Keeping good records on the farm is one aspect of our business that we have been investing a lot of time in recently and plan to continue to devote a good amount of time to. We find it amazingly beneficial to us as farmers, as businessmen, as neighbors, and as people conscious of our environmental impact to know how much we are planting, how much we consuming, and how much we are producing.
We believe small-scale farming doesn’t receive the attention it deserves because it’s rare that one sees in numbers the real impact and yield of even a small space devoted to growing food. Therefore, we are collecting and organizing data to give people a sense of the inputs, work, and productivity of our farm.
In addition, these numbers give us information and feedback to develop ways and strategies to better run our farm. We recognize that our ecological impact is directly linked to our economic success and viability and we view these numbers as a way to become more aware of this balance. How much city water are we using? Are there ways we could lower our usage next month? What are some avenues for collecting more biomass that’s headed to the landfill and turn it into compost and an increase in fertility of our soils?
We make a real effort to be conscientious of how we run our farm, and we’d like to use this data so people can see some of the realities of a functioning farm and so we can challenge ourselves to reflect month by month on how we could operate even better.
So here’s our first in a monthly installment of a look at some of our numbers and data for the month:
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Amount of Space Currently Planted: 2900 square feet
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Number of Plants Planted:
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Vegetables: 863
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Herbs: 365
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Fruit Trees/Other Perennials: 37
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Pounds of Harvest: N/A
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Number of Seedlings Started: 1188
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Rain Water Harvested: 110 gallons
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Harvested Rain Water Used: 110 gallons
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Compost Made and Sifted on the Farm: 3.5 Cubic Yards
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City Water Used: 1535 gallons
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Biomass (organic waste) Collected (kept out of our landfills):
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Woodchips: 33
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Truck-loads = ~505 cubic yards = 126 tons
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For Transportation: 20 Gallons
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Manure: 90 pounds
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Gasoline used by the Farm: For Work on the Farm: 1/4 Gallon