Hi fleam.

I've been following your comments with a great deal of interest.

If you really are willing to work hard all day day after day there are plenty of farmers who will find you a very unoffocial place to live such as a camper parked inside a barn and supply you with water and a minimal amount of electricity plus pay a modest wage of maybe seven dollars per hour in my part of the world.Plus there are usually benefits in the form of free veggies, often a place to hunt and fish, opportunities to do extra little side jobs for nieghbors if you have salable skills.

But getting connected is hard since providing housing under the table is somewhat of a risk to the employer.

But I know of half a dozen farm hands living this way within ten miles or so.They can actually save some money if they are frugal.

Let me also add that Mendocino County also produces a lot of wine grapes (not where I live in the mountains). A $hit load of the small growers didn't even pick this year because the price was less than the cost of picking the grapes. Further, labor contractors aren't interested in small vineyards so they have trouble even finding anyone to pick in the first place. And, this assume they have a home for their grapes. FWIW, "hang time" is becoming a big issue for all growers.

Todd

PS - yea set-up a "pick your own" operation. Good luck.

I'm glad to see an honest accounting posted of the realities of small scale farming as opposed to links to sites that make it look easy.A while back the site was overwhelmed with posts to links promising pie in the sky.

The owner has my sympathy.

I don't see anything to explain why so many different crops were planted in such necessarily small areas given the limited acreage but my guess is that the idea is to have as continious and as varied production as possible for marketing purposes.

Selling a little bit of high dollar produce seems to be a fairly easy thing to do if you are located right-near a prosperous town with the requisite purchasing power.Selling a lot seems to be the problem-that's apparently very hard even if you kill yourself trying to have ten different items to take to market every day.

As far as hiring and training farm hands goes, if you can find people who were construction laborers or machine operators used to production work on ana assembly line, you might have some small hope of success.

But unless you are able to tie your help down by providing housing and other subsidies, good workers will be gone like a shot for an easier job as soon as one becomes available-unless you can pay a substantial wage premium.

And larger stores seem to insist on dealing with wholesalers who can gaurantee delivery of everything ordered on time even if the quality averages a lot lower.

Now I will venture a wild axx guess that if this same hard working guy had planted his acreage in maye four different crops his total number of hours of work per dollar of revenue would have dropped like a stone.

Assuming of course he could have found a buyer.

Farming simply does not scale down as easily as most of us have been lead to believe.

On the other hand you can do very well by growing your own if you are willing to credit yourself with early home grown tomatos for your own table at the going supermarket price.Cutting out all those middle men makes up nicely for the inefficiencies of growing only very small quantities.

For what it's worth there is still enough small scale but industrial quality farm equipment around that you can put together what you need by shopping farm estate auctions in areas that used to have a lot of small farms.

These items include turn plows up to three bottom,specialty plows as for hilling and harvesting potatos, disks and harrows, rakes and grader boxes, rotary and sickle bar mowers, two wheel carts, four wheel wagons, front loaders fertilizer and lime spreaders, hay balers and so forth.It might take two or three years and a dozen trips to sales to find everything you need but if this stuff is in good condition it will last indefinitely.

Of course using this next step up sized stuff means that you will also need a tractor.Be sure to buy a popular make and model so that it will be easy to repair and find parts.Our 67 Oliver would have easily lasted us another twenty years but parts are very iffy as it was an unpopular make so we retired it for a 72 Ferguson that will probably be easy to find parts for even thirty more years down the road,unless tshtf of course.

As far as draft animals go, they are fine for subsistence farming or as sitf backup insurance and a well trained horse can pay it's way sometimes if you have the right work for it but plowing and cultivating an acre or two is not enough .

Now if you could use the horse to snake out some firewood, plow , cultivate, haul a few bushels of apples in from the orchard, and pull a wagon unattended except by voice command while loading cabbage ,and a few other jobs, plus maybe riding him to the nieghbors place occasionally instead of driving, then a horse might earn his hay and pasture.

But that Ferguson has been sitting in it's shed for three weeks now and it hasn't eaten a thing and the only care it needs on a daily basis is to make sure it hasn't been stolen.

i think there is a big diffreence between farming for a profit and growing enough to feed your family.
If you're trying to produce and sell enough to have a decent income in the money economy, then this is going to indeed
be a _lot_ of hard work. If you're trying to feed your family and maybe have some extra to share with neighbors, friends, etc, then you have a whole different equation to deal with.

One big thing is, what brings in profits for small scale operations tends to be vegetables and higher profit specialty items. Nobody growing row crops on a small scale or below
the mega-industrial standard of the day will be able to compete in the marketplace at all. Even more, things like being able to bring produce to market early in the season
brings much bigger profits than turning out the same crop just a few weeks later. Being able to sell product at a scale that
the corporate buyers of torday want to deal with is also an
issue, as the fellow in Mendocino had to struggle with.

To grow food to meet the calorie and nutrition needs of a family and enough surplus to share and set aside for a rainy day is a very different demand.

