Friday, March 5, 2010

To Organic or not to Organic

We are researching what it would take to make our farm "Certified Organic." I met with a guy from the Soil and Water Conservation Office today who gave me some paperwork to look over and so that is where we are right now. I really don't think we are that far off from Organic but I know there would have to be some changes and I'm not sure I want the government deciding how I run my farm. I guess it will boil down to how much it will cost (over $500 just for the initial certification) and would it ever work out to be a "budget neutral" item on our small farm. Would we be better off just staying "all natural" and not going the extra mile to Organic city? We'll see!

Welcome!

Welcome to our family blog. We have a small (55 acres) farm and are attempting to raise beef cattle, some hay, laying hens, honey bees, a dog and a small garden. We also have a small pond that has fish in it but they pretty much raise themselves.The Twenty-eight eleven is the name of our farm. It comes from Deutronomy 28:11 which reads: "The LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your beast and in the produce of your ground in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you." We count on God's blessings for our life as we know it so we thought it appropriate to go ahead and give Him all the glory for anything good that we produce, be it crops, cows, or children. This blog will be a fun project for us to document what is going on at our farm and hopefully share some natural ways of farming along the way (as we learn too).