What advice would you give people who are just sort of
starting off in the land, or wanting to start, how would you?
Well, the first thing I'd advice them is, don't get too far in debt
because debt is enslavement
So do things that take time and not money
And use your creativity to do for yourself
And shepherd your little nest egg, whatever it is
And let that economically be as slow as possible
And the next thing I would say is
Obviously this assumes you are getting in touch with the land
One of the permaculture concepts is don't do anything for a year
until you've walked it, seen it, see where the water goes
see where the frost pockets are
see where the dry spots are, those kinds of things
let the land speak to you
And then start with something you like
what do you like to eat? what do you like to do?
what fascinates you? what stokes your boiler?
And then start with that and try to
do enough extra that you can sell some of it
In other words, try to start some income
a little bit of income and cash flow
If you shepherded your nest egg,
and you started with something you really like
then, hopefully, that will drive your cash flow, and gradually
your cash flow will catch up to your nest egg before it runs out
that's the idea
It's really about making sure you don't chew through any of that nest egg
Don't chew through the nest egg and of course
Get in touch with your neighbors
Involve yourself in the community, that's where you make connections
who owns what machine that you might want to use
who does monthly trips to town
who might want to take product to costumers
when they are going to town anyway
Nathan, the guy who does the herd share dairy
the young farmer that you met this week
he just found a guy that works as a janitor at a highschool in Charlottesville
which is 30 miles away, where he has 2 of his milk drops
for his herd share members
And so he is paying this guy just like 20 bucks
to take an extra 10 minutes and drop the milk
in these 2 buying club locations
when he goes to work everyday
and it just bought him a whole day a week of labor
of not having to run over there and back
it's about connections amongst members of the community
rather than having these grand visions and grand plans
upfront and then blowing everything in one big mistake
And I think too, just not trying to plan too far ahead
Honestly, we can try to plan too far ahead
and overrun our learning curve
the learning curve is steep, so don't plan very far ahead
plan a year or two, and just realize
that you are going to learn so much
in the next two years, that whatever you think
it's going to be in the next three years
it's probably going to be obsolete by the time you get there
That goes back to what you've been saying about
the low cost flexible infrastructure
and not encumbering yourself with either debt
or large volumes of inflexible infraestructure that are likely to just bulk you down
It can be hard because when you are starting
you are so worried about your future
that you feel like you have to back one plan
you've got to throw everything into this thing
and get the turnover to support you in the last dollar you become accustomed to
yeah, or make it perfect
I sense your desire to make things perfect here
but I would encourage you not to leave this sheep shed too soon
It's a nice space, it's here, it's very acceptable
very functional, and nobody is complaining about it
it works great, you've got toilets here, ...
Generally I would say, don't move from something
until you get shoved out of it for some reason
whether it's not big enough, it's not functional enough
the roof caves in, people don't like it
until you are shoved out of it, don't bite off another project to chew on
until you actually get shoved out of what's functioning already
Teresa and I never had
Our only plan was, we just want to be full time farmers
That was our only plan
We didn't have plans to write books, to speak at conferences,
to rent farms, none of this stuff
So we just put our noses to the grindstone, and we only ate what we grew
We wanted to feed ourselves
We always said, if we knew how to grow toilet paper
and kleenex we could pull the plug on society
We had our own fuel
We had all our own food
We didn't have to go anywhere for entertainment
cause we loved what we did
we drove a 50 dollar car
we didn't buy machinery
instead we really focused on our own carbon resource
at that time you didn't hear about manure tea
but one of the reasons we didn't soil sample
was because we knew, if we soil sample
and it said, you need a thousand pounds of phosphate per acre
we couldn't afford it anyway
so no sense in wasting the time to soil sample
with that time to soil sample, we might as well go direct market three more beeves
and make an extra 300 dollars a beeve
than we would selling them at the sale barn
do you know what I am saying?
worry about the things that you've got control over
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