Back to the land: Interest in backyard farming picking up

Sara Clifford
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No potatoes in the bins. No flour. Limited meat selections. Higher prices.

If you were ever interested in living closer to the land and producing more of your own food, a global pandemic may cause you to think more seriously about it.

“There’s so many people doing more homesteading stuff,” said Torrie Rae, founder of the nonprofit SEED Brown County and administrator of a Facebook page by the same name. There, Rae and other experienced growers are dispensing advice and resources, since they can’t do it in person yet.

Posts on the Facebook page Brown County Barter also reflect locals’ wants and needs: Trading a Subaru for a tractor. Offering a TV for some laying hens.

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“I think there’s definitely been an uptick this year because of the coronavirus and grocery store shortages,” Kara Hammes said about interest in gardening. She’s the Brown County Purdue Extension educator for agriculture and natural resources.

“Everything I’ve read and seen and hear from other folks in Extension is that seed companies are having a hard time meeting demand. Even chick hatcheries are weeks out, to completely sold out.

“Of course, it could have happened anyway,” she added, “but I think all signs point to the situation we’re currently in, leading people to pursue more intensively meeting some of their own demand.”

But what if you’ve never raised anything but house pets, or consider yourself a “black thumb”? What if you have limited space for gardening, or limited money to try what could become just an expensive hobby?

Hammes, who teaches Master Gardener courses, and Cora Carter, the Bartholomew County Purdue Extension educator, whose family raises sheep, have some advice for beginning growers and livestock producers.

How to get growing

Thinking through what you realistically can grow and where you can do that are the first steps, and now is the time to start.

Even if you live in an apartment, at a property with no real yard space, or in the woods, you can still grow herbs and vegetables if you have direct sunlight somewhere for several hours of the day — ideally, for six hours or more.

That space might be in 5-gallon buckets with holes in the bottom that you set on your porch, Hammes said.

Or, if you have garden beds where sun-loving flowers already are, food crops can go right in with them, making more of an “edible landscape.”

“Having it someplace where you’re going to be seeing it regularly and it’s easy to check on is good,” she said. “When stuff comes ready to harvest, it can come on pretty fast, and if you’re not checking on it, you will miss it” — or you might forget to water it, and it won’t grow at all.

You also need to consider where your water source is.

For a beginning gardener, Hammes doesn’t recommend any space bigger than 10 by 10 feet. Gardens can get out of hand quickly with weeds. While weeds might not seem like a big deal, they compete with your crops for nutrients, so it’s best to get them out of there as soon as you can tell the difference between a weed and something you planted.

Brown County can be a little trickier than other Indiana locales for gardening, with sloped lots, heavy forest cover, clay soil and septic leach fields to consider.

If a lot of your yard is taken up by a septic field, “that does get more tricky,” Hammes said. “Really, if you were thinking about doing a garden bed directly in that soil, that’s not really a good idea because there’s always a chance that if your system is not functioning properly, that soil or groundwater could be contaminated and you could have no idea, or it may be when we have a very heavy rain is when it will happen. It’s not really safe to garden in soil over a septic field for you, and disturbing the soil like that could also mess with the trenches or the actual mechanics of the field … not to mention the food safety piece.”

Doing a raised bed over a septic field also isn’t recommended because of the extra weight over the field.

If your sunny area is on a hill, terraced, flat places can be built if you plan to do gardening long-term, but you might try container gardening first.

If soil quality is a concern, building a raised bed can be a good solution, but it comes at the cost of lumber and soil mix.

Normally, when there isn’t a global health crisis, Purdue Extension would be able to take in soil samples from a site and have them tested in a lab, then give recommendations. High PH is a common problem here, Hammes said. “So maybe it’s not necessarily the clay … but if the PH is too high, plants are not able to use the nutrients that are there,” she explained.

“That’s another reason that container gardening or a raised bed might be a good option.”

If the area you have doesn’t have full sun for six hours, you can still grow things there, but they might not produce as well. Leafy greens, and bramble crops like blackberries, will still do fine with less sun, she said.

Some crops are easier for beginners to grow than others. Things like tomatoes, beans and peas are good starters, she said. “You can get varieties that don’t take up a lot of room, and if that’s the kind of food your family eats normally, that’s a great place to start.”

Zucchini and squash also are easy to grow, but they take up more space.

One of the common mistakes beginners make is trying to pack too much into a garden. That limits how well the plants grow and how well they’ll produce, and makes them harder to access for weeding and harvesting. Check your seed packets or the markers that come with your plant starts for spacing guidance, and follow it.

Besides ignoring the weeding, another common mistake is planting too early, she said. Don’t let a couple 70-degree days in March or April fool you. You’re not going to “outsmart Mother Nature,” she said. It’s best to wait until after Mother’s Day, when we’re less likely to be surprised by frost.

“There’s so much that you could think about, but it gets really overwhelming,” she said, about planning your garden.

The great thing about crops is that most of them are annuals, which means they only grow for one year and then you have to plant new ones, she said. If your garden doesn’t turn out the way you want it to, you can always do it differently next year.

Depending on how well your garden produces and how much you invested in it, you may or may not save on groceries by planting it.

“It probably depends on a lot of things,” Hammes said. “If organic produce is something that matters to you, there can definitely be a cost savings there, because that food comes at a premium at a store.”

But there are other benefits, like the nutrient density of locally grown food, the ability to harvest it at peak ripeness outside your door, and sort of forcing yourself to eat more vegetables than you might normally, she said.

When zucchini season comes in, for instance, “you get creative,” she said. “I think you end up consuming way more (vegetables) than you probably would have been doing on your own. So, from a dollar for dollar perspective, if you had to buy all that, you may be ahead, but maybe you wouldn’t have bought it at all.”

This little piggie?

