On maintaining a Ranger: farm economics and deep authenticity

[Elleth]

Are you really wearing out the equivalent of six blankets a year? And can you really weave that much wool fabric by hand in a year?

Two adults working on the farm part time? No we don't go through that much. Ten adults working full time at manual tasks? I suspect we'd wear through more. Not primarily in the form of blankets, but in trousers, tunics, so forth and so on. Especially trousers.

As to weaving that much... I honestly don't know. It's a heck of a lot to process - even counting child and early teen labor doing the carding and spinning.
Villages with dozens of people are in some ways so much easier than small freeholds - lots more efficiency.

We finally took possession of our 'country house,' on 13 wooded, hilly acres. There's the old 1930s farm house I'm turning into the Dragons Wood Inn

SO EXCITING - I love following your photos developing the place! I can't wait to see how you develop it.

I confess I'm a bit more skeptical of permaculture models than Harper BUT in your case I think it's got a lot to offer you, given your part-time residency on the land.
A "food forest" layout back in a clearing in the woods with some mounds for water caching sounds perfect for your situaiton - especially since the sooner you get trees in the better.

Harper - thanks for the pointer on raspberry leaves. I'll have to give that a go!

[Straelbora]

Straelbora, if you haven't already done so, I hope that you will look into permaculture.

Also, biointensive gardening. I found this to be an outstanding, yet inexpensive resource:
http://www.standeyo.com/Our_Books/GG.html
Unfortunately, it is only available as an e-book.

Orchards and brambles are low maintenance and can give an excellent yield. Brambles grow fast. Red Raspberry offers a good fruit, but more importantly, its leaves are an excellent healing herb. Elderberry does as well (not a bramble).

Thanks. It looks like a great resource.

Actually, we've already planted several fruit trees, and as soon as some more land gets levelled out, will be planting more.

The land is excellent for brambles, berries, etc. I'm thinking of doing a row of blueberries at the verge between the yard and the wooded hillside, so that I can easily 'cage' them to protect the fruit from birds and other beasts.

[Straelbora]

Are you really wearing out the equivalent of six blankets a year? And can you really weave that much wool fabric by hand in a year?

Two adults working on the farm part time? No we don't go through that much. Ten adults working full time at manual tasks? I suspect we'd wear through more. Not primarily in the form of blankets, but in trousers, tunics, so forth and so on. Especially trousers.

As to weaving that much... I honestly don't know. It's a heck of a lot to process - even counting child and early teen labor doing the carding and spinning.
Villages with dozens of people are in some ways so much easier than small freeholds - lots more efficiency.

We finally took possession of our 'country house,' on 13 wooded, hilly acres. There's the old 1930s farm house I'm turning into the Dragons Wood Inn

SO EXCITING - I love following your photos developing the place! I can't wait to see how you develop it.

I confess I'm a bit more skeptical of permaculture models than Harper BUT in your case I think it's got a lot to offer you, given your part-time residency on the land.
A "food forest" layout back in a clearing in the woods with some mounds for water caching sounds perfect for your situaiton - especially since the sooner you get trees in the better.

Harper - thanks for the pointer on raspberry leaves. I'll have to give that a go!

If you're on Facebook, my page for Dragons Wood Inn has plenty of photos. I was going to post phtos here, but the time to resize them always gives me pause. I need to catch my website, www.dragonswoodinn.com, up with my Facebook page, in terms of content and photos. The new house build on the property finally finished about six weeks ago, so I'll at least be able to devote more time to working on transforming the Inn. I wish more Rangers lived in the area- I've got a barn's worth of old barn wood leaning on the outside of the old farm house, and need to cut it to size and cover the interior, floor to ceiling, with it. It would be great to have about half a dozen people doing a bit of an assembly line- we could probably get it done in a weekend.