Outback Farm

Outback Farm, even though it had no name back then was an idea I came up with back around 2007. I was in NY at the time working as an owner/operator with a tri-axle dump truck. Work was getting slow, fuel prices and everything else except rates was going up and I was looking for a way to make some extra money.My plan at the time was to rent an acre of ground from a neighbor that was downsizing her operation but a few other things came up and I figured that I'd be better off in Pa where I had access to more resources. Now before I go any farther, I'm not someone that is tired of the workaday world and wanted a change in scenery, I spent most of my first 40 years on a working farm and I'm the 9th generation to farm land in Nescopeck Twp so I know the life and knew what I was getting into but I also have a good idea of what I'm doing when it comes to farming. I do have to admit though that I have always been a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy and really never had much of a plan until recently. I figured in the beginning that I could make an ok living on a couple acres of produce and a woodlot but in the past year I've really looked into sustainable farming and I'm pretty convinced that I can make more than a decent living off of the couple tillable acres that I have with time being the biggest investment. I mentioned Joel Salintin from Polyface farm, Will Allen from Growing Power and Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Institute of Australia before but I'll tell you if your not familiar with their work do yourself a favor and check out some of the things they are doing, it's pretty amazing stuff. In their world anyone with as little as a half acre or or less can feed a family, if you have a couple acres, you can do that plus have a good business besides. So what does that mean for Outback Farm? Well you can already see that I'm into produce and chickens for eggs. Hopefully by this fall I can be raising chickens for fresh meat. Down the road a year or so I'm figuring a 20x50 high tunnel greenhouse that I can raise greens almost year round, tomatoes and peppers by early June and then raise turkeys for fresh meat until November/December. And looking even farther ahead I might even get into selling compost. That's the plan lets hope it works.