A NEW YEAR NEW PLANS

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For our own needs, the farming plans are a bit more precise. We want to increase the sweet corn acreage so as to provide for our cornmeal needs, and next summer I plan to try several kinds of wheat for flour. Stock beets or mangels and Jerusalem artichokes will also get a trial as animal feeds; each reportedly produces tremendous crops, though I don't know how they will fare in our climate. To improve culture of root crops, I plan to build a raised planting bed. Old bridge timbers will make a frame approximately six by twelve feet in size and a foot and a half high. Into it will go equal proportions of rich composted rabbit droppings and hay, chopped maple leave, and crushed bottles. (The shredder-grinder does a great job of reducing bottles to sand-sized cutlet that contains nary a splinter. It does so well we use it in the town's glass recycling program.)

On the livestock side, Louise wants to develop a self perpetuating flock of geese both for food and sale. A pigeon loft will go in over the chicken house and this year or next we'll also try raising turkeys. The vets have pretty well eliminated the disease hazards that formerly made turkey raising hard in any event and impossible near a chicken flock. As soon as I can get the fence up, we'll run a young beef steer or two, and we have entertained the idea of trying to raise American bison, the plains buffalo. Now, don't laugh. They are half again more efficient feed converters than cattle, are much hardier, not as inclined to waste energy putting on fat, and the flavor is similar to beef; many consider it even better. Finally, we plan to develop a strain of homestead sized hogs. Laboratory scientists have bred them down as small as a big guinea pig. And I would a lot rather dress out two 100 pound hogs than one 250 or 300 pounder. Anyone know where to buy a bison, or sell a miniature pig?

GETTING THE RECORDS IN ORDER

I realize now. that the day we began keeping these records was the day we changed from folks who were just trying out an alternative lifestyle to serious and committed homesteaders. Through the early part of our ten-year transition from city to suburb to ex-urb and finally to self-sufficient all organic homestead, gardening was primarily recreation. The few precious hours spent working the soil offered a refreshing change from the drudgery of a nine to five city job. It didn't matter a bit how much the garden produced or what the food actually cost. We enjoyed picking flowers and eating what vegetables and fruit we wanted and enjoyed even more giving the surplus to non-gardening friends. Gardening was a hobby, and a fine hobby, too.

Not so any longer. To be sure, we still get great pleasure from the gardens, orchard, and animals. It is the genuine satisfaction of providing our most elemental needs through hours of hard, often unpleasant labor. The better the planning, the more efficient will be our use of time, so the more productive will be the land the the more satisfying the labor. Thus the detailed records.

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