Time

It has been just over 1 year since we bought the ranch/farm, and we are more than halfway through our second growing season. What I am most impressed with, if I can use the phrase correctly, is how much time it takes to get significant food production on a small holding.

It takes several years to amend and compost a vegitable garden, which in our case is about 100' x 100' (does not include the corn, wheat, and potato plots - these require MUCH more ground). Give this some thought: to make a 10,000 sqft garden plot fertile takes about 4 inches of composted manure plus another inch or 2 of wood chips, leaves, or straw. That is 5,000 cubic (not sqft, we are talking volume here, not area) feet of organic material. This takes some time, and then the material has to react with the soil before it is bio available... Say 3 to 4 years for optimum fertility - and you must continue your efforts or production will decline.

For the most part you have just one growing season. Here in Middle Tennessee it starts April 15 and ends, in stages, from July 15 to September 1. If you make a mistake, have a storm, suffer a pest invasion, disease... well, that's it till next year. This is why most farmers prior to WW II maintained 1 full year's food supply in their larder - in case something bad happens to the crops. Even if your growing season is successful, your food preservation needs to successful, too, or you won't be self sufficient for long. During harvest season it is EASY to keep the table well supplied, how well you do so come February or March is the real issue.

Fruit trees don't produce for their first few years, even if you buy dwarf (I recommend them) trees. You will need at least 3 trees of each kind of fruit you plan to grow, so I would plant 5 or 6 as you will lose 1 or 2. That means 30 or more trees to be dug in and planted (apple, pear, plum, and peach all will grow in much of the lower 48), so in addition to time you better have a strong back... Say 3 to 4 years for fruit production.

Cattle, sheep, and goats for meat consumption and milk production take several years to breed and grow. Chickens, rabbits, and pigs take less time but still their feed supply is at least 1 season, and probably 2, away.

Provisioning your homestead with tools and implements will take more than 1 year, unless you make it your full time job, and learning how to use them all is no small feat.

If you are thinking of providing any important amount of food for your family, the preparations take much longer than many might think, and I think the "time to prepare" element must fit more prominently in your calculations.

Duh!

Our neighbors have farmed their land for the past 5 generations, and I chanced to meet the farmer tonight when I was out in my garden and he was examining his corn crop. We talked about his crops, commodity prices, and then corn. I mentioned my little experiment as if it was some crucial knowledge that the world must know (a little dramatic, but work woth me) about the corn plots with and without fertilizer. He chuckled politely and told me 'Corn won't grow without fertilizer", and that although I will grow some stalks, there won't be any corn cobs unless I fertilize the soil. I told him I did not use any commercial fertilizer, mostly manure, to which he replied that I must have used a lot of manure, and that if I did not manure the ground again before the next year, that crop would not grow.

I had researched growing corn and I kept running into the term "heavy feeder"... but that really was not that informative. You see, I thought that if you turned over the soil, planted some corn seeds, got some rain, that the corn would grow. Nope. It doesn't. And to think that corn is the number one source of animal feed... I wonder if Tyson is worried about this...

Thinking about this further, it would seem that all that corn farm land in Iowa purchased in 1035 exchanges and arranged by Wall Street investment banks is really under the Sword of Damocles/Amonium Nitrate fertilizer, derived from natural gas, and any hiccup in the natural gas market or supply and POOFF!! the value of those corn fields is zipity do da.

Corn!

We took 2, 15-feet by 30-feet plots and planted corn. On 1 plot we added several inches of composted manure from our horse stalls, straw, grass clippings, leaves, wood chips and other organic matter and worked it into about 8 inches of top soil giving us about 12 inches of loosened soil on planting day and sowed with corn. On the other, we added no organic material, tilled the soil, and planted the same seed of corn. Neither plot received commercial fertilizer.

As of June 28, 2007, 8 weeks into the project, the corn in the improved soil is nearly twice the height of the corn growing in the unimproved soil. The plants are a dark, healthy green, while the corn in the unimproved soil is a sickly pail green.

We will do an exact measurement by weight and cob count at harvest, but I have a good idea of the outcome.

BTW, we did a similar experiment with tomatoes... same outcome, though not as severe. The tomato plants in the unimproved soil are about 75% of the size of those in the improved soil.

The risk to our food supply is falling production per acre due to a lack of nitrogen fertilizer. And, no, we don’t have enough cows, horses, goats, etc… to provide enough manure to replace the nitrogen we now get from fertilizer. So don’t worry about how far your food has traveled; worry about how far the fertilizer traveled, from where, and how much nitrogen fertilizer is available, because we can’t go organic fast enough to make up the difference.