Vegetables and a lot of high-profit crops, for example, tend to have low calorie content. A perfect aubergine at the right
time of year could bring a couple dollars at a farmers market,
but you would have to eat a big pot of them if your sole food
was aubergines, just to get the calories you need. Half
an aubergine with a bit of rice or something and suddenly
the equation changes a lot.
A quarter acre garden will even with the average skill one
can find in most neighborhoods (the dedication and discipline to check up on things, weed and water as needed, know what to
plant together and what apart, when to plant, when to trim,
when to harvest, etc etc, is important but yes the motivated
individual can learn to do this) provide more vegetables than
a single family would _want_ to eat (in most places where
there is enough rainfall, of course). One person can take care
of that part-time. If it's a family feeding itself then
everyone does a bit of the work and nobody is out there doing
hard labor over the garden.. it's daily or weekly chores.

keeping trees likewise is work, but how many trees would a family keep? a few of each kind and you will be giving apples
or pears or walnutes, etc, to all the neighbors, even after
boiling down and canning heaps of them or piling up the nuts
for shelling later. Collecting the ones that are ready every few days during the season is a chore, but it's a chore for
a couple hours, not a mad race to get in a crop of many tons
before they pass their prime marketable condition. A family
of five would have a hard time using the produce of five apple
trees, much less 40 _acres_ of apples! (and if the apples have
a bad year, they might go without pies or cider for a season,
but they won't be bankrupted)

Keeping a few dozen chickens around, and they almost take care of themselves. The closer you get to trying to operate them
like a business the more work it becomes. If you put the
work into keeping a place for them to roost and nest and give
them enough treats that they keep coming back to 'home', then
beyond some basic things like fences, yes a fox or a cat or a hawk will get one from time to time, but thats just a trade off against additional labor. You'll never compete with the
operations that go through tens of thousands of chickens every week or two- but is that the goal?

Growing wheat, barley, lentils, peas, etc, on a 2000 acre
monoculture mega-farm is an impossible task for just a couple of people, without tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment and a large recurring cost. Growing such things
expecting to get 1/10 the yield per acre, over just a few acres, though, provides plenty for five or six people, for
a very manageable amount of work. You'd go out of business
in a day, trying to compete against the mega-farms this way-
but this is not the point of small scale farming!

If you have enough land, and for a family of say five or so,
this needn't be a whole lot of land, then you have the luxury of trading a lot of raw productivity per square foot for a
position further down the curve of diminishing returns.
If you're doing it for a profit, then you have to push right up against the very limit of that curve , same as everyone else.

While many people here might be anticipating changine scenarios and indeed preparing to farm to produce a sellable surplus, i think a comparable or larger number of people are
thinking not at all about farming to make an income, but of
growing enough to be independent or most of the way there
when they might need it.

just wanted to bring up this persepctive to keep in mind as we
talk about commercial farming post-peak.

Airdale,

Later on you will find a list of equipment I have if Jason left it in the article. They forgot to tell me the article was being posted tonight and I just happended by.

I have a 2 wheeled BCS 853 11 hp diesel with a rotatry plow, flail mower, tiller and root digger.

I am upscaling at this time. I just purchased a 45 hp Kioti and am getting a bed former and transplanter. I borrowed a 3 bottom from the nieghbor a few weeks ago and plowed up another 1 1/4 acres.

Looking forward to more input.

Wyo

Hi Bud,

Well, I have a post above yours and you are getting into the crap we hate - get bigger or get out. Let's cut to the bottom line - there are hobby farms and then the are farms.

WTHSHTF hobby farms might make it but I have doubts because they will be competing against the big guys and price will be an issue.

Todd

There's a surprising set of equipment available for garden tractors. I have an 18hp Craftsman (hey, stop laughing!). It has good bar tires on it now, and rarely gets stuck on our clay. We have a single-bottom plow, a disk pair, a cultivator that I can alternate regular tines or ultra-wing sweeps on, potato plow, chisel plow, crow-foot cultipacker, belly sickle-bar mower, and a few other things. It's more than enough to pull our manure spreader, old drill, two row planter, chain harrow, broadcast and drop spreaders, etc. And that's all with just a sleeve hitch. If you can get one with a cat0 three-point hitch, there's even more you can hook up.

And it was cheap. I got the tractor for $600. Another $500 on tire replacements and tune-up and I had a decent small tractor. Last week I picked up a swappable engine for another $50. It only burns about 5 gallons of gas a day even plowing our clay.

The problem is that it only works 4' width of anything at a time. At that rate, it takes the better part of a day to disk an acre.

The walk behind tractor I spoke of above , I now remember to be a Gravely. It also had a 'surrey' seat which you could ride in and steer with the normal handlebars.

This piece of equipment was powered by a 10 or 12 horse Kohler engine. It was a very very capable piece of equipment when you had the attachments. Even a front mounted sickle bar mower and a small rotary bush hog.

Airdale

$5 for a loaf of bread sounds like you are getting ripped off if it is commercially baked and stock standard white loaf. The people charging this sort of money must have a monopoly or something as I just can't see those prices in a mainstream supermarket. OK IO live in Australia but we are not that differnt to the US.

fleam,

Bread in the local farmers markets costs about $4.5-5.0 per loaf. Deep in the city heirloom tomatoes sell for $3.50/lb or a little higher and commerical tomatoes sell for up to $3/lb. Potatoes $2.50/lb, Onions $1.50/lb, peppers $2.00/lb. Prices like that.

