What Kind of Farm Do I Want?

People often ask me what kind of farm I want.  When I query what they mean by that, the answers usually underscore a common theme of how people of today think of farms in the US.  The usual replies indicate some form of specialized production.  The answers to my queries are exemplified by these answers.  "I mean, do you want an apple orchard, or a dairy farm?"  Or something like this, "Since you have chickens, I thought you might want a chicken farm."  Or lastly, "My grandfather had a vegetable farm that he ran in the summer, so I was wondering if you wanted to do something similar."  The answer to the question of what kind of farm I want is much more complicated than a type of specialized production.  But we can start with that angle.

The type of farm I want would be categorized as a "mixed farm."  A mixed farm has a variety of agricultural production efforts.  A mixed farm typically grows a variety of crops and animals.  Most farms of 100 years ago were mixed farms.  Each of the production enterprises usually supported in some fashion one or more other enterprises on the farm.  For example, corn might be raised to feed the hogs and to sell on the market.  The hogs in turn would clean up the fallen apples in the orchards and consume the left over whey or buttermilk from on farm dairy processing.  The chickens would lay eggs, provide meat, keep the insects at bay, and act as a second line of defense against small rodent infestations.  The orchard would provide nuts and fruit for the farm as well as shade for the sheep in the summer, and access to insects for the chickens, turkeys, and hogs.  The vegetable garden provided food for the farm family and bartering goods for neighbors or other local farm families that raised other foods not raised on a specific farm.  The woodlot provided firewood, fence posts, lumber for building, acorns for hogs, and a cool restful place to get away from everything for awhile.  These are just a few examples of the interactions on a mixed farm.

Aside from the general production focus of the farm, there are many other aspects that are worthy of discussion.  There is the question of purpose.  There is the question of size.  There is a question of production philosophy.  Of course there are other aspects of some importance, but I will limit this post to these remaining three items.

I imagine several purposes to my farm.  In no particular order these are the primary purposes that come to mind.  I've always wanted to raise food for may family.  My reasons for wanting to raise my family's food has evolved over time, among which are self-sufficiency, nutrition, variety, and economics.  As I age, I also want a purpose to have to get out of bed everyday and stay active.  I'd like my farm to provide me with an opportunity or requirement to do a good 20 hours a week of physical and mental activity.  One aspect of the farm that I believe I want is to provide some level of income in retirement.  Even though I have worked hard and have been fortunate to have good employment in my career, the prospects of living on my retirement savings and Social Security seems troublesome to me, particularly given the tenuous state of the Social Security system.  I feel a need to be able to provide an ongoing modest income stream, which I believe I can do with proper focus on my farm.

When I consider the size of the farm I would like, I think in scenarios.  I have scenarios that range from three to 60 acres, but I usually focus on three scenarios.  The first is a small version of about three acres, plus or minus.  On these three acres, I could raise most food for my family and have some very limited ability to produce an outside, supplemental income.  The next scenario is usually imagined as a 10-15 acre scenario.  This provides everything that the three acre scenario, plus the ability to raise larger livestock, such as cattle, and also provide a greater opportunity for supplemental retirement income.  The last scenario I usually imagine as a 30-40 acre farm.  This provides all the options of the smaller scenarios, plus much greater ability to raise more large stock and provide the level of supplemental retirement income that I believe would be more optimal.  The final selection of size will depend on what is available and on other circumstances at the time of selection.

In terms of production philosophy, my ideal harks back to what I imagined as a child of the 70's during the OPEC oil embargo.  As an early teen, I asked myself, "How could we grow all the food we needed and provide everything else we needed without any inputs from outside the property?"  The question is largely a theoretical question, but its direction is still important to me as the backbone of my farming philosophy.  I hate to use the cliche word, sustainability, but I will, primarily because I thought of it as an early teen before it became defined and redefined by elitists and oligarchs to fit their needs and the ideas they were peddling at the moment.  I want a farm that can provide excellent food for my family, in an ongoing repeatable manner, requiring as little off farm inputs as possible to do so.  In my mind, that is the definition of the sustainable farm I seek.

