Designing Sustainable Small Farms

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As you conduct your inventory of on-site resources, record the information on a series of maps. These don't have to be accurate to the half inch, but they should come fairly close to scale. Aerial photographs (Photo 16) are a good starting point, and sometimes the local town hall has maps available. You may also be able to get assistance from the local branch of the Soil Conservation Service. Nature's De sign by Carol A. Smyser (see the accompanying reading list) is an excellent source for sample maps. The book clearly illustrates how mapping aids the design process.

Local resources. Off-farm resources are almost always plentiful, and they're often free or exchangeable. These may include animal wastes, lumber scraps, contents of the local dump, seaweeds, restaurant throwaways, food-processing refuse, the expertise of skilled farmers and trades people, and local markets. At the New Alchemy Institute, for example, we have an enormous pile of leaves that we use for compost and mulch (Photo 17). Each spring and fall the pile is replenished as local people on their way to the landfill see our sign and choose to recycle their leaves rather than dump them. At Prag tree Farm in Arlington, Washington, certain weeds and edible flowers provide an unusual income simply because there's a mark 'et for these "products" at local gourmet restaurants specializing in exotic salads. If you have beekeepers in your community, they may be willing to place hives on your land, ensuring the pollination of your crops and a secure source of nectar for the bees. Bartering skills with neighbors and sharing equipment are other obvious ways of using local resources efficiently. Personal resources. Don't overestimate your own skills and assets. Carefully consider the time, know-how, and finances you have available to run a small farm or homestead, and avoid a stressful future by designing the land with those limitations in mind. Determine the amount of time you can reasonably allot to your new venture, and list the skills you already have. Then stop at this point and reexamine your objectives. Can they be attained with the resources available? If so, proceed further ... if not, go back and redefine your objectives and search for resources you might have overlooked.

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS

At this stage of the design process, it's critically important that you think function and not species. Consider the location and size of the landscape components, rather than their detailed composition. In other words, think in terms of "windbreak" and "orchard" and "pond" . . . not "three rows of white pine and two of autumn olive," "Liberty apples or Reliance peaches," or "hybrid tilapia or native trout."

Inputs and outputs. Efficient design is contingent upon recognizing inputs and outputs. Each component should be located so that its inputs are provided and its outputs are used. (This is the concept of relative location that we discussed in Part 1.) Compost heaps, for instance, require a mixture of organic materials, water, and air as inputs ... and they produce heat, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and humus. Ideally, then, composting operations should be located with easy access to a plentiful supply of organic matter and close to the point of use (the market garden, the orchard, the pasture, or whatever). In addition, outdoor compost heaps produce only compost ... but when the piles are placed inside a greenhouse, heat, carbon dioxide, and water vapor may be recovered as well. This could be especially important in the winter, when we could expect compost-making to help keep a greenhouse warm and provide carbon dioxide enrichment at a time when C0 2 is often a limiting factor in vegetable growth. Such a setup has recently been implemented at the New Alchemy Institute in cooperation with the BioThermal Energy Center (see Fig. 2). This winter, we'll learn how well it works.

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