Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>]

Although my crops and markets are different - I grow native trees for market - I've reached the same conclusion: 1 acre of growing crops is all I can handle.

On Oct 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

E. E. "Mitch"  Mitchamore

www.hillcountrynatives.biz