Harvest time

The garden at the Farm was productive this year, thanks to my mother-in-law's green thumb and (I am convinced) the bees, who keep everything well pollinated. In fact, even after some good hard freezes, there is still some Swiss chard that seems quite happy to go on doing its thing until it gets buried by snow. Almost everything else is over and done with, of course, a week before Christmas.
One of the beehives failed (unproductive queen, I think), but we were able to get some honey from the other one. Some we sold, some we ate, and some got turned into my first attempt at mead (now resting in bottles). Next year we hope for more.
The harvest doesn't stop when the garden gives out and the bees hunker down for the winter. The Farm still yields what we need and what we can use. We took another deer this season, a nice buck (after a fat doe last year), and the meat gets shared multiple ways. The little food plots have been visited by birds and animals a-plenty; I "harvested" one head of a sunflower to have a few seeds to scatter next spring.

I don't collect acorns, hickory nuts, or black walnuts, but they apparently feed the deer and squirrels well enough. And the trees themselves are a crop, of course, providing firewood that supplies at least half the heat we need over the winter. (We could probably heat entirely with wood, and maybe we will some day, but for now we simply don't have the time to cut that much wood!) So far we don't need to cut down any living trees: we have all we can handle skidding downed logs out of the steep ravines, and then cutting and splitting and hauling and stacking.
Truly, we often reap where we did not sow. What we "harvest" is not always (and not only) what we planned and initiated and nurtured directly. At least as often, we harvest by simply receiving what the place gives us. This kind of farming isn't far removed from the ancient hunter-gatherers: we try to keep dancing between design, opportunism, surprise, and sheer gratitude. That is the dance of harvest time.

Equipment

What equipment do you need on a hundred-acre farm, at least a third woods and more than half CRP? That's a good question! I admit that, like most guys, my instincts favor as much equipment as possible: lots of engines, blades, tools, gears, and so forth. Any project which requires the acquisition of new tools is a good project. If The Farm were purely a hobby, and if the budget were unlimited, then there would be no practical limit to the equipment we could accumulate. But both of those "if's" are far removed from reality. The farm cannot be a mere hobby, not as long as it's a real home (for my in-laws), a real neighbor (to the other farms around it), and a real habitat (for deer, turkey, quail, rabbits, etc.).

Every "real" farm needs a tractor, right? Well, that depends. A few farmers, of course, still use animal muscles as their main machines: horses, mules, and oxen still pull plows and wagons and other equipment as well as they ever did, and they have advantages. They eat grass and grain that can grow on the land, instead of consuming fossil fuels that have to be purchased with cash. And animal manure can return nutrients and energy to the soil. The muscles of animlas, and of the men and women who work with them, are limited -- and those limits are important in themselves, for they remind us that we are not sovereign or omnipotent.

But no, we did not opt to keep draft animals to work our land. Neither did we buy a tractor. Because over half The Farm is in CRP, and much of the rest is woods or drainage creeks, there is only a limited amount of land to work, so a tractor seemed like overkill. At the same time, the hills and often muddy soil dictated a machine that would handle terrain. So we got a second-hand Polaris Ranger 6x6. With it we can drag logs up out of the wooded ravines and haul tools to work on fences. It has plenty of power, and plenty (though not unlimited!) traction. What it doesn't have that a tractor would have is a PTO hook-up and hydraulics.

The Ranger gets us around and drags stuff or pulls a small trailer. But we're going to need a couple of other items, too. For one thing, we need a big rough-cut or trail mower to knock down the high weeds and grass and start clearing some trails in the woods. I'm looking at self-powered mowers with angled pull bars, so we can mow easily along fences. When it's time to burn a piece of the CRP, mowing a wide strip of firebreak might help prevent things from getting out of hand. For the same reason, we need to get a disc that we can pull with the Polaris. We'll disc or roto-till the firebreaks, and also use the disc to prepare food plots (sunflowers, millet, maybe even barley), and of course get the garden plot ready up next to the house.

