Tips and Tricks
Building
We built a reed bed to clean the waste water from the lodge. We made adjustments to the original design to remove the need for pumps. You can see photos of the construction here.
Farm and Garden
Main page |
The Conversion Plan | Journal 2000 | Journal 2001 | Tricks and Tips | links |
Like reading Eliot Coleman's books or using the spade as a dibber for seed potatoes!
Books
Definitely Eliot Coleman's books for micro and mini scale production. They also offer inspiration and a guide to the flexible system that is required. Conventional systems are more rigid (eg 15 applications of herbicide, pesticide, fertiliser in a season for McDonalds potatoes in Idaho) whereas organic systems are modified in reaction to soil changes, microclimate changes, seasonal fluctuations etc.
Also Nicolas Lampkin's Organic Farming which also offers economic parameters valuable in planning.
Karl Schwenke's Successful Small Scale Farming is particularly useful as a primer on small scale tools and equipment.
Chickens
A useful study on organic
chicken business in Ireland by the Department of Agriculture. (pdf
1.9 MB)
Potatoes
For planting by hand we used a spade as a long handled dibber to open the ground. This is quick and does not put pressure on the back, but it is only appropriate for micro or mini scale.
Varieties that have cropped well include Osprey. Verity proved very resistant to blight.
Tomatoes
We love tomatoes, but ... Our climate does not allow proper growing time. During our startup we experimented with various sowing and we found that outdoor germination has a very low success, less than 1% even when covered with fleece. However, when propagated and grown under glass we had a great crop. This requires more labour so we now grow them on a smaller scale which satisfies our domestic needs plus rather than field scale production. We may increase in future but all protected growing requires more complexity which is limitd by labour!
Scale of Operations
Our experience has ranged from micro to mini and we are planning to expand to a midi scale. Each has its limitations. The main resource limitations are equipment and labour, although generally the use of equipment to reduce labour is a requirement to make the unit economically viable. Therefore, a micro scale is viable if a day a week is contributed during the growing season, but advancing to a higher scale forces tradeoffs: spending too much on capital (i.e. resulting in overcapacity) will prevent viability, yet too little results in high labour requirements which also prevents viability. The costs of other variable costs, e.g. land, seed, is relatively insignificant.
We suggest that up to one hectare may be worked economically with one full time person and a two wheel tractor with implements. This scale is micro.
