Small Farming for Profit and Stewardship

This post is being "re-posted" because the link to my older post appears to be broken ... and perhaps no other post sums up the direction of this blog quite as well. Here are two people who decided to do whatever they needed to do so they could do what they WANT to do. That means stepping out of the box, defining what their dream life would look like, what is essential for them, and then partnering to get it done.

North Carolina farmer Alex Hitt and his wife Betsy have worked their 26 acre farm in Graham, N.C. into an environmental gem and profit center. "Over the years, Hitt has reduced acreage and labor by improving their soil with cover crops, concentrating on high-value crops that grow well in the area. What he has not reduced is profit, thanks to direct marketing through the Caroboro Farmers Market and Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery store in the area.

"Each acre returns a minimum of $20,000 annually, while four high-tunnel greenhouses (that shelter young or delicate crops) bring in $1,000 per crop. The Hitts embrace their small scale, growing 80 varieties of 23 vegetables along with 164 varieties of cut flowers on just three acres. Alex and Betsy were winners of the 2006 Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program." (~Reprinted from "Small American Farm" magazine, January 2007 issue.)

Alex and Betsy Hitt will deliver the keynote address at this year's Future Harvest Alliance Conference in Hagerstown, Maryland, January 12-13, 2007. Learn more about this and other Future Harvest-CASA information on their website at: http:/www.futureharvestcasa.org/, or email to: fhacasa@verizon.net.

In rural areas where the average income is between $13,000 and $18,000 annually, the Hitts are making far more by doing their market research and making money in ways that people raised in urban areas might seem unorthodox. Yet, who wouldn't relish spending a day selling products they've grown and produced on their own land? It isn't hard to make organic Cheese ... and you can use milk from the little, gentle cow I mention on: www.blackfarms.wordpress.com

Hustle ... Legal, right?

I was standing in line at a Newark, New Jersey coffee shop waiting to buy a donut. The guy next to me spoke very broken English. Said he was from Poland. Been here five years. Yet he had the newest cell phones and dressed like he had cash. Turns out he buys used cars at auctions, fixes them up, and then sells them. Makes a damn good living. No bosses to please. No HR Department to get turned down by. Just cash.



Being from the SF/Oakland Bay Area, I suffered economically when I was younger simply because I lacked ideas. "Everything Changes". If you're up today, you'll be down tomorrow. So a brother needs both a 21st Century skill set AND an 18th set of skills.

It's simply being a man. If you're smart enough to move out of the California Bay Area and purchase a home, then ... why shell out much needed cash to pay some joker who lives around the corner to check out your pad and halfway fix the holes in your dry wall? Learn how to do it yourself... it's all much easier than you think.

There are increasing numbers of places like SF City College's Evans Street Campus that teaches courses like:



Auto Body Repair
Home Building (from the ground up)
Auto Mechanics
Class A Truck Driving
HazMat
Motorcycle (two stroke) engine repair
Blue Print Reading

FOR FREE! Did you get that playa (I never figured out why so many people think they want to be players when life ain't NO game. Trust me.)

Besides, if you don't live in San Francisco or San Mateo Counties, how much game does it take to ask someone to use theirs ... or to simply tell the people you're homeless? (Happens every day playa.)

See, the idea is not to do these kind of gigs forever... the idea is to gain a currently needed skill and make enough money to buy some CHEAP property (with acreage) and then get onto doing the kinds of creative activities you really want to do. Remember the link I always preach ... rural real estate ... LAND in the country?

www.unitedcountry.com

Ways To Make Money

There are many ways to make a living ... and with increasing numbers of Baby Boomers dropping out of the workforce daily, things look great for younger generations (as well as still able-bodied boomers who aren't ready to quit yet.)

I'm an 18-Wheeler Semi truck driver ... but I can actually make as much money as you can driving a simple F350 pickup truck. Yep. They're called "Hotshots"and no, you don't need a Class A License to make truck driver's pay. Just a reliable pickup with enough pulling power to pull a small flatbed and you're in business.

Of course, if you want to deliver freight to all 48 states, you'll need stickers for the states you drive in along with increased insurance. But where there's a will, you can bet you can find a way. Bad credit? No problem, just start talking to the people who are in business to give you a loan and they will direct you to the folks who'll help you clean it up.

Criminal record? No problem. You'll be your own boss for one, and two ... almost every county in every state has a "Clean Slate" program that will expunge your record faster than you could have ever dreamed.

Benefits to this method of trucking?

1. You're your own boss and you control your time off
2. You have far less mechanic bills
3. When you reach a city, you don't have that HUGE tractor to manuver
4. The entry cost is a fraction of buying your own semi tractor-trailer
5. You can live anywhere, you don't have to starve, and you're your own man ... or woman (yes ... there ARE a lot of women in trucking.)
6. You can buy a trailer for 3 grand or less

Shanty Towns In Oakland??

"The only constant is change ... when you resist it, change happens anyway, pulling you along kicking and screaming."

