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.

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.

The Farm as Family Project

We were looking for an investment that didn't depend on the vagaries of the stock market. One option, of course, is real estate. If you own land it never simply evaporates (unless it's in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans or something), so it's never worth nothing. Or so they say. Several of us in the family felt this way, and we'd been thinking about it (separately) for a while.

I also wanted a place to hunt. Hunting deer on public land in Missouri isn't bad, but it's inconsistent, and you always have the feeling that you're hunting the spot where somebody just got the big buck -- or worse, that some other (less careful) hunter will be shooting from the other side side of the thicket. Besides, landowners get a nice break on deer (and turkey) tags to hunt game on their own property!

Deer and turkey are the major game in northern Missouri, but with proper land management the area is good for quail, too. Even ring-necked pheasant can be encouraged (though for those big birds, the closer to Iowa the better!).

My in-laws needed a place to retire. The ideal spot would be closer to their children and grandchildren (but not right in anybody's lap, perhaps). They would be more comfortable in the countryside than in a city. The house needed to be decent, but not that large; one story, big garage, cheap to heat, modern kitchen. It had to have a good spot for a garden.

Since "retirement" was part of the plan, it meant that we didn't want a real, working farm with all the maintenance and chores and daily hard work implied by the term! We didn't really want to get into the farming business of planting and harvesting crops or caring for livestock. Ideally we wanted a place that would basically pay for itself (or at least cover the taxes) with little or no work on our part. Finding a place with most of the acreage enrolled in the CRP program (more on that another time!) fit the bill very well.

In the back of our minds was the future option of putting another cabin or two on the place, so more of us could stay there and not be in each other's hair too much. And that meant it couldn't be too small a farm; we wound up with 100 acres, split by a paved road, with two or three potential building scattered around.

In all there were seven of us interested in pooling our resources to buy together. Combining our assets meant that we could get a bigger, nicer place than any of us could afford alone. But it also complicated the arrangements a bit, especially since the amounts we could invest were equal. After doing some reading on various options (incorporation, joint ownership, etc.), we decided to form a "limited liability company" (LLC). It cost us a few hundred bucks (using LegalZoom.com) to put the paperwork together, but after that the paperwork and tax process is quite simple, and we don't need to worry about complicated estate law or probate tying the place up. Since we thought (and still think) that we might eventually own more than one property, we called the new company "Wind Hills Properties LLC" -- drop us a line!