So you’ve finally bought your dream parcel of land. How do you know what to grow? What will grow well? What will work for your budget? Will you be growing for self-sufficiency or a commercial crop?
Step one- set up
Get soil testing done, or look at what is growing around you. Looking at what weeds or “unplanted plants” are thriving around you is a good indicator of your soil health. Make a list of these plants that you can see. You can use a plant identification app, too. I use plant.net and LOVE it! For example, we have a lot of wild elderberry. It likes free-draining loam soils of an acidic pH (5.5-6.5). We also have very prolific and healthy hawthorn trees that prefer 6.0-7.5pH. I did check pH once and it was 6.8, so not far off. Willow and oak also love acidic soils, and we have a lot of those!
Soil is very complicated. It has different layers, composition and pH levels. You won’t want one that will need heaps of correcting. I am lucky to have bought what looks like an ancient river bed, so the free-draining box is ticked! You can correct poor soil, but it is expensive to add products to it. Some land might be better to raising animals than growing fruit and veges. And that’s ok, as you can trade for fruit and veges instead.
You’re going to need shelter or a nursery crop if you’ve bought bare land. Plant at the end of winter and nurture through their first summer and you won’t regret it. It’s a lot of time and energy getting trees thriving when there aren’t any other trees around. But if you don’t put in this initial effort, every other plant you try will struggle or die. One cheat I recommend is to plant big trees. Smaller trees are at higher risk of dying, whereas bigger trees will establish quicker. Add the time you would put in nurturing a smaller plant and compare it to the cost of buying a bigger one instead. It is always more cost effective to pay a bit more for a bigger tree.
Step two- grow it
Decide what you’re going to grow. It’s good to focus on only a few things when starting out. The good news is that crops and animals have seasonal chores to maintain them. Plan it so you don’t get overwhelmed. Garlic is planted in winter when other chores are few. Lettuce in spring. Make a table of all the veges you eat and how many you’ll need to replicate your yearly consumption. Focus on produce that can be stored: apples, potato, onion, carrots. Or dried like beans, peas, seeds and corn. Or preserved like tomatoes, peppers, stone fruit and pears.
When buying perennial fruit and trees, it is important to buy from a local source. This way the plants will already be acclimatized to your conditions. I made the mistake many times buying blueberry plants and olive trees from a nationwide retailer, only for the plants to die in winter. Since using the advice and recommendations of my local garden center, I still have olives and blueberries. It was only a $10 difference per plant, but to think how much money I’ve wasted on plants that died!
If you decide to raise animals, have you got the right food growing already? Will you have enough feed for winter? You’ll also need shelter for all seasons. Make sure to look at where the prevailing winds come from, and what angles the rain falls in. Will you need electric fencing for pigs, cattle or goats? I’m a big fan of permaculture, so look at sunlight, rainfall, the contour of the land, natural shelter or existing trees while you plan.
Unfortunately we had brand new fencing wiped out the following winter by an unruly creek that decided to flood. This now means we have pretty bad fencing. We have only two securely fenced paddocks out of 6 grazing sites. Our goats often run wild and we round them up at the end of the day. This would be an issue if we had cattle or sheep. We don’t have a sheep dog, so our animals have to follow us politely instead. Horses, on the whole, are well behaved. We don’t need electric fencing and they stay behind a small piece of tape 3ft off the ground. They are easy to catch and move around.
Step three- build it
Now is the time to maximize your output. If you have put in the work the past 1-2 years setting up, you will now be able to plant the rest of what you need. Think vertically. You could grow pine-nut trees at the canopy level. Under this, you could grow mushroom logs, ginseng and blackberry vines. Now you’ve got four plants taking up the footprint of one. With livestock, you can focus on breeding up numbers. If you’re like me and the budget was tight, you only bought a few animals to begin with. The good news is that chickens, ducks, pigs and rabbits breed fast. Sheep and goats are pretty prolific too. Cattle and horses are much slower to build up numbers. With time, you will be able to work towards sufficient numbers and a high breed standard.
At this stage you can spend more money on infrastructure. We had a makeshift tin roofed A-frame goat shelter in one paddock and a 3 wall wood pallet and roofing iron shelter in another paddock. These were small and could cram all the goats in during bad weather, but didn’t account for their in-fighting. The roofs also blew away in the strong winds a lot. The lack of shelter made sick goats die faster. We bought all the materials we needed for $5,000 and built the super shed. It has 2 large yards, a sick bay and a chute for treatments, hoof trimming and shearing.
By waiting a few years, you will by now know how to lay out the farm to work for you. And you’ll know of any seasonal issues like flash flooding or strong winds. Chances are you were sold the land with rose-tinted glasses and have by now realized what you’re dealing with. With this knowledge, anything you build will be permanent and sufficient. You can build custom cattle yards, or laneways to move stock more easily. You will know which paddocks get swampy or flood. And you can work out your more permanent fencing strategy.
I like to have smaller paddocks to move stock around more frequently. Most paddocks are centered around the super shed, but some are further away. So I rely on portable goat shelters, a 1 ton plastic square drum with a hole cut in the side. You can get creative with larger shelter ideas such as tent-like roofs, converted car ports, and shipping containers.
I am experimenting with hawthorn as hedging. I love the idea of using natural features as hedging instead of treated wood. A stone wall would also look cool but I’m pretty sure the goats would think it’s a climbing toy! I’m hoping the hedging might work better where the seasonal floods take out the fences. There’s no point constructing a new fence every year!
Ways to save money
Do It Yourself- Obviously if you have the skills to do all the labor yourself this will save a lot of money. My husband taught himself as he went. He really enjoyed it and his new saying was “I love hammering!”. Mindfulness is for everyone on the farm.
Split large posts into halves or quarters. My clever husband used a chainsaw to cut round posts into quarters for our new chicken area. They don’t seem to make these to order anymore, and we were given a lot of used round posts from our neighbors. It made sense to make them go as far as possible. We have some horse yards to construct, but will need the full round posts for this.
Free trees- look around on roadsides, other farms (with permission) and your land for self-seeded free trees. Some will be good for firewood, like pine. And others for hedging, like hawthorn. They really do grow like weeds. Transplant in winter to avoid shock/ stress to the plant.
Alternative fence-building materials: Do you have an excess of iron that’s no longer good for roofing? It might look ugly, but can be particularly useful for pigs, who can be rough on fencing. You could use the resources around you. Stone fences look very charming and can keep sheep and horses in. You can cut 4 inch (10cm) diameter tree branches as rails or posts. They are easy to hammer into the ground with one end shaped into a point. Old hoses are great as insulators and then all you need is wire and a solar battery and you have an electric fence. Pallets are another great fencing idea. We had to make a quick fence to keep the goats in and it has lasted a few years now.
