lhtown wrote:If you had a choice, would you buy say 5-10 acres of semi-urban/urban land close to or within a population center or 40-80 acres an hour from any significant cities if you intended to make a living using permaculture ideals?
Easy. Rural. And that is what I did.
I drew circles on the map decades ago to locate where were the things that mattered to me (e.g., family, rocks, dancing), where were my markets (Burlington, Montpelier, Hanover - higher income areas) and where were lower land prices (rural, mountain). I then checked with the town offices that were in the junction areas asking about zoning and other things. In the towns that met my criteria I looked for property at the top of the
water sheds with good timber, water, etc.
My original goal had been a mere 20 acres but I have considerably more than that and use it - we do both
sustainable farming (pastured pork) and forestry both along the ideals of
permaculture. We deliver fresh pork weekly to the 'cities'* within about 1 hour of us.
We are on steep land and I terrace. Since we don't sell crops we don't need flat land. We sell meat and timber - both of which grow well on our steep land. Pasturing works on land that is not good for cropping.
Cheers
-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop
project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa *I say cities. They're cities to us. They have populations of 10 to 39 thousand. To us in Vermont those are cities although I realize that in most of the country they're a drop in a big building. The key is they are our market with the available income to spend on our products. Know your markets.
