weekend farming

[southern star]

Hi there,
I'm new to this forum and I'm thinking around the topic "weekend farming". My husband loves his job and as this is always tied to the city, but on the other hand we would love to have a bit more land than a suburban garden.

We are thinking or buying (well, mortgaging) some acreage outside the city, hopefully close to the railway. I have got some questions regarding our plans and maybe someone is doing the same.

At the moment, we might move, we might stay, so I don't exactly know the climate we would move to - it might be drier than here. Our climate is subtropical, Australian East Coast.

1.) We always had chicken. We now ask our neighbours to feed them when we are not here. Could they be left on their own for a weekend as well? And what do I do with the heaps of seedlings and cuttings I have in pots? How expensive would a automatic watering system be and is this reliable?
2.) On our acreage we would not be able to water often, usual agriculture here is always irrigated. I would like to plant a food forest with lots of different plant, but as well our potatoes, maize, and the like. Are there possibilities without irrigation?
3.) We can spend very little on a cabin/house or the like. However, I cannot imagine sleeping in a tent after working the whole day. Does anyone has experience with kit cabins, are they worthwhile or is it cheaper in the end to ask a tradesman for the skilled job and do the rest ourselves?
4.) And then there is the energy question. Some blocks do have electricity at the fence some not. I would rather prefer go without it, because of the fees involved.
It would be really great to get some hints!

[Yvonne's hubby]

If the farmers in your area are irrigating, theres prolly not enough rainfall in the area to support dryland farming crops. Plants like water, and die with out it, just like people do. I was born and raised in what is known as "semi arid" climate. The translation to that fancy phrase is NO RAIN during the growing seasons other than enough to ruin a hay crop the day its cured and ready to be baled. Dryland crops consist of some varieties of winter grains, planted in the late fall and depend upon the winter moisture to grow and mature by late spring. Gardens can be done, pending frost times and late winter precipitation in those areas.
My advice would be to talk to some of the older farmers in your area and find out what sort of crops can be raised without irrigation in the area. The older the better, them old geezers have lifetimes worth of knowledge stored away that the college kids have never heard of much less experienced.

[Windy in Kansas]

First off welcome to the forums. Chickens generally need to be penned up at dark and let out the next morning. I suppose if you only had a few and the quarters were too confining you could get by over a weekend. I'm certainly not sure about doing that every weekend however. When younger chickens tend to gang up on others. That could be disastrous.

I would be inclined to think that an automated watering system would work well. Many greenhouses use drop hoses to each potted plant with the system set to activate by timer. They even fertilizer through the drip system which is then called fertigation.

Having electricity go off and reset a timer would be a potential downfall. With good water retaining soil and mulch the plants should go quite awhile without their usual watering cycle.

Here is an article you may find of interest concerning gardening with little irrigation.
http://www.fullbooks.com/Gardening-W...out-much1.html

If you don't mind chemical products polyacrylamides, more specifically cross linked polyacrylamides may be just what you are looking for. They absorb moisture when it is available and release it to the plant as the plant needs it for the easy version.
http://www.hydrosource.com/serv01.htm I did considerable reading on them in 1997 and am comfortable using them while organic growers would not only shy away from them but run away from them. Individual choice.

A pitfall of weekend garden or farming is cooperation of weather. If you get rainy spells, if like here, it seems they always fall on the weekend which delays outdoor projects.

Again, welcome and greetings from the land of OZ, i.e. Kansas from the Wizard of Oz movie. Windy in Kansas

[southern star]

Thanks for the answers. We only have suburban chickens. That means that we only have five for our eggs, no rooster allowed. They are confined anyway and go in their house at night which is in the fencing.
As for the irrigation, I think I don't want to have some acres irrigated automatically when I'm not there and would maybe rather stick to olives or the like. Everything must be straightforward and low cost. In the first step all is thought or our own consumption and some giveaways.
The region we might look at would have approx. 600-800 mm annual rainfall, however in our climate this is not too much. We can crop year round. Not everything at every time but some stuff grows in winter like brassicas, lettuce etc. I would like to have the emphasis on the trees, however a decent harvest of potatoes which we might rotate with legumes and something else would be great.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

growwing up it was very common i had teachers and neibors who lived in town but had farms about 2-4 hours away this may have been mor common in our area as we were just a few miles from the case tractor plant that is where our neighbor worked but he also had a cash crop farm but irrigation is not very commmon here a few have it and use ocationaly but 98 percent of feilds don't have any they would take thier vacation spring and fall to get the crop in and out and that was that

not sure how it would work for you but most of them had brothers farming near where their farms where and would watch over things for them , as they started retiring they sold thier small towns homes closer to the cities and moved back to the farms.

[Madfarmer]

You'd enjoy and find useful information in the works of Bill Mollison, an Australian who developed the concept of Permaculture. Do a Google search on Permaculture. You'll find answers to many of your questions.

Madfarmer