Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I'm expecting the NWO to become kind of officially/obviously dictatorial in 2009-2010 timeframe (implementation of the codex alimentarius on 1/1/10, among other things, suggests that timeframe to me (and I can't believe someone was planning to poison me to death before I was even born)). So, we're planning on buying a farm. I've done a little WWOOFing (volunteering on organic farms), read a little permaculture, helped people with building of bale houses, that kind of stuff. Just looking at the property market here and I can see half million square meter farms for sale for the $100,000 mark. I think that within the next 2 to 3 years, housing will perhaps halve in value, gold will perhaps double in value, at which point we'd be able to buy such a farm outright, no debt :applause_

What I'm thinking is to set up a little permaculture system to feed ourselves (partner and child), which I'm guessing won't take half a million square meters! I've read in one of Mollison's books suggestions of a 7 plot rotation, so am thinking something along these lines, with a polytunnel or 2 as well. Then perhaps sheep on the rest of the land, following a foggage sorta system. A duck or 5 for eggs and slug control in the polytunnels, too. Probably some solar/water/wind energy system, composting toilet too.

Any of you guys done anything like this? Any sage advice for an IT contractor wannabe farmer?

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Well, I don't really have much advice to dispense as I don't have any personal experience in this area other than a few years of organic gardening. My plan is pretty similar to what you have said. I am very worried about Codex as these guidelines would make pretty much all commercial food toxic. If you don't have the ability to grow your own food by then or have arrangements with a local farmer you will be out of luck and probably suffer health problems because of it.

There is no way that I am going to eat that garbage. I have been eating a mostly organic diet for the past 2 years and I feel great. Not going back.

Do you know what a half million square meters works out to in hectares or acres seems like this must be quite a large area of land you are looking at?

One thing you might want to think about is stocking up on is a variety of organic seeds even before you get your land. They may be harder to come by and more expensive in the future. If you plan to have that farm in 2-3 years they should still be mostly viable. If you can grow different varieties to see which ones suit your needs best in the mean time, could save you a lot of trouble once you actually get started. Also learn to save your own seed.

Good luck.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

thanks for the thoughts. agreed with the seeds!

500,000 square meters is about 100 acres, which is a whole lot bigger than i'd imagined. the property is about a third forest, if i remember right. which is nice. ideally i'd like a source of running water to power a little turbine, too.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

My father in law retired to a 2.5 acre place in Oregon. He lived the next thirty years there until he died about ten years ago or so.

His garden was about 1 full acre, broken into three stepped pads. He raised chickens, gueina hens (don't know why) and geese. Geese are the best 'watch dogs' anyone could have. They don't like ANY body coming on 'their domain' and will set up quite a racket if anyone tries to.

But YOU have to be listening for them or it doesn't do any good. Like my father in law, my hearing is slowly starting to fade, so they are not a good choice for me.

Heritage seeds are a good suggestion. Go out and find the "Have More" book written by Robinson. Written in the late forties/early fifties. Great book with everything you need to know to set up your own 'hobby' farm. Ie, you don't want to become a farmer, but you want to HAVE MORE, eat better, secure your families future. THIS BOOK will be of great value. And though the advice is over fifty years old, it's as valid today as it was the day it was written. I can't remember if they mention land/house prices in the book, but you can ignore that one little piece of info. Here is a link to Amazon...

http://www.amazon.com/Have-More-Plan...e=UTF8&s=books



Here's three more from Amazon that I might get myself. The first one is "Five acres and Independance" by Kains...

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Acres-Ind...581686-3932459

The second one is "Successful Small scale farming: An Organic Approach" by Schwenke ...

http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Sma...581686-3932459

The third one is "The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live it" by Seymor and Headon ...

http://www.amazon.com/Self-sufficien...581686-3932459

Hope that helps.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I heard a fascinating story on NPR last week.

The author was talking about how messed up the state of farming was. How turning livestock onto feed lots instead of grazing had also turned Iowa into a corn factory to essentially feed the cows on the lots, and now Iowa was a net food importer, including the type of corn humans eat. And how we all are now essentially eating two kinds of foods, corn and soy, in all their myriad forms, including animals via the corn feed lots.

He discusses how this type of farming creates huge reliance on fossil feuls, while at the same time made the farmer a slave to the corn markets, the banks, etc.

The very interesting part was he studied a farm that used what he called "polyphase farming" which is probably a fancy name for how our grandparents farmed. They had a pretty strict rotation scheme of all kinds of anmals and crops, but most importantly, it required very little to zero extrernal inputs - no tons of fossil feul based fertilizer, etc. Everything consumed the by-products of the other things.

Even more importantly, it provided a white-collar level salary for two people and paid for their two farmhands. It also produced healthier foods.

I know zero about farming, but just listening to this kind of stuff had me ready to go buy some land and some pigs.

You can probably find this on the NPR site, and it sounds like he has a current book out about it. I forget the name of it, but it shouldn't be hard to find.

LG :smokin:

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

From the research I have done I can say that there is still money to be made in farming but you have to break with how things are normally done. Most farmers are not willing to take that risk and stay trapped in a system designed only to benefit TPTB.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

We get our beef from a friends brother in Nebraska. He grows heritage corn and feeds that to his small herd of cattle. His corn only gets water. THAT'S IT. His beef have no diseases and get no steroids or any other growth hormones.