It all starts to add up pretty fast! What about a post-hole auger? that would probably have to be a one or two-man hand-held, rather than a machine mounted one, because we have long stretches of fence running through the woods to build and maintain. A spreader/planter would be nice for those food-plots. Do we need a tank & sprayer to haul in the Polaris for fruit trees? And we've felt the need for a snow-plow blade several times this winter.

But we're trying to take it slow. The goal is not to have all the toys any boy could ever want, but to maintain, use, and improve this piece of land in some kind of sustainable fashion. And that means keeping costs down. Besides, the garage is already full.

The Buzz

In an earlier post, I listed beekeeping as one possible productive use of the hundred or so acres which I call The Farm (but which my wife prefers to refer to as "the country estate"). Yesterday I spent a day at a beekeeper workshop, hosted by the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association. It was time well spent. A couple of colonies of prime honey bees will soon be moving into luxury accommodations on the property.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I think I imagined a dozen or so retired introverts, tentatively exploring a new hobby. What I found was a crowd of 200-300 enthusiasts of all ages -- and that was just the beginners. A father and son were buying additional hive boxes and frames for their suburban yard. A couple from my own neighborhood have been keeping bees for years (they went to the advanced class). Farmers were there to learn how to add another cash crop to their operations. Vegetarians wanted to learn about meatlless livestock. Vendors were displaying and selling a wide range of equipment.

Hardly any mention was made of the cultural or philosophical or political reasons to encourage people to keep bees. Colony Collapse Disorder has taken a serious toll among commercial beekeeping operations, and nobody knows exactly what's behind it. Bees are so important and beneficial to both agriculture and gardening that it is almost a civic duty to at least consider keeping a couple of hives.

But the hundreds who showed up for the Saturday workshop needed no persuading. They were there, as far as I can tell, because they had already made up their minds that keeping bees was something they wanted to do -- whether for profit, or because they liked to eat honey, or because the bees would benefit their orchards, or out of sheer love for Western Civilization.

What people were looking for yesterday -- and what they got -- was not the why of beekeeping, but the how. How is a new hive assembled? How do you work safely around the little beasties? How do you get a new queen? How do you recognize and treat common bee pests and diseases? How do you harvest the honey? It was a full load of practical information: from honey-supers to small hive beetles, weighing the relative merits of different kinds of hive tools and the argument about queen excluders (a.k.a. "honey excluders" depending which side you're on).

The thoroughly down-to-earth focus of the whole day, and the ease with which I could get practical answers to all the dumb, novice questions I had, was refreshing and empowering. I've now ordered a beginners kit which will include structures (bottom board, boxes, frames, foundations, and covers -- and, yes, queen excluders!) for two hives and the basic tools and protective clothing to get me started. Queen kits will be ordered soon! Watch this space. . .

Orchard Dreams

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods." (Wendell Berry)

I've commented here before that I'd like to plant an orchard on The Farm. Nothing grandiose or industrial in scale: perhaps five or six apple trees, as many cherry trees and perhaps some pears. Planting an orchard is a sign of hope, an act of confidence and optimism about a future unseen. He who plants an orchard makes a long-term commitment to a specific piece of ground. He gives a gift to his children and his children's children.

The Farm--this Farm--is a little patch of rolling hills, where the natural state of the landscape is a patchwork of woods and grassland. To plant an orchard would woo the nature of that particular place, cultivation most in harmony with the character of the land itself, and therefore holds the promise of being both fruitful and happy. No sense trying to grow what the land doesn't want to bear, or planting against the grain of the soil.

Besides, I like apples, and almost everything made from apples. Ditto cherries. Less wild about pears, but one needs variety, right? I dream of getting a cider press and bottling fresh juices on a crisp October day. As a dabbling homebrewer, this could put me in touch with cultures around the world where cider fills the culinary niche occupied by beer in other places. Brittany, Normandy, and southwestern England, in particular, cherish the venerable art of cider making, as do the Basques and the hill tribes of Rhineland-Pfalz.