Wyo

I would really recommend herbs,they did really well for us this year...

Richrd,

Wow. I'm impressed. That is great.

Tell us some more about yourself and your operation.

My wife loved your last line. It is almost word for word what she keeps saying.

I am tapped out for new equipment for now but I have my eye on a rebuilt Allis Chalmers Model G for sometime in the future.

Wyo

Gail,

I know that everyone likes horses, but for most folks they would be better off with an industrial bike with one of those cool aluminum trailers. Properly taken care of they will last 30 years. even in a bad downturn you will be able to find grease and be able to do basic repairs. Stock an extra chain and a few tires. If your horse is not a plow horse he will not be of much use in farming. And they require a LOT of land for growing their fuel.

There is an issue with the embedded energy of course. But if we are going to embed energy in something is is far better that it is a small tractor than a Lexus. The Lexus is junk in 5-10 years and is pretty useles at pulling farm equipment. A small tractor can be kept running almost forever. Even in a bad collapse it will be a LONG time before the tractors are qll broken and unfixable by the clever. I mention up thread to Airdale that I would like to buy a used Allis Chalmers Model G. They are still around for sale and are used all the time by small organic farmers . They have not been made since circa 1960. Most are still in use. Lots of small farms use tractors that were made in the 50's. A new tractor, properly cared for, will get as much as 8000 hours on the engine. If you use it 250 hours a year (that's is a lot) you have a 32 year life. I know folks that have tractors with over 7000 hours on them that have had no major failures.

A good blacksmith or even myself with what I have can be pretty clever about making parts from stock steel. We will have lots of that for the forseeable future. I was in Cuba for a time once and saw craftsmen using files, hacksaws, drills, et(c but no milling machines) making car parts from stock metal to keep the old US cars running.

I thin the issue about the complex system is not to have one but the scale of it. What it is unlikely that we can support is a multi-billion population that lives in a complex society. We either have a managed drawdown or we have a freefall. But even in a freefall it is possible that enclaves of compexity will survive. Those enclaves are going to be populated by the people that prepared to find a way to support themselves. It is not the automobile or air conditioning that created civilization. It was having enough food and security to allow the philosopher/mathematicians and artists enough spare time to think and explain things. That is what I do not want to lose. Electricity is not all that important in comparison.

Wyo

Gail, IMO you are right about the long term, but timing the transition is difficult. While it may well turn out that the complex system that supports tractors will unwind faster than most folks want to believe, for the forseable future draft horses cannot generate enough cash flow to justify their use. For now, almost all small-scale farmers and doomsteaders need a cash flow in order to buy what they don't produce and pay taxes.

I will testify from my experiences in investing, one can be completely correct on a trend long term, but lose one's shirt on timing.

In terms of EROEI, I put my bets on perennials and trees. It still befuddles me that so many folks think a move to sustainability means just rehashing the 1800s with draft horses. Were the 1800s sustainable? I'm not so sure.

Plow horses take a lot of work to feed and maintain. Tractors require fuels that may be in short supply in the future. There's a lot of discussion on this site about EROEI and quite frankly in terms of calories most farming methods -- even small scale organic/"sustainable" farms seem to fall short. I imagine if all the energy entering and leaving a small farm was considered you would find either a very low EROEI or possibly a negative EROEI. This is speculation, of course.

I would think tree-crops would be much more efficient over the long-term in terms of EROEI. Plowing and turning the soil takes a lot of work, and I'm glad to double dig my garden beds once or twice for vegetables, but in terms of calories nuts are my choice for the food of the future. After initial planting, the only work is ongoing maintenance and mulching and perhaps pruning. It does not require that massive energy investment of turning the soil. Anyone who's done this by hand knows that's some good work.

Let's take hazelnuts for example, which has commercial yields of up to 2,000 pounds an acre in shell. Shelled, we're looking at maybe 700 lbs. for good cultivars. 700 lbs an acre doesn't compare to the commercial yields per acre for crops like corn and soy. But, hazels can live for 50 years. If we estimated that we'd get solid yields for 30 years off of one planting, a single planting could yield 21,000 lbs of hazelnuts. Compare that with thirty much more intensive plantings for corn and soy and there seems to be a major energetic difference!

It seems that an operation which sought to minimize energy inputs while maximizing production would turn to tree and perennial crops that don't require continual tillage. A no-till fukuoka method of grain production would also seem to make sense in this regard.

Am I just totally off my rocker here? Are small-scale farmers thinking in terms of EROEI? What am I missing?

On the nail Gail.

The issue is not the absolute consumption but rather, like PO, what it takes to keep the system up so that ANY product can be delivered at a price that wont collapse the other markets dependent on it.

I'm interested in what else is missing from Jim's calculations as well.

He says

Production per Gallon
For 2008: 7.4 lbs Production per gallon of fuel
For 2009: 19.0 lbs Production per gallon of fuel

What he doesn't give is an EROEI for the calories he produces which is what I would expect on this site especially. ie, does he produce more calories than he uses to grow them? If not, he has scaled down industrial farming that only enables us to eat the oil but his approach is not part of the solution to the problem.

