Marvelous Wonderful Farm's 2014 Christmas Photo
It's a bit of stretch to call what I'm doing 'farming', though I have a business license, and I'm losing money. But I do hope that I will begin to show a profit in two to three years, so here goes.
Marvelous Wonderful Farm is my attempt to prepare my family for climate change, to grow healthy food, and, eventually, to show a modest profit. We have five acres in Ridgefield, Washington, about 20 minutes North of Portland, Oregon. We're on a well traveled road, making a farm stand a future possibility.
I am trying to grow food ethically because it seems like a farmer should be at least as diligent with the soil as a Boy Scout is with a camp-sight and leave it better than he found it. I imagine that occasional future posts will include decrying of the fossil fuel intensive, health destroying, water ruining, life killing heavy equipment work that is currently called farming, but I'll keep this blog more about my trials and errors than about the failures of Big Ag.
Let's learn to grow our own food together. After all, if you're dependent on somebody else for food, you're dependent. Better to be dependent on someone you know and trust who is also dependent on you, which is a long way to say that I believe freedom and 'keeping it local' are meaningless without each other.
Rooster Picket Bug Kill Zone, before electric.
An important caveat, though, for any noob farmer: I have land, not much, but enough for one man to farm. Lack of arable soil is the single biggest impediment to starting farming. There are vertical farms and ingenious coops and front yard farmers who rent lawns, and the like, but nothing can really substitute for a few good, south facing acres; and that's what I've got. I say this only to be fair. I know my advantages.
Chris Rush Dudley
Marvelous Wonderful Farm and Film
chrisrushdudley@yahoo.com
Farm On!
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