We have a variety of missions and motivations layering over our 400 acres. We wish to grow much of our own food, we want to manage our land well, we want to keep our acreage in agricultural taxation, we want some form of sovereignty over our particular farm passion and the hours of our working life, we want to play alongside others in this farming-kind of sport, and/or maybe we just want to pick raspberries at the end of a summer day. To that end, we can divide the farm into not divisions but, more encompassingly, missions. Missions, as a concept, allows us to see the farm as both a whole, coordinated entity, but also perhaps a collection of arm-rubbing neighbors each with their own focus, whatever the case may be.
The Whole Farm : To make and maintain the land and farm as the heart and body of the community. To manage our land ecologically well while contributing to our community's human needs -- for food, fiber, fuel, framing, freedom, etc. -- as well as any work for further profit. To do this in a way that nurtures the whole being -- heart, mind, and body -- of those who do the work, and that does not threaten the financial integrity of the community in sum. We will always seek to understand and improve what we get for what we give, recognizing both the merits and the ends of productive efficiency, while acknowledging the real and relative cost of having what we want. That is to say, we will dream and build, and it might cost us, but it cannot cost us too much.
As a whole group, we maintain control of separate missions and operations, insofar as they are uniquely a incorporated entity such as an LLC, via the land lease, whose conditions permit us to express a common will and perhaps a particular charge. We will fund and/or own all permanent physical assets, though the separate missions will own the more liquid remainder of their business. Members of the commons are free to cooperate -- naturally but also legally, i.e. in a cooperative -- among their separate missions, and to create as diverse or singular a farm enterprise as they desire. We, in particular via a land committee, may engage in a more comprehensive plan for the land as we see fit.
There are tensions and pitfalls in all scenarios of this connection and separation of the various agricultural uses of our land, mostly around the nature of ownership, control, cooperation, vision, labor, and the darker side of "me and mine." If we provide here a sort of primordial soup, what emerges? While there may be no brightline path of total satisfaction, we begin with this : we take the basic stand that we want to grow our own food -- because this farm component, in particular, binds farmers and non-farmers alike in a shared experience -- but only to the extent that we can reasonably afford it.
Insofar as any particular food-related mission principally works for the sufficiency of the community, it could group into one coordinated body of fluid management and labor. If a mission outgrows its peers -- an outsized orchard or elderberry syrup operation, for example -- we must consider the ramifications of spin-off. The advantages of initially subsuming them into one body -- vegetables, small fruit, tree fruit, culinary herbs, staples, even flowers as one coordinated farm -- include fluidity in management and labor, team-spirit, and the unfractured experience of what is truly a whole.
The size of our community as against the size of the land also practically determine the nature of of what we can do, as various agricultural ventures scale differently with respect to land and labor. Modern haying equipment permits one farmer to manage a great many acres. Something similar can be said for bees and sheep. An herb farm is much more labor dense. If we want not just farmers but a balanced vocational community, and we presently have 12 households, then we are truly limited in the number of directions we can go at any one time.
The Food and Flower Farm : To grow much of what we eat and use -- vegetable, fruit, herb, staple, and more. To limit the scope of our production to what is reasonably efficient and productive, yet to continuously explore the possibility of increasing what falls under that scope. To similarly grow anything for further profit that makes us happy and the world more good and beautiful.
Crops : In real world terms, this means that vegetables, small fruit, tree fruit culinary herbs, eggs, and flowers likely fall in scope, with an eye to staples -- nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, and dairy -- in some small, quiet combine future. For further profit, we may or may not choose to increase our diverse offering (as in a CSA) or to focus on the larger-scale production of particular crops (such as neohybrid hazelnuts or apples). The choice, at least, comes down to vision and passion, our preference and capability for any particular number of farmers and missions in the community, and the production, post-harvest, and market realities of a particular crop. The potential inclusion of flowers, a non-edible food into an otherwise wholly edible-list, stems from the fact that its tools and labor overlap well with the food farm.