There are other major gaps in the story as well. Every calorie is wrapped in N,P,K,C and a host of trace elements that he is currently extracting from his land and exporting to the market. He doesn't mention any way to close that loop and refund the soil with the lost nutrients, nor any energy budget for doing that.

There are other BIG questions.

1. By focusing on production, Jim is buying into a product based model instead of a sustainability one. Frankly, the first few years needs to focus on making sure that the soil is healthy and that systems are in place to maintain that health under production. Of course you need to grow stuff as part of that and some of it will feed you and any surplus can be sold to the market, as long as there is a return flow to replace lost nutrients, but that can't afford to be the focus at this stage.
2. Plowing the soil and relying on plastic (oil-based) mulch has a short future under PO/ economic sitf conditions. Some of the permaculture people aim to have only 40% of the land in actual production while 60% is being renovated at any one time. Without that attention it is just mining the soil.
3. There is also no water budget in the piece. How much rain does he get over time? How much of that does he trap and how? How long will his supply last under different conditions and seasons? How much pumping is needed to move it to where it is required?
4. The herbs are obviously also seen as a product but a healthy landscape will have not 4 or 6 herbs but dozens, not just for flavour and medicinal purposes but as garden chemicals and environmental supports. The wormwood I grow keeps the predators off almost everything, the comfrey mines the deep clay and returns leached nutrients to the soil, acts as living mulch, protects the potatoes from many soil borne diseases and is a great foliar feed, Calendula attracts pollinators and is an antiseptic for minor abrasions etc etc. I have about 20 perennial or self seeding annual herbs growing in my quarter acre property and every one has a purpose in maintaining the production. I'll have 50 by the time I'm much older.

Another thing about the permaculture approach is that it enlists the critters in the landscape, birds, wasps, bees, worms, slaters, earwigs etc as part of the labour force. If you aren't recruiting and enabling those guys you are wastign vast resources.

We don't know if permaculture will actually be permanent, but its better than anything else so far.

Those of us interested in a sustainable alternative future need to make the alternative calculations. We need to look at what it will take to maintain our piece of land, whatever size, as productive forever. Then we need to optimise the production within that capacity. Only then should we be thinking of trading with the rest of the planet.

Schoff,

The living quarters issue is big. I am in the process of restoring a part of our old farm house that has never been livable since we purchased it (only about 1/2 the house was liveable when we started here) just to house farm workers. This type of farming requires lots of help and it is very difficult to find workers who can commute (which sort of makes no farming sense anyway).

We had two different farm workers live in one of our spare bedrooms this year but it was too awkward for everyone I think.

I understand what you mean about $ in the bank. I sometimes think that I will wake up and they will all be gone into some bankers pocket. I feel more comfortable with tangible goods too.

Wyo

Ceclia,

You hit on a core motivation for me. Form what I have studied water will be a major cause of reconfiguring agriculture on a timescale that is not far off that of peak oil. One can point to a host of locations around the world where looming water shortages for agriculture is going to be catastrophic; for instance there is the central valley of Calif, the American midwest (the Ogalla acquifer), the breadbaskets of India and China were ground water levels are dropping at 3-5 feet a YEAR, the Murray-Darling drainage in Australia to name some of them.

Land productivity in those areas is going to plumet in the not to distant future. And then there is the changing climate that will add in adverse effects as time goes on. A rececipe for disaster.

You mention the need to convert suburban/exurban lawns and pet horse pasture back to agriculture. This is exactly what I am doing. My property is the central part of a very old farm that was developed. I am surrounded by very large homes (as much as 7400 sq ft) whose croppable land is mostly just giant lawns. A few are keeping theirs in land use by having a local farmer come in ane cut hay on it and there is one poperty that has sheep. There are many thousands of acres in the DSC metro area that could be cropped by small farmers pretty efficiently. Especially if it has become really important to do so. This is where the small guys like myself have an advantage over the giant operations you see in the Central Valley. Their scale just does not work in the environment that I live in. The advantage will swing away from them in many locations as time goes on.

Wyo

Lee,

I plan on purchasing a spader with power harrow next winter. I have to pace myself. As the combination costs near $10,000 it is a big purchase. They are to tool of choice however and besides greatly improving the soil quality they reduce the energy usage of the farm significantly by eliminating one pass of the tractor. A spader with harrow can make a run down a bed incorporating old crop residue and prepareing the bed for transplanting in one fell swoop. Everyone that I know that is really good at this has one.

Most of the really good small scale farm equipment is not made in the US. Italy being the most common location for implements with almost all of them in Europe - though Asia is rising. For example the 45 HP Kioti (South Korean made) that I purchased has a good reputation and cost about $10,000 less for the equivalent Kubota (Japan) and %50 percent of the price of a John Deere (parts made all over the world).

Wyo

Had to look up a spader. Never heard of that before. Here's an article I found on them. Cool.

