Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

You're probably right, one acre through the seasons. But I have to agree 
totally, for 50 acres to support 50 people, they definitely would have to be 
on those acres. I think labor and transportation factors come in there. I 
think they'd have to be doing the work and not be someplace else. More 
thoughts on this?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 10/11/2009 at 5:29 PM Dan Conine wrote:

>>
>> 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.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Livingontheland mailing list
>Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland