Our Little Farm: Adventures in Sustainable Living

Preface

IN THIS BOOK, Miriam and I would like to tell you how we started our journey into sustainable living and the choices and adaptations we made along the way. We hope our story will inspire you if you are considering taking steps of your own—however small—toward a lifestyle that Miriam and I find so rewarding. Our little farm is dedicated to the production and preservation of fruit and vegetables, which allows us to enjoy at least some homegrown produce year-round. We also raise chickens for eggs and goats for milk; some years after we started, we added bees for honey. We mustn’t forget the honey—but more on that later. Let’s start at the beginning.

In 1991, Miriam and I moved with our young family into the forester’s lodge in a small village in the Eifel, a low range of forested mountains in northwestern Germany. I had accepted a position as forester in charge of the community’s forestland. We were invited to move into the old forest service farm, which consisted of a 1930s lodge built in the style typical for the area at that time; an outbuilding that originally housed a chicken coop and a pigsty; and the remains of a vegetable garden almost the size of a football field.

The community foresters who lived in the lodge used to grow or raise at least some of their own food, but by the time Miriam and I moved in, traces of their self-sufficient lifestyles were mostly gone. The outbuilding had been converted into a garage, and the vegetable garden had been taken over by Christmas trees. My predecessor had made the property easy care and was growing Christmas trees to cover the rent.

It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to restore the property to what it had once been. To that end, we gradually removed the Christmas trees, cleared the former animal stalls of junk, and eventually moved chickens into the renovated space. Meanwhile, the global food industry was being rocked by one crisis after another. Whether it was news about mad cow disease or pesticides in vegetables, antibiotic-resistant bacteria or cruel factory farms, with every headline our appetite for industrially produced food diminished.

The more we read, the larger our vegetable garden grew. We started with just 85 square feet (8 square meters), but over the years we expanded it to 3,250 square feet (300 square meters). The first two apple trees on the property were joined by many more, and we also added cherries, plums, and berry bushes—about forty in all. Sheep joined the chickens, and dairy found its way into the mix when we acquired milk goats. Even today, many years later, we don’t know where all this will ultimately lead us. In 2010, for instance, we purchased two beehives to help pollinate our fruit trees.

We’re enthusiastic but not fanatical: we’re not interested in blindly following manuals or accounting for every penny. What is important to us is the well-being of the animals we care for, paired with a workload we find manageable. Our goal is to produce as much food as we can from different food groups. We keep the Pareto principle in mind: 80 percent of the work will take 20 percent of our time, and the remaining 20 percent of the work will inevitably take up the remaining 80 percent of our time. That’s just a rule of thumb, of course. It reminds us that if we were to track every detail, we would get completely bogged down.

This is the approach we describe throughout this book. You’ll often notice that we’re not teasing out every last bit of produce because that would simply be too much work. We keep our attention focused on the big picture—and that sometimes means a few berries left on the bush, some undersized potatoes left in the ground, and some corners of the garden left to nature.

Although growing at least some of our food is now part of our everyday life, each meal we source from our garden is still a special treat. We have peace of mind because we know where our food comes from. We apply no poison, we source fertilizer from our own animals, and we deliver fruits and vegetables to our table garden fresh. Working in our vegetable garden brings additional rewards: as we pull or hoe weeds, our thoughts are free to wander while our bodies benefit from the exercise.

I’ll admit our backs have begun to rebel as we age, and a few years ago, we did discuss the possibility of scaling things back. At that time, the discussion didn’t last long—we quickly realized downsizing was not something we wanted to do. Instead, we bought a single-axle walk-behind tractor that allows us to prepare our vegetable beds in no time at all. We had a well drilled near our vegetable garden to make watering less of a chore. And a new shed for the goats made it easier for us to clean out their area. We also decided to focus on low-maintenance fruit and vegetables so we could continue growing our own food as we age. We never want to have to give up the superlative taste of at least some produce we have grown ourselves.

Perhaps you can relate to the position we find ourselves in at this stage in our lives. Or perhaps you’re just beginning to plan. Why don’t you join us on a tour of our little farm and let us surprise you by showing you how much you can achieve as a hobby farmer. All you need is a little practice.

PETER WOHLLEBEN / MIRIAM WOHLLEBEN

1

Daring to Dream

THE FIRST QUESTION Miriam and I had to ask ourselves was what being self-sufficient meant to us. Were we going to grow all our own food? Were we going to source our own water and produce our own fertilizer? Perhaps even get horses to pull a plow or purchase our own woodlot so we could grow building material and fuel?

