For about five years I've been interested in microfarming. My interest is in finding or developing cookbook techniques which will yield milk, meat and garden produce from a small space (say, a half acre) without constant hard labor and with a reasonable expenditure of money and time.

I'm approaching this from the viewpoint of an urban-oriented person who is not interested particularly in farming or gardening, but who needs to produce most of his own food.

Your ideas and experiences along these lines would be appreciated.

To be truthful if you are not interested in farming forget about it. It is a waste of your time. There is no easy method to farming it is hard work and takes experience to get things to turn out right. If you do not want to put the time and effort into it buy your food and concentrate on other things.

However I am going to post a thread in a couple days outlining how to farm on a small scale even if you live in an apartment. I do some farming from my front porch and I have some pics of the plants I currently have planted. It should be of help to you. It is low maintenance but not as high of yield as if you worked in the sun making the stuff grow.

To be truthful if you are not interested in farming forget about it. It is a waste of your time. There is no easy method to farming it is hard work and takes experience to get things to turn out right. If you do not want to put the time and effort into it buy your food and concentrate on other things.

I agree, I've spent the last 10 years striving in this direction. It doesn't pay and it's a lot of work. It will be an oasis should things collapse, but I'm starting to lean toward getting active in the here and now. I want to put my energy and resources to creating awareness in our people instead of preparing for a collapse which may or may not come. I do maintain some land and the bare minimum of stock should doomsday arrive.

To me it seems rather pointless to garden when you could be honing a skill to trade to fresh produce in the event of a crash. There is going to be a need for a diversity of skilled laborers. If we are all farmers who is going to make our tools or fix our tractors.

I agree, I've spent the last 10 years striving in this direction. It doesn't pay and it's a lot of work. It will be an oasis should things collapse, but I'm starting to lean toward getting active in the here and now. I want to put my energy and resources to creating awareness in our people instead of preparing for a collapse which may or may not come. I do maintain some land and the bare minimum of stock should doomsday arrive.

there is a new thing being sold and promoted in the gardening press and magazines and catalogs that is some sort of box designed to produce high yields of tomatoes and such. I forget what it's called. Seems to be a big marketing push going on for this item. Have you seen this folks?

I am pretty sure I know what you are talking about. Dad ordered it a couple years back and it didn't work. I don't have all the details because I was in college and living far away at that time.

there is a new thing being sold and promoted in the gardening press and magazines and catalogs that is some sort of box designed to produce high yields of tomatoes and such. I forget what it's called. Seems to be a big marketing push going on for this item. Have you seen this folks?