Tag: planning

50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming: #38 Use a pencil

1 Mar 201627 Nov 2013 by Mike (tfb)

50 Things I've Leaned from Tiny Farming: #38

See the growing list of 50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming:

#38 – Use a pencil: You can find no finer quick-planning and sketching technology than the PENCIL, used with a crisp sheet of paper, a supporting clipboard, and a quality white eraser. There is a curious kind of commitment only a pencil can bring to the start of something. The impermanence, the erasability, the chance to begin now but make sweeping changes later, is the cool thing. Pencils are perfect for roughing out garden maps, preliminarily filling in tricky forms, and sketching all sorts of construction and fabrication projects, mobile chicken coops to better farm stand shelving (even crudely done, a picture is worth…a lot). Forget digital—lappies, tablets, smartphones, batteries, cables, software, formats and files—there’s nothing like good old straightforward no-frills paper and pencil (traditional or mechanical) for freeing you up to think!

Anchoring the hoophouse

20 Nov 201325 Nov 2011 by Mike (tfb)

Finally got around to at least getting the base of the hoophouse anchored. This whole decision of whether to build it now or wait till spring has been up in the air for a while. At least, with the 4×4 rough cut cedar beams that hold up the steel ribs positioned and the anchor posts set, it’ll be relatively easy to get the frame up and then skin it…whenever. Even on a warm day in February or March! Flexibility! Options! Or maybe just…putting it off. I do want to purchase new plastic—what’s on hand now is around five years old, gotten milky, past its prime… In any case, today, I pounded in six 3′ T-bars, three per 20′ side. That little screw is only for the moment, it will all get bolted together with metal strapping or brackets. I’ve done this before… :)

Best laid plans begin here!

19 Apr 202224 Jan 2011 by Mike (tfb)

There’s a new tiny farming season just around the corner, and I’ve got my plans plans plans plans…

Well, this year’s Plan is actually WAY more laid-back and simple than that may sound. It’s my ninth consecutive year of full-time small-scale organic veggie farming, and this will be my FIFTH start-up on land that’s new to me (3 in the last 2 years, it’s been interesting times). At this point, I’m kinda used to it, and able to be real streamlined and minimal, economical and quite efficient.

This year, I’m still planning to grow just about everything in the way of garden veggies that can possibly do well in our mid-May to mid-September average frost-free Zone 4 (US) climate, but I’m majorly adjusting the relative quantities, growing more of some crops, and way less of others. I’m also concentrating my seed purchases mostly with one main supplier, and more carefully considering the number and selection of varieties than ever before. Among other big but simple changes from the past.

You could say I’m operating on a “the more you know, the less you need” principle. It’s pretty fascinating. When you let go of one whole set of concerns and details, all kinds of new thoughts, approaches, ideas come flooding in…

To underline the more-is-less point to myself, rather than starting as usual with a brand new planning notebook, I took my very first steno pad, from Year 1, way back in 2002-2003, ripped out all the used pages (saving them, of course, for the wayback machine), and began with a thin new no-waste Tiny Farm 2011 clean slate!

The tiny farming adventure continues. Stay tuned… :)