Hello and welcome to my organic farm site!
In this, my inaugural post, I’m going to provide a quick background on how I went from being a retired US Army intelligence officer in Pennsylvania to starting an organic farm in Tennessee.
It all started when that day came that I was just done with my job and needed a change.
There I was, sitting at my desk with the National Park Service, Gettysburg, PA. I was working as a contract officer, the actual title was Construction Control Representative. In practical terms that meant I oversaw construction and service contracts for the Gettysburg National Military Park. The job was exactly as exciting as it sounds. To make matters worse, my boss sucked and every day was just miserable.
This was September. I just had my second heart attack two months before, on June 6th, and in August my doctor strongly advised that I stop working, like for good. “Do you really want to die at your desk?” he asked.
Good enough for me. I’m out.
At first I wanted to stay close to my home in Maryland. I lived in Maryland, right on the PA line and commuted to my government job in Gettysburg. Have you ever shopped for a farm in northern Maryland or southern PA? Unless I were to win the lottery, land prices were just out of reach in that neighborhood.
So if I were to not end up in some apartment, I’d have to move. I grew up in the country and my whole family were dairy farmers. I am a country boy, through and through. City living just wasn’t going to do.
After shopping around, I had worked and lived in Black Mountain, North Carolina and just fell in love with the area. We made the decision to head south and start shopping. Unfortunately, it was October 2024 and Hurricane Helene was dumping rain on the exact place we were heading.
We never anticipated Helene would turn into the disaster that would affect so many people. They are still trying to recover.
Over subsequent weeks, we visited the area from almost to the Missouri border to all over Kentucky, western Virginia and North Carolina to eastern Tennessee. In the meantime, I was consuming everything I could find on organic farming. I even took a number of online courses on no-till farming, permaculture and homesteading. I’ve raised horses and had chickens, goats and horses before so I’m pretty confident I know what I’m doing. I’ve also been a beekeeper for about 5 years.
In the end, we met some great people and eventually offered a farm caretaker position 0verseeing about 30 acres on two properties in Tennessee, about 50 miles east of Knoxville.
We arrived officially on December 6th 2024. The homestead is 14 acres. That’s enough.
Its December. The days are mostly gloomy, cloudy with rain or snow. The ground is mostly frozen and my bees are all clustered up for the winter.
Not necessarily the best time of year to start farming.
In follow on posts, I’ll outline our plans for the property and the products we are going to offer.
Despite my experience and my online education, it still is a bit intimidating. There is so much to do to get ready for the spring planting season and to have the farm ready to accept livestock this spring.
Experienced farmers who successfully made the jump from their 9 to 5 life to being a farmer full time recommend to have at least one to two YEARS’ worth of existing salary in the bank before considering farming full time (see video below).
Maybe I’m not ready to take this plunge after all. I’m grateful now that I did serve 24 years in the Army and have my military pension as income, even if the farm goes bust.
But it won’t. It can’t. I have to make this work. I know I’ll make mistakes along the way. Hopefully these won’t be too drastic and you’ll be on board to learn from them as will I.
Follow along as we transform this beautiful land but still frozen into a no-till, permaculture and certified organic farm with eggs, produce, herbs, honey and livestock.
As I venture into the world of self sufficient organic farming, I’ll document the process here. There is going to be a very steep learning curve. This is my first year of attempting this and maybe against wiser judgement I’m jumping in head first.
No doubt there are many who are more experienced and know better than I do what I should be doing and how I should be doing it.I appreciate any comments and recommendations as we go!
Thank you for stopping by and I’ll “see” you next time!
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