The Farm started as a homesteading experiment, an action response to our era. With mistakes and corrections based on the movement of seasons, not bandwidth, how much of our food can we produce? What can we do on our own with what we already have? How can we moderate our needs and expectations to lower the energy and products we require from a global supply chain?

Our soil is poor for agriculture, mostly sand and clay with low pH from conifer litter. We use barnyard manure mixed with maple, alder, and myrtle leaves to make compost soil.

After 7 years, we have built up twenty garden beds, averaging 3 ft. wide by 20 ft. long. We produce all our salad greens, 7 to 8 months of our garlic and onion needs, and all winter we harvested broccoli, arugula, carrots, kale, and cilantro. In the winter, it rarely frosts or freezes. The summers are cool and dry, in high 60°s, and it is windy in June and July. The cool summers leave tomatoes and peppers struggling. We have grown bumper crops of tomatoes and peppers but these need coverings. This summer we'll build a greenhouse with materials on hand; that will help with the tomato and pepper plants.

Pests are controlled through plant rotation, intentional plantings, and other plant based methods. We also have used two chickens in a small cage (chicken tractor) moved along the bed before planting to scratch out weeds and eat grubs, root maggots, and earwigs. We have seasonal exploding populations of voles and slugs. Slugs are managed with weeding and inspections at dusk. We also use small pieces of 1"x6" boards in the beds and the slugs make a home under the boards accumulating for easy removal. In the past, we've used the beer in a can technique. Voles are underground. Spraying the ground with a castor oil and water mix seems to move them out to the perimeters of garden beds. We haven't been able to move out the colonies. Voles killed the asparagus roots and feast on beets, carrots, and turnips. We built these cedar raised containers and have lovely root crops now. Otherwise, bugs are currently under control; we think the crop rotation and inspections manage that.

We feed growing plants with an NPK mix every other month: dried compost, langbeinite, green sand, and bone meal. Plant rotations in sequences by plant families also help maintain an exchange of nutrients in the soil. We don't till our beds, we use a broadfork. Our soil testing is showing slight deficiencies in the major nutrients, so we can increase the amount of NPK we apply. We plan to introduce mason bees in the old stumps in the garden as an experiment to increase plant yields.

A solar, off-grid, small electric system runs the fans in our greenhouses and provides a remote power source.

Managing our production and consumption of energy and products is what we can do locally, but we can't reach sustainability. While we monitor our home and farm use of plastics, energy, and fossil fuels for equipment and vehicles, we buy what we need.