Farming - a series of my thoughts, a little random

I'm still considering options when it comes to farming, but a book called the Market Gardener has pointed me in a direction that my mind is rebelling against.

Well, not quite outright rebellion, but questioning the logical thought processes of certain aspects of the chosen methods used to farm.

Micro Farming, Intensive Market Gardening, uses a seemingly endless plethora of calculations, planning stages, soil tests, and new methods to counteract the harmful aspects of intensive agriculture.

It doesn't seem to make sense.  Harmful agriculture?  Every form of land based agriculture is taking the soil, and planting food products that wouldn't naturally grow there without cultivation.  Each food crop takes away when it is harvested, so that is the real damage, not the cultivation.  Market Gardening counteracts its intensive approach with amendments, compost, manure, and the like.

They do not use the modern method of farming called Mono-culture. I do agree with this. Old methods required crop rotation, and a field that should remain fallow, to allow it to rest, and wild grasses to grow there. In the intensive method, and I'm still learning, they plant cover crops, and turn them into 'green manure'. The green plant is mowed, and tilled back into the soil. The organic material is allowed to decompose on its own, over time.

While this seems logical, fallow fields are given a rest so that the same crops are not grown year after year in the same plot, like in mono-culture. This crop rotation prevents insect infestations from getting established in the long term. If you keep moving your crops around, once a nest is built, they have nothing to eat because the food source has moved on.

The author did lots of crop rotation, on a quite large scale, and with lots of planning, to keep different types of crops from growing in the same plots year after year.

I was impressed. Not so much with the green manure. They used lots of compost, which I liked, but the green manure just seems like a waste. The plant grows, using the soil, taking minerals to grow, gets turned back in, which, in the end, adds nothing to the soil except fresh organic matter. In retrospect, the organic matter was already there, in mineral format, or compost. Maybe I'm not quite seeing something.

Maybe its like yeast, and sourdough. Got to keep adding the food to keep the organisms, the ones that decompose organic matter, fed.

That makes a bit more sense.

I also like the idea of intensive gardening/farming. Use as much of the land as possible, without using large scale machinery, and accomplish the same goal. A good living.

Large scale mechanized agriculture. It seems to be centered on bigger is better. From what I've seen though, that motto has not given bigger balances to the farmer. Bigger machines mean bigger debts, which have to be serviced by the larger crop harvests. Larger land plots to work, bigger machines, bigger harvests, bigger debts. Doesn't seem logical to me. Just working to pay debt. Pretty much similar to what most people in the city do, with different scenery.

Although I do not agree with everything the author wrote, I do believe that his experience is valuable, and gives a different approach that I never even considered before. Bigger is not always better, and staying small may be good as well.

I would prefer self sustaining, but in order to attain his level of farming, its just not possible. So much time must be spent on the farming, and planning processes, that all the extras, to be as self sustainable, it wouldn't work. Something would suffer. Most likely the farm.

I like old ideas, and as modern experience is reinforcing the old ideas once again, its time to revisit some of them.

Not off grid. No grid. No power. We lived thousands of years without it. Why not again? Preservation through use of canning, salt, or honey, and not refrigeration.

However, I'm not a fool. The real reason people didn't use motorized vehicles, or mechanized farming for thousands of years was because it did not exist.

Would I mind sitting back, soaking up the heat of a wood stove during the winter? Would I mind driving to the city in a horse and buggy, with veggies to sell at market? Would I mind milking the cow first thing in the morning, collecting eggs, or preparing feed for the animals?

Not at all. I would love it. But I'm also realistic. That is years off for me, and maybe impossible to accomplish my total dream in my lifetime.

And what does my total dream look like? That is a discussion best left for another day.

Sorry for the randomness of this post. Once I start talking, I can't shut up, nor can I stay on topic. But talking it out helps me to figure out my direction.

Thank you for listening.