Stealth Farming

For those with little or no background in the production of food, here is an easy, entertaining discussion of a range of topics to help encourage you in the direction that suits you best. With concerns over the food supply, anyone should be able to do something according to the resources available. In some cases, you may need to understand the legal restrictions to avoid problems with the government. In other cases, you’ll simply want to keep your work out of sight. It’s funny how valuable crops (watermelon, hemp, sunflowers etc..) can disappear after your investment in time, sweat and cash .. ?just before you’re ready to harvest. I think of an older Italian entrepreneur who dug a trout pond North of Toronto and put a lot of effort into it. Someone pulled the entire stock of several thousand pounds by net during the night. ?Further South, a friend sourced truckloads of high-quality mulch for his garden. This led to incredibly high yields – until a neighbor complained to the local government, which ordered him to remove the mulch! In both cases, staying out of sight (or at least out of people’s minds) could have prevented heartbreak.

In no particular order, we’ll cover over twenty topics – of which some should appeal to your interest

Beekeeping

Except for medical reasons, the fear of an occasional bee sting should not prevent anyone from this healthy, seasonal investment. One bee colony (a stack of wood or plastic boxes from two to six feet high) can produce anywhere from 150 lbs to 300 lbs annually. Honey is taken during Spring and Summer – allowing the bees to collect enough supplies for the winter. This is truly stealth farming. You’ll see two or three colonies in an urban backyard or rooftop where the owner collects enough to supply their sugar needs and give some to friends. Often, a beekeeper will arrange with a landowner to place a series of colonies in a small, protected yard (maybe six to twelve hives in a 500 square foot area) somewhere on the property. No money changes hands. The landowner gets the benefit of bees pollinating their trees and crops. And the beekeeper gives the landowner a 50lb pail of honey each summer.. more than enough to keep the landowner supplied year-round. No prior experience is necessary. Check out some YouTube videos. Visit the local supply store in person or on-line. In many cases, you may purchase several colonies from an active beekeeper and retain that person for advice as you develop your operation. It may cost a few hundred dollars to start up an operation. You may spend a few short hours/week during peak season, then winterize the colonies in September and you’re finished until Spring.

Box Garden

For this activity, you may wish to refer to the Farmer’s Almanac. One of their articles claimed that a wooden box, two feet deep by four feet square (something that could fit on an apartment balcony) could support enough vegetables to supply most of the needs of a small family. They based this claim on a careful arrangement of plants growing tightly together in high-quality potting soil. Any well-cultivated garden plot with quality soil should produce amazing quantities of food with the caveat that you’ll need to discover what grows best in your climate zone and in your particular setting. This practice is also called ‘square foot gardening’ and there is plenty of support material for you. When a certain, well-known nation in Asia underwent a political revolution decades ago, much of their citizenry survived due to their skill with such small garden plots. If you don’t need the vegetables to survive, then it’s a work-life balance activity you can be proud of.

Railway lines, Power lines, abandoned lots

You’ll see these in most cities. Where power lines and railways cut through the urban landscape, there is usually a grassy right of way at least 50 to 100 yards across and maybe more. Abandoned lots will often be found in around the edge of newly developed areas, or bordering wetlands, stream valleys or behind large structures (buildings, amusement parks, industrial parks etc..). It may take a certain kind of person with a good eye, and the ability to track down local owners/authorities for permission to put in a garden. You want to make sure there is no well-travelled path nearby. Over the years, I’ve seen tractors plowing through cornfields, vegetable gardens, herds of goats and cattle, and the cutting of hay for livestock in these marginal plots of land. At the edge of one large city, an enterprising Asian family had constructed a wooden building from which to sell produce growing in the shadow of rail and power lines. They always had customers, and no one thought to issue a complaint. My own grandfather would plant watermelons in the middle of a large cornfield to keep them from being stolen. With this mindset, you may know of a secluded spot that would support high-value products. Doubtless, many readers already own sufficient land for this kind of venture. Keeping your activities at a low profile is important in any scenario.