Best beef we've ever eaten. This farmer is a small operation that grows other crops on a rotational basis as well. VERY SMALL basis though. Enough to feed himself and a few other families in a crunch. He makes his living via this and swapping his skills for things he needs. While I have no desire to live in Nebraska, seems like a life worth looking at.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

For city folks-

I have a hard time finding pastured beef
in supermarkets. Trader Joe's has it
sometimes. We have slowed way down
eating beef these days, but by coincidence,
we BBQ some last night.. In the past,
I have bought mail order from Lasater Grasslands,
a lil pricey, but worth it if you eat a lot of beef.

BTW I connected a cheap Radio Shack wired
remote thermometer to my upright freezer
which is in the garage. I can see what temp
it is from the kitchen. This means I have a good
chance of being alerted to a malfunction before
everything thaws. Also I won't have to open
the door to check its temp during a power outage.

I see that most remote thermometers are wireless
these days. I think I'd try and find one with
the sensor on the end of a long thin wire.

dtnwn

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Consider Japanese quail for eggs. for every dollar of feed you get 1.5 times as much egg from Japanese quail as you do from hens. they are hardy and begin laying eggs within a month from birth. males get full grown in 1.5 months for meat. females eat turkey starter and the males eat much anything like chickens

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

great info again, more thanks

mollison of permaculture fame suggests aquaculture as another possibility. will check out the japanese quail.

it sounds as if 100 acres is going to miles more than i need. i can for sure live with the idea of owning some forest, as i figure it's a possible place to shoot moose and to maintain some sort of income in the long run.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Put up maple trees. no one has gone broke yet selling maple syrup

as for japanese quail. the info on the net is sparse at best. they are not difficult to keep. you need to make your own cages. I actually ordered 2 cd roms full of info (it is in russian) from a guy in Siberia that grows them. Russians love quail.

I am planning on translating most important parts and will do a tutorial when i actually get some quail once I move into a new house

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

lasagna gardening is a good no till way of gardening

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

lasagna farming? i should google, i know.

foggage is interesting too. "developed" by on an old english guy (dead now, farm almost went bust upon his death, then there was an article in the guardian about it, people donated money, now it's up and running again under one of his kids), it's basically leave the animals entirely to their own devices until you eat them. no shelter, no food, no chemicals. yields are a little lower, costs basically zero aside from the land.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societ...801956,00.html

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Uranian, among a million other occupations I actually was an IT contractor myself and have done what you're intending to do. Most of everything I know about farming I learned from a family that escaped the Khmer Rouge, I believe it was about 10 acres they were actively farming Asian vegetables on and they turned $4,000US per week. I sheared some woolies down in NZ, too. I like sheep but they're no good for my part of the world. Where do you live? That will have a lot of impact on what you should do.

In general here's a little advice, don't count on gold doubling and farms devaluing in the next two years to get your place. If anything buy your farm and then leverage precious metals investments against your mortgage, it gives you an exit strategy plus it will likely take you at least 1 year to bring your operation fully online.

As you said, 100 acres is overkill for you and your family, unless you're trying to ranch on very poor quality land. Assuming you have water and reasonably good soil 5 acres will do all you need and give you a surplus. If you're at all clever you should be able to feed your family and have a cash crop and run other proffitable ventures off a 5 acre parcel. 5 was my minimum target but I settled on 3.5 acres because of the location and rich, black soil.

Here are a few things to consider when looking at land.

* Is there a livable house on it already? It makes things a lot easier, even if you intend to build your own place eventually.

* Does it have good soil? If the land has been left sitting take a look at the weeds, if they're stunted and scraggly nothing else will grow there. If they've grown vigorously then you're set.

* Does it have trees? You will want some large trees to shade your animals, yourself and even some vegetables. If the trees bear fruit or a nut that you can either eat yourself or feed to your animals that is a huge bonus. I have some beautiful ancient oaks that drop the sweetest acorns, appreciated by both me and my chickens.

* Does it have water? Rivers or streams are good, also wells and large ponds. I've got a well that feeds from an aquifer that feeds a large river a mile away, plus a half acre pond and frequent rains. You can work around poor soil with hydroponics and aquaculture, but there is no substitute for water.

* What are the neighbors like?

* Are there any things nearby that may be a bonus or objectionable? A hospital is good, a chemical plant is bad, wilderness is great!

I have both chickens and ducks. If you free range the ducks there is little difference between the two in terms of the effort you'll put in but too many ducks will quickly ruin an artificial or natural pond. It seems they poop more and are a little smellier, too. Chickens are the easiest animals in the world to raise, I believe. I don't know what breeds are available in your area but I heartily reccomend the mighty Rhode Island Red, they're a hardy meat and eggs breed that will raise their own young, forage for themselves and were once used for the commercial brown egg production so they're good layers. I'm going to experiment with Infidel's quail someday, emus too. The main benefit I see to ducks is mosquito control, since I live in an area of swamp and woods far from anywhere they spray for mosquitos I'm hoping mine will earn their keep.

