How ya gonna keep'em down on the farm?

For anyone who believes that peak oil and climate change will result in large changes to human population the only rational course is to figure out what kind of lifestyle is sustainable and to achieve this before things become dire. For my family the result is to focus our lives on building up a small farm to the point that it is able to provide for our needs.

We went through about a two year process in narrowing down the nice-to-haves, the must-haves, and the pie-in-the-sky features. Our short list ended up with the following:

1. 15 acres/6 hectares or larger
   
2. 1/2 forest and 1/2 arable fields
3. a small house that can be used while we build a bigger one
4. source of water other than a well
5. within two hours of a large city
6. part of a small nearby community or town
7. easily reachable by road, rail, and water
8. full sunlight for solar power
   
9. decent wind for wind power
10. away from coastal areas due to sea level rise
    

We found the ideal place about a year ago and bought it last Fall. It's 20 acres with about 2/3 forest and 1/3 fields with a nice though small house and a decaying barn. The former owners also installed a small diesel-powered sawmill so we can cut our own lumber as well. The fields haven't been used for about 50 years and are a bit overgrown. We've outfitted an 800cc ATV as a mini-tractor and will use it to get the fields in shape for food production next year. The first year goal is to cut the weeds, plow the soil thoroughly and plant "green manure" (red clover) through Fall 2008.

The property also has a nice little pond about 50 meters by 100 meters that we'll dredge and use to aquafarm crayfish. If things get really dire we'll convert to intensive fish farming. The crayfish are just for fun.

The plan is to add a greenhouse and wood-heated hot tub to one side of the little house this Summer. I've also invested in detailed plans for a Gambrel Roof barn that we plan to build next Summer. We'll use the plans to calculate how much lumber we need. The lumber will be cut in 2008 and set up to dry in the dilapidated barn until we're ready to raze it and put up the new one in 2009.

We'll add two large greenhouses beside the barn to extend the growing season a bit. These are 5 meters by 20 meters and will extend our growing season a month or two on either side of April and October. We live in a Northern climate (picked back in the 1990's due to global warming issues) and the growing season is quite short otherwise. The fields are divided up into our greenhouse area for vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc. and two larger fields we'll use for corn, wheat, potatoes, and sugar beets. The sugar beets are for our own Ethanol production for use in our car and ATV. Both of these are modern EFI (electronic fuel injection) vehicles that can be converted to Ethanol with a simple add-on box.

The new barn will sport a high efficiency still we'll use to produce our own Ethanol. Ethanol from sugar beets is a tried and true process and there are a lot of howto guides.

Once the barns and greenhouses are up we'll start building the wind and solar power systems. I figure it's a two year process to build test and debug the system and get us entirely off grid. We'll leave the little house on-grid so that we seem at least partially respectable to the powers that be but the new house we plan to build on the property will be completely off grid as will the greenhouses and barn.