Rent A Field

This scenario works off the idea that many farms are broken up into a series of fields – usually enclosed by fencing, roads, or natural barriers (trees, water, etc). Often one or more fields are unused for any number of reasons.. they don’t fit the owners plan or budget for operations, or the farmer doesn’t have the energy or desire to work them. Doing anything with a sizeable field is going to cost you in planning, physical work, and capital with the risk of failure in the background. I have lent out fields in the past where the farmer benefitted from the removal of hay for their livestock. One entrepreneur – a barber by trade – would rent a local field and do whatever fence repairs were necessary. In the Spring, he’d go to the Sale Barn and bid (very carefully) on a few young cows. A truck would deliver them to the field where they would eat and grow until late Fall. Then a truck would pick them up for auction at the Sale Barn. The difference in gained weight became his income. This kind of minimalist approach to livestock works best when you’ve either done your homework, or have a trusted advisor. In some cases, a group of families might work together and simply have the livestock butchered in the Fall to supply their needs over the following Winter and Spring. It’s a case where you have taken steps to guarantee the quality of your food supply. If you plan to do this with sheep or goats, then your cost in fencing may go up since those breeds are harder to contain. You’ll also have to deal with predators when raising smaller animals. Sourcing your livestock at the Sale Barn can also be hit and miss. Some animals end up there for health reasons or because they’re high-strung. The owner just wants to make a sale. You can hedge your bets by dealing directly with a reputable local farmer. Even here, you need to be careful. We purchased Tamworth sows from a well-known producer who’d been featured in the regional news. And he offloaded a Sow with leg problems that we did not detect. The Sow died a few months later and the original owner didn’t care. With all of the risks attached, why would you take this approach? Well, you don’t need millions in machinery. The operation can be expanded or reduced with minimum liability (sort of like the “cloud” for IT infrastructure). And it gets you into the business – even if you live in the city, pursuing another career. There is a rule of thumb that the cost of good fencing can be as great as the cost of any other aspect of a good livestock farming operation. Where fencing does not exist, you don’t need to sink telephone-pole sized posts with heavy page wire. Modern high-tech solutions include solar powered electric fencing with plastic posts where several acres can be enclosed in a few hours at minimal cost.

Solar Barrel Feeder

?Hunters typically harvest wild game from natural settings where the balance between food-supply, predators and prey lead to a certain distribution of say ‘how many deer per square mile’ and so on. In the Niagara Region parks that line the US/Canada frontier, bears and wolves are generally not tolerated. And food is abundant. ?So deer proliferate to the point where large-scale, organized hunts must be conducted.

The traditional farm has always sought to remove unwanted species – whether plants or animals – and encourage species that contribute to the food chain. This section deals with that middle-ground? between hunting and farming where predators are discouraged and desirable species are encouraged.

Hunters will often set up a 50-gallon barrel (on a stand or hanging from a tree branch) with a high-tech cannister mounted on the bottom. The cannister is programmed to open up once or more daily and spread grain over the ground in a radius that you choose. In Florida where deer and wild boar proliferate, an associate placed one of these units in the bush – just beyond his own property line and on government land. The smell of grain eventually brought in a roaming group of wild boar who quickly figured out the cadence and adjusted their own timing to be there when the grain fell. In this manner, he always knew where and when to go harvest fresh meat. For most foraging animals, raw grain (and sometimes grain laced with molasses) is highly addictive and they gain weight rapidly when it’s part of their diet. I tried a variation of this method by placing these barrels on land with a mixture of open fields, large shade trees and brush. There are no wild boar in the region, so I placed the domesticated but tough group of? Tamworth hogs in the area. They soon adapted to the grain from these barrels and the natural forage around them. A barrel loaded with 75Kg of grain (costing around $50 at the time) would keep up to 20 hogs fed for weeks at a time. This means you don’t need to be on site every day to check up and feed them. It was surprising to see how flocks of Wild Turkey soon adapted to the grain. They were always within sight of the barrels, and could walk around amongst the hogs feeding themselves.

Optimizing Game Birds

Most stretches of countryside are home to Pheasant, Quail, Grouse or other valuable game birds. But the supply of food, and proximity of predators often keep their numbers too low to be of practical interest. In this section, I decline to comment on methods of predator control due to the wide range of varying legal restrictions. Instead, you are better off seeking guidance from local residents – especially those with experience, since they would also benefit from efforts to reduce foxes, coyotes, and the like. There are books and videos on the subject for anyone who is interested. Placing well-designed feeders with grain and seed will help boost the local population of game birds. Again, there is plenty of material on this subject, including video presentations where a landowner has successfully raised the population of valuable meat birds to profitable levels. You probably don’t want to talk about this with anyone since the temptation for poachers will be too great. Harvesting gamebirds does not always require firearms – which draw attention to your activity and potentially drive away your birds. Instead, simple box traps can be made from branches and wire or string.

