We live on a small farm between Albany and Bennington in upstate New York. We moved here after searching for the perfect place for 18 months - and we found it. 5 acres of grass, 5 acres of forest and 5 acres of wetland.
We raise poultry, goats, horses, and a big garden and orchard. In the past we have grown a lot of different things, trying out stuff and seeing how it worked for us. We think there is a balance between "it should grow well here" and "it should grow well for us." Everybody's management is a little difference. For instance, we get more rain in the summer than nearby Albany does and it makes it tough to schedule spraying the fruit trees. So we picked varieties that were more bug-resistant and grew a little more aggressively (to bounce back after the bugs ate them).
Our farm motto is - "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without!" Our biggest piece of farm equipment is the pickup truck. After that is the lawn tractor. There are times we wish we had some tractor implements, but we stay away from those whenever possible - the Amish are right, it is a slippery road. So, we keep examining what we do and how to get the animals to do the work for us. Like the lawn mowing: we keep trying to make obsolete - our goats weren't numerous enough, so we upped the ante with a horse last year. We'll see if that works.
Our goal is to create a microfarm based on these principles:
- Sustainability - buying local feed and hay, creating local markets, and preserving our ecological community through farming.
- Restoration - making the landscape more resilient than when we found it through soil recovery, permaculture design, grazing management, and polycultural animal management.
- Appropriate Animals - breeding dwarf goats for backyard milking; raising hardy, heritage breeds that don't just survive, but thrive; and grazing in proper densities to restore native woodlands.
- Zero Net Carbon - using wind energy for electricity, choosing manual labor instead of power equipment whenever possible, and sequestering carbon by building up our soils.