The chicken tractor is the best thing that has ever happened to raising chickens. I house my chickens in a large tractor do to predators, but let them out to get some exercise and extra forage every day. If you set up two gardens you can tractor the chickens over one for a year while the other grows crops. It rests and rejuvenates your soils with some of the best manure you can get while simultaneously keeping the land productive. Chicken coops, immobile runs and battery cages have got to be the worst things that ever happened to raising chickens. I would excuse the chicken coop as a practical necessity in climates that get too cold for chickens in the winter.

I'll second what Wallew said about geese, nothing gets passed them. A lady who lived behind me used to keep two of them. If you can handle the noise they are great watch animals. A little known fact is that the greatest guard animal on land is a goose with a laser on its head.

A garden cart is very handy for all kinds of chores. I would avoid getting a tractor as a small operator. If you need extra muscle, hitch up some kind of suitable livestock. I'm looking at either training a dairy cow to tolerate chores or maybe a donkey. Apparently some people have used goats as certain breeds get quite large. I was suprised to discover there are goats that weigh into the hundreds of pounds and people have used goats to pull small carriages they ride in! I hate goat milk, the meat is pretty good though and they're very hardy. I don't know if I'll ever keep any myself but people have great success with them in my area.

As a tech you should be good at troubleshooting and problem solving. Apply those skills to your farm project. Do things the easy, natural way and you'll have a much easier time. It only takes me a few minutes to service a given chicken tractor, and that's only every other day.

I love aquaculture and hydroponics. I plan on expanding heavily into both, and they are symbiotic and stackable, allowing you to utilize a small space to produce a lot of food. As I have often mentioned here you can pump your fish water through your hydroponic system to give your plants a natural feed while filtering it for your fish. Let the water fall from a height of a couple feet when it re-enters the tank and it will oxygenate the water as well as prevent it from becoming stagnant.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

This is a good book btw

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Acres-Ind.../dp/0486209741

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

www.dirtdoctor.com is a good organic site

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

REV127-

Do you process those acorns for your chickens?

There's a row of street tree (Engleman?) oaks
a few blocks from my house that must have a million
acorns under them. We brought a few bags home to
feed our backyard scrub jays. You have to process
them for human consumption right?
How about for chickens?
_____________________________________________

Just did a google. It must be a "mast" year for
these particular oaks.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

The only processing I do for my chickens right now is either A) accidentally stepping on them and cracking them open, or B) deliberately cracking them open. They only like the acorns that are well browned and at dried, I suppose ripened is the word.

I've tried acorns on numerous occasions from many different trees over my life. Most were so bitter I never tried the same tree again. These are sweet enough I can eat them straight out of the shell. Otherwise leeching and boiling has worked for me. I think it all has to do with the soil and the tree.

The squirrels eat the acorns all day, and the boar eat them out in the woods, I know people can eat them and I haven't felt unsettled from eating them unprocessed so I presume they're safe for the chickens. My only concern is whether or not some bitterness might build up in the birds when it comes time to eat them but I'm viewing this as a wintertime bonus feed, not a staple. They mostly eat plants and bugs, plus some storebought feed that will soon be replaced by feed grown on site. I'm going to start asking around to see if anybody else has been feeding their chickens acorns for a while and how they do on it. The squirrels and pigs do not seem to suffer in taste from eating them, even off the bitter trees in other areas I have lived. Come to think of it the turkeys were fine, too. I reckon a turkey must be quite similar to a chicken for this purpose.

My big oaks must have dropped hundreds of pounds of acorns this year. I'm intending to gather up as much as I can and store them in bins, of course I'll cull any that are split, bored or show other signs of dammage. Next time I'm going to be ready with tarps or sheets under the trees to funnel them directly into the bins.

My wife tells me that oaks only develop acorns every so many years, but it seems to me the oaks have dropped them every year. I don't know if that's got anything to do with climate or species or what.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

REV127-

Thanks much for the info.

There are so many acorns on the ground
I was thinking of bagging some in mylar
and freezing to kill any bugs.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Infidel, that's only if you pay for your feed. My father in law went to his local grocer, who saved all the produce for him that he would have normally thrown out. If it was a little rotted, the chickens swooped to eat those parts first. He never paid for his chicken feed. And the eggs were much larger than all the other egg sellers around him. I guess them being fed greens instead of grain was a good thing. The geese loved the greens as well. I never saw the guinea hens eat anything as they always just sat in the trees near his coop. Never could figure out what they were good for.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

We have guienes and they are great watch birds. The best thing about them down here in TX is that they love grasshoppers. Big problem down here. They keep my garden free of them for the most part

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Honey says their chickens in central Texas
also loved grasshoppers. She also says
Guinea Fowl are good mousers. They don't
eat them, they just kill them.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Ever hear of Aquaponics?

http://www.aquaponics.com/

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

It looks like my idea has been thought of before, at least that means it's a good one. Aquaponics is a lot more catchy than food unit. Mine is still stackable, though, and it inputs bugs for fishfood.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

The permaculture concept works great!
On good soil you can feed your family easily on 1 acre if you just have chickens for meat and eggs. If you want beef or a milk cow then you need to know the cow/calf carry capacity of your land to know what you need to support 1 cow/calf unit.

