I guess this is a suitable place to make my introduction as well.. wall of text incoming!
Hey everyone, I've been lurking/reading on these forums the past few weeks, and figured I might as well go ahead and register myself. =P
Im a 25 old guy from Norway, from a city with aprox 25k people. Me, my wife and son plan to take over the familyfarm as soon as my dad get his new house built (might take 3-5 years for all I know, bureaucracy is like in so many other places very inefficient here - atleast when it comes to buildingpermits
).
The farm is aprox 160 acres (if my conversion from the metric system is correct heh). It is located on a northfacing slope, starting at the bottom is a river at about 75m (246ft) above sealevel, and the topmost point on farmland further up is about 160m (525ft) above sealevel. The property goes much higher up, but there's only forest as of know further up (fir/spruce? and pine mostly, some areas with birch/leaftrees ++).
Nevertheless.. i've been talking with my dad a lot throughout the winter, and come spring I will start with some various projects (hugelkultur++) on the farm to see what can be considered viable with the soiltype, location and landscape of the farm.
As it is now, most of the cultivated area of the farm have been "rented" out to some other farmers in the area, they are using it to grow grass/hay/food for animals the conventional way.
I'll make a thread in "members' 'steads" at a later time with more info about the project(s), with pictures etc. =)
I've always enjoyed the nature, fruit, veggies, animals and the scenery when I was growing up on that farm, its the only place I really consider
home. My dad used to take us fishing trout, pike and perch quite often throughout my entire childhood. Plus hunting (moose and deer) and generally doing stuff in the forest are mostly the stuff I remember as good things from back then, but somehow along the way I started focusing more and more on computer stuff and sitting indoors all year long :p I've tried a lot of various jobs (started working the summer I turned 14) as an assistant with some forest research throughout Norway, on the local golf course, in the local alpine center, package delivery business, then turned over to the gaming industry (PC games) for a short while and finally my last job (the one I currently have) is as a computer consultant in a big firm in my city/town. Though I have not a single doubt in my mind that what I currently do isnt what I exactly consider useful for neither myself or the humanity, and I guess i've changed a lot the two last years after my son was born (plus i've been sick the last 2 years and got a ton of food intolerances). It gaveme a wake up call and I started reading a lot, I stumbled upon "permaculture" and after that I havent had a doubt in my mind what I want to do with my life! I dont want my son to eat all the veggies and other food with leftover herbicides/pesticides etc in them. I want clean, fresh and locally grown food, so might as well do it myself =P
I got tons to learn, probably the hard way. So far Sepp Holzer is the person with an area in a climate that resemble my own that I've found, I seem to find more material from warmer climates. Here in Norway I dont find much information at all, not on the internet in any case. The hard part about finding info are all the english names on plants/guilds (they might not even be viable in my area, or found at all in Norway), the difference in climates and very few use the metric system when describing whatever they talk about.. weirdly enough =P hah
Tried to keep it short, but well I write a lot sometimes