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What do you think?
What are some of the start up materials that you will need?
Terry
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The first and most important "material" needed is to sit down and listen to farmers and ranchers in the area. Learn the local conditions, learn the land, the weather, the water flow and cycle, irrigation rights if any, buildings, tractors, fencing and other equipment already available etc... in great detail. Then investigate the markets already available and a strategy to develop markets that may or may not be there already like CSA's etc. Local laws. The list is long. You have to take a
holistic and
systems thinking approach and view the entire whole, not just one part. Joel Salatin (who has given many talks on how he developed his scale-able agricultural prototypes for multi-species MIRG) once was asked what advise he would give to the people trying to do something like what he is doing, if exported to help Iraq develop their delta, so they can again feed themselves. His answer was both short and wise.
"Yes, I am confident that we can help them. I think the first thing we need to do though is sit down and listen for a year."- Joel Salatin
And of course in my signature for Tville I quote Bill Mollison with every post.
"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature;
of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labour; & of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system."-Bill Mollison
All that assuming I can even pull it off on the small scale I am trying out now! LOLZ I haven't done ANYTHING yet! It is still spring year one! hahahahaha
BUT if your friend is really serious, message me privately and I will have a chat with him, maybe even schedule a meeting on the acreage at some future date. So I can see what's there to work with.
My original plan, once I got this project relatively well hammered out was to go to my cousin who owns the original family farm started by my great grandfather, and work out the largest scale there in cooperation with my family on our family land. So I might even decide to pass on the $1 lease offer.....maybe. The future is never locked in stone. I am flexible if I am anything at all. So we will see. Message me privately with a phone number of the guy and we can at least talk about it.