Fruiting trees, vines and bushes, hens to clean up weeds, bugs, turn the soil and fertilize it and give eggs and meat, and a big garden, root cellar and canning equipment and you are set.

I like pecan trees for shade and nuts, but they are slow growers.

A lot depends on your climate and soil. But I second the opinion to get at least a small place now. We can feed ourselves on our double town lot and have proved it experimentally, though variety is somewhat limited. For instance, citrus is way too much trouble here. But peaches do great.

Seed and tools now and store the seed carefully. Ours is sealed from moisture in plastic in the fridge to protect viability.

But if you got what you can afford now you can get your fruiting plants to bearing age and get the design working. It takes some experimentation to get everything growing where it is happy and the symbiosis going smoothly between the hens, humans, garden and fruit. And to learn what pests you have to keep out. Raccoons love to eat poultry and corn and snakes love eggs, for example. Birds like your fruit and berries. I think I am going to get some netting we get so much fruit pecking.

If you can afford 5 acres you can grow food to sell or trade. Working land by hand you really do not need a lot. 5 acres of woods would give you wood plus meat for the pot if you hunt. Then if you want milk, butter and cream and beef, you need enough pasture. But just a big lot.. 1/2 to 1 acre and you won't go hungry.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

:bowdown: to all the great and useful replies. One thing I hadn't thought of at all, which you all seem to be way ahead of me on, is making an income from such a project. My thoughts have centred around just feeding my family. The stuff I've read on end of the dollar and its replacement via Ameros and RFID chips has led me to suspect that at some point, should I refuse to be "chipped like a dog" (well said, Mr Russo!), that I wouldn't be able to buy/sell at some point in the not terribly distant future, hence I've been focussing on feeding my family. However, even if that isn't just some paranoid delusional vision, barter of excess goods from the garden is a good possibility. I still don't like the idea of debt associated with the project; as has been said, I won't count on gold doubling and housing halving, and will leverage my PMs if I must, but I'll give it a year to see how we go on this front. Just reading elsewhere that the codex's next stage of implementation in the EU is due for the end of next year (remarkably, the European Food Supplements Directive, which is the EU version of the codex, was actually kicked back after a legal case within the EU - this after a French woman was arrested for selling half a gram of vitamin C in 2003 - on the basis that it overrode national sovereignty), so that's another perhaps relevant date.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

It's all about where your land is. No need for specifics if you don't want, but continent/latitude would be nice, perhaps rainfall or other weather specifics, like +5,000ft high desert or whatever.

In temperate growing lands you need 1acre/person for greenstuffs. This does not include your staples, being grain and such. In temperate climates, you also need 1acre/cord of hardwood. That's truly degree-day specific, and could be from 1cord to 11+ cords per winter, ranging in N Am from Texas to Quebec.

So what do you have? 1 acre for garden per person, 1 for grains per person, 1 for wood, 1 for house, 1 for other things (chickens, garages, barns, ponds).

Farming in this way isn't going to make you any money. It will put you at poverty unless you can eke out cash from another source, like logs, construction, rentals, etc. The system is presently set to squeeze the commodity people (as opposed to the money people) and that means everything you take for granted now, like going to the store and buying clothes, shingles, gas, plastic, parts, is all dead-money lost. That's a very large change and I hope you're up to it. It can go well, especially as commodities are beginning a 15 year rise, but you should be forewarned it's the hardest, sometimes least rewarding work you can get. You have to really like and believe in what you're doing. I couldn't name the families broken up over this in the last "Back to the land" movement in N. America. That said, you can easily compare the health of families and food and values in the cities vs the voluntary country. Both are sick, but one is far sicker than the other.

It's not idyllic unless you have a trust fund to draw from. I root for your gold investments to provide you with this. Farming and independents will be the salvation of us all at some point.

Let us know your expected conditions so we can be of more service. Many here are farmers, cattlemen and orchardists, as well as survivalists (in the sense of eating acorns/game/etc.)

TS

A Simple Caveat

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I think that's a bit of negative view, Simpleton. The difficulty of the work and land required are directly relative to your methods, proffitability is directly relative to what you produce and how you market it. You don't even have to be selling meat, eggs, dairy or produce, you can do other things on your land for money, like making tradable goods. I would agree that a lot of people do not seem to know how to manage what land they have, or have unrealistic business models and those sorts are failure prone for sure.

Those are real concerns though, and why I'd encourage anyone considering an undertaking such as this to get started now rather than later. There is a learning curve involved and it's better to get over the hump when you're not under any pressue. One should come up with clear goals and workable methods of reaching them before tacking the project.

Weather conditions are definately a huge factor, I am grateful for my subtropical clime.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

in terms of geography, we're currently in the frozen north of europe, about 60 degrees north. it is unseasonally warm here now, we haven't had snow yet. i wonder about going further south (perhaps northern spain) because of this, as i suspect the hungry gap this far north is going to be significantly longer than at more reasonable latitudes. it seems that $2000/acre is a reasonable estimate for farmland in europe, although it gets cheaper if you buy in the 100s of acres. i'm trying to persuade a few friends to join us in this little adventure, as a network of support will be very useful, especially if we end up in a foreign country. if that's at all successful (a few seem interested), we might be lucky enough to end up with a big patch of land somewhere.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Concerning making money off of a modest amount of land. You are not going to make much if you are trying to sell ordinary produce or staple crops. Save those things for yourself. You have to specialize. For example you could grow specialty crops like herbs, mushrooms (organic of course), or rare livestock. for these things you sort of have to stay ahead of the curve. If there is a lot of money to be made in something eventually you will have competition.

