About the Casual Farmer

I'm just a normal suburban guy who has an interest in a very wide variety of things and tries not to let ignorance keep me from trying most of them.  I have a five acre wooded lot which has kept me in firewood for these past 20 years, but it's mostly tree-covered, east facing slope, so there's not a lot that can be done with it without a major investment of time and effort.

Five years ago I started to get the itch.  I felt the need to put down a seed and see a plant grow where I wanted it.  Little did I know where that itch was going to lead me.

I started with four little tomato plants in a 4x8 garden - the groundhog discovered the new salad bar that same afternoon and the Long War began.  Then it was tomatoes again, then peas, lettuce and tomatoes.  Then came the breakthrough - I stopped the small scale work and started looking for how I could really do more.

I have a very simple philosophy: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

With that philosophy in mind I went in for the big garden, but there were two problems: I didn't have a good space for a garden, and I didn't have any proper garden creating implements.  I was fortunate on both counts.  My property borders an unused, former pasture where the owner graciously allowed me to locate my garden.  The equipment was a little more difficult, but I finally found what I wanted: a 1973 Gravely Model L with a rotary plow, rotary cultivator, snow plow, brush hog, tined cultivator and sulkey for $300 (thank you e-bay).  The catch was that the motor was disassembled, but this didn't bother me since I had other plans.

I had to drive 300 miles to pick it up, but that was OK since it was less than an hour from my parent's house.  I got a Gravely and a weekend visit.  The next step was to repower the old beast.  A Gravely Model L is an awesome machine that is made to last many lifetimes, but it just wasn't over-the-top enough for me, so I bought a diesel engine for it.  Now that's overdone.  This beast will plow up, turn over, cut down or push aside anything you care to mention.  I'll brag more about the Gravely another time.

That took care of the roadblocks, and from there it was a simple matter to turn over a small 25 x 50 patch of former pasture land to have a delightful little piece of Western Pennsylvania clay that I could stick seeds in.  And the next year I more than doubled it.  I'm now working a 50 x 60 plot of organic garden with a 30 x 100 patch of buckwheat growing in the lower rock quarry we euphemistically call a field.  The groundhogs are temporarily foiled by the electric fence, but the rabbits haven't all been stopped.

It mostly keeps me amused and my wife bewildered.  It's also a good excuse to buy farming equipment.