Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Some interesting things

Heya.

So here's a link to the website of a Canadian (of course; they're way ahead of us in innovative ag) couple who figured out a way to profit $52,000 on the sales of crops from less than an acre of farmed land. About half an acre, in fact. And they only own about a 5th of it. And the rest? Back yards in their neighborhood. In some cases they rent the space to farm from neighbors and usually pay for the space in produce and in others they're actually paid to farm other people's property. As people start to realize the nonsense of lawns, some families have seen this "SPIN Farming" (stands for Small Plot INtensive farming) as an alternative to landscaping costs.

Their profitability key is to use high value crops like salad mixes, micro-greens and specialty beets all of which can be harvested very young and spaced very tightly. So they get several harvests from a small space all of which are quite valuable; especially since they weigh and package them at home, charging per bunch instead of per pound.

Speaking of the evil of lawns: heard of edible estates? I'd link to its website, but it's sort of a disorganized mess. Basically this guy started this project to teach people how to use edible plants in a front-lawn-replacing landscape. If done correctly it reduces water need and certainly pesticide and herbicide need and also produces something useful, unlike lawns, which produce nothing but neighborhood homogeneity and cover thousands of square miles of America.

4 comments:

עדי רזניק said...

thanks for all, the firsr link appears to be broken, can u fix it?

Liz said...

Update! I fixed the link. Thanks for the comment areznik.

KB said...

I was just talking about the uselessness of lawns today. Cultivating food is a really great idea, and much better than the one my roommate and I came up with, which was to plant a mini-forest of trees in our lawn.

Liz said...

Make it a mini forest of fruit trees. Trees are sweet, it's a good idea.