You could also look into producing value added products. For example you might grow your own cucumbers and turn them into pickles yourself. This way you are getting paid for both the vegetable and your time spent canning. I have seen home made organic pickles in a 1 quart jar going for about $10. You might set up a system where you sell only direct to local consumers so you get full retail value for your products. A greenhouse can produce a good income off of a small piece of land.

Remember if you are pretty much self sufficient,you don't have to make tons of money because you will be spending much, much less. Just a few ideas.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

The nice thing about having a little land is that it opens up so many opportunities to be self sufficient. Damn, there are so many neat things you can do with it. IMO, probably the most important thing is as Thorogrim and other(s) have suggested is to get hold of the best quality non-hybrid seeds you can find, and keep your annual crops coming out of this original source. That way, you're slowly acclimating your crops to your particular micro climate, and you only have to purchase your seed once. You can breed your plants for the qualities you deem are the most important (earliest;frost resistant; best tasting; best storage qualities, etc.). Commercial seed companies have some nefarious plans in mind to control the food supply, and people holding a safe seed supply may be possessing the most important item of all, next to water. It might make a good side business of some kind,too, as well as a great barter item.
REV127 probably sums up most of the important points. Good water, trees, and soil are huge. Neighbors, too, can make all the difference how you feel about what you are doing. There is one item not often talked about, and that is problems with wildlife of every kind, from powder post beetles to deer, and maybe larger, like bears. Many problems I've had have come from the critters. It never ceases to amaze me with what they can do. I agree you don't need a heckuva large place to do these things, either.5 acres would suffice for most. The biggest problem of all is the fact there are so many damned people developing the land that it's all becoming one urban jungle, and to me that's like the end to all real civilisation.

Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

I have been getting ready to start seeds for my garden next year. I have been using a product for the past five or six years called Sonic Bloom. It works wonderfully on my home garden.

Last year, due to health issues, I didn't start seeds like I ALWAYS do. So I went out and purchased all the garden plants I would plant. Two problems with this.

The first problem was, just because the plant SAYS it's Habenero pepper, doesn't mean it actually IS Habenero pepper. I got four plants that said they were Habs, but turned out to be what appeared to be Indian Hots. Not a big deal, but certainly NOT what I was hoping for.

Second problem was the plants I purchased were not treated with Sonic Bloom from the seed. When I start plants from seed, once I planted the plants in the ground, I stop using Sonic Bloom figuring I had done all I could. ANYWAY, I digress.

The store bought plants that had no Sonic Bloom treatment did not grow nearly as well and produced about half the fruit. My wife and a neighbor asked, "Why are your plants so 'short' this year. Last year they were AT LEAST two to three feet taller." Yeah, and they produced a lot more as well (my side note).

I use this example because it's happened to me. So I started perusing the Sonic Bloom website ( www.sonicbloom.com ) and found that the inventor, Dan Carlson had purchased a Walnut farm that had been in production since 1917. Then Dan bought it in 1989.

Here are two stories/links to visit so you can see for yourself.

The first link is a story written by the Star Tribune called "Green Acres". In this article, the author of the article writes :

"Retired chiropractor Bryan Zins agree. The 6,000 black walnuts trees on his 32 acre Blackwood Farms near Delano have been under constant Sonic Bloom treatment since they were planted 10 years ago. While untreated walnuts of that age would be expected to have diameters of about 3 inches, Zins' trees have grown to 9-inch diameters. Plus, they're bearing fruit years ahead of schedule and of amazing size - walnuts the size of oranges Zins says. "With walnut as a wood selling at about $1,000 per inch [18-inch diameter], the growth in my trees last year alone was worth $4 million. These trees are better than a 401k plan."

http://www.sonicbloom.com/StarTribune.htm

The second link is the story about Dan Carlson and HIS walnut farm. In this link, it says:

"Also, when Dan started using Sonic Bloom on the farm, the leaves were the size of his pointer finger. Now the seedling leaves are the size of the palm of his hand. The larger the leaves the larger the fruit and the faster the tree grows.

These trees and seedling are growing 500% faster than normal. Normally a black walnut trees grows 3/10ths of an inch in diameter a year. Ours grow 1.56 inches a year. So a tree that takes 50 to 80 years and can be worth $10,000 to 20,000 each, can now grow to maturity in 15 to 17 years. 250 trees an acre equals a lot of money (assumes tree spacing of 10 x 18 feet; close spacing makes the trees compete for sunlight and grow tall and straight)."

http://www.walnutseedlings.com/

So, perhaps getting that 100 acres might not be such a bad idea after all. Have a decent garden for self sufficency and then plant half of the remainder in a nut orchard. You won't be disappointed. Consider it this way. 250 trees per acre. Say you only plant 50 acres in trees. That's 12,500 trees. While they are growing for that 15 - 20 years they will be producing bushel on bushel of walnuts (or pecans or ... well, you get the idea) that is money in the bank. 15 - 20 years down the road, when the trees are 18 inches in diameter and you decide to cut them down and sell the hardwood, you will gross $125M (250t X 50a X 10000d - number of trees per acre x number of acres planted X minimum dollar amount you could collect per tree - this figure may be only half of what they are worth). SOMEBODY PLEASE CHECK MY MATH. I've run these numbers six times and it always comes up $125M. As you cut them down, you restart saplings so you can start the process all over again.

