giggle a little bit
Well I have to tell you, that finding THE land is really more of an art then since, it is quite like sculpting you have to choose: shape, material, size, tools, finishing, everything.
I mean IF i were to do it anywhere, I would most certainly do it the permaculture way. Trying to grow some serious connoisseur food, aiming at the very season at its price sky high... and make each square feet of the ground earn me some money.
I know most of you folks KNOW that.. but let me rumble a bit... permaculture design is divided into zones.
Zone 0 being the area of the house and the closest amenities, in this case it would involve some agro-tourism, which is very much promoted by European union and some funds are granted for that kind of development of the farms, in my case I would most certainly make eco-dome housing making it somewhat interesting for the people, which I know would attract publicity I am not very keen on, but it would attract customers which would attract income. Being a "farmer" you can have up to 5 "rentable" ( is that even a word?) rooms and pay no taxes for that income, as well as providing food and arranging weddings and such... no taxes to pay, just the tax for the land. Just tell me... is that the same around the other side of the paddle? Couse I am quite foggy on that matter I read some articles but it is kind of tangled... well great thing about having a status as a "farmer" is that you can run a nursery of any size and again pay no taxes, so ornamental plants along pathways, hedges and such can be kept for sale, in a pot-in-pot system which makes it just so easy to move them, make an automatic watering system and replace sold once from somewhere deeper in the farm.
Zone 1 Mandala gardens, using chickens to do my digging, putting them on a nice rotation, the organic food is always sky high on the market around here. While growing organic the biggest enemy's are weeds, but they can be handled using sawdust/wood chips mulch, and those are sometimes offered by woodyards, as giveaways or sometimes even they will offer to pay you to haul the sawdust away. Then of course comes some carp pond/ponds probably with some duck on it. it helps retain a micro climate for the mandalas, produce both duck's and carp, carp is a MUST on polish table for Christmas, so Christmas would be the time to market organically raised carp. Duck's meat raised the organic way is once again sky high.. all the time. Also probably a couple of those nice solar "domish" greenhouses mostly to show aquaponics which would produce shrimp which is NOT VERY popular in Poland and I have to say that I honestly would never touch that thing with a stick( in terms of eating) but they market at some nice price so it may be a little risky, but oh well... aquaponics beauty is that you can always switch to some ordinary fish.. which won''t market as well but with carefull choice you could always make some high protein fishmeal for chickens with it. As well as some greens such as rocket salad, spinach, salad those greens are quite pricey around here even those non-organic once, especially during colder months.
Zone 2 Poly tunnels for chickens to scratch under from late fall, all through winter till early spring, when they get kicked out to those mandalas in the previous zone... hatching would also probably take place in a barn in zone 0 in the cold of winter in order to put little chicks to work ( scratching ) in mandalas and sell some of em, fat some of em up and sell them at about 5/6 months old just before winter. When the tunnels would be emptied, the earth would be quite turned and scratched, weed free and fertile if you ask me, so it would be great to plant some veggies that around here grow better in greenhouses/poly tunnels like tomatoes, pepper, hot pepper, zucchini and such... again it would take some saw dust in order to maintain weeds and stick in the ground some pre started plants. which could be well started in those "domish" greenhouses. Also a small nursery of any ornamental trees that can work as Christmas trees grown using a pot-in-pot method let me tell you they market at about 100-150 PLN a pop ( polish zloty) that is say... 35-50$ but the thing you got to understand is, that an average "Joe" earns about 1500-2200 PLN ( polish zloty) 500-750$ after taxes and all those vultures charge, so it is quite high, and it is possible to use cloning method used by THE weed growers, checked it, it works well. even though it takes some electricity to light em up. Also probably some rabbit colonies would be housed in that zone.
Zone 3 food forest and main crops with some experimental, highly marketed once for our region such as quinoa.
Boy it is gonna be a lot, lot... lot of work. and it will most definitely be a long term project. But if I were to stay in Poland that is what it would look like more or less. Thanks to European union funds it would be a bit easier though.
