farming

We like to grow our own food, not only for all the usual reasons of health and freshness and knowing where our food comes from, but also because it is fun, and because we are curious about the steps that are involved in food production.  Many of these steps – such as harvesting and processing grains – have become increasingly invisible to the average consumer, as they happen at a far remove from cities and home kitchens, and on levels of industrialization that are difficult to replicate on a home scale.  We particularly enjoy rediscovering how to do these things at our small family scale.

But we’re not quite sure to call what we’re doing – since we’re not selling anything, some would say that we’re not really “farming.”  And we don’t have much of an interest in becoming a commercial operation, not least because of the economic constraints involved and the resulting need to specialize.

We sometimes say that we’re homesteading, except that we didn’t get our land for cheap via the Homestead Act, and we’re not truly relying on it for our sustenance.

What we’re doing could be called gardening, except for the tractors and other machinery that we like to play with.

Whatever it is called, we’re enjoying it.

We have more information here about both our plant crops and our chickens.