In a nutshell, what I have imagined as my ideal scenario is that I would like to have a mixed farm where I can raise food for my family, earn a supplemental retirement income, that is 30-40 acres in size and can be run in a sustainable manner using well-defined, stacked production enterprises and appropriate technology and techniques.  How is that for a run on sentence?  I reserve the right to change my mind, whenever I want.

Grandpa Ward's The "Have More" Plan

My questions into honey bees (mentioned in my previous post) led my Mom to ask her father, my Grandpa Ward, about any books he might have that might shed some light onto the topic of raising honey bees.  The treasure that emerged from that discussion dramatically shaped my thinking about what I wanted in life and provided foundational context to my wanting a farm.  That treasure was The "Have More" Plan, by Ed and Carolyn Robinson.
 

The subtitle to The "Have More" Plan was "A Little Land - A Lot of Living."  This ideal was the perspective of a young couple who had escaped apartment living in New York City to buy a house and about 2 1/2 acres in rural Connecticut in the 1940's.  This was just shortly after the Great Depression, so I am sure that experience significantly impacted their thinking, planning, and implementation of their little farm.

The Robinsons had determined that by raising your own food, a family could save enough money to pay for a house, and the cost of the commute to a city job.  More importantly, a family could have a much better quality of life and more nutritious and fresher food to boot.  On the Robinson homestead, they raised most of their own food.  They raised a vegetable garden, berries, grapes, herbs, bees, chickens, rabbits, goats, pigs, and wood for fires.  They canned or froze their own fruits and vegetables.  They extracted their own honey.  They made their own dairy products.  They had fun together as a family as they enjoyed the outdoors and interacting with nature.  The production techniques and the ideal of the homestead framed what I wanted from a farm.

My Mom read me sections of The "Have More" Plan when I was a child.  As soon as I could read adequately, I read each precious chapter.  I learned how to raise laying hens.  I learned how to feed pigs.  I learned how to milk goats.  I learned about having a family cow.  I learned about having a family wood lot.  I read and re-read The Have More Plan as a child and a teenager.

When I was about 15 years old I had a liver colored German Short Haired Pointer named, Cindy.  I got her in the Fall as a puppy, so I would bring her in the house to sleep at night due to the cold weather.  One night, she found my Grandpa's copy of The Have More Plan that he had loaned to us a decade earlier.  She unmercifully ripped off the hardback cover and chewed much of the book to pieces.  I was heartbroken and tried to mend the book, however unsuccessfully.  I replaced it with an edited version of the book that came in paperback.  Eventually, I was able to find a hardback copy of the book at a used book store and was able to replace Grandpa's copy about 30 years after Cindy shredded it.

Ed Robinson was focused on efficiency.  He wanted to set up his food production processes and facilities to be as efficient as possible.  I think this is a laudable goal and worthy of careful consideration.  Over time, I found that Ed focused too much on mimicing commercial agriculture production methods and less on how to raise more optimally nutritious foods.  That said, The Have More Plan provided the foundations of my farming dreams and the ideal of raising my family's food.

I've probably read The Have More Plan about 20 times in my life.  As is often said about good books, I find that I learn something new with each reading.  Maybe I should read it again, next week.

Honey Bee in a Jar

I lived in Rose Park, near Salt Lake City, from the time I was born until I was 6 1/2 years old.  We lived in a smallish house that was painted a bright glossy green with white trim.  To the south of our house was our driveway, then our neighbor's property with a small strip of grass, a bush, then the house.  The neighbors were the Riches, although I'm not sure about the spelling on that. The father's name was Mac.  For whatever reason, I don't recall the mother's name.  The next house down was Grandma and Grandpa Case's house.  They really weren't my grandma and grandpa, but they were the granparents of the Riches' children.  Enough of that trivia, let's get to the interesting thing, the bush by the driveway.

In the springtime, the Riches' bush, by our driveway, was covered in blossoms.  I remember the sweet aroma.  As a wee lad of four years old I found myself fascinated by the honey bees in the bush, seemingly rummaging through a flower then flying to the next flower.

 I wondered what they were doing and why they were doing it.  I asked my Mom if we could catch a honey bee in a jar and watch it.  Given that our house was perpetually blessed with babies, we had just the jar for it, a Gerber baby food jar, with the paper label removed, of course.  We captured the honey bee and took it into the kitchen.  My mom and I sat by the table and talked about the honey bee.  I was fascinated to learn that these bees made honey and they helped the flowers.  Why were the bees in the bushes?  Where did they live?  Did they have a mom and a dad?  Could they be pets?  Could I keep some bees in my bedroom?  My questions were endless.

