If you could have a small farm, what would you grow/keep?

Potatoes. Lot of potatoes. Good yield, not a lot of work, long conservation, lot of way to consume, vodka friendly. And you can sell excess easily I think. And also parsley and garlic. Good to add with potatoes.

I do have a small farm (though it’s still not anywhere near being a primary source of income).

• jalapenos
• anything hotter that will grow up here (I need to get a heated mat for starting seeds)
• sweet peppers
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• kohlrabi
• various beans
• carrots
• beets
• potatoes
• various varieties of cabbage
• hakusai (Chinese cabbage in English, IIRC)
• bok choi
• eggplant
• broccoli (regular and stick)
• cauliflower
• kabocha
• other squashes
• various herbs
• radishes
• blueberries
• biwa (loquat)
• ume (plum)
• kaki (persimmon variety)
• onions (both Japanese and yellow, white, and red)
• okra

and I’m sure more I’m forgetting. I don’t use chemical pesticides so a lot of the brassicas don’t end up doing well. It’s also why I gave up on corn because it will not do well without pesticides here. I live in northern Japan but coastal so I have more moderate weather. Still, peppers don’t like to do anything naturally until July or August and don’t do well in our rainy season (which we are still in this year, unfortunately)

Goats, pigs, your mom. But I’d need a few hectares for the latter. 😁

Apples and Bees. Although where I live there’s plenty of orchards and they produce some stunning Honey. So it would be more of a personal thing where I’d produce apple cider and meads for the long winter nights.

Strawberries. They are the best taste to effort and cost of what little grows here in the north.

Potato is an option but they are cheap at the store.

Peppers and chili is an option but they require a greenhouse to stand a chance.

I’d not bother keeping animals unless I intended to make it a bigger part of my income. Can’t just fuck off for a week and do something else. Chickens would be the first contender if I did though

Dank, beans and chilis.

I would just extend what I am trying to do with my yard to make a food forest. So some more perennial fruiting and nut trees and perennial berry bushes. Really try the permaculture thing with lots of little harvest instead of a few big ones.

I have been loving growing herbs both culinary and medicinal. My yard gets enough to craft remedies for my should but it would be a great way to make some cash if you get some perennial herbs set up for regular harvesting and drying. I might try to sell calendula but I would really need to get good at starting from seed. But there’s money in that.

I would add sugarcane to the list. Its juice is pretty good and it’s a “plant and forget it” type of crop. Just don’t overdo it. The seedlings from one single sugarcane are more than enough.

I’d run a small moisture farm

Probably what I’m gardening now, but more? Tomatoes. Strawberries. Pickling cucumbers. Jalapeños.

irish wolfhounds

A small plot for my own use, maybe in a greenhouse, and the rest solar panels connected to the grid.

Hey nice! This is kind of a dream for me. For my small plot I’ve gotten a good hang of the basics, and very good at composting. My main goal is a sustainable garden whose fertilizer comes from within. Phosphorus is the biggest challenge to that, imo.

That said, Jerusalem artichokes are a big winner, alongside soy beans, kale (hardy as hell), and beets (also hardy), followed next by carrots, onions, tomatoes (increasingly picky in my experience). Obviously there are a ton of others including herbs, but I love growing these.

I’d love to be able to grow what I eat every day:

Onions
Carrots
Broccoli
Spinach
Brussel Sprouts
Tomatoes

Chickens

I have no idea how to do this, and I don’t think I’d be very good at it.

Chili. Definitely chili, a few type of it. It take small land to produce a lot of it, and chili also sell in high price per kg.

Also okra, bittergourd, pineapple

Corn, squash, beans. Maybe some hanging tomatoes.

Well assuming no legal problems, if just want a small plot of weed.

Enough to have several plants of 3 or 4 different strains, with enough quantity to be high anytime I want, and enough to keep my siblings that partake stocked for free.

And enough to have the amounts needed when baking with it.

I don’t wanna become a dealer or have a massive stockpile, but I don’t wanna have to ration til the next crop is ready. Wouldn’t need but like a quarter ounce of each kind I have at the absolute most. One of them only uses occasional edibles, and the two of us that use flower use dry vapes, do we don’t need much at a time.

And even then we use ABV to make it, so really even a quarter ounce would probably work. I do limit my usage when I have some, but even if I didn’t I would be zooted 24/7.

