Building a Hobby Farm- from woods to eggs

[hunterridgefarm]

Tony,

I have been reading your thread with great interest as we are doing a Hobby type farm also. I plan on having a pick your own fall crops like pumpkin and Indain corn. We also will have blueberry, grape, and figs. Not sure about the chickens yet as we have seen coyote and recently black bear on our property.

I know the clearing take time and brush plies seem to multiply. I can not burn where we are building. So I am pushing the brush over a knoll and spreading dirt between layers of brush to speed the rotting process up.

Keep the picks coming, you have already given me a couple of ideas.

David

[tony123]

Hey David. Thanks for chiming in. Sounds like you've got some neat ideas. I have to once again stress the "hobby" part of "hobby farm".

We have coyote, the neighbor saw a black bear, and I saw a bobcat. Still, We're going to go forward with the animals, and will play the cards we're dealt.

Looks like some rain is in our forecast finally for later this week. If so, I'll get some of this debris burnt off and can start posting of more exciting things.

We did recently come up with an idea for another part of the property. (listen to me....it's only 3 acres ) Our driveway is a 35' wide right of way that comes 600' back to our property. It gets full sun and has pasture on both sides. We had sort of written it off as useless to us. But we got to thinking about a small fruit orchard. Maybe apples and peaches? We have 2 strips that are each about 8' wide x 500' long. If we space trees at 25' spacing, that's 40 trees! Heck, I guess its not wasted after all! More research.

Here's a shot of this long stretch at the driveway.

[easygo]

Tony,

I'm in a similar boat here with slowly shaping a 10 acre hobby "farm" I maintain besides working a 9-5 job. (No animals yet) My son is only 6 months old, so now the projects are at a standstill but I love your thread. I have been increasing the size of our two gardens and it has been very rewarding. One we have for flowers and herbs the other for vegetables. I'd say keep some of your grass clippings and leaves in the fall so you can start compost piles. It has greatly improved the gravely soil in my gardens over the past three years and it does not take a whole lot of work to get decent compost. But judging by your experience with landscaping you would know a lot about that. Keep the pictures coming and best of luck.

[tony123]

Thanks for the input easygo! Hang in there. When my boys were 6 months all I could do was keep my head above water. It's much better now at 3 years The little guys are even loading some of this wood debris into the trailer!

Well, we got a combined hours worth of rain over the last 48 hours. I never paid so much attention to the rain as I do now that seed is in the ground.

Stopped in at a local feed store today. Met a guy who raises chicks for sale as well as goats. Gave him my name and number. He's saying that early February is a good time to buy the chicks. That gives me about 2.5-3 months to get some fencing up and a coop. Times a wastin'.

tony

[HappyCPE]

Tony, when I was looking at real estate 3 years ago I saw several places that used the driveway area for fruit trees. It's a great idea, Except, all these places had very mature trees, and no fencing. The trees were planted long before the deer became a problem in NJ, and it isn't economical to fence the long and skinny driveway. How much hooved-rat pressure do you have in your area?

What is traditional, going back to French and English garden design, is to plant hardwoods on both sides of the lane. You see that a lot here. Usually the zoning code requires 50' wide lanes here so medium size trees work well; you might have to choose carefully if yours is narrower.

On edit - If you have a ROW, does that allow you to plant? Or just traverse the property? Mostly we have "flag" lots where the driveway is owned, not a right of way.

[tony123]

Our "flag" portion is owned with full rights. It is 35' wide, and the gravel drive is currently about 14' wide. If necessary I could easily live with 10' wide to give the trees a bit more space.

Deer are probably light to medium around here. The left side of the above photo is going to be fenced by the neighbor for his horse pasture (in the next month). It will be 4' fence though, so not high enough to stop deer. The other side will likely remain with no fence, although I've thought about fencing it to match the neighbors on the left. I thought that might be a neat way of making it appear that we are "part" of the horse farm instead of "next" to it.

Are deer a threat to the fruit, or the tree itself? if its only the fruit I don't think that's a problem. If we get 10% of the fruit that would be plenty.

[KentT]

Tony,

If you use "semi-dwarf" fruit trees, rather than standard-sized or the "novelty" dwarf size, you can get a LOT of trees producing a LOT of fruit in that amount of space beside your driveway.

You can space semi-dwarf apples 15-20 feet apart, for example, and they'll typically get no taller than about 12-15 feet, so they're easy to maintain and easy to pick...

[dmccarty]

Originally Posted by KentT

Tony,

If you use "semi-dwarf" fruit trees, rather than standard-sized or the "novelty" dwarf size, you can get a LOT of trees producing a LOT of fruit in that amount of space beside your driveway. ...

KentT beat me to it. Don't use full size fruit trees. Use the dwarfs or semi dwarfs. The will produce quicker than the full size trees and in the same space you can have more varieties. Some Apple trees need polinating trees to bare fruit. Smaller trees are also easier to harvest.

Later,
Dan

[tony123]

Looks like I stumbled into some apple experts. I welcome any other input you guys have. I was going to start with my local extension agent for research on the apples.

Reading another current thread here, I thought of doing some Pecan trees along the drive. Realizing that I don't want them to shade the apples, I'll need to be careful of placement. Probably 6 pecan trees would be plenty.

[easygo]

I have about a dozen apple trees in my yard. The deer do eat off the lower leaves and shoots in the early spring, but don't cause much real damage. I actually like seeing them out there. In the Fall after we gave away as much as we could, made as many quarts of apple sauce and ate apples to sickness, the deer and the turkeys do a wonderful job of finishing off the fallen apples. I'd imagine the horse farm would love to get some from you as treat for the animals.