Why I chose this name for this blog.

A friend of mine wrote a song called "Farming Is The Hard Way", which includes things like plowing with a three legged cow.  I don't plow with oxen.  I don't really plow with a tractor.   I don't use a rototiller.  I do occasionally use a small rip plow, sometimes called a subsoiler, that reaches a narrow tooth down about 12" and loosens the soil without churning it.  I use that on a small tractor, and I try to avoid running machinery in the garden if the soil is at all soft.   I'm "farming the hard way" in that I'm focused on hand digging my beds.  Because my soil is a heavy clay loam, it's easily damaged by excessive machinery use.

I'm also aware of our future using less petroleum products.  I'm trying to grow without putting more fossil energy into the garden than I get out as food energy.   I'm not sure I'm succeeding, because I do still use fossil energy to import things.  The tree trimmers who have generously given me several loads of wood chips certainly use petroleum, as does the plastic greenhouse film, the lumber mills, the tool makers, and all that.  But I hope that what I'm doing makes my garden more robust and reliable against global economic weirdness.  I'm trying to garden in a way that will be possible regardless of what the world throws at me.  Sometimes that means a more labor intensive initial approach.  I hope that in the long run, it makes it easier.

As for the URL, what I started with was heavy clay and weeds.  I've seen progressions of weeds over time and I've seen the soil getting easier to work, but I know it will fall back into it's old pattern without proper attention.

Finally, when we were first dating, my wife introduced me to her family as "Dan the Farmer".  The youngest of her siblings' kids still calls me that, as one word, when he greets me or wants to get my attention.  Sometimes, when I've been doing poorly in the garden, I'm a little embarrassed to be called that.  It seems like it shouldn't apply to me because I'm not that good.  But just now, I feel like I should embrace it and try to live up to it.

Plus the first few titles I thought of were already taken.