Katie Nicholson

Go for it! It's a lot of work, but very tasty results! Hopefully your trees are closer together than ours are so you don't have a much walking to do!

Where I live, logging is the main industry. We're surrounded by thousands of acres owned by timber companies. Clear cut land is cheap because it erodes rapidly with no tree roots to hold the soil against rain and wind erosion so you would have to get green stuff established ASAP after the trees are gone. If you have some mature trees, you might consider talking to a  sawmill and seeing if you can sell them the trees. You would have to get someone to cut the trees and deliver them to the sawmill, but if your timber is good, the price you get for the logs would offset the cost of logging. Another thought is to advertise that you're taking bids to SELL your timber (once again, it would need to have to be enough fairly mature trees for this to be an option. A conservation department or university extension forester might be a good person to talk with). Of course if timber isn't an industry in your area or you don't have enough worthwhile trees these may not be options. Another thought is that there are small chainsaws which are easier for women to start and handle. They won't be much use against really big trees, but they can get a lot of the small stuff and you could probably clear a drivable path at least. Finally, our driveway is just gravel on top of dirt in the area we had bulldozed for the house. I think it cost about $1000 for the gravel (he spread it down the driveway and we smoothed it with the tractor or my father-in-law's skidsteer). I can't remember what the bulldozing cost. We add more gravel when potholes appear. We don't have ditches or pipes or any such things and don't really need them because we're on a ridge and it's the country and if we can't drive down our driveway then the gravel road is impassable too.

It is magical! We've long since finished our last jar that we saved for ourselves. I really do hope we do it again some year when we've got more time. Maybe when our children are big enough to help which will be a while. Those buckets can get heavy!

Unfortunately not this year. Production costs were prohibitively high so we made very little profit last winter and don't think we could charge much more if we were to offer syrup again. Maybe we'll do it again sometime in the future if we can find a way to reduce production costs.

We have a sick month old St Croix bottle ram. I was feeding him a homemade formula (1/4c cream and large egg in bottom of half gallon jar, then top off with whole milk), but switched to Sav-A-Lam when he became ill because we were concerned that he hadn't been getting proper nutrition from the homemade. He's started taking his bottle again and is taking nearly as much as he was before he got sick. Any thoughts on what to do to help him recover from the antibiotics we've been giving him? I am also wondering about cod liver oil or other supplements to help him fight the infection, and regain sight and hearing. Our hope had been to keep him as a ram, but if he doesn't regain sight/ hearing we may decide to fatten him up for slaughter. Any insights appreciated!

Laura Trovillion wrote:We get all of our chicken wheat also known as gravity grains, whole wheat flour, oats and heirloom cornmeal from Brian and his wife. They are good people and are doing really great things with organic heirlooms in the middle of conventional corn/bean country.

I was impressed by their selection and pleased with their pricing. I would have loved to find a place more local to me here in the Missouri Ozarks to buy from, but as you say, we live in the middle of conventional crop country so all the grain sellers I found in Missouri sold conventional seed, with one or two having organic options, but no heirlooms. We are toying with the idea of selling organically raised, heirloom grain in a few years when we get grain growing figured out.

Just realized I needed to update! We ended up buying 50lb of turkey red wheat from https://qualityorganic.net/
in IL. We also bought hulless oats, and popcorm. They aren't seed sellers, but rather grain sellers. They had the best prices that we could find.

We've got wheat and oats up. Of course we'll wait another month or two to plant the popcorn. Our plan is to save enough seed from all three crops to give us the seed needed to feed our family/ livestock next year. Hopefully we'll have enough to eat some too. We definitely have enough popcorn (if we can get it to grow!)

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Winter rye grows feral in the wildlands here. It takes care of itself with no weeding, and no irrigation. No other grain grows consistently in the wildlands in my ecosystem.

I can harvest and clean enough grain in an hour to feed myself for a week. I love subsistence farming. Makes my heart sing.

I wonder what the yield per acre is, how satisfactorily it can be harvested with a combine, and whether additional processing steps are required before it's ready to turn into the final product (ground, rolled, crimped, etc)? I know many permies enjoy subsistence farming which is why I said we're not very interested in it since the farming methods may well differ!

Robert Ray wrote:Take a look at "Kernza". I'm not sure about how it would grow in your climate. Thynopirium intermedium is what Rodale started out with in the development of "Kernza" Some of the perennial ryes I think are for a bit colder climate. I like Great Basin Seeds they might have a suggestion for your zone .

Kernza would probably grow here, but we're not quite to the level of growing 20 acres which it looks like is the minimum amount they'll sell for planting. I think my husband figured 5 acres to be enough for our personal use with the heirloom wheat we planted this year (can't remember the variety off the top of my head. We planted 1/3 acre and will save the seed to plant next year.) That being said, kernza yields are lower than standard wheat so we'd have to plant more. Might be worth it if we didn't have to mess with plowing, disking, and planting.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Search for Marc Bonfils for no-plow wheat production.

My husband has been looking at that one, possibly planting ladino clover on the field with the wheat (he may have already done that, but I'm not sure), but we're questioning long-term yields with the Bonfils method.  Another question is how labor intensive is it? If we can't do it in the same amount of time with similar yields to the traditional plowing and sowing, then it may be unrealistic for our sustainability goals. We're also looking at rocky, clay soil so may need to do other amendments for satisfactory results. That's why Back to Eden is appealing to me right now, though obtaining enough organic matter to cover 5 acres 4-6 inches deep might be problematic... 🤔

My husband and I just watched the Back to Eden film and were contemplating whether grains (wheat, oats, etc) could be grown no till in quantities great enough to feed a family and livestock. Plowing certainly makes it easier to plant in the beginning, but could no till be done successfully long-term without massive amounts of time/ labor/ inputs? We're looking at calories here as well as quality of life. We don't want to be subsistence farmers or to be so involved in growing things to eat that we have no time for other interests (and we have many).