The Spinning of Possibilty

This is a picture of what Lil'Bug calls the "frog pond"; it is a mud hole that has been there before the creek was dammed up. Possibly spring fed, possibly just a low spot that water drains to. It's neat. She asked me today if it would be good for ice skating. I think it might, I don't know. It is a lot closer to the house, pretty shallow and has a nice slope to the bank, so maybe. We will see.

Our 40 acres will open up to us a slew of possibility to us and to her. What should we choose? What kind of peaches? What variety of apples? Which livestock? Ice skating, sledding, duck hunting, wild crafting.......the list just seems to get bigger every day.

But today I am thinking about the farm business itself. Our farm approach will be simple, but not easy. We will start small, provide for ourselves and family, then grow a little, do a market stand with what we produce that is excess of our own needs, and then go from there. Perhaps the next step will be to offer a share box at the market stand that will include what would be in a share that week, if one subscribed to the CSA. BUT A SHARE OF WHAT?

The full CSA model is really appealing, but the add ons could be where we will make our mark, I think. Add ons like meat, dairy, honey, fruit, herbs, and specialty vegetables. At our weekly homeschool meet up we talked about how great it would be if one CSA or co-op of farms could put everything a family would need for the week in a box with recipes. Grain would be the only thing needed then, as I am not considering growing wheat and grinding flour. (Ok, I am considering it for myself, but not for farm production....).

We currently spend 60-85$ a week on groceries, for technically a family of four (Lil'Bug and I each eat 1 serving, and Dearest eats double. We'd have to match that cost or less I think to be appealing to a wide customer base, no?

The problem is that I don't see us being able to sustain all of those things on our 25 workable acres. That's why farms specialize, right? But it is a really neat idea.

So then I started thinking about livestock........
One of the things I am constantly amazed about is the price of meat. And organic raised meat? Get out. Seriously. We cannot afford to eat the way we do buying from grocery stores. Also, it may be organic at the store, but where is it from? California? Florida? Canada? Mexico? So much is lost in transport, that it is hardly worth it to buy "organic". (Also it is silly to me to buy product that's shipped in when we raise that same stuff in Iowa and ship it out....) BUT when we buy directly from the local farmer and pick it up in bulk from the local processor, we pay less than consumers are paying per pound for regular meat. We paid last year 100$ a month for meat and we ate meat with almost every meal, including most breakfasts. We ate out less, we lost some in the power outage and we ran out early BUT this year we are buying a bit more, cutting it up differently, and eating out even less. Another bonus is that we now know more recipes in which to use the meat we get. Seriously, some of these cuts are like 8$ a pound. Yike. We paid around $1.60 per pound for everything, just about. (Tell me if I'm wrong Dearest, but that's what I had in my notes.) More for the 26 lbs of lamb meat though. This is prime stuff, grass fed, pasture raised, and local. Beef is Black Angus. We're eating like kings and paying less than people who cut coupons for grocery store meat. Why doesn't every family do this?

Ok, back to my mindful thought wandering......
Last year I wrote a post about things we considered when we started looking for a property and making the decision to move to this lifestyle: here. Now, a year later we are worrying about many of the same things, but not others. The new place is only 6 minutes from town, hospital, fire department, gas stations, etc. The roads get re-graded once a week, plowed within 24 hours usually. It is near the county seat, but far enough from the sources of employment in Iowa that housing developments are not an immediate threat. Maybe 20 years from now Des Moines will explode horizontally again, though I hope not.

So these are the things I am thinking about today while hand feeding Wonder Pup (Hobbit actually ate a whole can of food, though only out of my hand a bite at a time with coaxing and he's still peeing (still odorless) inside....he ate food, yay!). Also, the cat is completely mended and back to her antics.