Management : Planning and management of each sub-mission within the Food Farm -- vegetables, fruits, culinary herbs, etc. -- falls to individual farmers, while visioning, goal-setting, critical examination, and labor falls to the cooperative group. That is, we are each managers of our realm, with the space to nurture our own dream and passion, but the work is done by and for a collective. If for whatever reason it seems more reasonable to split and sell each sub-mission into separate business entities that do or do not cooperatively own a set of tools, we can consider that. In the meantime, let's begin with the assumption that we find a form of cooperative farming that gives the full balance of being master of one's own ship while also sharing the journey.
Labor : The aim is to have labor fluidity for all farmers, including managers, between missions. This gives a fuller life, with more diverse friends and experiences. We have a great opportunity for those in the community for whom farming and its management is not their present passion to still engage in the farm. While there are a variety of avenues for this, small fruit harvest, in particular, is well-suited to non-management labor : 1) it's tasty, 2) farmers can sometimes find it warying to pick the amount required to fill multiple bellies.
Wage : We explicitly counter the college-age low-wage race-to-the-bottom of American small-scale organic, and seek to ceiling our hours to a reasonable 35-40h/week in season and to floor our income to minimum wage, while simultaneously recognizing both the clockless needs of a living farm and the limits of community subsidization. In order to achieve minimum wage we need to 1) produce enough food efficiently enough to 2) earn the value of the money our community -- including our partner, if we have one -- pays us. For the non-farmer, this may be hard to grasp, but we need to be righteous enough to earn minimum wage. Managers will all get a salary, part-time help will get paid by an hourly or piece-meal rate.
Size : If our market is principally ourselves, then this is how large we would be.
Veggies : 2-3 acres in crop, flipping back and forth within 4-6 acres. Those 2-3 acres will need 3-4 farmers to work them at <=40h/week. We are ~12 households, giving us a fuzzy 36 adult-sized bellies to feed, year-round. We can get about 20-33 bellies fed per acre, depending upon many things. Let's assume we thus need 1.5-2 acres to feed our present and potentially larger future selves. If we choose to fill the sparse-crop gaps with our own production -- not a neighboring farm's -- then we can add 30-50% to that, to give us a 2 to 3 acre base. If we flip back and forth between a full-year cover crop, then we need 4-6 acres at minimum. If we choose a compost-heavy system, we need to add 10-30 acres of hay land for compost, depending upon the number of cuts we get, our application rate, and the percent of the land we compost each year.
Fruit, Small : 2-3 acres. It is a nice coincidence that a heavy-fruit eater's small-fruit takes about as much space to grow as their vegetables.
Fruit, Tree : 2-3 acres. It is a further coincidence that tree fruit take the same amount of space as the small fruit and vegetables each take. These are ballpark figures, with annual farm yield and per-person demand bound to fluctuate, but they're workable starting figures.
Market : If we grow for 130-150% of what we need, accepting some light years in broccoli or flush years in tomatoes, then what do we do with the excess. If we simply put out our excess in a farmstand, we would have a true "volatile market" that would likely be neither large nor stable enough for continued interest. We could grow more, but that 1) increases the size of the food operation as against the other ventures in a limited farm labor pool, thus limiting those ventures, and 2) perhaps does not recognize the inherent fact of waste in the farm operation, which does not have to be a can to kick down the road. Thus, we might be able to preserve most excess for winter -- summer squash, corn, tomatoes, greens, etc. Some winters we have a lot, others we don't. We either live with that lack -- which we intentionally allow -- or gladly use the excess of other farmers to subsidize our own.
The "Test Bed" research farm : It is fun to experiment, but it's also fun to have food, which experiments sometimes fail to yield. In addition to the main "production" farm, part of the food farm will be a smaller ~1/10 acre garden for variety and cultural practice experimentation. This frees each manager's brain and time from the inefficiencies and logistics of in-season experimentation -- remembering all the varieties and practices one is testing, measuring the results, etc. -- and turns the main "production" farm into the best bet we have for success. It does not limit, but we hope encourages, each manager, and mission un-related farmers, to dream evolution outside of the fear of whole-farm failure, while not having to manage the unruliness of those dreams. It further makes for a pretty beautiful little garden, with lots of delicious taste-tests throughout the summer. I expect to site it in the commons commons / middleground.
The Vast, Productive Remainder : To provide the opportunity for agricultural pursuit and an agricultural life while maintaining agricultural taxation. While these pursuits may in some ways be less directly critical than food production, they are not less important -- especially not to the person who engages in them, but also not to us, as a whole, and our community culture itself. We likely cannot afford 400 acres of land that is not under agricultural taxation, and so these pursuits fundamentally sustain the commons.