We realized if we did all of that, we would be catapulted back to life as it was lived a couple of hundred years ago. Our days would be long and hard and most of our waking hours would be devoted to working in the fields and out in the woods. We would have no time for vacations—or even for paid employment. Where would we get the money to purchase the tools we’d need, to say nothing of the land where all this work would be done? In the past, failed harvests, which inevitably happen, might even have led to death by starvation.

Miriam and I decided being completely self-sufficient was not for us. That would have been unrealistic. But we do get satisfaction from sourcing at least some of our food from our own garden, learning how to grow this food, and acquiring new skills. We wanted to experience what it was like to grow and process fruit and vegetables, and raise chickens for eggs and goats for milk. Variety instead of quantity, you might say. Then, if we wanted, we could do more of those things we found most interesting or tasty or rewarding.

TIME IS THE limiting factor in any plan for self-sufficiency. Therefore, the first thing Miriam and I did was to decide how much time we wanted to devote to living off the land. Ideally, once we had our little farm, we would never have to visit a grocery store, but for that kind of independence, we would have to work about ten hours a day for each person we were supplying with food. Every hour we subtracted from this total would mean a 10 percent reduction in the amount of food we could produce.

As we planned, Miriam and I decided we could each afford to spend two hours a day working on our little farm, which meant we could expect to cover no more than 20 percent of our nutritional needs. That might not sound like much; however, as we have since discovered, two hours a day allows us to put food we have grown ourselves on the table 365 days a year. And these delicacies fill our plates with generous servings of joy spiced with summer memories.

Another issue Miriam and I had to consider in addition to time was timing. Harvest was an occasion we were looking forward to—as long as we were going to be at home and not on vacation somewhere far away. Even if we could find someone to look after the garden and pick produce in our absence, we knew preserving and storing that produce would be up to us. And so, in addition to deciding how much time we wanted to spend working on the farm every day, we had to consider when we needed to be hands-on and how that would affect our ability to travel.

We could control this to some degree by selecting what we would grow. For example, if we decided we wanted to travel in July and August, potatoes, cabbages, and apples would be good choices. Depending on the variety, potatoes would be ready to harvest from the end of July, cabbages from September, and apples usually not until October. A garden full of many different fruits and vegetables that offered harvest opportunities from April to October would be slightly more challenging. We wouldn’t want to miss an entire crop of strawberries demanding to be picked in less than four weeks. Or abandon our currants—which all ripen in just a few days—to the birds. (Birds are capable of picking bushes clean overnight.)

We also had to consider the bottlenecks that inevitably occur in summer when different crops need harvesting, washing, and processing all at the same time. As Miriam and I soon discovered, chores around harvest time greatly increase the average amount of time each one of us needs to spend in the vegetable garden and quickly drive it over five hours a day. On those days, we were going to have to give up comfortable evenings on the couch in front of the television. I have to say, though, that this was a sacrifice Miriam and I were more than happy to make because we knew we would be amply rewarded with healthy food in the winter months.

AS MIRIAM AND I wanted to keep animals, there was one more thing we had to consider. Animals need tending one to three times a day depending on the weather and the season. A private menagerie would be a real problem if we wanted to take time off. What if we wanted to spend a night away or go on vacation for a couple of weeks? We had to be certain we could organize reliable help to look after our beloved charges.

In the summer, we likely could find older children in the neighborhood eager to supplement their allowances. All our summer help would need to do would be to check on the animals morning and evening, inspect pasture fences and runs, and replenish feed and water troughs. In winter, however, when the larger animals (our goats, for example) joined the smaller ones (our chickens) inside, traveling would mean finding someone who would be willing to clean out the stalls—and feeding and watering would be bigger chores (for example, someone would have to provide warm water when temperatures dipped below freezing).

Finally, there was the question of births. Between January and March our animals might be having babies, and one or two difficult deliveries might require intervention—either by us or by the local veterinarian. This was not going to be the time of year for worry-free traveling unless we could find someone absolutely dependable (perhaps a family member) who would be ready to step in—and would this person also be willing and able to milk the goats?

And what if some of our neighbors turned out to be less than thrilled by our livestock operations? What if they complained about crowing roosters or billy goats loudly broadcasting their desire? (Billy goats can call lustily for days during mating season until they bleat themselves hoarse.) We decided we would talk to the neighbors beforehand and follow up with a few eggs from time to time—or maybe some cheese or a jar of honey—so they felt part of farm life.

