Trees and Vegetables

Tree farming can supply a good income you have enough land to sustain a harvest every year. In order to make this work you would have to focus on harvesting ten acres per year with a complete cycle coming about every 45 years. This model would mean that you need to have 450 acres. The other way is to harvest all at once and budget your money over the next 45 years. This is hard to do, but there is also the option of having a Christmas Tree Farm on a lesser amount of acreage. This will keep a constant cash flow going. You can plant desirable verities and capitalize on the locally grown angle of your product. Most people enjoy the added bonus of knowing where the things they buy come from.

Aside from trees, there are always vegetables. Local produce is highly desirable. It is a lot of work to grow and sell goods, but again the local angle will be beneficial to you. If you go to Sunday Market you will see customers who wait all week to buy fresh local produce. Also it is easy to co-op your goods if let’s say you grow wonderful tomatoes, and you have a friend who grows wonderful peppers.

Also note that tomatoes, peppers and basil only seem to grow well here on the coast within a green house. There is an August blight that will kick your butt if you think you’ll harvest anything planted outside. Tomatoes like warm nights so enclose them with some heat. The latest I have been able to keep tomatoes in my green house was until January 21 one year.

You may also be able to market your goods to local shops and restaurants, though you won’t be paid as highly as when you sell directly to the customer. Also consider a road side stand. We’ve sold blueberries that way last year and made some spending money. Also keep the food bank in mind. They appreciate any fresh produce you can share with them.

Back before we got animals we had a garden 21 raised bed. Each bed was six feet by four feet which was enclosed with cedar fence boards. We were gardening only 504 square feet, but you would be amazed what that limited space produced.

The boards lasted over ten years. The beauty of the raised bed was that you could treat each bed differently. Being raised the soil would dry sooner after the winter rains, and the ground would remain warmer. Weeds were easier to control and the soil never became compacted because we would never walk on it. It was by far the easiest, cleanest way I’ve found to garden.