My Mom and I went to the library and got a good children's book on honey bees.  I sat by my Mom on the green vinyl couch in the living room as she read the book to me.  We looked at the pictures.  We talked about the pictures.  I learned that bees lived in hives.  I learned there was a queen that laid eggs.  I learned that bees gathered nectar and made it into honey for their food.  "Honey is yummy!" I exclaimed.  I liked honey on toast, on pancakes, but most of all on peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

I learned much about honey bees for a four year old.  I was enthralled by the idea, that maybe one day I could keep bees and they would make honey, enough for themselves and for me.  I eagerly looked forward to the day when I could have my own hive of bees, and honey from that hive.

Introduction - Post #1

You may wonder why a middle-aged MBA with a "professional" life may want to have a farm.  The purpose of this introduction is to explain in general terms the reasons for this apparent insanity.  "Grandpa's Farm" is a concept that sprouted in rudimentary form in the mind of a wee lad of four years old, when I watched honeybees gather nectar from the neighbor's bush.  I wanted bees for the delicious honey they produced.  I wanted to know more.

Growing up, I was fascinated by the thought of growing food for my family.  I wanted to raise vegetables, especially tomatoes and corn.  I wanted to pick berries, eat some, and help my Mom make jam.  Raspberry jam was my favorite.  I wanted to pick apples, peaches, and pears.  I liked to eat them fresh, but I also liked to eat them in the Winter and Spring out of the jars my Mom canned for our family.  I wanted to raise chickens to lay eggs for our family.  First I got three White Leghorn chicks.  I soon decided three was not enough and I got ten more.  The eggs were fabulously fresh.  I wanted pigs to eat our leftover garden produce and leftovers from our table.  The bacon was amazing.  I wanted to raise beef for our family, so I cooperated with a friend and did so.  I wanted to be able to feed my family well.  I wanted to feed my family good food, better than store bought food.  I wanted to feed them adequately, nutritiously, deliciously, fantastically.  I had a dream, a dream that I imagined would be both rewarding and fulfilling.

Farming is hard work.  Why yes it is.  I speak from experience.  Why would anyone want to work that hard?  Because it is immensely fulfilling and rewarding.  Amazing things happen in the farming process, with amazing things being produced.  I have experience with farming, so I can approach this with my eyes wide open.  I started working on a dairy farm at age 10.  By the time I was 14, my average summer work week on Rawl's dairy farm was between 75 and 80 hours.  Many hours were hard work, but many hours included watching toads in the irrigation ditch and dragon flies as the flew by.  In college, I worked two more years at the Utah State University Dairy farm.  I fed calves, herded cattle, milked cows, fed cows, etc.  When I was milking, my shift started at 2:30 am.  I got done in time for 8:30 classes.  I am aware of the hard work of farming.  I am also aware of the tremendous satisfaction and reward that comes from farming.  Call me crazy, my kids do.

Through life, nutrition became more important to me as I learned that it started with the soil and impacted our plant foods,our animal foods, eventually our bodies and our physical and mental health.  I learned about soil science.  I learned about sustainability.  I learned about how to grow fantastic food efficiently.  I learned how to grow nutritionally dense food well and how nutritionally dense food could create the foundation of health in children, leading to healthier, happier lives for them.  I learned that nutritionally dense foods are hard to come by in the standard channels of distribution (grocery stores).  I learned that nutritionally dense food is scarce and therefore expensive.  I wanted to grow great food for my kids, grand kids, friends, and family.  I wanted my loved ones to have a place in the country to come and get away from suburbia and find both great food aplenty and peace and joy in nature.  That is why I want a farm, Grandpa's Farm.

This blog is about my journey from a wee lad through years of experience and learning and also dreaming and planning for the ways in which I would grown fantastic, nutritionally dense food on my very own farm.  I expect this blog to be roughly a ten year blog of the past, present, and future, with close up experience of buying, building, and reaping the harvest and the joy at Grandpa's Farm.