I have tried WWOOF for workers , but not much luck

I would recommend the Yanmar 155D 4x4 tractor , which is what I use

http://jxn.craigslist.org/grd/1503007980.html

Howard 3 point tiller and two ripper shanks is what I use to make beds

Probably the best walk behind is the Howard Gem Rotovator if you can find one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_qVV3x9lM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPQx3XaSH2s&feature=related

Robert,

Check with your local organic growers re the broccoli. They will know what the situation is with bugs and broccoli for that climate. Broccoli is a cold weather plant and it may just not be the right climate in Hawaii. But it could be just that you need row covers and some beneficial insects. Or maybe one of the organic pest controls like mild soap.

You might need some soil amendments also. I have no idea what volcanic soils are like. It might be interesting!

You should talk to the local growers about their energy and mineral usages in the Hawaiian situation. It would be interesting to see what the differences/problems are between there and here.

Wyo

Boof,

Very interesting numbers. However, if they are accurate, I think that the opposite conclusion would be warrented. It would mean that I am achieving a pretty high level of sustainability already. And I can do much better in the future.

If one of the TOD experts on EROEI would like to check the above figures and chime in I would appreciate it.

If I have achieved near 1:1 EROEI this soon in my operation one could conclude that it is highly likely that farming techniques like mine are not only viable but they will become essential in the downslope of peak oil. Your figures indicate that I am almost 10 times more efficient than the equivalent industrial grower!! I think that there must be some error here as that is hard to imagine. I can see a lot more efficiency gain from where I am at today. If you notice from my figures there was a couple of million calories more food grown that was not sold or used (composted). On the downslope that food could have been consumed.

You touch on issue of what happens when there is no more synthetic NPK and chemicals. I DO NOT use them now so that is not the issue. I use organic methods. That is not to say that obtaining organic fertilizers and needed minerals will not be an issue in the future because it will. Just in different ways.

When one ships large amounts of nutrients off-farm (the produce I sell) then one is required to bring replacements on farm or over time the soil will deplete and the system falls apart. Right now I am purchasing organic fertilizers and compost, I create my own compost as well (it is just not possible on a little place like mine to produce enough), I plant cover crops to put nutrients into the soil (primarily nitrogen) for my production crops, I rotate crops to take advantage what a preceeding crop can leave for the next one and to disrupt the pest cycles. There are many such techniques.

I do need fuel, but I can likely convert substantially to bio fuel in the future. I think that it will be a LONG time before there is no fuel available to farmers. As rationing comes to the fore you can be that those who produce food will be very high on the list. If they don't feed you then you will not need any fuel in any case thus freeing the fuel up for the farmers again. Simple solution :)

As we draw down the small farms will naturally evolve towards the mixed farm systems that existed before industrialization. In such a system the animals provide a significant boost to the fertilizer mineral requirements. In the past it was also common to incorporate human waste into the agriculture inputs stream to provide the needed nutrients. This is still common in many parts of th world. Surrounding my farm is a large area where the land is very suitable for grazing, growing grain, raising chickens, pigs, not to mention what I am doing. There are multiple strong springs and 4 ponds within a 1/4 miles of my house and probably 50 croppable acres. The people who live here could make a go of it should they choose to. Between the residents here there are already 8 small tractors and even some implements beyond mine.

Besides getting ones phosphorous from manures one can also get it from rock phosphate (since I have naturally low PH soils this works for me as well as the manure based fertilizers).

Transport to market will evolve as energy supplies change. One thing that will happen is that food is going to cost a lot more not less. Some of that cost will be to offset transportation costs. As things wind down a long way older methods of transport will return. There are many wasy of making this work. Downtown DC is only 50 miles from here and inbetween us there are literally hundreds of thousands of other people who will want food supplies. A healty young man with an idustrial bike and trailer could hop on the bike path a couple of miles from here and, since it is mostly down hill from here to there) get there in a few hours, sell the produce and bike home. Hard work but doable. There are ways. It is hardly hopeless.

Wyo

Boof:  US gasoline is about 115 kBTU (~120 MJ) per gallon, diesel about 140 kBTU (~155 MJ) per gallon.

You're absolutely right about transport to market being the difficult part for liquid fuels.  This is where rail, especially electrified rail, can make such a difference.  There are already scheduled trains of refrigerated produce carriers from the big produce areas to the rest of the country, and electric rail transport can nearly eliminate petroleum even for a two-thousand-mile salad.

Hi Vermont,

Good to hear from you again. I am glad that things are going well for you.

I like your idea about using the students. Unfortunately there is not corollary in my area. Except in rare cases the workers have to live on the farm as it is so expensive in the area that the only people who could work farms that live here would be students living with their parents (who pretty much take a dim view still of this type of activity - they'll learn over time) or immigrants like the young Mexican boy who worked for me last summer.

We are looking for a young couple who have experience in organic farming and want to make a life doing this. They can work for us and we can help them buld up their resources in terms of money and experience. If the right couple came along we could even make arrangements to let them live here in the off season and get jobs in the local economy till the next farming season. We know of other local farmers who are leasing part of their land to young farmers just to help them get started. I love that concept.

I understand about the loneliness of working by yourself all the time as I did it for 2 years myself. It helps to have others working with you. Next year my wife is going to join me so that will be a big improvement in lifestyle. I do not miss the commuting and I especially love not having to spend half my life flying somewhere. Yuck! Plus we will have to have 2-3 workers next year. The place will seem busy.

