Thank you for the lift this morning Kollibri, I too have my garden soil showing signs I have done something right over the last couple decades. My farmstand opened for an eight week sweet corn succession yesterday. I haven’t used any diesel or gas tractors in several years. The corn crop is zero fossil fuel or standard NPK , mostly with a hoe. The gas one customer uses to drive here to the farmstand is more than what I used to produce the whole crop.
I also read your notes on grain production efforts on your coop 15 years ago. I am getting my act together with grain production, processing and milling and I think grains are pretty easy too. I have gone as far as pecking my own quern then growing and milling my own grains by hand in the field onto the threshing floor and then hand milled on the quern stone. After I sift the resulting flour through a #50 sieve the flour was light and free of all grit. Of course learning when to plant and how to harvest are a learning curve but it turns out grain is kinda easy IMO.
Acorns, grains, a small garden and some hens are really all it takes. And far easier than people imagine.
Wow. This is so well stated. I love how your prognostication about food production unfolds from the simple and gorgeous observation that this year's garden is the best you've ever had… which is AS IT SHOULD BE, you tell us, after inhabiting the same parcel and molding it over the years. Everything you say about industrial farming and suburban sprawl and how so few of us can understand the workings or the value of what once was common knowledge absolutely makes sense. It's sobering to read, but at the same time I thank you for writing this.
Thanks, Ruben! I'm glad it makes sense. Sometimes I spend so much time editing that by the time I publish I can't tell if if it is intelligible or just gobblygook.
Great piece Lynn Cady, very clearly expressed argument and sound as a sound thing is. Here I’m waiting/hoping for a reversal in the farm unification process that began a century ago and saw the erasure of the tyddynwy (smallholders) who were the backbone of the small, local communities. As the big farms become less and less viable and the need for local, small scale food production becomes a necessityq for families, I’m hoping authorities will finally see the value of low impact developments, or they will be ignored and people will just retake the land out of desperate need. Better to steer it if we can.
I really appreciate this piece, from start to finish. I've made many of the same depressing observations but share your hopes too.
Thanks for this comment, Kollibri. It's good to know someone else is thinking along the same lines
Thank you for the lift this morning Kollibri, I too have my garden soil showing signs I have done something right over the last couple decades. My farmstand opened for an eight week sweet corn succession yesterday. I haven’t used any diesel or gas tractors in several years. The corn crop is zero fossil fuel or standard NPK , mostly with a hoe. The gas one customer uses to drive here to the farmstand is more than what I used to produce the whole crop.
I also read your notes on grain production efforts on your coop 15 years ago. I am getting my act together with grain production, processing and milling and I think grains are pretty easy too. I have gone as far as pecking my own quern then growing and milling my own grains by hand in the field onto the threshing floor and then hand milled on the quern stone. After I sift the resulting flour through a #50 sieve the flour was light and free of all grit. Of course learning when to plant and how to harvest are a learning curve but it turns out grain is kinda easy IMO.
Acorns, grains, a small garden and some hens are really all it takes. And far easier than people imagine.
Wow. This is so well stated. I love how your prognostication about food production unfolds from the simple and gorgeous observation that this year's garden is the best you've ever had… which is AS IT SHOULD BE, you tell us, after inhabiting the same parcel and molding it over the years. Everything you say about industrial farming and suburban sprawl and how so few of us can understand the workings or the value of what once was common knowledge absolutely makes sense. It's sobering to read, but at the same time I thank you for writing this.
Thanks, Ruben! I'm glad it makes sense. Sometimes I spend so much time editing that by the time I publish I can't tell if if it is intelligible or just gobblygook.
Great piece Lynn Cady, very clearly expressed argument and sound as a sound thing is. Here I’m waiting/hoping for a reversal in the farm unification process that began a century ago and saw the erasure of the tyddynwy (smallholders) who were the backbone of the small, local communities. As the big farms become less and less viable and the need for local, small scale food production becomes a necessityq for families, I’m hoping authorities will finally see the value of low impact developments, or they will be ignored and people will just retake the land out of desperate need. Better to steer it if we can.