The place looks worse every time I return to Oakland. Economic racism looms large here. In an area where blacks experienced leaps in their personal incomes during and after World War II, it is now very clear that the black dollar has been written off in California as well as in many other states.

I parked my semi near the Oakland Coliseum and walked over the bridge to take BART. Hearing voices I looked down and was shocked to see a SHANTY TOWN here in Oakland!

The time when the plan was to: "Get a good education, and get a good (government) job is OVER!" Through. Ka-Put. Time for a new plan peoples. In other words... you can change, die, or wish you were dead.

It's been said that when God closes one door, He opens at least one more. Folks, we are faced with the same old Existential Dilemma that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Camus, wrote enough books to fill up vaults about. In short, we are FORCED to be free.

China and India are now the world's number one and two largest economies. What do they have us looking at on television? Paris Hilton. In California the public health system is already overwhelmed and the parole system is hanging on by a tread. The recent Sub Prime Housing debacle threatens to ignite the global recession that has been rumored for the past ten years. And what is the black community's response? To demand Reparations.

Wake up folks! Everybody is trying to bring a covered dish to the table and all we're looking for is a free meal?? THIS from the son's and daughters whose ancestors walked out of Africa and peopled the world?? Oh Noooo ... we can do far better.

But the news is actually good for those who can see the signs, take faith in God, and walk towards a far more promising future. Land is cheap and plentiful in the Midwest and South. (Well ... many have already woke up and moved to the south so it's getting crowded in someplace already.)


I strongly feel that it's better to learn trades than are immune to recession than it is to get an English Degree. If your first dream is to become a doctor, nurse or teacher and you have the means to do so, then by all means, DO. Rural areas NEED those skills. The key is ... get some of this cheap land while it's still cheap.

In Oklahoma where my trucking company is based out of, I can buy 20 acres with an old house on it, a barn and water on or near it for under $100,000 dollars. In some cases, around $56, 000. The quality of life is far higher there and you can grow your own organic food without worries about the increase in genetically modified crops.

Wake up folks ... it's time to go. It's also time to relearn how to love each other .. and ourselves. Nothing teaches that like self-determination. The only Klan you have to worry about these days are those thugs living next door. Me? I'm buying land in areas where blacks are (many are very integrated), and building large fences protected by very large dogs.

Oklahoma: The Grass is Greener

It's a slightly overcast, warm, good Sunday. I'm still in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a lifetime in California, I'm shocked to find the place being so very Kool.. I see that what I really need is the opportunity to make some good friends, page-up at a good church, and be in an environment where I can afford to buy a home (and some land attached to it), meet a good woman of beauty and heart, and prosper.

They all here in Oklahoma. I most likely won't live here forever, but it's just a kick in the behind that I remained so stuck in California for so many years. Cali ain't the be-all, end-all by no means. It's "over-done" with too many rats in the cage—plus, people everywhere know what time it is. Yeah, there are some Neanderthals here, but by far, there are more people who will smile back and say "hello". Kool. (And there's sooo much green, fertile land to buy a farm on here in the Midwestern "Heartland.")

This morning I flagged down a sister in a car and asked here where a black church was. She pointed out the directions and told me it started at 11:00am. About an hour later, I started walking down that green bordered country road to church. Right away it started raining. A few feet up the road some old sisters in a hooptie say me walking and asked me if I was going to church. I said yeah, and they told me to hop in. Turned out the directions were slightly wrong and I might not have found it had it not rained and had they not been there at that particular moment. Church was good.

There are a lot of ways to be wealthy ... and I regret that I've felt the pull of being a loner for so many years. It's kept me struggling spiritually and economically far longer than it should have. (As in, "It's who you know, that counts." That's including God!) Perhaps worse than that, being a loner and believing in the "American" lie of "being independent" from others has also malnourished the manhood I've always wanted to actualize. Yes, a man does need to stand on his own two feet, provide for himself, his family, and then to do charitable acts of goodness and kindness for others... but in order to do that, he has to come through the gauntlet of relationships with others. It is through the spiritual, physical, economical, and moral challenges and difficulties with others that my adolescent edges are scraped off, and my masculine heart is forged.

Again, I voice my concern about the economic racism that is so strong in California and many other urban centers across the country. I see sooo many opportunities in "off the chart" places like Oklahoma for anyone with a business sense. Google is coming to Tulsa. I suspect that Oklahoma City holds more prospects than Tulsa. But you’d better do your homework and get some skills BEFORE you move to slower and/or more rural parts of the country. (They have plenty of "haves" and "have-nots" here already. You want to capitalized on all the gentrifications you’ve lived through in places that are now over-crowed and over developed.) Bring that experience with you.

I'm waiting on my trainer-truck, and then I'll be heading out. When I see other places of "good prospect", I'll send you a shout about them. Until then, God bless you my friends.

How Bad Do You Want It?

