As it relates to the general economy, there can't be anything good about this:

http://wcfcourier.com/business/local/far....

On the bright side, there are enormous swaths of suburban yards growing nothing but inedible grass.

Maybe our millions of unemployed could exchange some of their Internet porn time for gardening?

Drive a big loop around the country and you will be shocked by how much farm land there is. What really shocked me was that almost ALL of it was irrigated. The only farmland I saw that was not fully irrigated was in Iowa.

Talked to a local farmer in central Nebraska, and he said water is the issue no one is talking about outside his circle.

.... and to address the linked article directly. Kyle Bass did suggest to invest in producing assets. And farmland is a bit more productive than say an investment in Facebook. :)

I'm with Mpekar about suburban and urban gardening. From my perspective, grass lawns are not that appealing by themselves. I like to look outside and see the birds and butterflies going about their business. The grass lawns with shade trees offer very little more for migratory birds to eat than the pavement in the streets. Birds are limited in their diet selections. The insects and larvae some of them eat are even more selective. Right now, it is about time to take up most of the remnants of the English peas that are growing among the snapdragons in the flower box planters on the edge of my patio. The leaf lettuce is done with too. I brought nasturtium and honey dew melon vine transplants from the farm yesterday so that I can use them as edible ornamentals and divert some more of the grass space to a productive purpose. A fig tree I have been growing from a cutting is ready to go into the ground.

As Sandor pointed out, a lot of ag land is irrigated. That land is being used to grow wheat, corn, and soy -- some of the constituents that are over-represented in our diets. Lawns are irrigated too. A well-kept grass lawn serves very little practical purpose other than moderating the amount of heat reflected up to your house, preventing erosion, and discouraging snakes. Grass lawns are expensive to maintain. The water and land currently devoted to grass can be used to produce some of the highest quality food ever and look good too, especially if you use edible flowers or other blooming companion plants in the mix.

This guy took up his tiny front yard and put in raised beds for vegetables. He's a bit over the top, but I still would be okay with him for a neighbor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SO-2SVc8....

Here's his channel.

growingyourgreens.com

When I bought my current farm, there were a total of 7 trees on the entire place, on 10 acres. The only bushes were the house foundation plantings, and they were a homogeneous monotonous mix of barberry and holly. The patio baked in the afternoon sun with not a single green shrub, vine, or even container planting nearby. I didn't have a single flower, bulb, or other blooming greenery on the entire place. Ugh. And no wildlife other than deer; no birds of any kind. As Azus said, barren, yet lots of grass. Not even an earthworm to be found.

A few years down the road and there's now 2 barns with extensive plantings of fruit and nut trees surrounding them, a large planting of blueberry and aronia bushes, the barberry have been thinned in favor of American cranberry, elderberry, bush cherries, columnar apple trees, a pergola was built over the patio that now sports kiwi and grapes, and quince and currant bushes are everywhere. My electric transformer is surrounded and screened by sunchokes and Manchurian apricots and sunflowers, and climbing the pillars of the front porch are chocolate and cinnamon vines and maypops. My 40x60' vegetable garden produces about 60% of my yearly vegetable needs for 5 people; it would produce more if I had the time. The chicken run has oak/acorn and mulberry trees that over hang it, providing some summer and fall food for the chickens and ducks.

To say the wildlife moved in is an understatement. I have an incredible diversity of birds, including my personal favorite, hummingbirds. The deer are discouraged from the people food by fences planted with rosa rugosa, which give me rose hips each fall; all other marauders are discouraged by the .22. The springtime flower show is astonishingly beautiful, and the foliage looks great all the way into winter.

It's been a lot of fun and I'm not done yet. I don't think most people driving down the street recognize bushes and trees that provide food and you can't see the garden from the street, so when the zombie apocalypse arrives I probably won't have to worry about them stealing any of it.

You all should do something similar. Even one fruit tree would be a good start.

Very little of the farmland in Illinois is irrigated.

Tesla - sounds great what state are you in, other than disbelief?

I'm in PA, the southeast corner. Rolling hills, Amish country, semi-rural ie Philadelphia is only an hour away).

Then you are too close to civilization for the Zombie apocalypse...your farm would be overrun in 3 days, max.

Maybe you could put in a couple of observation posts, you know, for birding, with hardware that could hold something heavy. And line the box with steel.

I'm counting on a lot of suburbia between us and the "homies", as well as neighbors and some lead delivery tools.

In reality, IMO, what we're going to get is a slow step down, as we have been the past 3 years, and like Argentina, rather than the zombie apocalypse.

an hour away by car is 2 or 3 days on foot for those who are fit enough to do 20 or 30 miles days. I suspect many are not fit enough to 20 or 30 mile days.

as long as you're not visible from a main roadway, you should be fine. Those with cars and sense enough to be bugging out will be using the main roads and will continue to follow the main roads once they run out of gas. those without sense will travel inward to the city centers to beg for 2 hots and a cot from the withering government.

those suburbanites who think they'll just take over a farm or homestead out in the sicks by force - those are the ones you have to watch out for.

Ferfal's site had a letter, posted years ago, by someone who lived in Yugoslavia during the breakup and seiges of the cities by the National guard/police units.

The Nat. Guard/Police would surround the city and use snipers to harass the occupants. The "off-duty" guardsman would then spend a few weeks systematically looting the nearby farms. they would pull up at dusk with a tank or APC, raid the home, torture the occupants for the location of their loot, and then kill them all.

