Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

After ten  years on their farm, the Greers have yet to show a profit. Is
this a sustainable model to be repeated?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/18/2009 at 6:53 PM Emery Mitchamore wrote:

>I'll bite.  What's wrong?
>
>On Apr 18, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Tradingpost wrote:
>
>>
>> what's wrong with this picture???
>>
>>
>> Trading city life for an East Texas farm
>>
>http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/lifetravel/stories/DN-ns_gr
e
>>
>> erfarm_0419gd.State.Edition1.24f8b93.html
>>
>> 04:44 PM CDT on Friday, April 17, 2009
>>
>> By MARIANA GREENE / The Dallas Morning News
>> magreene@dallasnews.com
>>
>> DAINGERFIELD, Texas – The process of finding the farm provides clues
>> that
>> Sid and Eva Greer have retreated from the corporate life, even
>> before you
>> hear their story. Their midlife change of course is not an uncommon
>> plotline these days, but far more dream of similar scenarios without
>> summoning the pluck to make it happen.
>>
>> The Greers exchanged chauffeured cars, life in exotic locales and
>> audiences
>> with trade ministers for manual labor sunrise to sundown. Sid runs
>> heirloom
>> beef cattle and farms pick-your-own fields of fruits, berries and
>> vegetables. At night, online, he researches sustainable agriculture
>> methods
>> and puzzles over additional ways to diversify the farm's means of
>> earning
>> income. Eva tests recipes, plans her schedule of cooking classes,
>> caters
>> events in nearby towns and readies four bed-and-breakfast cabins for
>> weekend guests. (Breakfast is often homemade bread and her own fig or
>> blackberry preserves that you eat in your cabin.)
>>
>> The couple, now in their fifties, started down this road fully
>> prepared for
>> hard work, although after 10 years, the operation has yet to turn a
>> profit.
>>
>> It takes only a few minutes to reach Greer Farm once you turn off the
>> two-lane highway between Gilmer and Daingerfield, minutes that belie
>> how
>> remote the farm feels. After twists and turns, the road ever
>> narrowing, you
>> come upon the historic homestead, a planter's imposing house and
>> handmade
>> outbuildings built in the 1850s, some restored, some not. Shrieking
>> guineas
>> announce guests, and in the barnyard baby goats kick up their heels
>> and
>> chickens scratch for bugs.
>>
>> As busy as the farm is for its owners, it is a spot of serenity for
>> guests.
>>
>> "It was killing me," Sid says of his former career with an oil
>> company. He
>> was gone from his wife and four children 300 nights a year, even
>> though
>> they lived with him at postings in Madagascar, Tunisia and London.
>>
>> When his position in London was eliminated, he didn't try to find
>> work in
>> the same field; he talked his wife and remaining school-age daughter
>> into
>> making a momentous change in their lives by buying a farm.
>>
>> "I felt like this would be a lifestyle that would provide a longer,
>> healthier life than the one I had," Sid says. "I wanted to live off
>> the
>> land."
>>
>> Farming is in Sid's family. His father's people were ranchers and
>> farmers
>> in North Texas, and Sid grew up in East Texas. Eva grew up in what was
>> British Honduras, now known as Belize. Her German physician father and
>> aristocratic mother resettled there after World War II, after his
>> years in
>> a German labor camp and her mother's spent trying to obtain his
>> freedom.
>>
>> In Belize, Eva says she entertained herself by reading cookbooks.
>> Imagining
>> the recipes on the table planted a passion for good food made with
>> fresh
>> ingredients. In Madagascar, she ran a staff house for Amoco employees
>> "because restaurants were not safe. People came to our house to have
>> a nice
>> meal."
>>
>> When her husband expressed his desire to exchange their fast life
>> for a
>> slow life, Eva, with their children grown, worried what would occupy
>> her
>> time. Farming was Sid's dream. "I didn't know how I could live here,
>> retire
>> here, without being bored," she says.
>>
>> Before the move, therefore, she enrolled in the International Culinary
>> School at the Art Institute-Houston so she could pursue
>> professionally "my
>> God-given passion."
>>
>> Although they bought the farm in 1994, they did not move here until
>> 1999.
>> Sid taught himself to be a farmer and rancher by "attending lots of
>> seminars and reading lots of books." He is outspoken politically,
>> and that
>> fervor extends to the current philosophies of farming. He has tried
>> strictly organic methods but finds it too expensive to be practical.
>> Instead, he practices the tenets of sustainable agriculture, employing
>> methods that provide farm profitability without degrading the natural
>> resources that support production.
>>
>> Diversification is important, Sid asserts. He raises grass-fed Maine-
>> Anjou
>> cattle and sells the beef directly to his customers, chefs and
>> consumers
>> who participate in the local food movement, who want to know the
>> rancher
>> raising the beef they consume.
>>
>> On the farming side, Sid is enlarging berry fields and fruit
>> orchards by
>> planting trial patches of filberts, olives and raspberries purported
>> to
>> produce in the Texas climate. He already grows blackberries,
>> blueberries,
>> figs and plums. Last year's crops, he said, were harvested on a
>> pick-your-own basis; he had no produce left to take to a farmers
>> market.
>>
>> The Greers also earn income through agritourism, a practice far more
>> prevalent in Europe. More and more, the four cabins are rented to
>> city-dwellers who want to experience life on the farm. Sid doesn't put
>> folks behind a plow or perch them on a tractor. But he does allow
>> guests to
>> gather eggs in the henhouse, feed the goats, offer treats to the
>> horses and
>> pet the baby animals. It's a daily ritual at 4:30 p.m. in the Old
>> Barnyard.
>> You also may accompany him to the pastures, where the red or brown
>> beef
>> cattle, a French heirloom breed, come galloping to greet him. Though
>> large,
>> the animals are gentle, standing quietly until he moves to unload
>> hay. He
>> calls several by name and pats them like they are big, friendly dogs.
>>
>> Twice a day, Sid checks the coyote traps set in pastures. The
>> coyotes prey
>> on calves, sometimes even while the heifer is giving birth.
>> Sometimes he
>> doesn't get around to it until dark, bucking over bumpy pastures in
>> his
>> pickup, the truck's headlights making narrow paths in utter
>> darkness. Then
>> it's back to the farmhouse to sit down to dinner with his wife.
>>
>> He and Eva build their fences, plow their fields and plant their
>> crops.
>> They have one small tractor and one part-time helper. Although Sid
>> toils
>> from before dawn to after dark, he still finds time to post on his
>> blog,
>> Farmers Don't Blog (www.greerfarm.com/blog). He notes what's
>> happening on
>> the farm and shares articles, short stories and poems he likes.
>>
>> "There's something about sitting on the porch in a rocker in the
>> morning
>> with coffee, or in the evening with tea, and hearing nothing but
>> birds."
>>
>> To learn about the bed-and- breakfast accommodations, cooking class
>> schedule or pick-your-own fields, go to www.greerfarm.com.
>>
>>
>
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