Some ideas on sustainable farming

For the past few years I've been planting a 2 acre market garden that so far I have been able do without any chemicals or commercial fertilizer and aside from some weather issues and not being able to make enough compost to suit me, it's gone ok. To me, any kind of sustainable venture needs to include growing vegetables, any vegetables that you grow will save money at the market plus you know how your food is grown and, if all goes well it should give you some cash besides, it really is about the same as growing money. Back in my Grandfathers time it was called truck farming,I'm guessing because the vegetables were put on a truck and hauled to market and I like that name. There is a lot of thought that needs to go into something like this and if you get it started, you will probably be constantly tweaking to come up with a combination that works for you and that is the most important part, making it work for you. Education is your best weapon here and I'll be including links here or you can go to one of my Facebook pages and find links to articles that I've used in the past but the bottom line is that you really need to figure out what will work for you and then start working at putting that plan in motion. One of the biggest problems with truck farming is that most of the work happens over a couple months in the summer so if your going to make this a venture that you can live off of then you need to spread it out to as close to year round as possible. Most of the months from April to October will be covered but adding crops like garlic which around here is planted in the fall or mushrooms like oyster or shiitake that will grow with little input  from you once they are started will help spread out the labor some and in the case with mushrooms, give you a crop to harvest in the spring. I've mentioned chickens before and if you can build a market for eggs and meat chickens, they can add some extra late fall/early winter income or extra spring income that can get you through the winter and give you the added benefit of eggs,meat and fertilizer. Now those chickens will have to be fed all winter even if production is down but by starting hens laying at different times in the year you should be able to keep some laying over winter plus if you can free range them in the garden through the fall plus grow a late season garden of mostly greens that will usually get you into winter at least and a fodder growing system that will keep feed costs down for the laying hens in the winter months it is workable. Looking for new ideas and figuring how to make them work in your favor is your best bet for coming out on top of any business venture and sustainable farming is no different.

Fodder growing experiment

I've been working on an experiment with growing fodder the past few days, my normal routine is to soak my wheat seed in a bucket with water and bleach for 12hrs then put the seed in a bucket with drain holes for 48hrs, watering it every 12hrs then traying it at the end of the 48hrs for another 36 hrs before feeding it. In the pictures that is the first picture.The middle picture is wheat seed that was put straight into a stainless steel tray right from a 12hr soak. The ss tray has a flat bottom on it where the 1020 trays are ribbed to give them some extra stength. What I wanted to see was if I can get better germination rates with the flat bottom tray and if there was any benefit to traying the seed for the whole time and eliminating the 48hrs in the bucket. So far it looks promising as the last picture shows, the seed that skipped the bucket step is 12hrs behind the other but already has more roots and a lot more sprouts than the seed that came out of the bucket, the next 12-24 hrs should tell a lot. The one issue that I am having a little bit is just a tiny bit of white mold in the seed in the metal trays and at this point I'm not sure why but it is a managable problem so I'm going to keep forging ahead.

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.