Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

> Always appropriate, isn't it. As for us here we grow for markets on less
> than a quarter acre. It's not a living of course, and with a short
> frost-free season, poor soil to start with and very low rainfall it's too
> much work for us.
My father acquired a 1300 acre farm for 100 bucks an acre in 1975. Being 
mostly swamp and tundra, it barely supported 100 milking head and the 
other supporting cast (pigs, calves, heifers, etc). I thought of it as a 
massive farm.

I now own 50 acres, and I have learned to think of it as a massive 
place. It is a size which requires machinery, but even with machinery, 
one person cannot be on the whole place in their mind. Regardless of the 
labor, I have found that an acre is as much as one person can properly 
keep in useful focus throughout the seasons. More than that and the 
details suffer.

I now understand how this farm could be 50 families' source of food and 
income, but they would have to BE here in order for it to happen. We 
have spent the last 100 years destroying that opportunity with petroleum 
and money as motive.

Dan C.