Mid Summer Update

The house is pretty well gutted at this point. I have pictures to post soon. Most of the work has centered on the sills being repaired in a couple of place. However, work has slowed because two of our sons are getting married and money is a little tight. But we are hoping to make some new progress after July.

In the time being we have been cutting the fields. We have a 1964 Ford 4000 tractor now (pictures will follow) and we are getting the fields cut that have been over run by sumac and weeds. Our big goal is to start getting the soil prepared for grazing. We have been reading a couple of books, You Can Farm, by Joel Salatin, and The Keyline Plan, by P.A. Yeomans. Without going in to a lot of detail, the Keyline Plan is a method of cultivating your land so that water is retained so that the natural build up of the soil can occur, while not using evasive plowing techniques. Once I have some extra money, I plan on buying a chisel plow, as described in the Keyline Plan to further the process, so when spring arrives we can begin grazing the fields. Also, John our neighbor has been cutting the good fields for hay.

As for Joel Salatin’s book, all I can say for now is that it's life changing. A colleague of mine loaned me the book after many conversations we had about small scale farming. Beth went through it cover to cover, which I too read cover to cover based upon her excitement. As a result, we have really changed our farming plan around completely based upon his methods and models. But I would like to discuss more about the book and our exploration in another entry. 

But all in all, things are moving too slowly for us, but through it all we are really learning about patience, and being slow and steady. And we are comforted by the fact that we are not incurring debt.