5 difficult rules we’ve followed as we’ve grown our homestead

In todays world the temptation to make a buck fast is real. But we've tried to be intentional about building up our farm and its revenue streams. Don't get me wrong, ways to make income in the short term have been considerations as well (because starting a farm and business requires capital) But we have tried to keep our eye on the long term prize. Here are 5 rules we've tried to follow as we built our farm. 

 We don’t buy plant starts.

We don’t spray herbicide or pesticides, even “natural” ones. 

We have been incredibly selective about bringing in compost and have mostly used what we’ve made ourselves.

We only water with harvested rainwater.

Slow and steady wins the race. 

Let me elaborate: 1 & 2. In the early years I remember our plants being totally ravaged by pest. I wanted so badly to just go buy some plants from the big box store. Or spray something natural on the leaves. Jared had to remind me (alot because I’m not very patient ;) )that our goal was to breed resilient plants that would thrive on our homestead with minimal management and intervention. Buying plants wouldn’t help us get there. Neither would spraying anything . It was so frustrating. But fast forward to today and we have plants that produce well and resist pests with no spraying and no fertilizer other than the occasional application of compost. Hard but worth it .

3 We had a bad experience early on where the application of some Compost we purchased killed a lot of our plants. It really set us back, so we decided we would stick to making our own . We have done this for years and only very recently brought in some compost from a source we felt confident we could trust Thanks  @compostbg

4 What’s in tap water? Who the heck knows. We harvest rainwater in IBC totes to water plant starts and vegetables we don’t save seed from(like potatoes and sweet potatoes) We generally don’t water plants saved from seed in any instance because we want to be able to select for the ones that are drought tolerant 

5 Almost all our principles( including ones I haven’t listed here) have caused us to grow slowly. And it’s been very difficult in plenty of ways. But we think the end results leave us in a much better place. Our goal here is to produce food and energy for ourselves in a way that respects and enhances the environment with minimal management. We try to attend to that goal with our choices and in most causes moving slowly has helped us accomplish that.