Neighbors aside, we had to check into the local rules about how loud or smelly our animals were allowed to be. We knew the rules varied by jurisdiction and that different courts sometimes interpreted similar rules differently. The one constant is that nighttime quiet, usually between seven at night and eight in the morning, is sacrosanct. It would be up to us to keep noises such as the rooster’s early morning calls under wraps, perhaps keeping our chickens inside until later in the day. Some jurisdictions even impose an additional quiet time in the middle of the day, which makes it almost impossible to keep animals. Luckily, we didn’t run into that problem. In and around a small town or village like ours, the kinds of domestic livestock we were thinking of raising are common, and the regulations are less stringent than they would be in a larger urban development.

OTHER THAN TIME and the desire to enjoy our project, there was one other thing we needed before we could live off the land: space. But how much space did we need? We discovered it depended on a number of factors, and weighing them all was quite the balancing act. And what would we do if it turned out we weren’t going to have access to as much space as we’d like? Miriam and I looked at our wish list and decided which items were most important to us. If necessary, we could lay out a plan to achieve, if not all our goals, then as many of them as possible.

Then we set to calculating. We started by checking out the maximum amount of space we could—and wanted to—devote to growing vegetables. I say wanted to because not every square inch needed to become a vegetable bed. We also wanted space for flower beds, a lawn, and a place to barbecue. We figured if the space we had at home wasn’t enough for the vegetables we hoped to plant, we might be able to rent a plot of land elsewhere, maybe in a community garden or from a local farmer.

We also needed space for animals (in our case, chickens, goats, sheep, and horses). Larger animals need a few acres of pasture. We hoped to purchase a field of our own. If the property belonged to us, we would be able to manage it organically and improve the quality of the grass and forage plants over time. Traces of liquid manure applied by former owners persist in forage for many years. It also takes time and environmentally friendly practices to restore the soil to good health if, for example, a previous owner grew a single crop using pesticides.

That said, we knew it wouldn’t be easy to purchase land, because where we live, farmers have the right of first refusal on larger parcels. We had a land sale fall through after the purchase agreement had been notarized. We had spoken with the local farmer, who assured us he was not interested, but when the licensing authorities were informed, his son stepped up and we had to hand back a pasture we had already fenced.

We knew if we couldn’t find land to buy, a long-term lease was an option. As that arrangement would be between us and the landowner, no third party would be involved. Large-scale enterprises are rarely interested in areas under 5 acres (a couple of hectares), but these small spaces are ideal for people like us who want to try their hand at self-sufficient living.

EVENTUALLY, MIRIAM AND I secured the land we needed. The next step was to figure out how to use it efficiently. We wanted to raise more than just fruit and vegetables because we enjoy eating eggs and milk products. Raising animals, however, requires a lot more space than growing vegetables, for a couple of reasons. When animals convert vegetable calories into animal calories, they reserve at least 80 percent for themselves, and growing feed for animals takes a lot of space. And if we also wanted to grow our own animal feed (that is to say, pasture grass, hay, and grains), we would not only have to budget the area we needed per person we would be feeding, but we would also have to allot more of our time to working on our little farm.

Here’s the general guide Miriam and I used so we would know roughly how much space to allow per person for the food we hoped to grow and raise: 430 square feet (40 square meters) for potatoes, 1,000 square feet (90 square meters) for other vegetables, 1,600 square feet (150 square meters) for eggs, and nearly 1.25 acres (half a hectare) for milk and cheese. For the two of us, the potatoes and vegetables combined would need an area roughly the size of a full-sized tennis court, the chickens would take up slightly more space, and the goats would roam over an area about the size of two American football fields. If we were going to grow grain for animal feed, we’d need another 3,250 square feet or so (300 square meters). Was this doable?

Initially, we hoped we would have enough space around the forest lodge. Daily trips would be short, it would be easy for us to monitor our vegetable beds and animal areas, and it wouldn’t take us long to water or harvest our crops or feed our animals. We would be able to use even small windows of time, say less than half an hour, to complete a task or two. This brought us to the most important requirement for our self-sufficiency project: we wanted the area we would be using to be as close to our home as possible. In the end, Miriam and I did not quite manage to check this one off our list. Our vegetable beds and the winter quarters for our chickens and goats are on our property, but we ended up leasing a pasture across the road for our goats in summer—and later, for our horses year-round.

One reason we ended up renting our pasture rather than buying