An Old Person’s Garden

A narrative that I’ve heard many times, concerns a younger person volunteering to help an older farmer or gardener with their work. In? some extreme cases, this help went on for a few years, and eventually the old-timer signed over their property to their assistant as part of their will. In your case, it could be an older neighbor who can’t keep up with their garden anymore. You exchange your labor for a share of the crop and hopefully learn from the old-timer as they benefit from the social value of your presence. Apparently, my dairy-farming grandfather (born in the 1800s) was an expert on the many species of wild and domestic vegetation – their medical and nutritional value and how to manage them. He passed away and much of his knowledge passed away with him. Then a few years ago, I met another old-timer with similar levels of gardening knowledge. But he was difficult to find and also passed away – along with whatever he knew. Fortunately, you can reverse-engineer much of this lost knowledge through YouTube and other dedicated communities.

Industrial Byproducts, expired groceries and Dairy Surplus

While grass-fed livestock are prized for their health and taste, the livelihood of commercial producers is largely dependent on the weight of the animal. And grass alone is not very conducive to weight gains. The fact is, many producers will either supplement their livestock’s diet with grain or other products, or keep the animal in a stall where movement is limited, and highly-enriched food is abundant. I have no interest in declaring the moral superiority of one method over another. But an entrepreneurial operator might find a local store that is willing to sell or give large quantities of product that were taken off the shelf over the expiry date. One farmer was buying 50-gallon garbage bags of no-preservative bread from a local bakery at $5/bag. His hogs loved it, until others found out and pretty soon the first-come-first-served product was hard to get. Another operator had an agreement with the local dairy producer for food materials they could not process or sell on time. This sizeable, dependable supply helped keep the farmer profitable for years. An ethical issue might arise when you try to present your work as “organic”? I’m aware of producers who took advantage of the good reputation of wild-boar meat by enclosing the herd in a pen to be fed industrial by-products. For the stealth farmer looking for ways to sustain a few animals without a multi-million dollar operation, sourcing protein and/or vegetables from commercial establishments might be the way to go. If your animal doesn’t have access to pasture, then square bales of quality hay can be supplemented into a smaller space for good results. Larger producers may rely on hormones and antibiotics to maximize animal growth and prevent medical conditions related to weight loss. Of course, this is probably not what you want in the meat you consume, which could be another reason to practice stealth farming. The hog farmer who relied on dairy byproducts, was against this use of chemicals. So while he couldn’t legally use the word “organic” he was in fact able to use the word “natural” in his marketing.

Front Yard Angus

This method proves the anecdote “necessity is the mother of invention”. While many jurisdictions regulate the ownership of any livestock to properties of minimum acreage among other things, you might be surprised by the number of private, suburban-style residences (a bungalow on a half-acre lot) with a cow grazing happily. They’ll often have one or two electric wires around the yard, some kind of lean-to shelter and water source. I have no idea how they manage the processing into meat, or what bylaws they could be violating. But I suspect law-enforcement will be reluctant to throw the book at them since these are often folks just doing what they can to survive. As mentioned elsewhere in this article, if you opt for a goat or sheep then your fencing requirements are increased and the risk of predators is also higher. In general, a sizeable cow or hog is less susceptible to attack by predators. When running a large animal like this, it’s usually a good idea to keep a few chickens in the same yard. They tend to get along well with the other animals. They will break down the manure and help control flies, worms and other parasites that might accompany the presence of livestock.

Back Yard Chickens

In our 1990s suburban neighborhood, I built a 10 x 10 foot chicken yard with a little house for half-dozen hens. They yielded around one egg a day each – enough for a family of five with extra eggs to give to friends. The yard was small enough to escape notice by neighbors. And when their egg-laying days came to an end, we processed them into meat. Other entrepreneurs will construct a hen house on wheels that can be moved around the yard. The hens eat, fertilize the grass, and then go into the house before dark where the owner shuts the doors to keep out predators. In areas experiencing winter and lots of snow, these chickens can be moved into a garage inside a mesh enclosure and kept warm with little more than a light bulb.

The Goat Leash

In places with an abundance of? plants but where fencing is not practical, goats on a leash might just be your solution. In rural Virginia, some local farmers had trouble controlling the growth of plants, weeds and bushes along ditches, driveways and buildings. They let some goats loose and were amazed to see how effectively they controlled the vegetation. Equally amazed at how fast the goats gained weight, these farmers were converting unwanted vegetation into high-quality meat. In my own situation, letting them roam free wasn’t a good option. So each goat was given a 20 foot leash attached to either a heavy, movable object of a post. This gave the animal 4,000 square feet to roam and eat. Each day I would switch their positions around, and in the evening they went into a modest barn for the night. I’ve run this method profitably several times.

