Why we do it

It's been a while since I posted here and I know I need to get consistent. Hopefully, I will be able to keep the blog moving along with all the doings at StonePath.

This post will be a short, re-introduction to what we are doing at StonePath, whyt we do it, and what's the point. Some of the people who follow this blog already know much of the answers, but others may not.

Our goal is to inspire others to start grabbing more self-sufficiency and a little control back into their lives, no matter how much land they have to use (or even containers for those who live in an apartment) or funds available to spend.

StonePath sits on a relatively small country lot in southern portion of Northeast Ohio. The available land we have to use is roughly 1/2 acre give or take. Our goal is to grow 70% of the vegetables our family will use in a year from the available space we have.

It's a daunting task, however, small scale agriculture techniques are really coming into their own. Small scale, super-intensive gardening is becoming more and more necessary as the available farm land is purchased and turned into sub-divisions.

The days of large family farms providing all the food for the country are slipping away. I read that the average age of the American farmer is now 58. The decline in farming comes from many sources, they include; a) the younger generations are entering college and profeesional less willing to take ovver the family farm,  b) The enormous cost of running a large farm in this economy is forcing many farmers to leave, c) The changing and very uncertain climate of late is causing real challenges in production, and there are many others.

All of these factors point to, what I believe, is a coming crisis in food production.

Similar to the above situation is the ever growing use of genetic modification of the food supply. I plan to discuss this more in a future post, however, it is worth mentioning now because it is one of the large reasons we have decided to grow organic and control what we eat.

As I move forward with the blog, I am taking the blog back to basics, and will describe what we are doing and why to help others to take the leap into small scale, intensive Microfarming.