I grant you there will be costs involved to get the trees to this point, but I am unaware of ANY agriculture plant that will make this amount of money in this timeframe. AND this doesn't count the walnuts you could sell every year. I can't put a dollar amount to that, because I've got no idea what walnuts sell for.

Here is a link to the Sonic Bloom site that gives thirty eight articles written about their products.

http://www.sonicbloom.com/Published.htm

Hope this will help in making your decisions.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

You've got me on European advice. Weather has been getting volatile there however, with hurricanes in Norway, tornados in London, and 40c weather in England--enough so they are starting wine and olives. It's also populated.

I don't know if it's possible, but perhaps Prague and other eastern areas are less populated and more rugged? These things are very specific to one's personal tastes and reasons for moving. My impulse is to stay north, or towards the familiar, but one cannot tell if the Gulf Stream will continue as it has. I recall that throughout the world, the end is seen as fire. Except one place: Scandinavia. There the end of the world is in ice. Very interesting. Maybe it means nothing.

One excellent thing is that France maintains high-cuisine farming, and places like Belgium have high-intensity cold-weather methods down to a science.

A book to look for is "New Organic Grower" and "4 Season Growing" by Eliot Coleman. But his knowledge seems largely to be translated from his European counterparts. Again, he shows that in Maine (which is going to be akin to Scotland/Norway) that you can grow whatever you need.

Posters are right: specialize. Farmers often work harder and not smarter by growing 3x the quantity when if they specialized they could grow less at 3x the price. Straw mushrooms, Oak and birch mushrooms, good example. You could get your cash from a small, controllable crop at a high price for your care, instead of a low price made up via your double-hours. Then the vegetable part could be for your own leisure.

One thing I think is overlooked is trees, which require far less work in my opinion than field crops. You could do fruit, chestnuts, hazels, etc, but creating a niche market where YOU are the local supplier of some oddity would be the ideal, because despite what they tell you, farming is largely about marketing, because anyone can grow and so few customers can tell the difference unless you educate them.

I have to stand by the difficulty of farm life, being familiar with most states/provinces as being utterly wiped out, to the level of growing rabbits for food, like say, Poland, or what you see in "Roger and Me". I am pleased that things are not as bad in some areas, parts of the south are a bit less downtrodden, but that's not been my experience. In the north it's been generations since a farm opened instead of closed, or farmers could afford even a roof for the house or barn. It's tighter than you could imagine, for longer than you can believe.

Good luck.

TS

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

wallew, interesting concept, the sonic bloom one, i've never seen anything like it. thanks for the links.

lots of comments upon the wisdom of growing a cash crop, seems a good idea. running out of thanks on this thread :)

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Learn about bees and beekeeping because much of what you are going to
want to grow is going to require pollination. I think people would be surprised at how much a few hives can add
to a healthy self sufficient lifestyle or wealth in a more commodity based economy.

bees produce food in the form of honey, pollen,bee larvae (havent tried this yet but is very popular in some countries):puke:
also propolis and royall jelly are considered foods or health suppliments.

they produce fuel in the form of beeswax (this is valuable right now for candles) and ethanol can easily be produced from honey
even with simple home aparatus although it is currently not legal to run your own distillery (for some stupid reason).

medicine in the form of bee stings (yes people realy sting themselves on purpose for arthritus I think) propolis,royall jelly
alcohol (ethanol). aparently just eating RAW honey helps with alergies because of the pollen it contains. honey has been
used for hundreds of years to fight infections in injuries.there are also many soaps,balms that use beeswax.
MEAD.:beer: :beer:

wax and propolis can also bee used as sealants, lubricant or glues.

The bees themselves will increase the quality of soil when they die and discard debris from the hive.
bees are a favored food of fish and many other animals that we could consume (dont think they go well with ducks)

Yes there is a catch
THE CATCH IS KEEPING THEM ALIVE without buying shares in bayer.
better learn how to do it now.

Re: Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

There is no way that black walnut trees are worth anything near that. You may get 1 in 10,000 trees that rate that good for veneer cut. Orchard trees will never acheive a veneer cut--highly figured wood comes from trees that have been highly stressed and slowly grown with years of drought, floods, injuries, overcrowding, etc.

On the stump, I would say on the average you may get $50-100 per tree. Depends on location and yearly supply and demand.

I also call b.s. on his 15-17 years to harvest.

30 minimum and 40 would be better.

Re: Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

Re: Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

QWAK,I could be wrong on this but it is my understanding that Black Walnut trees have a route system that excreats a chemical that inhibits growth of other walnut trees which are near by and too close and is natures way of THINING them out. When grown too close together the trees become BEAN POLLS and die off. Here at my cabin it is sarounded by black walnut trees and when I first bought the place I found many small dead and down bkack wallnut trees that I turned in to very nice "Walking Staffs" which I gave away as gifts explaining to each person that their gift was unique and it was the "HEART of a Black Wallnut tree" which had died naturaly.

the DUCK

Re: Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

I'm not up on current log prices; but if a mill is paying $500.00 per 18" log then the owner will probably receive $165.00 or 1/3 unless he logs them himself.

