agriculture beta?
Jun. 24th, 2019 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseHi friends, wondering if any of you are available to beta on the farmcore aspects of the next story in my TDiR series; I know some of you have related special interests! I'm looking for information about reparative agriculture in England in the early 1990s; what kind of liberal farming was commonly practiced, if in my story I should set them up as certified permaculture or locavore or halal or organic or some other sort of period-specific utopian project.
My characters are starting from scratch in an old farmstead that's just been lived in for a few decades, not farmed, and I'm trying to figure out what I need to have them plant/rear and also what to pursue in terms of grants and funding, investments ect. The story is set in August/September through May or so, in the Thames River Valley; I've been using Susan Cooper's childhood home of Dorney as my geographical stand-in for the location of the village.
-You plant the new young trees in the fall, I know that much!
-Before the frost, till up the land to start preparing the soil? Are alfalfa and soy good crops to plant in this context, or are those for factory farming and it should be more like corn, peas, squash, and carrots? Do I sound too much like an American, with all these New World plants?
-Maybe set up animals before winter? for fertilizer ect. I'm thinking sheep or goats, chickens, and rabbits. Do I want a pig? Pig might be too much.
-I need at least one horse, for plot-related reasons. Does the horse need companion animals? Is it okay to have just the one? (There could be a barncat! Horses like cats, don't they?) Also what kind of dog would make sense, as a working breed?
-Build the raised beds for the kitchen garden in the fall, I think? And then plant in spring?
-When do I need to get herbs in by? Should some of that have been put in right away, at the end of the summer season, to get established? Or would it make more sense to prepare beds and then start from seed in the spring?
There's also a whole class of questions I've got to work out about the politics of the establishment; I'm trying to make a sort of farm-Camelot, so it has to be powerful and just, and I want to get the equivalencies and the ethics right.
-Are they a nonprofit or heritage site, maybe?
-One of the themes in the series is celebration of cultural diversity via foodways, and I was thinking that I could develop that further here. Halal butchery is fasure a relevant sociopolitical issue, and might be something my characters should look into providing in this context. Are there other ag products that non-white families in 1990s Britain would have been looking for, that my characters ought to supply? Lamb is a thing like that, I think; what about herbs and spices? Different veg?
-I'm researching period social programs that would include working at a farm like the one I'm imagining as part of service or support; any leads on that sort of thing would be very welcome!
My characters are starting from scratch in an old farmstead that's just been lived in for a few decades, not farmed, and I'm trying to figure out what I need to have them plant/rear and also what to pursue in terms of grants and funding, investments ect. The story is set in August/September through May or so, in the Thames River Valley; I've been using Susan Cooper's childhood home of Dorney as my geographical stand-in for the location of the village.
-You plant the new young trees in the fall, I know that much!
-Before the frost, till up the land to start preparing the soil? Are alfalfa and soy good crops to plant in this context, or are those for factory farming and it should be more like corn, peas, squash, and carrots? Do I sound too much like an American, with all these New World plants?
-Maybe set up animals before winter? for fertilizer ect. I'm thinking sheep or goats, chickens, and rabbits. Do I want a pig? Pig might be too much.
-I need at least one horse, for plot-related reasons. Does the horse need companion animals? Is it okay to have just the one? (There could be a barncat! Horses like cats, don't they?) Also what kind of dog would make sense, as a working breed?
-Build the raised beds for the kitchen garden in the fall, I think? And then plant in spring?
-When do I need to get herbs in by? Should some of that have been put in right away, at the end of the summer season, to get established? Or would it make more sense to prepare beds and then start from seed in the spring?
There's also a whole class of questions I've got to work out about the politics of the establishment; I'm trying to make a sort of farm-Camelot, so it has to be powerful and just, and I want to get the equivalencies and the ethics right.
-Are they a nonprofit or heritage site, maybe?
-One of the themes in the series is celebration of cultural diversity via foodways, and I was thinking that I could develop that further here. Halal butchery is fasure a relevant sociopolitical issue, and might be something my characters should look into providing in this context. Are there other ag products that non-white families in 1990s Britain would have been looking for, that my characters ought to supply? Lamb is a thing like that, I think; what about herbs and spices? Different veg?
-I'm researching period social programs that would include working at a farm like the one I'm imagining as part of service or support; any leads on that sort of thing would be very welcome!