First Post - We find our land.

So we started a small organic farm. I think this kind of info might be useful for other peak oil/climate change/organic types who are thinking about farming. We really could use more small organic farms, if only to make sure some of the older knowledge about low energy farming isn't lost. So this blog will be about our experiences at A&B Acres.

Jodi and I (Ken) have been organic gardening in our back yard for over a decade. In 2006 we did a cash-out refinance, thinking it was our last chance before the housing bubble burst (a little early, but about right). We parked the money for a while, thinking about what to do with it. Meanwhile, we were trying to get our neighbors to go for a small community garden in our local park. There's plenty of land there, even if the soil is too gravelly and high pH. But the neighbors wouldn't bite.

So we started looking around for some land. My first thoughts were about something farther away from Ann Arbor, where we live, and more toward a place we could run away to if Detroit ever really blew up. AA is only about 40 miles from downtown Detroit. Luckily for us, the first place we looked seriously at was owned by a doctor in Florida who really didn't understand the value of his property, and wouldn't even consider a reasonable offer. He's probably still trying to unload it.

So, on to plan B. Anything a little closer? Hey wait, what about this little 11 acre place by Chelsea? Chelsea is about 20 miles west of AA, in the opposite direction from Detroit. And the soil at this place!!! Black as night, a rich organic clay; I'd never seen such rich looking soil. Turns out it *is* rich. Too rich, in fact. But I'll get to that later.

So we bought it. Pulled out some of that aforementioned money, matched up with Greenstone Farm Credit (*Highly* recommended if you're in the Great Lakes region), and ended up getting it for a great price. Turns out the guy who owned it had thought of putting a house on it, but the water table was too high to make that feasible. (More on the water issues later too.) So we got pretty nice farmland at a little over $2k per acre, fall of 2007. And then the fun started...