I figure even if I got some of my tolerance back, I couldn’t use more than a gram a day (I believe the capsules my vape uses are 0.1g per bowl, and I would probably max out at 4 bowls.

That’s what… 0.4g a day, 2.8g/week, 11.2g/month.

I have no idea how long a plant takes to grow to maturity, or how long they keep producing after a harvest (do you just chop the whole plant down? It is it like picking oranges off a tree that will grow back? I’ve never actually looked into it at all tbh),

Anyway, with like 4 or so different strains at a time, I would need to make more friends to give all that away.

Various spice and herb plants so I can enjoy them. I’m not sure what grows in my climate but anything would be nice fresh.

It depends of you want money or satisfaction?

If it’s money then the answer is going to be boring: find a cash crop that grows and sells well in your area and grow that. Here it’s garlic.

If it’s satisfaction then IDK honestly. Probably a bike track for my kids. I’d grow veggies but avoid livestock.

Fennel, it grows well for me and is a premium crop, and maybe Stokes Purple sweet potatoes and okra.

But really, fennel because it is reasonably well compensated and the only thing I grow the bugs ignore. Hong Tsoi is vigorous for me but doesn’t cost as much.

If you have room for animals, figure out what people will pay for and raise those. I have no idea on that.

I’m lucky enough to have a job that pays well where I work from home and don’t have to stick to a schedule so my little farm doesn’t have to provide any real monetary value and just gives us decent food stability and good will with neighbors.

We just moved here last year so were still getting set up, but so far we have a dozen pear and apple trees, tomatoes, too much zucchini, an assortment of peppers, eggplant, bush beans, 1/8th of an acre of potatoes and a 1/4 acre of pumpkin and squash. Once the squash bed is done I’ll fill it with onions and garlic to overwinter. We also have a nice little flock of quail for eggs.

If we had more room I would love to expand everything, plant a lot more fruit bushes and trees, get some ducks and chickens, maybe a couple goats and a donkey

Poppies

Honestly, whatever could make the most money. So probably mushrooms or truffles.

I would experiment. try out chickens and ducks or geese. try out sheep and goat. various perenials.

In a fantasy sense, I’d love to have sheep and donkeys, grow herbs and mushrooms, and make cheese (with vegan rennet).

I would grow indigenous food plants and selectively breed them for better yield and taste.

That’s if I liked gardening.

Cows, goats, chickens. For pets and food; only eating the milk and eggs tho.

Well small to tiny personal farms; you’ll want to grow the things you like to eat. Just skip the staple crops (wheat,rice, potatoes, beans) as they are dirt cheap and not worth the trouble (except at scale)

Onions, tomatoes, and probably hot peppers of varying ass-tearage.

Scotch bonnets and peaches

As long as it doesn’t need to produce anything but joy, dogs.

Deleted by author

I don’t know about a whole farm, but I suppose that the plant that I’d most personally be likely to grow would be some sort of hot peppers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Capsicum_cultivars

Not a lot of work, and nice fresh in small quantities — so having some growing there is nice. Plus, it’s something where a grocery store is only gonna have a limited selection of options relative to what’s out there.

Whether that’s a good choice is gonna depend on climate where one lives.

I also kind of like pineapple guavas. Those are hard to find in stores (unavailable in many places) as they don’t ship well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feijoa

If I didn’t personally have to take care of them, probably a variety of fruit trees, grapes, berries, maybe squash. Dad planted stuff around the back yard when I was a kid planned so that there was always something edible out there year-round. Grafted stuff on there too, so you had plumcots on one of the apricot trees, a peach tree that was half yellow and half white, a bunch of types of apples and plums (IIRC seven types on one tree) and so forth. It was neat from a consuming standpoint, but I wouldn’t personally want to deal with caring for each. If you enjoy the hobby, though…shrugs More fun than just having a ton of one thing. Not optimal from a cash crop standpoint, though.

EDIT: Oh, strawberries. Not that they’re hard to find, but store-bought strawberries are really watery, as they’re sold by weight or something like that. If you’ve ever had strawberries that aren’t as heavily watered, like, wild strawberries, it’s a neat experience. Much stronger flavor.

Cows and grain. Mostly because I already know how.

I may be a well paid tech guy today, but I’ll always be a hick and a yokel at heart.

Nothing. Working a farm is fucking awful.