Thoughts on micro farming.

Kristina's convinced me that we don't need masses of land to feed ourselves, although it would be nice anyway!

I've been looking into the idea of "micro farms", which is an idea to help "third world" people who tend to be a bit skint be less dependant on soya from the USA. You have about a hectare of land and grow everything on it you need, plus extra to sell.

Here's an aerial photo of the field:

Here's my idea based on a 7000m2 field plus a bit of garden:

The red line is the property boundary - this is the plan of "house no.1" as per previous blog entry. We've put an offer in because it's the best one we've seen, and also the first!

Green line is semi-dwarfing fruit trees spaced at 4m intervals with hedging/large species like cherry along the bottom: that's 40 trees in total.

Red arrows are the direction of the rotation.

A: 2 weaner pigs chewing their way through Jerusalem Fartichokes sown last year.

B: Fartichokes growing for pigs the following year.

C: Pasture which has been growing for 3 years, which the pigs will clear when they've finished the fartichokes in the late summer or whenever.

D: Pasture which has been growing for 2 years and is being cut for hay. Should get 10 bales from it based on average yields of 2 tons an acre. Pygmy goats only need 1kg of hay a day.

E: New pasture growing and being nibbled by rabbits and chickens in arks.

F: Spring-sown barley, which will have pasture under-sown so when the barley's taken off, the pasture is already growing ready for the chickens, etc. Based on getting 1750lb malted barley per acre (which is the grain minus 20% for wasteage), I could get 360lb grain, or 6 pints of 3% bitter for every day of the year. Belters.

G: Root crop, which is sown on land that had pigs on last year so it's nicely dug up and manured already. As I will be hoeing like mad here, it will be hopefully weed-free for sowing barley/etc next year. If I sow cabbages 40cm apart in rows 50cm apart I should get 800 plants, and about 900kgs yield if they grow to about 1.5kg each. Cushty. That's the animals fed.

H: Perennial crops like asparagus, hops, etc, and polytunnels for habanero chillies!

I: Our veg beds, based on the normal rotation of potatoes-legumes-brassica-roots.

J: Bees in nice top-bar hives. See http://www.biobees.com/ for info. Definitely getting into this.

K: Soft fruit.

L: Herbs.

M: Pond and wild flowers, etc.

So, every year we could get (with some Divine Intervention on our behalf) 200kgs pig meat, milk and cheese from goats, eggs, chicken, rabbit, honey, more beer than I can drink, more veg than it's possible to eat, bread (if wheat is grown instead of barley?), more fruit than we can eat (cider press for Christmas please Santa), herbs, duck meat (smoked), and a Farmer's Tan. All on less than 2 acres.

This place has a nice old stone gite as well, so might be an earner in summer if we play a "Biologite" card with a veg box, fresh bread, etc, and charge cheap rent.