Using the Land
Outside Growing
Aside from starting some seedlings indoors, all growing is done outside with real soil and real sunlight. No greenhouse, no cold frame (yet). This leads to being really dependent on the weather being favourable.
Working Farm
We have a real, working farm here. It's used to grow plants for food, and plants for livestock feed. We no longer farm with dairy cattle and a neighbour rents most of the fields to grow crops for his farm business. Equipment to plant, protect and harvest plants is expensive, so he has to work as many fields as he can to pay for the equipment that he needs for his business. As technology changes, so does the need for using more up to date equipment. I feed people with my garden plots, but not near as many as my neighbour does with the field crops he plants and harvests.
Unused Land No More
Some of our fields are odd shapes, and some are up hills. The leads to modern farm machinery to be unable to use some areas in a field. That's were our growing practices come in. The garden plots that grow the vegetables, herbs and flowers make use of these difficult and unused spots. A garden doesn't need to have equal length rows running its full length, be flat or be close to buildings. It just needs work.
Challenges
Since we don't use the prime spots on the farm, more work was needed to make them suitable. Three plots are a distance from the buildings and have water wagons; wagon frames with poly tanks full of water on them. Two plots are in low lying areas and can be prone to flooding, so raised beds with walkways in-between them were built with a shovel and lines of twine to keep things straight. One plot is partly on a side of a hill and half the hill has been terraced. All the soil in the plots are full of rocks; Puslinch Township is full of them, we swear at the glaciers for putting them here every time a shovel hits one.
Disappearing Farmland
The 2021 Canadian census found that in the province of Ontario, 317 acres of land used for farming was permanently taken out of farming practices, every day. That's a scary number as Ontario has roughly five percent of its land able to support farming. With its large and growing population, it is getting harder to feed a majority of Ontario's population. If there's one thing I've leaned from Roman history, it is have a plan for food production and don't be reliant on distant lands. How does this tie in to how we use land here? Not letting good soil go to waste or grow weeds will become the norm in the future when Ontario needs to become self reliant on its food production.
Livestock
We still have livestock on the farm. Not as many as we used to. Livestock are great, not just for having your own source for meat and eggs, but for the environment as well. The grasses that grow in a pasture and hay field have huge root systems. Not only do they hold soil in place from wind and water erosion, they pull carbon out of the atmosphere and create homes to a large amount of microorganisms that only live in the soil. The destruction of such areas stops the sequestering of carbon and actually releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Our cows are also good at getting rid of carrot tops, darkened spinach and damage potatoes.