We live on the 6-7 acre heart of what was once a thriving several-hundred-acre family farm (not our family) in Tennessee. Much of it has been badly used or neglected and the vast rich acres sloughed off to pay debts until all that remains is a small and scrubby sort of sterility..
I've no ambition to re-aquire hundreds of acres and manage them in the mercenary agro-industrial way. I do want to get our little plot, and along with it, the idea of a small family-sized farm breathing again.
Here's where we are, and some of the ideas we're using
Neglect - Walking the land
Scrubbiness - Working the land
What, where, when, interwoven!? - Permaculture
How?!? - Assorted (mostly organic) agricultural/ gardening tactics:
Soil re-building: Rotations - "rests", cover crops - green manures, chickens - composting, pastures - sods, mulches - nutrient capture.
Structures: Pattern language, Permaculture, Pre-industrial agricultural design of all eras
Sustenance: Kitchen garden, Square-foot gardens, Eternal yield main gardens, Orchards and Forest Gardens, Yards and permanent pastures, wilderness reserves
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(Note: Each of these individual items will probably become individual posts or perhaps even a series of posts... For now here's some fundamentals on how they originate/interlink)
- Neglect - Walking the land
Long before we had any idea what we wanted to do here the land was well on it's way to becoming a jungle. Far too overgrown for anything short of a bulldozer.
Our first action was hacking paths around the perimeter, then into subdivisions, and finally to the interesting points and plants we found along the way. It wasn't any fun, especially since we did it during the summer (so the leaves and flowers would help in identification). Winter is a much better and more natural time for this. It's when land clear and woodlot work was traditionally done, I think.
Afterwards, we began using the paths more and more, not just for mere utility access (which was all I'd intended), but for recreation, exercise, and study. During these walks vines got clipped, trees marked, deadfall branches dragged to the burnpile, naturalized wildflowers and ferns found, sterile or poorly draining and other problem areas found upfront, and plans and possibilities began to coalesce.
- Scrubbiness - Working the land
There's an old proverb: "The best fertilizer is the shadow of the gardener"
In the absence of a perfect plan I've had to just started doing. As the song goes.. you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. After a while things just start settling and fitting into place. So valuable trees get cleared around, poison ivy cautiously removed, excess leaves twigs and branches from one area get shifted to an area that needs mulch (and stable humus) the particularities of seasons and soils became more familiar
- What?, where!?!, when?!? interwoven!!?? - Permaculture
We're still working on all the components/ingredients that we want to include in our farmlet. At 2 acres poorly and disjointedly used (out of ~6) we have the land and resources for more. It's finding the best individual "parts" and fitting them into a functioning whole where we come up short. In the absence of even a modest supply of overall-wearing coots and codgers (the traditional reservoir of reliable local how-to) the biggest help has been the agricultural renaissance of permaculture.
How?!? - Assorted (mostly organic) agricultural/ gardening tactics:
Soil re-building: Rotations - "rests", cover crops - green manures, chickens - composting - permanent pastures, and leys - sods - mulches - nutrient capture.
Structures: Pattern language, Permaculture, Pre-industrial agricultural design of all eras
Sustenance: Kitchen garden, Square-foot gardens, Eternal yield main gardens, Orchards and Forest Gardens, Yards and permanent pastures, wilderness reserves