Like you say. The lifestyle is priceless. I almost never met anyone when I was growing up in Wyoming that left the ranch unless they had to. Finances there are tough and most have to leave, but they don't want to. I work every day and don't mind doing so. I want to be out there every day. I took only my second day off this past weekend since February and was getting the yips from sitting around by early afternoon.

Your resouce situation is a key here. I am in the same boat in that I have not had to borrow any money to make this happen. I have been paying my way as the operation grows just because that is the way I think one should do it and it gives me time to learn as I grow. There are tons of well off landowners in this area who could set up farm worker lodging, buy some equipment and hire some young folks with experience to run a small farm on their property. Think of the difference that would make over time.

Take care,

Wyo

Social dynamics are key to this. The amount of additional energy I have when NOT working alone on the farm is tremendous. Thanks for bringing this up.

Couple of questions:

1. Can you guestimate how much land do you think it would take for a couple to live off -modest protein needs, say a chicken a week + a couple of eggs a day from chicken flock, no beef or pork...
2. How did you insulate the floor?

Have you thought about Aquaponics?

Nick.

Hi carnot,

If I may ask, why was your only option to use raised beds on your heavy clay soil?

Was it due to poor drainage or some other soil condition?

Thanks,

spindifferent

My apologies for those who commented with questions. Since I made the post I returned home to experience some awful ( for the UK ) weather.

I will try an answer the questions as follows:

We opted for raised beds after trying for several years to improve the heavy clay soil. I live on the north side of the Weald Dome, which is a dome structure that has seen the top of the dome eroded away. The down slopes are covered in a thick clay layer (gault) with a thin topsoil that drain poorly.Many vegetables simply did not grow (carrots, asparagus, parsnips). Other vegetables gave poor yields. We started with one raised bed and imported topsoil, which was a big improvement but lacked biomass. Drainage was greatly improved and the soil allowed better root aeration. Subsequently we have expanded the raised beds and our current system uses concrete slotted posts and what we, in the UK, call concrete gravel boards. The concrete posts provide support for the various structures that we emply. The most useful structure are steel hoops that allow us to cover the bed in fleece or poyethylene film. To keep the slugs and snails at bay copper pipe is fitted between the slots. This is effective and green and does not poison the birdlife.

When we set put on this path we had a lot to learn. On our 200 square metres we grow a lot but we are not self sufficient by any means. We do not grow wheat, so bread and flour is bought in. As more is produced the next problem is storage; this is a major issue. Potatoe, carrots and onions can be stored but care is needed and a lot of space. Temperature is important. This year we stored many potatoes in the ground. We took off the tops to avoid blight and left the potatoes in the gound which has worked well and has freed up space for something else. Carrots are difficult; we use sand but results are mixed. For many vegetables freezing is a last resort. We have vegetable all year round but it is sesonal, and winter time is particularly difficult. Brassicas and leaks provide the winter crop but it can get a bit monotonous. We do not produce any meat products, the sheep are pets (rapid composters). We are doing our homework on poulty. The best advice is that per chicken an area of 80 square feet is required to avoid the ground being destroyed. I aim to build a chicken run of about 500-600 square feet to house 6 birds. I am particularly interested in animal welfare so intensive keeping is not an option.

In reply as to how much land per person is required I would say a great deal more than we have under cultivation. If we were to be totally self sufficient then I would expect that we would need to expand our operation significantly, probably by more than 10X. Growing feed grains is no easy task and is probably best left to the experts. If we kept chickens for meat protein then the feed requirement would increase alarmingly. Raising something like 50 chickens per year would take something like 500 -700 kg of feed, much of it feed grains. For other carbohydrates and protein then per person I would estimate about 150 - 200 kg of wheat, corn. This would take some careful storage. I am fortunate in having the land available but I do not relish the challenge.Various estimates have been given to the per capita land requirement but it very much depends on soil quality and water. I would agree that something like 0.4 hectares ( 1 acre) is a minimum and even that might not be sustainable.

The real issue is maintaining soil biomass. I would recommend that all potential growers read the paper on Peak Soil. We process a huge amount of biomass; animal manure, wood chip, leaves, paper, cardboard, food peelings, and plant residues. What really concerns me is how little this subject is considered. Biofuels present a real threat to soil biomass and bio-diversity. Stripping the soil biomass is akin to soil mining and will drastically reduce crop yields unless extensive fertilizer use is employed. Our soil has a very high biomass content which we adjust for each diffrent crops by addding sand, grit or topsoil. I estimate that we add about 10 to 35 ltrs of compost per square metre per year. This is due to natural decomposition of the biomass. I also have some woodland and the soil depth remains constant. Leaf litter and tree debris disappears over time to keep a near constant topsoil depth.

One of our key reason for going down this route was also product quality. Until you have eaten sweet corn within 15 minutes of picking you have not eaten sweet corn. Likewise for tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, peas, beans, carrots and many others picking it fresh cannot be beaten, and all of the produce is grown without pesticides or artificial fertilizer use.