Getting from here to there is another matter. Choosing, buying, and planting trees is the easy part. The little saplings won't survive long if we don't protect them somehow from the ravenous local whitetail population.

My first thought was to fence the whole orchard area with 7- or 8-foot deer fencing. Nice idea -- until a little research put a pricetag on that project. It turns out it's pretty easy to spend over a thousand dollars to protect a dozen fruit trees, and that is just too much (unless we're aiming at commercial production, of course; then we could recoup the investment over several years of profits).

I think we'll have to settle for improvised solutions, using whatever old fencing and posts we can find around The Farm. And this does not diminish the pleasure of dreaming hopefully toward my orchard. The art of cultivating with the nature of the land instead of against it involves compromise between what we want and what the land can provide. And there is another kind of compromise to learn: between a theoretical ideal and the affordable.

What Do You Do There? (The Farm as Hobby)

Now that you have a "farm," what do you really do with it?

I said before that we weren't really interested in becoming working farmers: we didn't really want to plow, plant, cultivate, harvest, and market fields of hay or beans or corn. We didn't want to commit ourselves to the constant demands of a commercial livestock operation (and don't be naive: five cows are nearly as much trouble as fifty, and much less profitable!).

The fact is, I am mostly interested in hunting on the place. Whitetail deer, wild turkeys, and bobwhite quail are the crops I really look forward to harvesting. I have reason to believe that they are already there, to some extent.

And with some management of the land, they should thrive. We will put in some sunflowers and millet to provide a little food and cover for the birds. We'll avoid thinning out the woods too much, and make sure the creeks and drainage areas have plenty of cover for shy deer. Starting in 2010, we'll start a rotation of controlled burning to improve the CRP grasslands for quail habitat. We'll shoot coyotes and bobcats that put pressure on the small game.

There should be plenty of room on the property for a nice big garden, without bothering the game. In fact, I'm a little worried that the game will eat the garden: we'll see! A very tall fence might be in our near future.

If we want to get more serious about things, there is room for up to 6 acres (!!) of garden area, which would keep us all busy most of the summer, and might supply vegetables, herbs, and flowers to sell at area farmers markets. There is a growing movement of "community supported agriculture" that encourages people to buy and consume local produce, and this tends to favor small, family operations more than large, industrial farms. It is entirely realistic to imagine a one- or two-acre garden that could produce a couple of thousand dollars a year

Across the road from the house is a long pasture, about 4.5 acres, along a ridgetop. It is sheltered on the North by the oaks and hickories of our woods. It has a nice southern exposure for full sun. It looks like a beautiful place to plant an orchard. Apples, pears, cherries, and maybe hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts -- wouldn't that be nice? With a small pump we can water them from the spring-fed pond to tide them over the hot dry spells of a Missouri summer. Most of the pruning and harvesting can be done during family work-weekends. There is probably room there for a couple of hundred trees. This sounds like the sort of thing that could quickly get out of hand.

If we have a big garden, and we start planting fruit trees, we're going to want some honey bees. In fact, given the global problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, and the tremendous importance of bees as pollinators for all kinds of plants (wild and domestic), I consider it our duty to the future of civilization to encourage a hive or two on the place. A good spot would be over at the east end of that area north of the road where I want to put the orchard; from there they can also pollinate the garden next to the house, without the bother of a swarm of bees right next to the house.

Somewhere in this plan there should be a patch of hops. Hops grow on bines (which are different from "vines" -- look it up!). The aromatic flowers are harvested in the fall and used for -- you guessed it! -- beer. It turns out there's also a sort of world-wide hops shortage, so growing our own makes sense, and might be a money-maker, too.

The worrying collapse of honey bee colonies, and the looming shortage of hops are two terrible signs of the fast-approaching collapse of Western Civilization as we know it. It's our duty to humanity, to our children's children's children, to cultivate a little pocket of these precious resources.