In the beginning I mentioned a book that promised you could be self-sufficient on a quarter acre. I was excited by this notion because the land I bought matched what the book planned out on a larger scale. My house is situated towards the east, the land is a large flat rectangle, and since it’s one acre instead of a quarter acre, all I had to do was translate the plans from the book 4 times as large.
But that’s not how life works. Just this last year I’ve learned new things about the plants and animals I want to add to my homestead that will almost completely rearrange the plan I laid out. I knew I wanted plants and chickens, but this year we discovered rabbits, and that pigs don’t take up as much space as I always thought, and some berries don’t like to be next to each other and give each other fungal infections. (It’s been a super educational year this year; believe me.)
All that said, I wanted to get started. I’m 30 this year and while I have plenty of time, I feel like I wasted so much already. There is a tiny hiccup to filling my land with all my homestead hopes and dreams… I don’t have a fence. I don’t quite know where my land ends and would hate to breach onto a neighbor’s plot with my excitement or wake up to a tree cut down because I didn’t check the line ahead of time. So we decided to start with landmarks we knew were safe.
The Traditionally Tilled plots would start 20 feet from the northern corner of my house. These plots were meant for a rotating crop of beans, corn, and potatoes- all things loved by my family so a great way to start! Each crop leaves a supply of nutrients to help the next year’s plants grow well.
February this year, we dug up three 8 x 8 plots to give us plenty of time to get the soil where we want it for each of the plants. (If you hadn’t guessed, we didn’t have the right idea in mind for that either.) We bought a soil test kit that seemed simple enough. My son and I took some samples from each of the plots, and we tested for pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The pH was at 7, (each of my plants called for 5.5-6) and the nutrients were all way under. So, I bought some 10-10-10 fertilizer and some soil acidifier and tilled some into each plot. Retesting a week later showed a slight increase in nutrients, but not much else.
A trip to the u-pick taught us that the county co-op office also offered more advanced soil tests and for not much more than I had just spent on my simple store test. We pulled a sample from each plot, let it dry, and submitted it. A couple of weeks later, I got a letter in the mail that showed my store test was less than accurate. My pH was at 5.8, the Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium numbers were still very low, and the test had more information to give- calcium, magnesium, zinc and cation saturations. If I had kept adding my amendments based on the store-bought tests, I might’ve run my soil useless.
Lesson learned: Do your research. Get information from multiple sources. Adjust your plan as you learn new information.