Regardless, $165 or $500 is quite a bit different than $10,000-20,000 (AAA veneer grade or better) and you will not grow veneer qualitiy lumber in an orchard (designed for nut production) nor will you grow an 18" log from seedlings in that short amount of time.

Not going to happen IMHO.

With some luck, you could grow a couple of veneer quality logs in a stand of timber planted much thicker than an orchard and harvist in 50-80 years. 18" logs in 30 years.

I'm not saying it is a bad idea--I plan on doing something similar myself only primarily carpathian on black walnut rootstock. I'm just trying to be more realistic with the figures.

Re: Consider becoming a NUT farmer
 

I haven't seen black walnuts affect other walnuts but they do product juglone; this is a toxic susbtance designed to inhibit plant growth. It completely kills some plants but affects others in much lesser degrees or not at all. Walnut sawdust also contains this substance and can affect some people and should not be used for mulching or animal bedding.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

About 20 years ago I met a farmer in Georgia who grew green peppers. He sold $49,000 worth of peppers off of 10 acres. He had 50 acres and planted 5 different items, 10 acres each. He usually sold off 2 or 3 of the 5 items and plowed the others under if they didn't develop well or if the market for them was bad. I never could understand all the farmers in the midwest trying to make a living on corn and soybeans.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Think WEATHER, labor and market, particularly weatherand labor.

CC

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

This is the most accurate statement in your post.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

QWAK,This aeria has very little top soil less than 2 feet in many places and more rocks than dirt. Under the dirt is sand stone bed rock in layers that peal up with out too much effort. A man down the road from me HARVESTS the rock puts it on pallots and sells it to home builders. Several times a month a big flat bed truck comes and hauls of a big load of nice flat rock.:proud:

You may find that growing stuff is not the best way to live off your land so try to be open to ideas and opertunities that are unconventional because what is or has been in the passed was not very profitable or all the locals would be rich! :albertein

Thinking OUT SIDE the BOX is often the best solution but what ever you do will requier a lot of time and hard work, that is why so many left living in the country and moved to cities in the passed.

There are traid offs and nothing is FREE and I am not just talking dollars.:proud: The transition will likely be much harder then expected ,some how DREAMS and reality seldom mesh as we hope they will. You are changing your LIFE drasticly and change is always hard.

Good LUCK! :coolbeer: the DUCK

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

a friend of mine used to sell honey from his bees, in a region where -25 celsius is not hugely uncommon in winter. so i guess apiculture (?) is a worthwhile thing to consider, too.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

short of them not being terminator seeds (i.e. the plant not producing seeds), are there other advantages to using non-hybrid seed?

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Yes, the flavor of traditional heirloom seeds is far superior to that of commmercial hybrids. The terminator strains were bred for two purposes, one was to force the farmer to keep buying from the seed company and the other was to produce a tough fruit or vegetable that would travel well. Quality suffered as a result of this. A commercial tomato tastes nothing like an heirloom tomato. You probably have better food in your country, but I liken the difference to that between regular mass produced food and organic food. There is a huge difference in quality.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Regarding the price of trees.

Apparently no one here has ever encountered what the Japanese are willing to pay for good wood.

While living in Portland, a neighbor had five large pine trees cut down. They went directly to Japan after being cut down. I asked WHY he would do this.

$50,000 for all five. And they cut them down and cut out the roots and cleaned up the results. The house we bought in Rockwood (subdivision in eastern Portland) had just had seven large pine trees cut down BECAUSE of the prices offered by the Japanese.

You folks need to think globally. Not locally. Locally you will get screwed every time. Like was said above. ALL farming is about marketing. You can go the way EVERYBODY does and get screwed. Or get creative and make big bucks.

Work smarter. Not harder.

If you want to be stupid, be stupid. If you want to be smart, be smart.

And for all those who don't believe the Sonic Bloom concept, great. Don't believe it. Be stupid. Water off a ducks back. I've used their products for more seven years and have found they UNDERSTATE their product.

But that's OK, be stupid.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

thanks for the info, rev

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I've heard about Japanese paying big time for certain types of huge logs to repair temples and pogodas but each of these sales have been from the pacific northwest where it is fairly close to port.

About the sonic bloom product:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/p...ry/021086.html

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...9293.Bt.r.html

Not saying it doesn't work but I would be skeptical and want to test it for several years prior to committing lots money. $300.00 per acre is a bunch for something that may or may not work--when your talking about a 100 acres or so.

I did find some good stuff by following his links to his other website--bunch of walnut related videos.

Edited to add: After futher investigation it looks like you could make your own "sonic bloom" by purchasing Gibberellic Acid, seaweed extract, and some trace mineral solutions.

