Organic Farming

I got into organic farming about 2 years ago. I was going through some tough times in my little home. I live in a small ranch style house in rural Oregon, and try to eek out a living as best I can as a contractor and all around fix it man. But as the housing boom has faded, and the economy has collapsed, work is scarce. I got a book on organic farming, figuring that if I grew my own food, it would help things along for me. You see, it would use up some of my increasingly abundant free time, cut down on food expenses, and at the same time, allow me to eat more healthily. On top of this, it would give me a sense of pride. You see, I always love a new project.

I had been eating food grown by organic farming for some time, but never really understood the intricacies of it. I guess that I still don't in some ways. You see, the type of organic farming that I was doing, growing small plots of my own stuff, was much different from the agriculture that goes on at the big organic farms scattered across the country. They have to find ways to grow huge fields of the same crop, and they can afford expensive measures to control pests without using any unnatural pesticides. For me, I had very little space to meet all of my needs, and I had to be clever to defeat the little varmints which were the bane of organic farming.

First of all, were the slugs. Everyone knows that you can get rid of slugs through the use of beer, which somehow simultaneously attracts and drowns them. What you might not realize until you try organic farming, is that there are always more slugs out to ravage your crops.