Hi Richard, I grew up knowing how to grow plants and care for animals, living on a farm, so I find it a bit difficult to understand in a way when someone doesn't have that as part of their basic knowledge. I think that in the time between now and when you can buy your smallholding, you need to set out to learn all you can about growing crops and vegetables, to immerse yourself in it. See it as a course with a defined aim and a time scale, with a definite outcome, your knowledge.
Some areas to explore are books, You tube clips, TV gardening programmes such as gardeners world, just to get a feel for the seasonality of growing. Get yourself some good basic books on gardening - one very good one is old now but still worth reading: Geoff Hamilton's 'Organic gardening'. There are so many more books out there that you just need to choose a couple that interest you most. Often books aimed at allotment growers are ideal for what you need. There are some good magazines too, well one that I would recommend: 'Kitchen Garden magazine' which is aimed at beginners but has plenty of articles of interest to more knowledgeable gardeners. The reason I like to have one gardening magazine is for the pictures! There's something wonderful about seeing colour pictures of growing veg at a time when the garden is winter bare - it gives me inspiration! Of course once you have moved to your new home you will have lots of questions which a book will never answer and that's when this group will be most helpful, so expect to ask lots of questions.
I would put in a personal plea that you stick to organic principles for the sake of your health and the health of our planet. I can see no point in going to the effort of growing your own food if you then grow it in a chemical pot pourri. The same applies to keeping hens, try to keep interventions as environmentally friendly as possible.
You say you want to specialise in Agriculture automation. That seems against nature at first, but I think it's the way things will have to go if we are to feed a growing world population from a shrinking area suitable for crops, as climate change progresses. By learning to grow your own food you will see what AI can do for automation of food production and what areas need innovation. There's nothing like weeding amongst the carrots to make anyone wish there was a machine that could do that for us
Topic: Greetings (Read 3102 times)
