when you read some of these farm patterns you are unimpressed and react with:
- “So what?”
- “My grandmother could have told me that”
- “That’s what I do already”
- “How else would you do it?”
- “Of course”
- or some other response that indicates that the pattern you have just read is obvious, normal, natural or common practice.
If so, please don’t be surprised and don’t assume the farm patterns are no use.
If you are a smart farmer, you are probably using many of these techniques already.
The whole point of them is to distill commonsense farming into a form that can easily be passed to someone who has not yet discovered that way of working.
If you are already working this way, you may still find farm patterns in here that will add to your skills and improve your farming.
These farm patterns are all commonsense approaches I have found.
Some I picked up in life as a child trotting along knee-high to Uncle Bill on the farm and as an adult on that farm and others.
Some I found through my own farming.
Some showed up when I was advising farmers on how to solve problems without chemicals.
Others were spotted while I was working alongside farmers and observing them and how they farmed.
Some have come from researchers I have worked with.
Others came out of my head and were then tested in the real world of farming and grazing and found to work. These were missing patterns for the set.
I could see there must be a way to resolve this or that problem without creating more problems. So I would hunt down ways to do that.
There are more farm patterns out there that I have not documented — yet.
You may be using some that are not in this collection. If so I would like to hear about it.
If you have any farm patterns to add or any comments on any of these patterns, please email me on michael [at] organicexchange [dot] com [dot] au