Just Get Started…

Our family has always practiced certain levels of self reliance. My grandparents homesteaded to feed their family of 6 while making just a few dollars a week working at Troy Mills. Hunting and fishing are also very important to us as a way to feed our family, as well as foraging for mushrooms, berries, leeks, etc… But that was as deep as our background went: Family had done this before decades ago and I’m an avid outdoorsmen. Not exactly the prerequisites needed to be successful at growing your own food.

A few years ago, my wife and I were living in Ithaca, NY when we moved to our first apartment and we had a very small planting box outside our front door. Eager to fill it, we went down to the nearest Home Depot and paid $4 per plant to start a very small garden… and although it was a relatively unsuccessful season to say the least… we were absolutely hooked. All of a sudden we wanted to dive into a homesteading kind of life… But we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

We bought a 1700’s farm house to pursue a new idea. Not a lot of acreage, bad pastures, lots of weeds, and no infrastructure except for one small barn. But it was ours and it was a start.

The first year we used my dad’s small Kubota to rototill a garden plot. We didn’t even know it was supposed to be south facing, but we got pretty lucky because we accidentally picked the perfect spot. We bought seed trays and lights and transplanting supplies over the winter and had everything sprouted in the spring. That was the easy(ish) part. We were a little late starting the seeds and a little late getting them out, but we put them right in the ground and it seemed like we were on our way. This farming thing is easy!

Nope. Not a single tomato seedling survived the transplant, and wow did the weeds take over. We had to comb apart Timothy grass and milk weed and wildflower and clover just to find our little tiny transplanted seedling. Needless to say, just about all failed and all the money we spent on seeds and seed starting equipment, not to mention time invested, was gone. So we went back to Home Depot and spent a few hundred dollars on pre-started plants. By that time, we were really late into the season, had spent twice as much for half the plants and still had weed problems like I’ve never seen. We were frustrated, a little defeated, and a little lost. But we were far from giving up.

The next few seasons we tried many different techniques for transplanting and weed control but much remained the same. We had a some level of control and healthy plant growth until the big heat of late June hit and all of a sudden our garden would disappear into the tall weeds. Plastic row covers, straw mulch, hoeing and raking, etc… They all worked to some degree but none worked well enough to show us the vegetable yields we wanted. We finally learned that the problem was this: We were taking a large agricultural model and trying to apply it to a small homestead. Planting directly in the ground works but it’s a LOT of work.

Then we stumbled upon permaculture. Permaculture is essentially using Nature’s existing structure to your advantage in order to grow and produce your own food in a way that requires very little outside additives like chemical fertilizer/weed control. Think of it as building your own ecological functions to create healthier overall systems that coalesce into one amazing well oiled machine. For example, use chickens and chicken manure to fertilize pastures with rotational grazing as opposed to granular fertilizer. Using pigs to rototill up a new garden plot or to clear the woods for you to make new pasture. Using goats to clear poison ivy or tall standing weeds as opposed to a brush hog or weed wacker. Using raised beds to imitate vegetable growth in non compacted ground without having to loosen the soil mechanically which kills microorganisms vital to vegetable growth and development. Its easy to do because Nature has already done all the work… You just need to harness it with a little bit of infrastructure.

Armed with this new method, we changed almost everything we were doing. We began to focus raising livestock on rotational grazing which led to unbelievably healthy pastures. We And our green thumbs took off! We used our own composted chicken manure, shavings, leaves, and grass clippings to fill the beds and we’ll never do it any other way. The height is easy on the back, what very few weeds there are almost fall out when you pull them, and the dirt always remains loose for root and nutrient development.

I’ll end by saying I wish something like this existed when were just getting started. I would have spent a lot less money on really bad ideas, and could have skipped at least some of the heart ache and frustration that comes in those early years. But now we are in a position to be that helpful foundation to others and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We want to teach hands on and present people with the infrastructure needed to get a jump start, and completely avoiding the costly mistakes and the early learning curve.

Getting started seems difficult, maybe it seems expensive, maybe it seems time consuming. There’s never going to be a perfect time to press go; the sign you’re waiting for won’t just appear and say, “Start now! It’s a perfect time”. But if you want to grow your own food here is my advice: Start today. There’s truly no better time than right now. We’ll help get you going as big or small as you want. What’s important is: just get going. Putting your own food on your own plate is a feeling that is hard to duplicate, and once you do there’s no looking back. It’s way too much fun.

I’ll leave you with this quote: “A year from now you’ll wish you started today.” - Karen Lamb