Small is beautiful.

You don't need a huge plot of land to create something meaningful. Do what you can afford - there is plenty of room for exploration and growth starting from where you are right now. Even if you want to live off the land, figure out your income apart from farming, at least for the first five-eight years.

I sometimes meet people who want to start farming without any capital or skills. I also meet people who perceive land to be the answer to all their problems. Yet I’m convinced we remain as we are, even in the most beautiful places.

The realities of work and capital are often not fair. And at times, it is possible to get outside these injustices- there is so much land across South Africa and so many ways to access to it. But usually, this access is made easier with some work experience, some skills, some savings, and some willingness to prioritise one thing and compromise on another.

Many parts of the growing journey are not naturally enjoyable at first. They become more enjoyable as our competency and experience improves. If you have financial stress and heavy farm responsibilities from the beginning, that will be a lot to deal with.

It’s not that farming always has to be super expensive. It is that it is very difficult to earn a middle-class income from small-scale farming. So if you have a middle-class standard of living, you either have work outside your home to support yourself, or you need to drop your standard of living. Or a combination of the two. While you are preparing to do this, you can grow wherever you are.

One of the things I'm most grateful for is that Eugene and I agreed to only buy land well within our budget, without large startup costs. We knew I'd need to keep working after we moved, which narrowed our location choices considerably. We also wanted somewhere my parents could eventually join us without being far away from my siblings and their other grandkids. So we looked for a small plot that fit our budget.

Our philosophy could be summarised this way: buy and build without debt to avoid financial stress. We were happy to live on a very small plot (less than 1000m2) if necessary. If we'd moved somewhere more expensive, our lives would be very different - the people around us would have different needs and inevitably we’d be comparing ourselves differently, and our budget would have been stretched from day one.

Starting small meant we could only improve. Our plot began as bare land filled with port jackson - it could only get better under our care, whatever projects we could afford. Our knowledge and skills could gradually develop alongside each new project.

I've seen many places where expenses become prohibitive, where location and size create immediate overhead and labor costs. But on just one acre, we don't need heavy machinery. We're close to market, community, and sources of organic waste.

Ten years later, the potential for growth continues to surprise us. We now have chickens, goats, ducks, quail, vermicomposting and black soldier fly systems, 54 veggie beds, a food forest, hot compost, humanure systems, our home, my parents' home, a tiny house, a shop, and a nursery.

And we still have many years of growing and improving ahead of us. A hundred more projects, and that’s just on a small plot.

Workshops

Additional resources:
Schumacher, E. F. (1999). Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered: 25 years later ... with commentaries. Hartley & Marks Publishers.

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