Hay : 200 acres of open land, to share with the sheep and the bees. A local fellow has been baling and trucking all over the east coast, but would take his equipment with him if he does not continue here. Someone else might fill-in. It is up to us to decide how, why, and how much to hay, and if we want to do it ourselves.
Wool : 200 acres of open land, to share with the hay and the bees. Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, VT is at least one place for custom spinning. The market after that is up for study. For the back of the envelope, let's imagine : 100-200 sheep per farmer, 5-10 sheep per acre, 10 pounds of wool per sheep, $2-3-10! / pound of wool, and 2-3 hours / sheep per year. Thus, per farmer : 10-20-40 acres, 200-300 hours, 1000-2000 pounds of wool, $2000-$6000-$20000.
Bees & Honey : 200 acres of open land. We have the potential to manage some fraction of the fields as wildflower meadows for bees that might also be cut and gathered for compost and even bouquets. Honey is not perishable like lettuce, which is a big plus. No market analysis yet done.
Dairy : The purpose, here, would be for ghee, a temperate-climate cooking-fat, which is, importantly, shelf-stable. The math of a vegetarian dairy functionally involves twice as many animals, assuming a 50/50 male/female birth split. In most cases today, the males are kept in pens for veal, while the females are kept for dairy products. Sexed-semen techniques drastically increase the female : male birth ratio, but a full cost-benefit analysis needs to be made on that, as I am not an expert. This is not a necessary component of the farm, and it in its nature brings to the front the reality of life, death, and living, much like sheep do. That said, a neighboring farm could (very) potentially manage our demand as a fraction of their dairy, while we manage the males.
Flowers : I dream of a more perennial, often-native flower farm. My CSA folks seemed to like what I offered, which was not-at-all the Floret Flowers bouquet -- as impossibly awesome as she and they are -- but more like a meadow in a glass. (Though I also love roses and peonies, and dream of a rosarian among us.) Flowers are perishable, my taste may not be yours, and beyond our own demand, and perhaps some from the town, the markets are likely distant -- i.e., the market analysis needs to be done -- still, they are a high-return crop that makes people happy. Even if only grown for ourselves, there is a small business here, but we could have a larger one. I expect it would be part of the commons commons / middleground.
Christmas Trees : I do not believe there is a local supplier of Christmas trees. If the operation is properly sized, the labor and income timing look like a good fit with our other work. Plus, the impetus here is to dream and do before we die, and I'm in love with winter and the holiday season, which means I want to smile at people as I tie up a tree and give them some hot cocoa with my snow-suit on. I don't need to hear how silly it is to grow trees to be cut after six years. :)
Maple Sap & Syrup : I have not conducted a survey on maple trees, seeing mostly cedar on my winter visit. They are around, it's just a question of their count and density, if one were to make it a business. There are likely enough trees for sap slurping, and even home or common-house boiling. Making it a business is up to us, though perhaps unnecessary and uneconomical, it is still a possibility.
Seeds and Trees : Green Things Farm Collective cut-out their seeds division because it wasn't profitable. East Hill Tree Farm is just across the way, from a competitive vantage. But, gosh-darn, I would love to find a way to get a seed-farm started -- likely custom-order by variety including our own research selections, not a true seed company with a catalog. I draw inspiration from Common Wealth Seeds, a visit to High Mowing early into my career, Joseph Lofthouse's landrace seeds approach, and the very nature of the potential for plant health and quality through cultivar choice itself. As to trees, it's hard to read John Bunker's Apples and the Art of Detection, hang-out at the Edible Landscaping Persimmon Festival, read any of Michael Phillips books, or marvel at Badgersett Research's Neohybrid Hazel work without wanting to help spread the good news. Is eating the fruit enough? Is growing it enough? Is selecting or propagating it enough? We should always be conscious of the nature of our dreaming and what will ever be enough, still ...
Medicinal Herbs, Mushrooms, etc. : There is more that we can do, it is principally a question of available hours, talent, interest, and the understanding that we should not spread ourselves too thin for lack of seeing what then falls out of focus.