An isolated farm is only as good as the neighbors willing to help out.

If you are riding out a depression or entry level difficulties it is not a problem...if it is something heavier you will understand why walled towns with forays in to the countyside in the day to work was the norm for 1,000 or more years in the West.

Quote:

The average cash rent for corn and soybean ground is $252 per acre...

Holy cow...only getting $80 an acre in N.C...

Tesla, how many acres do you have? Can you manage that all by your own household or do you need some farming hands? How do you select the location of your farm? (altitude, precipitation, sun/shade, soil?)

While I'm not big on all the biblical references, this guy quite obviously has hit on a WONDERFUL solution for no-plow gardening.

It's a long film, but I can't recommend it strongly enough. I plan to implement as soon as I can buy a an old beater pickup truck to get the wood chips to the garden. (No way to get a big truck back there.)

http://backtoedenfilm.com/

Riceball - I have 10 acres, most of it pasture for horses. Therefore, I only have to cut a half acre around the house and barns - the horses do the rest. Once a month I do a quick run thru the pastures to knock down the tall weeds the horses don't eat. If I wanted to spend another 7k on fencing changes, I'd have goats do it for me. All told, grass/pasture maintenance takes me about 16 hours a month in the spring, less in summer and fall. I only weedwhack the fencelines once in the spring and in October.

I keep only a fairly small (40x60) annual vegetable garden because I have relatively little time for it. The rest of my food area consists of trees, bushes, and perennial vegetables and herbs. All I have to do in those areas is keep out the weeks - that is a chore. Once a spring I hire 4 guys for a day to weed and mulch , then the SO and I can maintain it at a reasonable level.

My biggest problem is restraining myself from creating too many beds that I can't maintain.

Tesla, I read that you could tie a goat to a tire & then move it about the yard or pasture. That way you'd only need a smaller pen for the goats & they could have several hours a day out in the pasture keeping the weeds down. Might be a cheaper alternative to the $7k for a fence modification.

Here in South Dakota non-irrigated cropland has doubled in the last 2-3 years and is up to $7,000/A in my area and bumping $10,000/A toward the Minnesota border. The highest cash rents in my county have hit $465/A but average in the $200-300/A range.

At an April 5th auction 320 A cropland sold for $7,000/A and 154 A river bottom pasture sold for $4,350/A. I counted 96 vehicles at the auction.

Farmland as an investment is unaffordable if not virtually unavailable anymore.

Even most recreational hunting land is being sold off as commercial hunting can't even compete with crop production (profitability).

They are removing/burying trees, fences, and rock piles and draining (ditching/tiling) is going on 24/7. Most farmers own their own tiling spades, excavators, back hoes, front end loaders/payloaders, and in some cases even bulldozers. Rather than spend up to $7,000/A to add acres farmers are spending up to $1,000/A to improve the prodcutivity of what they already own. $1,000/A is the extremem expense for "zone tiling".

A friend who sells heavy construction equipment says he could sell farmers every used front end loader he could find - which he can't. So, they're buying new.

Tesla, that sounds like Wyeth country. I lived 3 years on 2 acres in Glen Mills; it was so lovely there - until TOL brothers found it. Glad you have a piece of the planet saved. That area is so cool with the 18thc stone houses and bank barns.

I am*****ed, I'm looking for a new home here in southeast NJ near the shore, a guy put his 7 acre tree farm for sale and he wants 750K for it- and it's just a 1800 sqft rancher with 1 outbuilding. He already sold 6.5 acres to the state for permanent farming use and has miniscule taxes. The other 1/2 acre and house bring the total property taxes to 4300. The intention with the farmland preservation program is to pay the landowner fair value, preserve the land and make the lands affordable to future farmers. This guy is trying to profit twice. Who can buy a Christmas tree farm for 3/4 of a mil and turn a profit ? If the house on the 1/2 acre were elsewhere it would be 225-250k in this local market. The 6.5 acres that he has already been paid for -and are never developable- should not be valued at $500,000. Gives my brain serious wtf.
Makes it impossible to emulate your type of existance.

Thanks for posting that Asimov! That looks interesting, I'll have to spend more time with it tonight. Looks like I need to step up my plan for a wood chipper...it sucks too, I can't use a regular 'consumer' grade chipper...the damn thing would need to run forever on our property, so I need to find a commercial chipper for a good price somewhere.

Sometimes utility companies will give you wood chips for free. They may even deliver to your location. It depends on what other arrangements they have made and in what kind of mood the EPA finds itself.

One thing he stresses is that you want chipped branches, leaves and all. You don't want the size sorted wood chips that you'd normally buy.

Music, I'm just south of Unionville and west of Kennett Square...some of the most beautiful acreage on Earth IMO. Glen Mills is nice, but it isn't really south central Chester County.

For those who've never been in this area:




Land in this area goes for about 40k an acre, if anyone is interested...and it's some of the most productive there is, with enough rainfall in the growing season to need little to no irrigation. Standard crops are alfalfa/timothy, soybeans, corn.

Did you say 40k and acre or 4k an acre?

Very bucolic setting Tesla. I used to love driving down the side roads off rt 1 south of Chadds Ford. Or the trip out to the railroad museum. Hope the locals strive to preserve your area it is not easy to fend off the big developers.