Making a living off the land

This is my grandfather Paul Bragg.

He and my Grandmother could pull an immense amount of food and a modest income off his small farm and the woods around it.

Here is part of how he did it. This shows four large paper bags filled with ginseng. This is how he bought his winter's heating oil each year.

He would farm all summer and hit the woods and hunt ginseng in the fall , and then squirrels turkey and deer during hunting season.

The farm season started in early March with winter onions and leaf lettuce that would be hauled to the flea market as soon as the flea market would open.  You can also start your traditionally transplanted plants such as peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, and so on. Also many types of greens can be planted which are frost hardy.

April and may mark the onset of many fruit harvest seasons. Fruit patches and orchards return for years without having to be set back out. This includes many such as strawberries that are picked into quart baskets and sold to loyal customers all over town. The same with blueberries, gooseberries, cherries , raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, and grapes (bunches not baskets). that takes you into big fruit season of plums apples, peaches,  pears that can be sold by the pound or by the peck or bushel. This does not preclude the farmer from having to maintain fruit patches, each fruit variety requires tending to  be it pruning trees and vines, weeding or mowing around, spraying for maximum yield and protection from disease and marauding mammals such as deer and rabbits.

As soon as two weeks before the last frost many vegetables and tubers can be put out. Potatoes can be planted around the middle of April. May-July one can put in corn, beans, squash, cucumbers, melons and gourds .  August is the time to sow your winter  greens and root vegetable crops like carrots, turnips beets and onion.

Livestock can be purchased in the spring and a lot of forage is available for them to eat during the spring summer and early fall. This extra forage curtails the amount of supplemental grain and hey that constitute a majority of the annual cost of raising livestock.

Apple butter, Jams, Jellies , relish, chowchow, and honey are products that were regularly being produced, canned  and marketed from the family farm. The strong aroma of spices and flavors  that would permeate your sinuses, skin, clothes and soul upon entering the old kitchen on a chow-chow cooking day could scarce be equaled in the markets of the Mediterranean or southeast Asia.  Everyone should be so lucky as to know the smell of vinegar cleaning a in a copper kettle and wood smoke for a campfire as a batch of apple butter is about to be prepared. There should be lines to watch the action of the liquid gold of freshly harvested honey slowly y exiting the comb and dripping into a container to then be placed into spotless canning jars.  

September, October and November were still productive months with pumpkins, and gourds to harvest. Potatoes get dug and many other root crops like rutabagas and turnips There were also nuts to pick up and their farm was covered in Black walnut trees But even the months of  December  offered a time to sell jams and jellies that had been put up back in the Summer.  Throughout the year there were fairs and festivals, flea markets and yard sales, and holiday gatherings to attend and hawk the various products. Many farmers plow in th fall and this allows the grass and foliage that they turn over to compost underground and create a warm moist home for the microbes that help the next year's  garden flourish

January and February's short days still held work around the farm. There were beds to work up, Fruit trees to prune, and the various poles trellises and wire cages that had been the bones to the previous years garden have to be put up and stored. Livestock that is kept through the winter has to be fed as the green fields of spring and summer don’t produce so grain and hey harvested in the previous seasons has to be delved out to the livestock.  

Homesteading can be a year round enterprise and one has to be every bit as industrious , open minded, and  determined as any CEO, Engineer , or other business professional to be able to pull a living out of the land.