I'm heading into my second year veggie farming err market gardening really as I'm growing on just 2 acres. Its small scale intensive farming of a diverse selection of veggies.
I have chickens......always wanted to farm. It's hard just to start farming, around here it is passed down generation to generation. I grew up in the motel business and don't want nothing to do with it now. Helped our neighbors farm cattle growing up and did the day to day all summer with them. Always enjoyed it!
It will be interesting to see how your okra does, BCB. I tried it before here in Western PA and the plant didn't like it very much. My climate might be a bit too cold.
I picked about a gallon of okra a day last year for a couple weeks. Needs to be hot and relatively dry to do well.
Never had much luck with it down here. Back in IL my dad had a good patch. Ruined me on the store bought stuff.
That's a lot of asparagus! Do you have a market for it and do you know you won't be able to take your first harvest for at least 2 years? It likes a good root base before you start cutting it. The most land I've ever planted at once was about a half acre. That's how I built up the small grocery store in the basement.
Yeah...to all that. I think it could move it pretty easily. Got to cut it twice a day. ..might as well milk cows though. I have a small patch now and it does extremely well in our black sand soil. See what I mean: http://firewoodhoardersclub.com/forums/threads/gardening.2251/page-10#post-103843
I farm a bit. We have horses, hogs, lots of chickens both meat and layers, boer goats, nubian goats for milk, and a couple of steers in the spring.
That's a lot of asparagus! I had okra in my backyard garden a few years ago and it was doing very well but the damm deer got it before I could harvest. Oh well, I ate one of his cousins tonight for dinner lol.
We have 19 chickens right now. Have 2 horses and a donkey as well. At the height of our excursion into the farming arena, we had 50 chickens, 20 goats ( a mix of boer and nubian), 6 horses, 5 donkey's and a llama. It just got to be too much. Now it's about 1000sf garden to keep our supplies up and the chickens for eggs.
Last year I had a 30 member CSA and sold at 3 farmers markets plus one private business. Way too much work for 1 person so I'm scaling down to 2 markets this summers and hoping to bring some help on board. The Hoss seeder I ordered earlier this week just arrived in the mail today. The thing is built like a fricking tank! I use a 70+ year old planet junior wheel hoe and the hoss seeder attaches right to it. Its way heavier and is supposed to be more accurate than the earthway seeder I used last year for direct seeding.
I worked a Farm with about 100 CSA shares this past season. Mad respect for small operatiins like that. It was all certified natural grown, big into cover crops and all. Great stuff. Weeding was intensive tho!