Barrel Fish

Used 50 gallon plastic or metal barrels are ideal to raise fish for food. You want to ensure they are “food grade” and did not previously hold chemicals of any kind. I have purchased such for $20 each in recent years making this possibly one of the easiest, least-expensive ways to produce food. ?Tilapia and catfish are two of the most popular species. One does not need to be a biologist or chemist to manage the water, and there is plenty of material on line to consult before doing this. Some operators will join two barrels together and/or add several inches of gravel to the bottom to support breeding. Should you choose to explore this activity, it’s best to avoid using treated city water. Instead, try spring water, filtered water or rain water in conjunction with a modest filtration system.

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Pond Cage

Access to a larger body of clean water certainly expands your options and scale of fish-farming. This can be anywhere from a 1/2 acre pond or river, all the way up to lakes and the ocean itself. One concern you’ll have is that you’re trying to both feed and protect a set of fish that you will later harvest for food. Throwing fish food into open water lacks control and efficiency. And predators in the area (from birds to mammals to other fish) may reduce the size of your investment. Enter the fish cage – often a wood frame covered in metal mesh such as chicken wire, and with a mesh door on the top side where you can access your fish. With floats to keep the top of the cage at the water surface, you can string several cages together along the side of a dock for maximum ease of management. Back in the 1960s, my father built such a cage and used it at the family campsite during vacation. He’d take the Bass and Perch from a good day’s catch and place them into the cage for easy retrieval during the week. At the other end of the spectrum, you have commercial operators raising Salmon in large, floating enclosures in protected bay areas.

Insect Traps

Going one step further, you may choose to work with the indigenous fish species in a local area by creatively increasing their food supply to boost their size and numbers. Purchasing 50lb bags of processed fish food, and finding a way to distribute it to the water is certainly one option. Seeing that many species depend on insects for their diet, you may choose instead to increase the supply through the use of a device that attracts flying insects and directs them down to the water surface where they become fish food. Some combination of light (to attract the bugs), plastic barriers and possibly a fan to push them downward comes in many designs you can order or build yourself. You could run this from a solar-powered, battery-operated device and achieve some pretty amazing results.?

Abandoned Fruit Trees

The truth is, there are parts of the countryside where you will find a fruit tree (or dozens of them) that is either the result of hikers spitting out seeds from an apple, or where an orchard once stood but is now abandoned and overgrown with other trees and bushes. We found over a dozen mature Apple trees hidden amongst the Spruce, Cedar and Birch trees. We then discovered many miles of such trees along highways throughout the region. In Florida, the same applies to Orange trees in some places. Granted, these wild fruits aren’t always the sweetest as they may lack the nutrients and pruning to improve their quality. But you can always take care of that yourself if you have regular access to the area. The dozen or so apple trees in the bush behind our place will drop enough fruit to fill a couple of barrels. Apples are a favorite of deer – making for a bigger, sweeter animal during hunting season.

Maple Sugar

The simplest form of this food production involves drilling a small hole into a large Maple Tree at the end of Winter to collect sap in a bucket. The sap is boiled down in a large pot to create Maple Sugar. If you live in the Northern half of the continent, it should not be too difficult to locate trees for this activity. If you work a few dozen trees like this, then it becomes practical to build or acquire a large-scale boiler. Maple sugar runs for a few weeks.. processing may take a few days. So it’s a seasonal activity for sure.

