse (12' x 20') is being selected and ordered. A list of vegetables has been written up, seeds researched.

The list is impressive. But seeds are cheap and experience is priceless so I will plant a lot and see how it grows:
asparagus
brussel sprouts
broccoli
yellow squash
lettuce/greens
cabbage
peas
beans
potatoes
yams
corn
butternut squash
acorn squash
zucchini
carrots
turnips
tomatoes
onions
garlic

Herbs and Fruits (TBD)

Our compost pile has been turned and pvc pipes run into it so it can breathe. We're in USDA Zone 5b here so most plants will not go into the ground until May, but I will start them early in the greenhouse and use cold frames to extend the growing season.

Fauna:
Today I put in an order for 25 more straight run layers. I will cull all but the best 10 to go with my current 10.

I also ordered free-range broilers, 20 of them. Both sets of chicks will arrive sometime in mid April and the meat birds will be processed by late July.

I have another farm tour planned this week with a local farm that provides chickens (to hold us over until our own are available), raw milk and honey. I also found a local coop grocery which sells grass-fed local beef. It's pricey, but I am happy to give my money to a local farmer instead of a marketer, packager, processor, truck driver. Since 85 cents of every conventional food dollar goes to these "supporting" roles and NOT the farmer, I think buying local, organic food is a bargain at twice the price.

Ok rant over, back to planning.

How's this all going to work? I work full time and have an hour and a half commute each day. The SO telecommutes from the farm, about 50 hours a week in the winter and 20 hours a week in the summer. Most of the labor will not be done by the author of this blog, but by my SO. I provide the financial backing, the research, health insurance and the sheer positive energy (we CAN do it!) and labor as I can on the evenings and weekends. The point is that we are going to do this and we both have "other" jobs. With good planning, proactive fixing (spend 5 minutes today to fix a problem rather than 30 minutes tomorrow), and a whole bunch of luck, we'll meet our goal within the next five years.

The First Step

This blog is about sustainability, being responsible and accountable for the resources you consume, but also living a rich and uncommon life. It's not a political blog, or a "rant" blog, or even a useful blog. It's a chronicle of how a suburban-raised, upper-middle class, over-educated, no-life-skills individual can slowly make a difference on a very small scale.

And so it goes like this. Five years ago, I got interested in horse farming. Not farming horses, farming WITH horses. You know, plows and wagons and such. I was living in Texas at the time and there were no horse farmers within 500 miles. So I flew to Vermont and took a workshop on working with horses. It was life changing.

The workshop itself was immensely education, but the real secret is that you lived with the farming family for four glorious and exhausting days. They oozed the kind of knowledge you would never find in mainstream life: how to cook fiddleheads, how to recycle EVERYTHING, how to raise animals humanely, how to diversify, how to live in clean air and not ruin everything around you.

So I got inspired, and started looking for a small farm to work with my (non-existent, but maybe someday) team of horses. I wanted to relocate to New England for various reasons, one of which is that it actually rains there, unlike drought-stricken Texas. Looking at land is depressing, because even though you feel blessed in life and rich, nothing makes you feel poor and unlucky like looking at 30 acre parcels of tillable land in New England. They simply don't exist for less than $1m because the old farms are disappearing. They have been subdivided for 300 years and never put back together. They are sold for lucrative development money. All I wanted to do was the "right thing" by these farms and I couldn't afford the price of admission.

I kept looking and finally, when the housing bubble burst, I could start to get in the door. I found a small 5.5 acre property in the heart of New Hampshire. It had not been previously farmed (in fact, it's mostly wooded), but there is a lot of potential there.

So here I am, learning to farm. It's important to set goals, so here's the big one: Within 5 years, I want to grow/raise/barter for 70% of the perishable food I consume. That's a pretty serious goal. And there's a catch. I have two pleasure horses (not work horses, the shame!) and they are not going any where, so I need to dedicate a portion of my precious soil to their upkeep. Horses don't make a lot of sense on a sustainable farm because they consume huge amounts of resources and even though they produce huge amounts of manure, all that energy they produce does nothing but make me happy. So there's the rub. I am farming my small parcel of land to ENRICH my life, not IMPOVERISH my life. The horses grant me a luxury I could not live without.

So that's the gist of it. Two adults, two horses, and 10 laying hens. It's going to be a wild ride.