In response to the question on aquaponics this is not a route I would consider. The experience with Aquaponics in the UK have not been met with much praise, as the produce tends to lack flavour and texture. I also do not see this as sustainable as it require inputs of power for pumping, and nutrients in the form of synthetic fertilizer.

Moving onto the greenhouse. The base consists of 150 mm of reinforced concrete base onto which is 3 cpourses of facing brick laid out to the size of the greenhouse. 100 mm PU foam foil coated insulation fllowed by 75 mm of concrete screed followed by dense concrete slab. This acts as a heat sink/ store. The concrete screed is embedded with underfloor hot water heating pipe which will eventually be connected to a solar panel. We are currently seeing what the effect is without any heating.

Finally I would ebd by saying that there is no standard model. Each location will have its own set of circumstances dependent on insolation, water soil type and weather patterns. It varies across the UK by a significant degree. If you have a the best conditions you can do well. If you have non ideal conditions you will have to work much harder. Many thanks to all those who replied.

WNC,

The diversification that you speak of is exactly where we are going to 2010. With my wife working with me it gives us the opportunity to jump inito the "value added" part of being a producer. She has excellent skills at baking and preserving many different items. She cans a mean salsa and tomato sauces. There are good markets for such things and the profit margins are good. It also gives you product to sell at the beginning and end of the grwoing season thus upping your revenues a lot.

By doing this we can utilize a great amount of the produce we currently throw in the compost pile. Then our product sold to energy invest will improve substantially as well as revenues. And as you say the more skill one has at preserving food the better off they will be in the future.

Wyo

Spindifferent,

All of our soils are different kinds of silt/loam. the best one (and what occupies the most of our land) is called Catoctin Loam which is the best soil type in Virginia according to the Virginia tech extension service. Note that the civilians all think that the soils here are clay (they are sort of redish), but clay is much harder to deal with. Loam is in general the best kind of soil to have.

Water is obtained in two ways. First, this part of the country recieves an average of 40 inches of rain a year (about 50 this year). Second, we have a strong spring on our farm that comes out of the ground under our spring house. It fills a large pond (approx 2 acre feet of water) and I use this for supplemental irrigation purposes. It is worth nothing that even in a place that gets 40 inches of rain you will need to irrigate to have high levels of production. Mother Nature does not choose to ask exactly when the plants need their next drink unfortunately.

Wyo

DeltaS,

That depends on how you mean to ask the question. Could I have afforded to do it without her help? Yes. Would I have done it without her support. Most likely not as I would never have ended up in this time and place if I had not had her support.

If you want to do something like this and your spouse is really against it I would think that the prospects of success would not be high. Mall Queens are not particularly suited for immediate conversion into farm girls. There is something of an ajustment period :) She is a Wyoming girl, born on the reservation and did not grow up with that silver spoon. She is pretty tough and independent and not taken in by consummerism nor advertizing.

Wyo

Wyo

Paleocon,

If one wants to consider using land for agricultural purposes one has to honestly evaluate that land to see what is possible. It does not pay to force a solution.

The lay of the land is critical for cropping. If it is too steep then it is just not a good idea. Is it suitable for orchards or just for forest products. If it is open is it suitable for grazing. Do you get enough rain. Do you have your own water source. What type of soils do you have and what are they suitable for. Is the land extremely rocky. Is it really wet.

There are a host of issues to consider. Not to mention where it is located makes a difference in terms of markets and customers.

If you need help figuring out some of these things you should call up your County Extension agent. That is their job. They will look up your soil type and will visit the land with you to look at it and give you an idea what your options are. You can also find farmers in your area that are going to have solid knowledge about what tends to work there and what does not.

Lease rates vary widely depending on location and soil types. I would have no idea how to answer unless I had personal knowledge of your location. But the extension agent and local farmers can help you there as well.

Outside of living where there is a lot of rain (40 inch average per year) I have a strong spring on the property that fills a large pond. I do not keep track of the total water useage from irrigation. I keep track of the fuel I use but that is it. If the crops need water they get it. Since I own the water I do not have to worry about rationing or scheduling my water usage as many farmers do. Since I am not pumping from deep in the ground I do not have large pumping costs which have to be taken into consideration in terms of farm profitability.

There are going to be wars over water in the next 20 years as the looming shortages turn into reality.

Wyo

a CSA attempt ...

http://grubchico.org/csa.html

Partners ? ....

http://www.chicofoodnetwork.org/

Sharrpa,

1. Well I think that it just depends on the specific conditions that you have where you live. And one needs to consider how you need to farm now to make money and what will work later on if both situation are your focus. What kind of affluence does the 500 house suburban development have and where do they currently buy their produce. Could you sign up 50 of them to a CSA? Does the 3 acres have infrastructure? If all you have is bare land and no place to live, no shop, no storage, wash room, produce storage room, do you need deer fence, etc. The 10 acre place might have all of what you need. Or not. If you can sign up a full CSA in one general location then delivery to there is practical. Many options.

2. There are CSA's near me that deliver (some 700 shares) quite a distance from the farm. They charge A LOT! Some have on farm pickup (25 to 170 shares). This has it's own headaches. And some that have various pickup points that they drop off multiple shares and the customers drive there to get them. This is often done at farmers markets.

