2013 New Years resolution?

I have always enjoyed hearing stories and reading blogs about peoples goals and the journeys to get there. Whether its abstaining from alcohol, not buying things from China (or not buying anything at all), food related, weight related, or anything else, I find them entertaining and sometimes insightful.  I finally have a challenge of my own I am going to blog about.  As the house Jess and I recently bought is in the ALR, in order to qualify for farm status (and the very valuable tax break associated with it) we have to produce $2500 worth of farm gate sales from an area over 2 acres. It can be any primary agricultural product. Eggs, meat, horses, vegetables, flowers, syrup... pretty much anything. The value is only counted as the raw product, as in the value of the live weight animal minus purchase costs, not the proceeds of say, salami or sausages.  My hope is by blogging about the progress and products that come out of the place I can do two things: create a bit of a scrapbook, and generate interest about our extremely modest attempt at farming in order to shift the goods.

The plan at this point is to sell eggs, maybe some roasting chickens, attempt to raise 2 or 3 pigs, and farm some vegetables.  If it all goes to hell we can probably flog a lot of the naturally growing blackberries at the end of summer 2013.

In the blog I will try to post about the structures and systems we have to purchase and implement, the process and progress of the goods we grow, and the final product we will then rely on the public to buy. The hope is to break even on the costs of production, and the tax break will be the wages.

Can we do it? I hope so!