Part of the reason I was really excited about having the opportunity to work on the Student Farm was that I was going to see how difficult it would be to have a small farming operation. It has been a dream of mine for a few years now to have a modest orchard and vegetable farm, but I had never been a part of starting a farm from the ground. Now as I look back on the last few months, I feel confident that it is absolutely possible. Don’t get me wrong, it has been far more involved than I had previously anticipated, but this experience has given me the confidence that I can go out and start something of my own up someday.
If there is one thing that I recognize from my experiences at the student farm is that farming knowledge is incredibly under-appreciated! There are so many things that you have to know and skills that you have to have to be successful. For example, to be successful you have to develop a planting calendar which includes succession planting, calculate the amount of seed you will need and where to buy it from, know when to till to minimize soil compaction and maintain soil structure, know how to use the tractor and the implements, know how to maintain the tractor, know basic carpentry skills to build stuff for the farm like a wash/pack area and post-harvest shelving, know how to harvest the crop and process it to maintain the highest quality for the consumer, know how to find a market for your crop and forecast availability for your customers, know how to keep accurate records for accounting purposes… I feel like I could go on for a long time and not even come close to everything that agriculturalists need to know to be successful.
Building sheds on the farm and processing produce at the aforementioned wash/pack area
One thing has been somewhat discouraging and that is coming to understand how capital intensive it is to start a small farming operation. Acquiring the land, setting up irrigation and a perimeter fence, buying equipment such as a small tractor, shovels, hoes etc, it adds up quick and soon you are having to take out a huge loan which adds stress and pressure to make sure you are making enough money to make the payments. And being stressed about money sort of takes the fun out of it for me. So, I guess that if you don’t have access to land already, it would be important to start small and build up as you go. I suppose that is true for most things in life too.
Working on the farm has given me invaluable experience that I hope to use in the future both as a grower and an educator. I realized that having intensive hands-on experiences is the way one can come to truly understand all of the nuances of small scale-diversified agriculture and anything really, and I would love for those that I teach to have similar experiences.