3. I have no idea, but I am sure that there are readers here that could give you a good estimate pretty quick. An alternative choice is to partner with a restaurant to collect their used cooking oil (maybe you trade veggies for it?). Then you make your biodiesel out of that. Lots of farmers are doing that.

4. I have not done this but it is done all the time. There are employment adds all the time for experienced farmers to take over large farm/CSA operations. I know of one operation where the owners do not farm but have hired a farm manager to run the farm and hire workers as needed. They provided the start up financing and land.

5. I'll pass that on to my spouse. I keep telling her that she will have to work her way up from basic farm worker just like all the rest! What's that progression again? Worker, 2nd mate, 1st mate (thinking in Tiger terms here :), partner, spouse. Something like that. I'm sure it will work out. Seriously though. Finding a partner that you are not related to or bound to in some fashion will be very hard if you do not have a thick resume to bring to the table. But if you have land and resources who knows.

Wyo

jmygann,

For 2009 I had near 13,000 feet of raised bedsd taht were either 3' or 4' wide. Approximately 2 full acres. I did not use all of those beds last year as some were fallow.

For next year I will have 3 1/4 acres of beds. All the beds will be reconfigured to a standard size so I do not have figures yet on the linear feet of beds.

By IRS counting methods I will have made money this year, but not much as I have large amounts of depreciation that I can still take against revenues.

But as a good guess (and assuming that you are paying for your own equipment) I think that it will take about 5 acres to make a solid livable income in my area. This will vary widely depending on where you live, what you can grow on your land, and the markets available to you. The typical engineering answer, "It depends."

It is always worth keeping in mind that farmers like myself can count income different than a lawyer. They can't eat the paperwork they produce while I can significantly feed myself.

Wyo

Great article from Wyoming, and great follow-up in the comments. It's really inspiring to hear the exchange of ideas. It's also reassuring to hear so many people thinking the same way about the changes coming up. I resonate strongly with what Wyoming is talking about.

I'm in semi-retirement and ended up in Louisiana, north of New Orleans. I have a passion to start farming and can't even find a farm that will take me on with no pay! There are some great organic farms here, but maybe they aren't interested in expanding or using an extra hand (although that's just really hard to imagine!) I did find a part-time internship at a vineyard, though. I will keep trying.

BTW, Wyoming, it sounds like you might have done some work with my dad. I grew up all over the world and the family settled on a couple acres in Great Falls after selling the house in McLean. My dad was an electronic engineer for the same company as you and was DDS&T before retiring. Sound familiar?

Rick Oliver

In terms of having enough food around when things get a bit hairy- I've been experimenting with taking apple cuttings on their own roots. This is in temperate England, where if i stick a foot long apple stick as thick as my finger into the ground, i will most times get a small tree taking root by the following spring..
This is an effective and easy way to cheaply propagate large numbers of apple trees without the expense and expertise of grafting.
it doesnt take long to put a few hundred cuttings into the ground, and a standard apple tree will produce a lot of apples after 5 years (100 - 250 kgs)
Placed around the countryside and given to friends i'm hoping this will build up an "edible infrastructure" in the surrounding landscape to feed people.
I am due to move to the states in the next few years and wonder if anyone else has experience with this? do you need supplemental heat to produce cuttings/ will they stand over one of your vermont winters?
this site has a good background to this technique: http://www.orangepippin.com/articles/own-roots.aspx

Thanks, interesting site.

BTW use .com not .org

I forgot to add that you might be interested in this blogger if you're not already familiar with his writing. He's put together some very thought-provoking charts of counties declared disaster areas by the USDA: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html

It isn't just trees. Its about everything. Birds,insects,bats,frogs,.............

we have finally started and gotten far enough along in killing the planet that those who live with nature can see it happening.

The 'canaries' have already left. In the woods that 'canary' is mushrooms. All but oyster mushrooms no long come up here. Oysters grow on dead wood so they do ok. Not a single morel can I find anymore. Not one.

All life is now IMO starting the dieoff we speak of here on TOD. Its just most TOD folks do NOT live in the country. They talk about it but they do not really understand it. Its just chatter and jabberwocky.

Airdale

hi gail just saw your post and wanted to say there is a direct link between too much nitrogen application and reduced copper levels - excess nitrogen blocks copper uptake aswell as other minerals- which help plants against moulds and other decomposing organisms.
Also there are people working to bring trees back to life so to speak, by using various trace element applications..after all most disease is malnutrition in one form of another..
http://suddenoaklifeorg.wordpress.com/

mgoodman,

Thanks, I already own it. I learn something from everything I read and there is good stuff in the book. However, I do not think that many of the thiings he goes over are valuable to me and he did not address many areas where I need assitance. Being an ex-engineer I am pretty familiar with the core of his message about tracking costs and figuring out what crops are the best money makers. But most farmers that I know already know this stuff without figuring it out in such ways. When you sell at farmers markets it hits you in the face straight up every day pretty much. None of the very successful farmers I know use his techniques. I also have a somewhat different agenda than Wiswall as you might have noted already so some of his information is more valuable in a past tense sense. It will not be as useful in the future. I learned more from his descriptions of his actual farming techniques than anything else.

Wyo