the genius of the place
We're getting a lot of snow this winter, and more is in the forecast; these are good times for working on indoor projects. The farm house at Stoneborn gives us lots to do, and of course there are always milking and pasture jobs, but when we want to stay warm we sit down with Masha's spruce tea and doughnuts and and put in some work on our series of field guides (Field Guides for Inputs-Free Farming and Homesteading). This is from The Permacultural Homestead:
The Genius of the Place
If you're like most of us, you didn't grow up on a farm (less than 2% of Americans call themselves farmers). Even if you did, you probably weren't raising many of your own groceries; the average farmer buys his food at the store, same as everyone else. You probably didn't even grow up with a garden, or chickens. This homesteading thing was pretty much a closed book.
And speaking of books, there are literally thousands of books out there to tell us how to garden, how to raise a chicken, how to build a compost pile, how to milk a goat. Why so many? Because every farm, every garden is different, and people love to share their successes. But there is one thing without which none of these books is going to help you to success, and it's the most important thing in absolutely any collaboration with nature.
The most important part of homesteading is the place itself: This land, this climate, this living community. The nature of the place where you plan to settle down and become part of the picture is going to have more to do with what kind of farm you can make there, than any plans you may design for it. You can have a most exact blueprint of the farm you intend to build, but if that blueprint doesn't reflect the nature of what Nature wants, you're doomed for ultimate failure – probably by way of insolvency. You have to consider what the land wants to do. A successful farm, as Wes Jackson says, must 'consult the genius of the place'.
Usually the problem is that we start building our farm before we know what it ought to look like. We see a plan in a book, magazine, or video, and decide, 'That's the farm for me!' We hear about someone else's great success with a certain breed or marketing tool and we imagine we'll do just the same thing. Sounds great; doesn't work. Trying to make the farm of your dreams happen on land you don't know is like choosing your spouse from a random group of strangers and then trying to turn him or her into your idea of the perfect partner.
With one big, exciting difference: You might not make a successful relationship with just anybody, but just about any piece of earth with some available water can be made into a successful farmstead – if you'll just let it show you how.
- Find and harness the free solar energy that is pouring down on your farm every day.
- Find and conserve your water.
- Garden.
- Put your animals to work.
- Start feeding yourself from the farm from the very first day.
The present is an especially good time to add folks to the roll of small farmers and homesteaders.