Fencing

Whether you’re trying to keep livestock in a certain area, or keep other animals out of an area (ie..protecting your garden or crop from wild animals), fencing is one of the most expensive and labor-intensive parts of any agricultural enterprise. Here are some shortcuts based on decades of experimentation. In an ideal situation, you might have a tractor-driven auger that can dig a 3-foot hole in seconds. You drop the post into the hole, fill in any gaps around the post and move on to the next. This is great when you have a small fortune invested in equipment. Before installing posts, it’s good to decide whether you will run page-wire (steel mesh), barbed wire, or electric fencing. Page wire is the most expensive, but might be the preferred route for those managing cattle worth over a quarter of a million dollars. In stealth or small-scale farming, a combination of two or three strands of barbed wire, along with two strands of electric wire can form an effective barrier, quickly and cheaply. For posts, locate a supply of cedar logs with a minimum? four inch diameter. Cut one end of the log with a chainsaw or large table saw so that it comes to a point similar to the shape of a pencil…. Thus it’s called a pencil post. Take a pointed metal bar or an extra large crowbar and drive it into the ground where you want the post. You then move the bar around.. back and forth and in a circular motion until it has formed a hole that will accommodate your post. You may need to drive it down with a sledgehammer several times and repeat until your hole is several feet deep. Now you can push the sharpened post-end into the hole and drive it down further with the sledgehammer. This is not an easy exercise. Fence building is tough. If you have metal stakes, then you could place two or three of them to fill out the space between pencil-posts, and do this going down the length of the field. The problem is that tight wires are going to pull the corner post down. Placing two posts six to eight feet apart and running a third, diagonal post from the top of the corner post to the bottom of the inside post helps to keep the system tight and upright. Larger animals such as cattle or hogs, or bears may push on a fencing structure enough to knock it over. Placing a strand of electric wire one foot off the ground and then alternating between electric and barbed wire for a total of five strands may be enough in most cases to ward off predators and keep your investment safely inside. In cases where you need something quickly to contain sheep or goats, the modern plastic post with built in hooks for electric wire may be the best way to go. The posts aren’t designed to be leaned against since the wire delivers a shock. They come with a six inch spike built into the bottom so that literally all you have to do is jab them into the soil and run the wire. For a quarter-acre paddock or situations where you want to move the structure around, this setup is ideal. The subject of fencing can fill textbooks with specs and illustrations. The intent here is just to get you thinking about what you’d like to do and offer a few simple solutions. The last solution here deals with land you can’t really dig into – ie.. sink a fence post of any kind. What’s the purpose of fencing a rocky area ( or an area that just won’t support a post)? These marginal properties can still support a lot of vegetation that livestock can thrive on. Cattle, sheep and goats are adept at feeding in places where you could never garden or run machinery. If managed carefully, their activity can actually promote the growth of vegetation through natural fertilizer. If you can throw some hay over the fence, it can help to build up the soil. The fencing technique here is a rock-crib. Take your cedar posts and cut them into four foot lengths. Arrange them in pairs – one pair laying on top of another until you have something that looks like a crib. Fill this crib with the biggest rocks you can find or carry and you’ll have an un-movable object to which fencing can be attached tightly. Rock cribs are labor intensive so you may reserve them for the corners of your pasture. Thinking of how much work goes into this structure may deter most people. On the other hand, they seem to form an attractive looking landmark when they are completed and they do solve a problem that might otherwise cost you a fortune in high-tech equipment.

Creating Your Own Soil

Soil science can challenge the most brilliant, technical minds. Or it can be a relaxing hobby for those with limited resources who recognize it’s potential. Ideal soils are a mixture of sand, silt and clay with a percentage of organic material and hopefully nutrients that plants can use to thrive. In natural settings, it can take many years of erosion and biological activity to produce an ideal soil. If you have access to manure and the other components, you can always experiment? with local materials to produce a superior potting soil. One large producer of farm supplies up North experimented with processing manure in combination with mulch to create something you could spread over a field. The results were amazing, but they shut the project down over the amount of work involved, and – if I remember correctly – the smell.

What Grows Naturally

Twenty years ago, the old-timer identified a blue flower growing all over the region as Chicory. This was around the time that I was attempting to grow Rye in a two acre field at the back of the farm. He pointed out that Rye is not a naturally occurring species. Therefore you would have to re-plant it every year to get a crop. If you stopped planting Rye, you would get a fraction of the crop the following year as other native species move in to re-establish themselves. Nothing wrong with that since it’s been the practice of most farmers for millennia. But going back to the Chicory… the entire plant can be harvested and used from the flower to the leaves to the root which can be dried and used for a coffee substitute. We walked around one day and quickly filled bags with this naturally occurring Chicory without having planted or making any effort to promote it. The old timer pointed out that you could obtain fantastic results by re-planting the local Chicory in a fertilized garden with plenty of water. My point to the reader is that for anyone willing to make the effort, there are native plants in every region with some level of commercial value – be it food, medicine, herbals etc.. In the decades after the chaos of WWII when thousands of displaced families moved from Europe to North America, you could see old-timers walking along the road harvesting certain plants – including Dandelions – to produce oils, salve, vinegar, jelly, soap, tea and wine. Those stealth farmers are long gone. Their knowledge and work ethic is largely gone. And those who came after them are usually not interested in this type of hard work. But this can change.

Water Supply

Since both plants and animals depend on water, anyone in this business will need to plan for it. At the same time, it’s possible that no other commodity is as regulated and controlled as the supply of water. You may have access to a few acres with a seasonal stream. And you figure “no problem, I’ll just dig a pond or water hole over here and let the stream fill it naturally in the Spring”. I believe that most jurisdictions are not favorable to the practice, so be careful! Having a large plastic, fiberglass or steel container that you can fill and keep on site, could be an alternative. There are also kits available for soft ground – allowing you to drive a 2” pipe several feet into the ground from which water can be pumped at a slow but reasonable rate. Temporary setups like this can make the difference in a field that otherwise has no open water for crops or animals. Contracting with a well-driller can cost many thousands – not including the permits needed for a permanent well. Fortunately, you can lean on technology for a range of quick, inexpensive solutions.