You can buy the acid from places such as http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/GibberellicAcid.htm

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

F1 generation Hybrid plants and animals can have amazing and consistent qualities. Understanding the terms heterozygosity and homozygosity helps. Hetero mean 2 different genes in each pair and homo means a matched set. Plants or animals that are homozygous have little or no variability. For example, peas with two tall genes are considered homozygous for that trait. Peas with two short genes are likewise, homozygous and will be short. If you mate two short peas, you will only get short peas. Likewise if you mate two tall peas, you will get only tall peas. If you mate a tall pea to a short pea plant, you get medium pea plants (carrying one short and one tall gene). But if you mate a medium pea with a medium pea, you get a mix of tall, short and medium progeny.

In order to create a consistent designer plant or animal, you can cross two different homozygous varieties and get a very consistent and hardy cross in the first generation. In the pea example, in the first (f1) generation, all of the pea plants will be medium in size, but will have both a short and a tall gene.

The main reason most hybrid crosses aren't always the best tasting or most favorable to the home grower, is because the breeders we're more concerned about ship-ability and market-ability. If you used these same breeding techniques to create a hybrid that met your tastes, they could be amazing.

The main problem is that you need to maintain the two homozygous parent breeding stocks and keep doing the crosses every year. If you didn't and you tried to raise offspring from your F1 (heterozygous/terminal) crosses, you would get terribly inconsistent results. In the example above, the f1 generation of the tall X short peas produced all medium peas. But if you keep the seed from the medium pea plants, they will grow a hodge-podge of plants (tall, short, and medium). The only way (in this example) to grow medium sized pea plants, is to grow tall plants separately from short plants and use the pollen from the tall plants to fertilize the female part of the short plants to produce hybrid (heterozygous) seed that will grow 100% medium sized peas.

It's mostly a fable that hybrids don't produce viable seed. The "terminal" terminology refers to the fact that the breeders stop breeding these plants and animals after this cross is made. While hybrids themselves are very consistent, hybrids crossed with each other produce inconsistent results (some very good, some very poor, and lots of mediocre).

So, the only reason to want non-hybrids is that non-hybrids (homozygous) will produce offspring much like themselves (good or bad), generation after generation. This is true in all plants and animals.

Reality

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

As an aside to your GREAT references mentioned (Thanks!!) I do know that many people use geuina fowl as watchdogs (same as geese) and they do a great job decimating the deer tick and insect population in a yard. Maybe that was why he had them?

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Actually I have some hybrid tomato plants growing on my property right now. They are the result of some garbage left by the previous owner that contained some tomato seed, I'm guessing an animal ripped open a bag containing food that was left outside. The tomato is completely inedible. They are perhaps 1 inch in diameter, hard, dry and covered with many times more thorns than any tomato plant I've ever seen, almost more like the fine barbs of a cactus. They are "viable" after a fashion, but not at all something you'd raise on purpose.

Otherwise making hybrids can be useful, it's often employed to create new breeds of livestock or plants. Many people are under the mistaken impression that crossed species can't produce viable offspring, but this is also not always the case. There is a world of difference between these sorts of crosses and those churned out by the likes of Monsanto and DuPont, though not everything will yield results as unpleasant as my mutant tomatos.

Hybridization itself is not what makes a given plant yield superior fruit, good breeding is. Crosses can be part of that breeding but by no means guarantee results. I've also reviewed longterm studies that compared crop yields of current hybrids from the big commercial seed growers vs traditional high yield heirlooms that indicated that there were only a few crops that showed any significant increase in production with the hybrid. If I can find the links again I'll post them.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Sounds more like what we used to call devils tomato and highly poisonous (do they have lighter green almost furry leaves)
please dont eat.the hybrid seeds from tomatoes we used to grow reverted back to a cherry tomatoe.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I thank you for the concern, but one look at that thing and I had no intention of eating it. The mutant tomatoes do share some similarities with devil's tomato/horse nettle, but are different and appear to really have grown from storebought tomato scattered with garbage. The previous owners of my property were idiots and it is fortunate we got the land from them before they ruined it.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

Well, I took another look at those plants and I think you were right about them being devil tomatos. I found some growing in the woods behind my place, too. I guess the garbage was only a sign of how messy the previous owners were and the weed just happened to grow in the same spot. I'm still not going to eat'em, but I think I'll go ahead and kill every one of those devil tomatos I find on my property or the woods behind me. They look like nothing but trouble.

I also found many bones when when walking in the woods recently. The remains of a cow and two things I couldn't identify. One seemed like it might be from a large bird like the turkeys we have around here, the other I'm not so sure about. It was a mammalian jaw of some kind, full of sharp teeth, but it was very round in profile, the jaw was almost a semicircle. Maybe somebody's pet? I don't some small dogs have very bizarre looking jaws and skulls. Here's a chihauhau, looks like an alien predator to me.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I am bumping this thread for those of us interested in food preps.

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

some good permaculture articles here (written in Australia)

http://www.permaculturesouthernhighl...urnalindex.htm

Re: Novice farmer seeks advice
 

I would seek out OldTimers in the area that would be more than willing to give you tips on planting times, when and how much water-- best stock etc.

Also the contract hayer type freelancers for exmple are a great resource and their like. Hell they are just looking for a home and room and board, and honest and hard working. Then you have someone on the place when you are ITing back in Soddom City.

Just remember keep your word , pay better than average wages and return all favors 2fold.