DATELINE: Tulsa, Oklahoma - July 1, 2007: Well, all those Mardi Gras parade floats filled with drunk black men dressed up as Indians, decrying their, "Indian Blood," wasn't a case of insanity after all. In my search to find a place to buy a small farm and create a livelihood in rural America has brought me here to Oklahoma, a place rich in Native American … and black history.

Oklahoma was part of the Indian Territories and has a rich history that is intertwined with African American history and African-Native American history.

There are physical monuments (towns, buildings and structures) built by blacks that remain today. The Buffalo soldiers also had a very significant role in settling this area. The area near Ft. Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, was where the first black Civil War Union Soldiers distinguished themselves in what has been known as, The Gettysburg of The West.

More significant is the history if black Seminal Indians who came up from Florida with the aboriginal Florida Seminoles. There were actually three branches of Native Americans relevant to African American History:

1.) White acculturated Indians (the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and others. For example, the Creek changed their names to Scottish surnames, took blacks as slaves, and changed their names too..)
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/resour.htm

2.) Aboriginals like the Seminoles who were never concurred and who never adapted to "the white mans ways"

3.) African-Indians and Seminole Freemen. Many Africans who ran away from white slavery and escaped into Spanish controlled Florida, were adopted by Seminoles. Blacks who were their off-spring were never slaves and proved unsuitable for Andrew Jackson’s campaign to force them to become slaves. http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/
So it is here that I find myself now, seeking to start my next leg in re-creating my life, and discovering that Oklahoma is a far more fertile ground than California for anyone who has developed transferable skills. There are plenty of opportunities here for people who want to start their own small business. There are a lot of good people here. The land is green for those who want to farm and prepare themselves for the "Global Recession" that is certainly heading our way. (And we KNOW who is historically hurt worst by "recessions." I wish I'd left California earlier.)

African and Seminole towns in the Indian Territories
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/6-towns.htm

The Meaning of Your Life?

One life to live ... for whom?

Living in a time and place where all around us are messages promoting hoarding and spending, it's very easy to lose track of what really satisfies you. So much so that many don't have a clue. America is increasingly getting ... fatter. Oh yeah ... there's so many reasons, right? But the main one is that fork at the end of our wrist.

Furtunately for us, a couple of people in San Francisco got together and started a microfinance startup named Kiva Microfinance is using the internet to bring normal people together to help alleviate poverty in Uganda .

There have been years when I made pretty good money, and other years when I made squat. But the primary constant element that determined the quality of my life was ... people. How did I connect with? Whom did I touch or allow myself to be touched by. In today's increasingly alienated world of violence, suspicion, and hatred, it's ... almost vital to find something worthy to integrate into my life. I can give a few bucks to some body standing on a corner looking for a handout (... a quarter that may go directly into the pockets of the beer industry...) or I can log onto Kiva and for as little as $35.00, have a positive, sustainable affect on the lives of an entire village of (industrious) people. For more on the story, visit : "Jewels In The Jungle."

Log onto the site. Have fun. Feel good about yourself. Feel good about others ....

Alternative Building: Papercrete

Okay, so you've got your eye on a piece of property that has a 3 bdrm/1.5 bath house on it, 17 acres of land, a barn, an all season creek (fresh water is going to be increasingly more important), and is divided between 5 acres of cleared pasture/farmland and the rest in timber that you can mill or sell.

We've already learned that one of the best small farm practices is to use no more than three acres for crops and flowers. So what else can you do with all that land?

How about greatly increasing the equity of your "empire" by adding another structure to it? Building Green and "Alternative" allows you to creative wonderful, mortgage-free buildings at pennies to what traditional buildings cost. The building can be wood burning Sauna cordwood building or a Strawbale "Adobe" home that keeps you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer while decreasing your dependence on both energy and energy companies.

The latest ... and the building style that has recently caught my eye is Papercrete .... a substance that creates lightweight "concrete-ish" mix or "adobe-ish" blocks to build with.

Like cordwood homes, you don't have to be a builder to build a house. There are books and videos at your local public library. You can begin your search by clicking on the links and by googling some keywords like: alternative building, papercrete, cordwood building, strawbale houses, and building with cob.

Farm or Go to College FREE?

• Okay, so not everyone wants to move to the country.
  
  
• And not all black folks seem to be eager to move "down south.
  
  
• And younger people may have so many other dreams than ... to become a farmer.

One of the most exciting new opportunities I've heard of ... in my life! ... is a current program that is sending young black males to college F-R-E-E !!

Black male college grads are in such short supply that they are now sending us to college free. (That's too sad to laugh at.) But it's true... there are about 13 black universities and other colleges who'll pay for your college. Here's the info:

For information about the Call Me MISTER program, please contact us through one of these methods:

Email:

MISTER@clemson.edu

Telephone:

Call toll-free : 1-800-640-2657

Mail:
Call Me MISTER

203 Holtzendorff

Clemson University

Clemson, SC 29634