It's cool working on a small scale with a decentralized intentional community of like-minded people. It has a few drawbacks at times, but I obviously think the benefits are stronger.
A few weeks ago our community pig farmer, the friend I bought Buddy and Scooter from, shared with us an email he got from the local feed mill: feed prices are up nearly thirty percent from the start of the year.
I've been monitoring our feed consumption more closely since getting the pigs. In the first week on the good feed, the pigs ate fifty pounds, roughly three and a half pounds apiece daily. Recently, they're up more than double that. The rabbits as a whole consumed a forty pound bag, a smidge over a pound apiece for the week, not counting the ones that aren't weaned yet. I found out that Sam was far under feeding the grow outs, they're nearly double that now as well. Glad I checked in on that. The chickens, in a month, have consumed a bit over half a bag. We don't have many chickens to eat a lot of feed. As a side note, I think for labor and price, a laying flock is the most effective food animal to raise on a home scale.
When we were talking about feed cost in the chat, we came to the quick decision to start a grain growing co-op between whoever wanted to produce some. As of now, we have three people signed up to split the bag of sorghum seed we bought. The decision was made, and I went to pick up a bag the next morning. I had traded my friend a lawn mower the weekend previous, and he hadn't paid me for it yet. We worked it out that my pay would be for him to cover the bag of sorghum seeds for the group, and so the wealth was kept in our community of friends and growers.
Sorghum coming up, alongside wild blackberries and more bermuda
Sorghum is a small grain, similar in nutrient to corn, but it grows better in our Texas heat with less irrigation and the stalks can be used as fodder. My original intent was to get as many of us as are willing to start growing milo (another name for sorghum) to help our egg farmers. I doubt we'll get to significant scale this season, but it's a quick and inexpensive start. None of us has mass acreage yet to devote to a large scale grain operation, but I'm optimistic on the fodder we can raise from stalks.
Milo is a big portion of every soy-free chicken feed I've found, though certainly not a complete ration. Everyone that raises chickens in our group though, raises them in a polycultural environment with access to excessive forage and bugs. Feed is largely a supplement for our happy happy chickens. Learning that the stalks are commonly used as a hay product is awesome. Combined with a bit of comfrey, it looks like we can make a complete rabbit feed on top of the grain harvest. Everyone interested in the project has rabbits too, it's kind of a Man Scouts cultural thing (in the trinity camp anyways) to have rabbits for home scale meat production. These are my people.
The size and economic development in our intentional community here makes for easy decision making and quick action. The decentralization though does delay action a bit. The decision was made pretty fast that evening, and the seeds were acquired the next morning. My seeds were planted a couple days later when we had a sunny day, but I haven't been able to get the other seeds distributed to the guys that want to grow. That's the biggest stumbling block of being over half an hour between us all rather than a more centralized community, but here we are, making it work.
One of my small sorghum beds
I'll be the first to admit we're late to the grain game, and that we likely won't grow enough to cover anybody's yearly feed, but we're starting. With fifty pounds of seed, we'll have plenty for next year's planting should harvest not happen, and we're starting now to looked at broader sowing options and other grains. I'll probably be the smallest grower this year, with around 250 square feet sowed so far. I won't plant any more after memorial day weekend because it's really getting late now.
It's strange to me on a personal level, getting involved in grain agriculture. A couple years ago, I damn near swore off and dismissed it, somehow not making the connection of having chickens and buying feed for them. Now, I'm starting to open up and imagine ways to grow this stuff in a polycultural system like mine. This year, being an afterthought, I'm just doing a few separate beds that I barely reclaimed from piles of ragweed and bermuda; the remnant of last year's community garden beds. As I watch the stuff grow, I'll be thinking on more places to put it next spring. Observe and react, right?
Seeds en route to a friend, memorial day weekend
So for now, we're just getting acquainted with the plant; how it grows, where it likes to be on our properties, how we can use it and incorporate it in our systems, et cetera. Eventually, my dream would be for some folks to grow a plot of sorghum or some other grain in exchange for eggs or rabbit meat. Like ten pounds of milo grain for a couple weeks worth of eggs for a family, or two bales of sorghum stalks for five butchered rabbits, some kind of economic system that benefits each party in a food production system, because eventually our growers are going to be getting maxed out with what they can grow. I know I can only do so much here on my heavenly half acre. If I could get more friends on board, and produce a product that they would want to trade, that would be really ideal. Self-reliance can go somewhere else; I want community reliance.
What can you do with your friends to help lessen the effects of the great reset and the economic crises that are coming? Are you and your freedom cell doing anything? Maybe growing, maybe talking to your farmers, maybe canning whatever you can buy in bulk? Let's talk more! I think it's high time we start calling each other out on what we're doing to make our communities better off. Bounce ideas off of each other and how you're making your intentional communities more internally reliant and more resilient overall. What's your next project?
Love and resolve from Texas
Nate 💚
P.S.
All the seeds are now delivered, and I think everyone has at least part of the crop sown now. Rolling right along, now we just need some sunshine...