People often ask what kind of farm we have and I struggle to provide an answer that is easily understood. We aren’t setting out to be ‘radish’ farmers or ‘emu’ farmers or ‘100% free range organic biodynamic fiscally conservative but socially liberal heritage breed pork’ farmers. What we really want is to eat and feed others great food by emulating natural ecosystems. This means throwing as much diversity at the business plan as we can handle and seeing what sticks. Since we are only just beginning to learn our land, we don’t know yet what’s going to work. Each place is different — almost every farmer I’ve spoken to has said that you have to farm according to your place and what works there and for you.
T-post in the center of this picture is 6 feet tall and not sunk into the ground - it is held up only by the grass!
In our case that starts with being hay farmers, as we have mostly pasture with grasses adapted to wet soils — and this is problematic. Not only does hay not pay well on a small scale (I did the hay math on hay equipment— minimum of 9 years to break even, assuming the cheapest all new equipment, consistent annual production of 800 fifty-pound bales, and selling it all at $4 per bale), but it also turns out that I have pretty bad allergies. Adult onset allergies are not uncommon, or it might be that I’ve always had them and they’re only evident now because I spend all day and night next to 30 acres of grass. Either way, they appear to be here to stay. Cutting the grass before the pollen ramps up is challenging because of the wet Springs and soggy soils, so the possibility of solving this challenge with a few steers is becoming more and more appealing.
Until I do the cow math — grass from 800 fifty-pound bales of hay will feed about 4 adult cows for a whole year — not accounting for hay quality, cow age, wastage, supplementary feed rate, that time they got into the garden, or about a million other variables. This seems promising at first (4 cows x 500 pounds {boneless meat output} x $4 per pound = $8000) but since we can only graze for about half the year, we would still require hay equipment (or buying hay) and of course, buying steers (...calculating...) = 10.3 years to break even. Yay hay!
So for now we sell to a local hay contractor, who like many farmers these days, works a full time job in town and can’t cut hay right now because of a broken mower and a pesky novel virus that has bogged down the tractor parts delivery business. Ah-chooo! Did I mention the 30 acres of pollen?
Maybe this year’s black swan is nature’s way of telling us we really should all take the year off.
Pictured above: A deer in the tall grass, a farmer-in-training by the tall grass, and a handmade haystack.