For non-farm folk, chickens seem to be the “gateway animal” into livestock ownership, Carter said.

Poultry — chickens and ducks — don’t take up a lot of space and they’re happy in small areas, she said. The food isn’t expensive, the animals themselves aren’t expensive — as little as $1 each per chick, if you find them at a farm store — and caring for them isn’t time-intensive.

Plus, poultry produce a food product — eggs — without needing to slaughter the animal.

However, “they do have issues with diseases that can pass from animal to human, and they are sensitive to cold. But overall, I think they’re pretty easy,” Carter said.

Pigs are pretty easy, too, she said — if you only have one or two. Yes, they’re smellier and produce more waste, and they’re more expensive than a chicken, but they also don’t take up much space, and they can produce a good amount of food.

You need to make sure you have sturdy fences, though, because pigs will break things, she said.

Sheep or goats will require more space, and higher fences. They will go over and under them — whatever they can do to break out. “They’re escape artists. They’re pretty smart,” said Carter, whose family raises about 100 sheep.

Goats and sheep need grazing and “browsing” space. If they don’t get enough greenery, you’ll have the expense of hay.

One appeal to goats is that they’ll eat just about anything. “They’ll nibble on low-hanging tree branches, bushes, that terrible multiflora rose. … That’s how they got a reputation for eating tin cans; they’ll eat a lot of things that a lot of animals won’t eat,” she said.

She said she been receiving more and more inquiries about “small ruminants” like sheep and goats from people who haven’t owned them before — including people from Brown County — mostly to keep weeds down on their properties, she said.

One acre of good-quality pasture can support six to eight goats, or one cow, she said.

“You do need to keep an eye on their body condition,” she cautioned. If your sheep or goats appear to be losing weight, they might not be getting enough nutrients from what they’ve found to eat, so you may need to supplement with grain or hay. Animal feed mills or feed companies can give advice, she said.

How much and what they need to be fed will depend on what you plan to get out of them. “In human terms, a marathon runner eats differently than someone who has a desk job, or someone who’s pregnant,” she said. For goats, those used for milking have the highest nutritional needs, followed by pregnant goats, young and growing or meat goats, adult goats, and “maintenance goats.” “That’s the goat that’s not doing anything, just trying to stay alive, and that’s what we call ‘maintenance,'” Carter said.

Generally, it’s best to get an animal to raise from a local farmer rather than from a livestock auction because auction stock might not be the best of the herd, she said. If you’ve never been to a sale barn, take someone with you who knows what to look for. If you don’t know a farmer, check with your local Extension or 4-H office, she said.

Usually, lambs are the ones sent to market for meat because they have a better flavor than older sheep, Carter said. Lamb is a red meat, so it can be used similarly to beef, but you won’t notice the taste difference as much if it’s in something like spaghetti versus grilling it like a burger, she said.

If you’re raising for meat, you also need to think about whether you’re going to butcher your animals yourself or send them out to a professional.

About butchering, “you really need to know what you’re doing if you plan on doing that,” she said, “and a lot of local meat processing families are really backed up right now. There’s a lot of demand for people getting animals butchered, and so there’s not a lot of immediate gratification if you wanted to get your animal butchered. It may be weeks before you could get into a facility.”

Demand for butchers does fluctuate seasonally, “but I think it’s seen a little of an influx due to people not being able to buy meat in stores. People might know a local farmer and buy an animal and want it in their freezer, and they don’t know the wait time,” Carter said.

That demand backup is further complicated by social distancing requirements, which can reduce the amount of animals that can be processed in a day with the number of staff that are allowed to work there, she added.

If you’re planning to sell meat from your animal, there are other requirements on who you can take that animal to for butchering, she said.

Several cost calculators exist that can show you what financial commitment you’re getting into before you get too far into into raising livestock. Her family considers its 100-sheep operation to be an “expensive hobby,” she said. Sending them to market covers feeding them, but not much else.

“I think a lot of people get into livestock, including chickens, just kind of in a self-sufficiency mindset,” Carter said. “… There’s some pride involved in growing your own tomato plants, or harvesting their own eggs, or eating your own steak from a cow you raised. I think it kind of goes back to that pride.

“And some people maybe remember their grandparents or great-grandparents who had a farm, and it’s a nostalgia thing. Small facilities, I think that’s what it goes back to,” she said.

“Of course, some people are really interested in getting a sort of a safety net set up and doing it seriously, and it’s because they want to save money on their food, and they’re making budgets and being very careful about the amount of money they put into it so they know what their savings are. And that is very reasonable and very common, but it’s not as much (of a driver) as nostalgia.”

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NEED A SPACE?

Brown County has a community garden at Deer Run Park where people who have no sun or usable yard spaces can plant a garden. Spaces are in high demand. Brown County Parks and Recreation Director Mark Shields said last week that he thought they had one or two spots open, but if more spaces are needed, it’s possible that more could be made. Call the parks and rec office at 812-988-5522 to inquire.

PLANT A ROW?

If you don’t need or don’t want all the produce you grow, local food banks would be happy to take it.

Mother’s Cupboard accepts produce donations at the community kitchen on Memorial Drive in Nashville. Depending on how much is donated, it could be used in the hot meals given out at the center each day or offered to pantry visitors.

Hoosier Hills Food Bank, which serves a six-county area including Brown, promotes the Plant-a-Row for the Hungry program, asking gardeners to plant additional food for the purpose of sharing it with people in need.

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Area Purdue Extension agents suggest reading the following:

Bartholomew County Purdue Extension Educator Cora Carter plans to offer an “Animal Science 101” course either virtually later this year or in person early next year. “It’s a really good introductory course for people interested in raising livestock,” she said. If interested in getting put on an email list about the course and timing, email her at [email protected].

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