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Eating Well in Rural America
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Eating real food with real ingredients is a priority for our family. Before we moved to the Ozarks, we lived outside a large city where organic produce and meat was not hard to find. The prices were reasonable since there was a demand for organic food.
We moved to an area of the country where the organic food movement is just now trickling in. It was definitely an eye opener to see how spoiled we were, with pretty much anything we wanted just a 10 minute drive away. There are grocery stores that sell organic meat and produce about an hour away, which we do go to if we happen to need to go to the city for other reasons. However we prefer to stay on the farm and avoid unnecessary running around as much as possible.
how do we eat well in rural America when organic food isn’t readily available?
The House Design
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We have spent about 2 years on our farm now and are at the point where we are ready to build a house. It took about that long to get a feel for the best siting and to get various other prerequisite projects completed, such as a barn to store the straw bales. This has given us some time to think about what we really want. Here are some of the things we considered in our design.
Getting Ready For Plaster
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We’re still working on our straw bale guest cabin. As you probably know, things don’t always go according to plan or go as quickly as you’d like them to go. The bales were stacked and ready for the welded wire in December. Winter is very mild here in southern Missouri, and we thought we could put the lime plaster up before the weather got too cold. But as the night time lows dipped around freezing, we realized that we were just going to have to wait for warmer weather. There always other projects to do around here, so work on the guest cabin slowed to working on it on rainy days. Several other projects took priority and have been completed. Our focus has returned to the guest cabin as we’re nearly ready to get started on our actual house! It’s time to get this cabin done!
Surviving Summer
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The heat of summer is upon us! It’s the time of year when many people retreat into their air conditioned homes to keep cool and comfortable. But what would you do if you didn’t have air conditioning?
When we lived in Colorado, we did not have air conditioning. Sure, it got hot during the day, but the nights were always cool and there was no humidity. Our house was also positioned in a way that the afternoon sun didn’t shine into our house during the summer. We were quite comfortable and didn’t even think about needing air conditioning.
Fast forward to the beautiful Ozarks. We are currently living in a trailer house until we finish building our house. Trailer houses are poorly insulated and tend to act like an oven in the summer heat. And the humidity! Everything melts in the humidity, people included. We soon found ways to not only survive an Ozark summer, but to enjoy it without central air.
Posted in Farm Life
Tagged keeping cool, no air conditioning, no central air, summer heat, surviving summer
Farming: A Career Change
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A conventional job is often described as comfortable, stable, or secure. Whether or not that is actually accurate, it can certainly feel that way. However, humans tend to be rather illogical about things and that perceived security may not be as secure as it feels. Regardless, comfortable easily describes many jobs. Routine and known things are somehow comfortable. Branching out into the unknown can certainly be intimidating. This is how I felt when I left the safe, familiar world of engineering and decided to buy a farm. That coupled with my inexperience in the field of farming made it feel extra scary. However, today I’m grateful that we pursued our dreams, even though we haven’t yet fully met all our goals.
Here are some things to think about if you decide to consider a career change. My experience is from engineering to farming/ranching/permaculture so that’s what I’ll share, but I suspect it could apply to more than just those specifics. Keep in mind that I’m not giving advice, just sharing our experiences. As my neighbor always says, free advice is worth just that anyway. Most importantly, try to be honest with yourself throughout this decision making process or else this is a waste of time. Be willing to consider downsides. Don’t look at best-case income/etc unless you also consider worst case or more realistic outcomes.
Posted in Farm Life, Homesteading, Moving
Tagged career change, changing jobs, get started farming, moving to homestead, starting a farm
Hugelkultur Garden Beds
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One of the first things that I wanted to do when we moved to our homestead was to get a garden started. It was the beginning of August, but I had dreams of a fall garden. After attempting to dig a few small beds, I realized just how rocky and hard the soil was! There is a lot of clay content in our soil, and a LOT of rocks. I did plant a few odds and ends, which did grow and we got a few things out of the garden that fall. But I knew that we could make it much better.
It was time to think about raised beds. More specifically, hugelkultur beds.
Getting started without permanent fencing
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When we purchased our farm in the summer of 2014, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. Our farm had a lot of barns, most in disrepair. The fencing wasn’t much better. There was a lot of barbed wire, some of it was in good shape but most of the fence was in desperate need of repair. There were some rotten posts, holes in parts of the fence, the entire fence down in other areas. Despite all of this, we were eager to get started adding animals as soon as possible. We wanted to add sheep, goats, cattle and pigs to our farm.
From the beginning we knew that we wanted to practice rotational grazing with all of our animals. Rotational grazing involves moving livestock to fresh paddocks to allow the grass in the previous paddocks to grow back. How frequently you move your livestock depends on your situation and can range from a couple of times a day, to once a week. Electric fencing is often used in rotational grazing systems, with a permanent perimeter fence. Electric fencing seemed like a good solution to our fencing issues. The decision was made to use temporary electric fence exclusively until we could get some permanent fence built.
Reasons For Trees
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Have you ever not appreciated something until you didn’t have it? I have lived in wooded areas most of my life, but never really thought about trees and the benefit of trees until we moved to Colorado. Sure we lived in a Ponderosa Pine forest, but it was a dry climate and not much else grew. The ranches there were dry with a rare tree in the pastures. It wasn’t until we moved to southern Missouri and saw the variety of trees that grow here that I started to think about all the benefits wooded areas on your homestead or farm brings.
Trees are beautiful and majestic, but their benefits are often overlooked. While it is important to keep the woods from taking over pastures, trees are an asset to your farm or homestead.
Here are Some reasons why you should have trees on your homestead.
Posted in Homesteading
Tagged benefits of trees, erosion control, Nitrogen Fixers, permaculture, plant trees, Trees, windbreak
The Chicken Coop: “Coop Deville”
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When we moved to Missouri we had to leave our mobile chicken coop, “The Eggmobile” (a la Joel Salatin) behind. Travis had designed and built that coop, but it was just too big to move from Colorado to Missouri. We sold the chicken coop to a good friend and decided to build another coop similar to what we had had before. A mobile chicken coop was a requirement for us, we wanted the chickens to follow the livestock for pasture sanitation and fertilization.