3. The Farm
Today, I did a small thing, but a very big thing: I started the farm.
My plan, as it stands, is to create 50 foot long, 30 inch wide beds, in blocks of 10 for ease of organization and rotation. Today, I created 40 of these beds, and when I look at out the field, rather than feel elated at the work I’ve done, I feel defeated: there is so much more to do, and I am already incredibly behind in the season.
This time of year, I should be up to my elbows in plant starts of cabbage, broccoli, kale, and other cool-weather brassicas to set out this weekend. Instead, I have a collection of rapidly aging seeds that are somewhere in our garage among all the furniture we haven’t yet moved in, warm, wet days that are portents to a real spring, and 9 acres of cleared field sitting bare.
Granted, I have absolutely no plan to cultivate 9 acres into food, per se. Rather, my aim to to create a bio-diverse eco-system where once there were rows of corn and soybeans. I’ve already been greeted by some skeptical locals as they pop-in to ask what I’m doing with the field; invariably, their eyebrows shoot up beneath their caps when I say that I plan to cultivate on my own. They are too polite to tell me that I am a crazy person, but I get what those eyebrows mean.
Additionally, I plan to commit the ultimate sin against conventional, row crop farming: I am planting trees.
At the south west side of the farm, there will be an orchard and honeybee hives, along with rows of flowers for additional pollination (and beauty, duh!); at the north east corner, I am going to plant sugar maples for maple syrup. Both of these treed section will be about 1.5 acres each, so I’ll be “taking away” 3 acres of field that could be used for cultivation of crops. Yes, how DARE I?
Well, orchards are a great way to diversify my product, and they are wonderful places to home chickens and pigs. Plus, pollinators love a good fruit tree. The maple stand is obvious in its purpose, but it is also an excellent place for pigs and chickens, will prevent erosion in a sloping, wet-ish area on the property, provide shade and syrup (eventually) and even firewood in a generation, you know, if I’m still here come 2040.
In the center of the field will be the market garden and hopefully, hemp for CBD, but that’s a whole other post about federal laws, Indiana agriculture’s behind-the-times mentality, and a host of other road-blocks. There will also be more flowers, and woody cane fruits, like raspberries and blackberries.
One of these days, I’ll start keeping bees, get a high tunnel or two, a walk-behind tractor, some fencing, more seed, work on composting and soil amendments, get more chickens, poultry netting, geese, some kunekune pigs, build housing for the small livestock, and use cover crops to increase soil productivity. But for now, I will add more beds, plant those cool-weather crops this weekend and hope for the best, buy some small trees when I have an extra couple hundred dollars lying around, and remind myself to take it slow.
Just like Rome, a farm can’t be built in a day…